In the bottom right hand corner of a YouTube video, you can see an old man pushing his bike. He's walking slowly, but you can hear people on the roof shouting at him, "Hurry old man, hurry up, run, run, run." Further down the alley, there is a white van reversing fast; on the bridge behind, two cars driving, hazard lights flashing. I doubt they survived. The people on the roof can see the Tsunami churning the river, waves of black water, throwing fishing boats against the bridge piles, pouring over the flood wall, and later the camera follows a half-submerged van, hazard lights still ablaze, as it washes out to sea.

We spent New Year in Ishinomaki, where those shots were taken, in the northern part of Miyagi prefecture, with a volunteer group called “It’s not just mud.” One of the volunteers, Toshi, grew up in the town and took us on a tour, past the shell of the store where he worked as a teenager, the shuttered shops in the central district, and the empty lots surrounding the paper mill. We stood on the hill above the port by his old school and looked down at the few remaining buildings, an empty wrecked hospital, some storage tanks, ten or so apartment blocks. The remainder, little houses and alleys, machine shops and small businesses are swept away and destroyed. Toshi said about 4,000 people died in his district, one in forty of the town; the official figures say 6,500 dead, out of 160,000, about 30,000 homes destroyed or seriously damaged. The unofficial figures reckon far more.

Compared to the scenes immediately after the earthquake, much of the muck, mud and debris have been cleared. Huge dumps of wrecked cars, building materials, and wreckage are stored along the front. The roads are passable again, although drivers must weave between the manhole covers that are now six inches above road level; most of the suburbs have power, water, and sewage. And the paper mill and chemical plant reopened two months ago, a waft of sulfur giving a sniff of economic recovery. But the industrial area, once busy with hurrying trucks and the noise of machinery is empty, silent wasteland. This province had a GDP greater than all Argentina before last March; it will be years before jobs and income return to pre March levels, if ever.
But there’s a deeper malaise behind the superficial clearance. We worked in a community centre where the tide mark from the Tsunami is 2.3 meters, the waters soaked the ground floor for over a week. Even two miles inland, the water reached chest height. That means that every house was flooded, drenching the plaster, insulation, timber framing, kitchen cupboards, pots, pans, bedding, appliances, books, and albums with a toxic mix of Tsunami silt and chemical waste washed in from the port.

Nine months after the disaster, few houses have been restored and the survivors camp above rotting rooms. In the immediate aftermath, whole areas were condemned and scheduled for demolition so owners abandoned their homes to the rats and kites and moved away. Now, it seems those decisions have been overturned, and the owners are trickling back. Where else can people go in this crowded little island? And although it is hard to know (we don’t speak Japanese) it seems to me that there is little project planning, overall direction, or leadership at either national, regional, or city level. Tohuku rarely features on national TV – Fukushima, Olympus and political shenanigans dominate. The locals say the Mayor has been on holiday since March 11 – he has never visited one of the worst damaged suburbs, Watanoha (where we stayed). Rumours say the Yakuza have moved into the construction industry, raising prices and demanding protection money from the tradesmen.
And so the small volunteer groups do the best they can, working with local communities, clearing ditches, preparing houses for restoration by removing rotting plaster and timber, cooking New Year meals, and bagging tsunami debris for removal.

We stayed a week (facebook.com/ItsNotJustMud). INJM uses two semi derelict houses as a base, with ten to thirty volunteers sleeping on the floor, sharing the chores, leaving to work in the morning, and returning each afternoon to cook nabe pots of miso soup and stews. There is power to one house and cold water to both, but baths mean a trip to the local onsen, which is very welcome as the sleeping quarters are ice boxes.
We spent our first two days collecting debris from a house section and the beach, the second two cleaning ditches, and the third two cleaning photographs and documents in the Nakajima community centre. Other volunteers came from Japan, Europe, Asia, Australia and NZ. It doesn’t seem appropriate, but we had fun clearing ditches, shoveling silt, and enjoying the friendship of a lovely group of people, despite the sadness and anger, and the choking need to weep from time to time, as when we found a little kokeshi doll (shrine to a dead child) in the rubble surrounded by fresh flowers. We are twice the age of some of the other volunteers, but felt quite comfortable and accepted (unlike another organization that turned me down a couple of months ago on the grounds I was too old ... ha).
It will take several years, the government reckons three, most outside groups guess ten or more, so there will be masses of work for INJM and others for some time yet. If any of you can donate, then check out the “itsnotjustmud.com” site; they have a list of needs there.
Love to you all
Nigel and Linda

