January
Year of the Tiger
28/01/10 08:48
This is the year of the tiger, should be very
auspicious for me. So was 1950, so I was born in the
year of the tiger and 5 x 12 is a very important
number - Linda says I should join the bean throwing
ceremony at the local temple. I think I’d rather go
out for a good meal.
We’ve had a wonderful month, finishing the school holidays with day trips here and there, Edo Tokyo Museum in Ryoko, the open air Architectural Museum, birdwatching down by the river, walking in the mountains, and more woodwork at Shuko-kai. It seems every time we go out we find something new and interesting. We popped up in the wrong subway station a couple of weeks ago, and found ourselves in the Street of Dolls, hence the new photograph on the front page.
The Tokyo Edo Museum is a very strange building, built at the height of the bubble economy, showing amazing models of old Edo. Sadly there is no real social history, or such that there is, rather understated. For example, in the pleasure quarter section, the captions on the exhibits mention in passing, that the life expectancy for a courtesan in the Edo pleasure quarters (i.e. brothels) was 22. That implies the girls were pretty young when they entered. By giving the brothels/prostitution a euphemism (pleasure quarters/courtesans) and lauding the cultural accomplishments of Samurai users in the same display, it rather glosses over what I imagine must have been an abusive and unpleasant existence. Dead courtesans were cremated at a local shrine and the ashes buried in unmarked mass graves. Hummm.
The Tokyo Edo Museum is complimented by an open air architectural museum on the fringes of Tokyo, where the city transported and reassembled all sorts of houses, old farm houses, shops built after the Great Kanto Earthquake, early modernist’s houses, and one that looks remarkably like Morris Road. There is a playground, where the kids can use spinning tops, hoops, stilts and play Edo era games. We saw the first blossom of spring, (probably plum and almond) and lovely wintersweet.
We also managed to find the Meguro Parisitological museum, wonderful if rather macabre, includes an 8 foot tapeworm in a bottle, with a length of tape hanging on the wall to demonstrate the real length. I hadn’t realised filarias and schistosomiasis were problems in Japan until after the 2nd War.
We had super day in the mountains, a cable car ride across the Hakone plateau with good views of Fuji, followed by walk round the western edge of Lake Ashinoko, spotting Skylarks, Grey Headed Starlings, and I think, Goldcrests.
The birds in Rishinmori park are now very hungry and now the leaves have gone from the trees, we get to see some of the small species like Pygmy Woodpeckers and Great Tits.
Our first visitors, Julian and Jana, arrived from New Zealand en route to Germany on the 14th, spent a whirlwind two days doing Tokyo. Linda started back at TOIS on 11th, leaving me to practice Japanese, go to auditions, set up a removable workbench in the kitchen so I can get on with my Shuko-kai assignment. We had an amazing demonstration of how to make concealed dovetail joints last week that was quite breathtaking.
Photographs of January are here; More photographs of shuko-kai on Picasa, including a little movie, and of the Outdoor architectural museum here
Cheers
Nigel
We’ve had a wonderful month, finishing the school holidays with day trips here and there, Edo Tokyo Museum in Ryoko, the open air Architectural Museum, birdwatching down by the river, walking in the mountains, and more woodwork at Shuko-kai. It seems every time we go out we find something new and interesting. We popped up in the wrong subway station a couple of weeks ago, and found ourselves in the Street of Dolls, hence the new photograph on the front page.
The Tokyo Edo Museum is a very strange building, built at the height of the bubble economy, showing amazing models of old Edo. Sadly there is no real social history, or such that there is, rather understated. For example, in the pleasure quarter section, the captions on the exhibits mention in passing, that the life expectancy for a courtesan in the Edo pleasure quarters (i.e. brothels) was 22. That implies the girls were pretty young when they entered. By giving the brothels/prostitution a euphemism (pleasure quarters/courtesans) and lauding the cultural accomplishments of Samurai users in the same display, it rather glosses over what I imagine must have been an abusive and unpleasant existence. Dead courtesans were cremated at a local shrine and the ashes buried in unmarked mass graves. Hummm.
The Tokyo Edo Museum is complimented by an open air architectural museum on the fringes of Tokyo, where the city transported and reassembled all sorts of houses, old farm houses, shops built after the Great Kanto Earthquake, early modernist’s houses, and one that looks remarkably like Morris Road. There is a playground, where the kids can use spinning tops, hoops, stilts and play Edo era games. We saw the first blossom of spring, (probably plum and almond) and lovely wintersweet.
We also managed to find the Meguro Parisitological museum, wonderful if rather macabre, includes an 8 foot tapeworm in a bottle, with a length of tape hanging on the wall to demonstrate the real length. I hadn’t realised filarias and schistosomiasis were problems in Japan until after the 2nd War.
We had super day in the mountains, a cable car ride across the Hakone plateau with good views of Fuji, followed by walk round the western edge of Lake Ashinoko, spotting Skylarks, Grey Headed Starlings, and I think, Goldcrests.
The birds in Rishinmori park are now very hungry and now the leaves have gone from the trees, we get to see some of the small species like Pygmy Woodpeckers and Great Tits.
Our first visitors, Julian and Jana, arrived from New Zealand en route to Germany on the 14th, spent a whirlwind two days doing Tokyo. Linda started back at TOIS on 11th, leaving me to practice Japanese, go to auditions, set up a removable workbench in the kitchen so I can get on with my Shuko-kai assignment. We had an amazing demonstration of how to make concealed dovetail joints last week that was quite breathtaking.
Photographs of January are here; More photographs of shuko-kai on Picasa, including a little movie, and of the Outdoor architectural museum here
Cheers
Nigel