Yanaka is one of the least changed areas in Tokyo. Spared by chance from the great firestorms of World War II, you can get an idea of how old Tokyo looked. Narrow lanes run between wooden houses of vertical boards topped with over heavy tile roofs, old and new temples, a long shopping street lined with craft shops and snack bars, and the biggest Buddhist cemetery in Tokyo, where the ashes of the great and the famous fertilise Sakura and Maple, the not so famous homeless sleep amongst the tombstones, and the young and in love find little spaces to be alone.
The village has always been something of a magnet for artists and writers. The rents are cheap, the streets full of life and colour, noodle bars and little izakaya (taverns serving snack food), sakabata (flags) fluttering in the wind, tiny galleries selling old photographs, or hand knitted leg warmers, woven bamboo or sumei paintings, all sandwiched just far enough from the base money making downtown and industry in the suburbs.


And at the end of each October, the village holds an exhibition, to celebrate the return of the cool weather; the galleries put out their wares on benches and maybe, just maybe, sell enough to take the artists through the winter nursing a sake in the warmth of the local izakaya.
We wandered over one Saturday, to check out Jim’s exhibition. He’s our sumei teacher. He came from New York for the summer twenty years ago and never left. He prints and engraves, makes banjos out of broken shamisens, plays jazz to old ladies in their kimonos, and squashes ten yen coins on the local railway track to engrave the flattened copper discs into little medallions. He wasn’t there, but we supped green tea with his wife and some friends, admired the prints, and decided that we couldn’t afford hatchi man yen just now thank you very much.
On the way back, one of the older houses was exhibiting a collection of silver brooches and other ware on a shelf in the window. The house, like many others in Yanaka looks rather dilapidated, more shack than house. But inside there was a small front room, a raised platform measuring six or so tatami mats, and a low table made of a single block of wood on two trunks. Along one side, under the window, Sato-san has his workbench, anvil, torch, and the tools from 70 years smithing.


I sat on the step and admired a bowl and a teapot under repair, and we exchanged information, like where we were from, and yes we liked Japan, and he had learnt silversmithing as a boy, and I have retired, and all the things we could talk about with my ten words of Japanese and his ten words of Eigo.
“I’m 83” he told me. “How old are you?”
“61” I say.
“Ah,” he says, “a mere youngster.”
Meanwhile, Linda, fingered the wares and admired a rather elegant silver brooch in the shape of a maple leaf. We bought a much smaller and cheaper turtle with a tail and legs that wiggled, and a braid to attach to a phone, bowed to Sato-san and went on our merry way ogling a very beautiful but expensive Sumei painting in the gallery further along the lane.
“Ha,” I thought “it’s Linda’s birthday in December.”
So the following week, I went back to Yanaka to buy the brooch. No luck, Sato-san was not in. I went back the following week on my way to an acting job, and the window was open. I called through the window, and Sato-san appeared through the curtains at the back all smiles and welcome.
I took off my shoes, and we sat at the low table and I looked around for signs of any brooches, turtles, or maple leaves. There were none, nor any silver ware of any sort, except for the teapot, still awaiting repair. After several minutes of my stumbling Japanese, I managed to explain we had seen a rather attractive brooch during the exhibition, and, as it was “tanjoubi no oksan” in a couple of weeks, “sumimaisen broochi wa Ikura desu ka?”
His face lit up, and he went to the back of the shop, pulling open drawers and boxes, emptying paper onto the floor, until he found a pendant, decorated with gold, silver, and copper discs, on a black background and brought it back to the table in great triumph. His wife brought tea, and we sat round the table trying to converse, while Sato-san inscribed the back of the pendant with “Linda”, found a chain, hunted out a box, set the pendant in the box, wrapped the box in special washi paper, all of which took about an hour and a half. By which time I was beginning to wonder if I would make the audition, or be able to get up from the table with my stiff and sore knees.
He finally finished the inscribing, the mounting and the careful wrapping and I asked to pay.
He would not take a single yen. He said he was so pleased to be asked, I had made him a very happy man, so it was his gift to my wife. His wife laughed, probably at my embarrassment, and said something to the effect of “He likes doing this sort of thing, and I was to be sure to go and get a proper chain, as the one he had given me wasn’t real gold you know”. I was relieved by that.
And as I backed out the shop, thanking them in my awful awful Japanese, they knelt on the floor and gave the deep bow.
How generous of time and thought, how precious, how delightful.



Japanese are incredibly generous, sometimes one has to be careful not to admire something to much; When Will Fergusson was hitching round Japan (Hitchhiking with Buddha) he almost ended up with a Bonsai in his backpack, having admired the skill of the artist a little too enthusiastically. I suspect Sato-san may be partially retired, but Jim told me he still teaches students; Sato-san might have been selling the silver pieces on behalf of his students or have sold his entire stock. Who knows?

September and October were hectic. Linda launched herself back into schoolwork, I continue with editing, TV-commercials, and scored an extra role, this time in Robert Devereux (Donizetti) staged by the Bavarian State Opera company and starring Edita Gruberova (extraordinary voice). The whole thing almost got cancelled because 80 members of the troupe, including two of the stars refused to come, and the others insisted that their drinking water be flown in from Germany. Ha. The plot, is just as melodramatic, but heck, this is opera, and to be on stage with a Diva at full bore is quite something.

I suspect it may be my last stage role ... I’d like to do another ballet, but there doesn’t seem to be much else in the offing; The New York Met cancelled because of Fukushima fears.

Not surprising in some ways; the misinformation from Tepco, and the incompetence of Japanese government and bureaucracy continue to amaze; one of the school’s teachers spent their holiday up north helping clean up a small community and reported that very little appears to have been achieved. The bigger towns have made progress, the ships are back in the water and the communication routes are all open. But many people still live in temporary accommodation, farming in the fallout area is effectively dead, fishing right up and down the coast is a fraction of it’s former activity, and other industrial and commercial activity will take years to recover. It is very difficult to get an accurate idea of just how much progress is being made as, even in Japan, the reports are fading from the TV news and daily papers. I fear for winter.


Although the institutional response appears to have been better than that after Kobe in 1995, disaster and recovery planning still appears woefully inadequate. Given that Tokyo and Shizuoka both sit on major faults overdue for activity, we wonder what will happen if another big shake occurs.

In the meantime, everyone crosses fingers and gets on with life. Sarah arrived at the end of October for three weeks, taking the holiday originally planned last March. After a hectic week in Tokyo, we joined the tourist trail to Shikoku, catching the Jidai-Matsurai (like a walking museum said Sarah) and Kurama-no-Himatsuri fesitvals (amazing fire festival held this year in torrential rain) in Kyoto, and the temple trail in Nara. The woodwork and the carpentry in the Todai-ji in Nara (founded in 745 and last rebuilt in 1709) are staggering. It is the biggest wooden building in the world; Sarah managed to crawl through a hole in the bottom of the one of the pillars, thus reserving her place in paradise. I, sigh, no longer fit.

Naoshima art island, in the middle of the inland sea, made a change from temples. Although I didn’t find the gallery I wanted to see, there was plenty else, like the Hockney in Benesse House, and of course the Yasanori Pumpkin down on the jetty.

Inland Shikoku is rugged and remote, the contrast with the industrial coastlines is such that it is hard to believe it is part of the same country. We spent one night in a hostel attached to a temple in the mountains (uncomfortable and cold), Sarah managed half a day’s kayaking (seventh heaven), and Linda and I managed a bit of gentle walking through the Ritsurin-koen in Kochi (claimed to be the finest garden in Japan). It is pretty neat, but I am not sure about all those bonsai-ed pines.

The temperature has plummeted this last week, we could be in for a long winter.
Love to you all. More pictures here and at Picassa.

The biggest rock in Borneo is Mount Kinabalu. In fact, it is the biggest rock (4,040 m) between the Himalayas and New Guinea, and by the time we were 3/4 up, it felt like it.
We took a diversion on the way back to NZ in June; we thought we might take a few walks in real tropical jungle, you know, do a bit bird watching on the side, spend some time with an orangutan or two, have a chat with the crocodiles, or a hornbill, cuddle up with a python or tarantula. An elephant and a whiskered pig would be nice, and as for tarsier, well, t’would be good if we bumped into one of those, such big eyes. Just something a bit more exotic than our usual fare of paradise flycatchers and sea eagles, sigh.



So when we discovered we could fly direct from Tokyo to Kota Kinabalu, off we went. The flight was a shocker … took us a full day diving on a coral reef to get over the jet lag. Then there were the buses, crawling up over the Crocker Range through the mist and the rain up to Mount Kinabalu National Park.
We stayed in a small village by the park entrance, about 1,500 metres altitude, then climbed to about 2,800 meters before turning back. Climbers have to hire a guide and spend two nights on the mountain in hotels (owned by a private chain) which makes the climb expensive as well as exhausting. So we turned round at the last gate, and wandered back to our cheaper hostel along the first of our real jungle walks.
It’s quite different from what I imagined, at least up in the ranges. Hot and sticky yes, but some places are quite open, and the trail was good (apart from one cliff section where I managed to sky dive into a bush just above a 40 m drop).




On down to Sepilok near the coast. We stayed at a lodge near the Orangutan sanctuary – basic but comfortable – and I saw three otters in the river running through the grounds. The sanctuary was worth a visit, but it is a bit like an open zoo. It takes five years or more to ease an orphaned youngster back into the wild and the animals are much harder to see in the wild.
And the sanctuaries are sorely needed. Much of the accessible primary rain forest has been converted into palm oil plantation. Traveling down from the mountain, we drove for three hours and saw nothing else, thousands of square kilometers, industrial scale planting for industry oils, cosmetics, and latterly biofuel. Now that’s a green own goal if ever there was one, and a difficult ethical/political/developmental debate. New Zealanders hardly have any right to tell developing countries not to convert native landscapes; given our prosperity is, historically, based on the full exploitation of our landscapes. Why shouldn’t tropical countries take a similar path. Nevertheless, the disappearance of such a huge area of wilderness in such a short time (60 years since WWII) is sad and frightening.



There is also a secondary issue; any prosperity gains may well be temporary. Palm Oil was once liquid gold, but like other commodities such as lamb and milk in NZ, real prices have fallen steadily for 50 years. The wealth generated has been captured by a few companies and families, I wonder how much has benefited Sabah people, and is steadily declining.
But where the plantations press to the river, the remaining animal life has been squeezed into a corridor. We spent the next three days in a jungle camp on the Kinabatangan River and saw a staggering number of animals. Unlike zoos, or even the rehabilitation centre, most views are fleeting and far. So the guide will say there is an Orangutan up there, and, once one gets one’s eye in, the nests are easy enough to see, and maybe the movement of a lazy hand that pulls a leafy curtain too. And as for gibbons … I can do a good gibbon call … you might get a good view through binoculars (for half a second) before they leap out of view.



The first camp was great fun, but somewhat spartan. So we finished with three days in the Borneo Rain Forest Lodge, 80 kms down a gravel track on the edge of one of the largest remaining primary forest reserves. Quite the most luxurious place we have ever stayed. We arrived just after lunch, and were somewhat startled to be allocated our own guide – apparently we were the only people wishing to concentrate on bird watching. Vivian was fantastic; he’d spent two years learning all the local bird-song and would stop, head to one side, then point with a little laser at some tiny little bird we would never have spotted on our own. By the time we left, we could almost bluff a rufous-fronted from a chestnut-winged babbler. We counted up over 70 different species; four out five hornbill species, fish owls, tarsier, tarantula, proboscis monkeys, agamid lizards and, on the very last day, on the track on the way out, an elephant, and a whiskered pig.
Back to cold damp NZ, much house maintenance and visiting when we were able. Now we are back to Tokyo for one more year.
Hotter and less comfortable than Borneo, but winter is coming.
Love to you all.

We’ve got rather used to aftershocks. Although there are still occasional 5 or 6 jolts, the frequency and intensity have declined, and most have been too far north to be felt in Tokyo. So we are getting back to normal. Sort of. The school will certainly reopen next year, though it might be in diminished form. Some students and teachers have left, others may no longer come, but Linda will have a job next year. My acting and modeling jobs continue to provide profitable entertainment, at least for Linda. We watched one show the other night, and Linda fell off the sofa laughing, whilst I hid underneath from embarrassment. When that work dries up, there is writing and editing, not that I feel particularly good about the latter – grammar was never my strong point.


Meanwhile, spring is here, pleasantly warm without the humidity that will set in over the next month. The Sakura blossom festivals were somewhat subdued, but Azaleas, dogwood, orchids are in full bloom. We have had some wonderful birdwatching walks in the hills. Last Saturday we spent the day at Mount Futuoka, about an hour to the south. This is a small range of hills near Kamakura, and well known as a breeding site for rare migrants. There are few visitors away from the main trails, and we spent the day walking in deciduous forest full of bird song, looking for Narcissus and Paradise flycatchers. We spotted the Narcissus and might have glimpsed the other, but paradise can wait; here were bush warblers flying to nest, busy pygmy woodpeckers, Japanese Green woodpecker, ground partridge clucking in the bamboo and a dozen other pleasures.





At the beginning of May, Alison (Linda’s sister) and John arrived; flying in to celebrate their new granddaughter, Chihiro, (to Naho and Mike at the beginning of April). Alison had formal mother in law duties to complete for the blessing ceremony at the local Shinto temple, none too onerous, she was required to hold the baby for an hour or so. We met J&A in Matsumuto, and stayed in a lovely Ryokan before walking through the Kamakochi valley in the Japanese Alps. There is still snow in the mountains, and we met a procession of windblown students, carrying snowboards and skis down from the back-country slopes after the Golden Week holiday. We also spotted mandarin duck and nuthatch, which we have wanted to see in the wild.

The school year ends in three weeks. We are heading back to New Zealand, via Borneo, orang-utan, and hornbill we hope. Looking forward to seeing as many friends and relatives as we can.
Love
Nigel.

As a compensation for our cancelled holiday (we had planned a skiing trip in Nozawa the week after the earthquake) we met Sarah in Taipei. Taiwan is very different from Japan. The streets are broader, but not quite so neat and tidy; herds of scooters charge the junctions, nobody plays with their keitei (mobile phone) on the metro (people actually talk to each other), no beer and booze shops in the night market (imagine Musashi Koyama without sake), the temples gaudy and the roofs exotic.
We spent two nights in Taipei, then took a train to Jiaoxi on the spectacular east coast railway, the train rocketing into tunnels as chains of coaches crawled up cliff roads. I’m so glad we didn’t hire a car.



The Taroko resort hotel was fairly luxurious for us, well up in the mountains. Sitting above the Taroko gorge. Magnificent, maybe 7-800 metre cliffs in places, sheer into the river; where the soil is deeper, rainforest trees cling, in a tangle of vines. On the Thursday, we were dropped off at the start of a trail into the mountains.
The original hill-tribes, the Altayal, were forced out of the mountains by the Japanese, down onto the plains. When WWII ended, the tribal lands were pinched by Han Chinese refugees (veteran soldiers, presumably KMT,must have been similar to the returned servicemen scheme in NZ) but growing vegetables and fruit can’t have been profitable in that climate (wet and very far from market). Eventually, the farmers aged and left for an easier life on the coast. So the land has been taken over by the national park administration, leaving neat little houses and a tiny church to the monkeys, birds and jungle.
We had a neat days walk. All sorts of flowers, garden plants in New Zealand, here in the original habitat, neat birds we couldn’t identify, though it was slightly unnerving to see the bent guard rails on the track, where boulders had come down.
Back to Tokyo to pick up the pieces. Linda’s students gradually returning. The editing goes on, though I am not sure I am cut out for proof reading. It can be pretty heavy going sometimes and I miss an awful lot.
Never mind, the weather is warming. We went walking in the Miura peninsular last week, saw Japanese green woodpecker.

Dear All,
Many, many thanks for all your wishes and concerns. We’re fine, though tired, and grieving for the thousands, not so far from here, who are cold and hungry, and have lost everything they loved. We arrived back in Tokyo Saturday 26th March, a fortnight after the great quake, by somewhat circuitous routes.

As it so happened, I was in Italy filming a comedy about time travel between ancient Rome and Edo Tokyo with a Japanese heart-throb called Hiroshi Abe. How bizarre. We took off as the earthquake hit, and I and the film crew flew on in blissful ignorance until we reached Rome, where the horror was all over large TVs in the terminal. I don’t think anyone in the film crew realized the scale of the catastrophe until a few days later; as it was, we suppressed our feelings and got on with the job of filming. There isn’t much else to laugh about.

Linda was on her own in our shaky apartment, and, on day 5, fled down to Nagoya to stay with our nephew’s family, as much for company as anything else. Tokyo by then was shaking every few hours, Fukushima becoming ever more threatening, and it’s not much fun being on your own in a climate of fear. Half of Linda’s colleagues, including the principal and the deputy principal, packed bags and flew out on Day 3 when Fukushima leaked, school closed early, food, water and electricity were under threat – although in truth, reports of the demise of Tokyo in the media are greatly exaggerated.


It is pretty weird. The neon and the escalators are turned off, it is dark and quiet, and it is hard not to feel to depressed. Even were this our country, there is not a great deal we could do. The people who need help are sleeping on cardboard in school halls 200 miles to the north. Getting rice, kerosene, sympathy into those tiny communities is for the national community, not expatriates who can’t even speak the language.

As for our situation, the nuclear threat is greatly exaggerated. I received a bigger dose of radiation flying to Europe than I will get in the next year from the leaks in Fukushima. But that is a scientific rationalist argument that won’t assuage the fear of unknown for most people, who don’t understand risk, who don’t understand radiation and who don’t (rightly) trust the glib assurances of a company and government which hasn’t done a great deal to earn peoples trust.

Our initial impression is that there is plenty of food, and the transportation system is working. So the best thing for us is to return and contribute to rebuilding and reassurance by doing what we do normally; if everyone pulls out, how will the economy and community confidence rebuild? So Linda starts school again on Monday, and I have a stack of science papers to edit and rewrite; lets get on with it, keeping a weather eye open for any more developments and treating the authorities bland pronouncements with skepticism.
Of course, it might all turn to worms. If none of the TIS children return (and many of the embassies are recommending their nationals stay away), then we won’t have jobs.

We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. In the meantime, we’re safe and well, though glum.

Love to you all, and thank you once again for your thoughts, wishes and love.
Nigel and Linda

It is very easy to get out of Tokyo. It takes two hours by train to get Mount Mitake or Takao in the Chichibu-Taka-Kai National Park, and about two and a half down to the Izu Peninsula jutting south from Fuji-san. In 1853, Perry was forced to anchor in Shimoda, about as far away from Tokyo as the Shogun could put him, and the landscape is dotted little fishing villages in tiny coves, and wooded hills. The area is also famous for the posh Ryokan (traditional inns), and Linda treated me to a night the famous (in Japan) Ozawa onsen to celebrate my birthday.
We took the Shinkansen to Atami, then caught the black ship express, which is a tourist train with sideways seats face out the windows, out to Shimodo and spent a pleasant afternoon bird watching round the coast, Osprey and lots of little brown buntingy things.


The Ozawa onsen is quite a complex, built round a 17th century farmhouse complex. There is a concrete hotel set behind, but is (for once) well designed and quite inconspicuous. The buildings are Namoko-kobe style, which refers to the triangular tiles on the outside, and has splendid roofs. The rooms were Japanese style, far too much food to eat, and a very spacious onsen. In the evening, we were invited to pound rice to make mochi, which I think is rather revolting, like a cross between putty and PVA glue, and served with daikon (giant radish) ... yuck.


At the beginning of March, we had two good hikes in Chichibu, still snow on the tops, but my new boots gave me blisters; lots of time looking at old buildings and temples. I am fascinated by the roofs of traditional Japanese buildings. The older farmhouses were thatched, a huge communal effort for the entire village. Wealthier families and village leaders used heavy tiles, culminating in an ornate stacked ridge; the roofs sometimes seem to perch precariously on incongruously flimsy walls, so that the slightest shake would bring them down. But it doesn’t happen. Temple roofs are even more elegantly coiffeured, even when built out of shingles. Though the most prestigious temples seem to have roofs of tile or copper. The modern buildings, all straight lines, angles and iron, are so inelegant by comparison.
Have a look at some of the roofs in the album ...

The plot was spend New Year with the Ito-Smithies (Linda’s nephew’s family) in Nagoya, then head south to Yakushima to walk through a forest with 3,000 year old Yakasugi cedar trees, back to Kyushu, hire a car and bird watch at two international sites in the very south of the island. Yakushima is about 60 km south of Kyushu, very mountainous, rising to 1,800 metres, subtropical on the coast, alpine in the interior. It does rain a lot though; 35 days a month according the locals, so I did think it might be wise to get a new pair of boots, given that my old ones have split soles.



Now Linda suggests the damage was done as I was jumping up and down in the outdoors shop testing the fit. Not true; I reckon I dislocated my toe getting out of bed four days later. Whatever; by the time we left Tokyo for Nagoya, I could hardly walk. Not that we needed to walk anywhere in Nagoya. The Ito family laid on a sequence of splendid feasts. Linda walked to the shrine at midnight, to ring the bell for luck and drink warm, weak sake, (I stayed behind in bed nursing my throbbing foot); New Years Day we practiced calligraphy (it is good luck to draw a Kanji representing your wishes for the year - Mike drew a daddy, I drew craft (this might be the year of the perfect box) Linda drew a butterfly (I’m not quite sure what that represents, but the kanji is relatively easy), ate, drank more sake, hobbled a few steps, ate more and drank more sake and hobbled.

Stress levels started to rise after we left Nagoya for the Osaka ferry south. We were guided to the wrong terminal by (for the first time in Japan) unhelpful staff, and made the right ferry with two minutes to spare, after a high speed, two mile, high anxiety, every light is red, taxi ride and a bad tempered hobble, waving my stick furiously at the the gang plank (the person who invented luggage with wheels deserves a Nobel peace prize). Overnight ferry is a thoroughly calming and civilized way to travel, at least it would be if you managed to get supper, but when we arrived hungry in Yakoshima, we found that all the banks and all the ATMS were closed for three days over New Year. We scraped around in the bottom of our bags and emptied our pockets, and found ¥2,810, just enough to get us to the Yakoshima Youth Hostel, where the warden was kind enough to add ichi-man-yen to the credit card bill, and provide some instant noodles and oranges for tea. There was no question of me walking anywhere, and to our disappointment, the mountain roads were closed by an uncharacteristic dump of three metres of snow, so we didn’t get to walk in cedar forest, though we did have a splendid drive round the Island, spotting Daurian Redstart, flycatchers, monkeys and deer (and just possibly, wishfully, an Ancient Murrilet).

After two days we headed back to Kyushu, stayed in Sakurojima Youth Hostel which is on the slopes of a live volcano which we couldn’t see through the rain (but the onsen was swimming pool size and we were the only occupants), drove across the peninsular in the rain, failing to find the Manogsegawa estuary, (listed by the International Bird Federation as the wintering ground for Black faced Spoonbill) because the latitude and longitude in the information sheet were incorrect (but we did see some very pretty villages, a Merlin and Eastern Marsh Harrier); on up to Arasaki, (where the crane observatory was closed due to avian influenza outbreak ,but we did see thousands of White Naped and Hooded cranes flying, Wigeon, Pochard, Mallard, Spotbill, Teal, Dunlin, Sandpiper, Shoveller in the local estuary, and drove on to Nagasaki via Kodomodo castle, and Miyami (famed for ceramics and fine pottery; beautiful and way beyond our budget).

We’ve taken to staying in Youth hostels as they are cheap and until Nagasaki, good value for money. Perhaps Nagasaki is the exception that proves the rule, but the warden and the facilities were decidedly odd and not very clean. We were too late to find anywhere else, so first thing the following morning, we left, hired a car and drove in beautiful, clear air over the top of Mount Unzen (last erupted in 1990) and back to the airport, (minor panics when my penknife was confiscated and staff lost my tickets).

One of those holidays, where you look back and can’t stop laughing at all the little dramas, the foul weather, road closures, lack of mobility and the things that almost go disastrously wrong, but don’t. Kyushu is volcanoes and forest, lovely villages (when you get away from the huge towns), even some unspoiled coast, and people are ever so friendly, even when stupid gaijins crash hire cars into the back of their pride and joy. Ooops.

Photographs here and lots more on Picassa

So now its back to work. My foot is just about pain free, and am back to Yaizu twice a month, though other work is slow. We had better weather than Linda’s colleagues who went to Europe or holidayed in Queensland. And we are going skiing in two weeks.

Now that might do more than break in the boots.