Changes

Well my new Head of DM starts on Monday, which means I can handover the sales activities to someone else. This is great because it means I can concentrate on the real work that I came here for. I guess the first 3-4 weeks will be handover anyway, so a more gradual phasing out of the activities.

Anyway, today was a bit warmer, and not windy for a change. In fact when I went out for lunch ("Asian" bento which means a combination of curries on rice), it was actually quite pleasant. The sky was bright blue, and Tokyo was generally a nice place to be. By about 4pm it had come over cloudy which was a shame. However, still a nice day.

No idea what it was like in Bangkok - if people post enough comments, maybe we can convince Sonia to add something here?

Winter

Well it continues to be cold around here. The temperatures are getting down to around zero most nights. A few times the wind is strong enough that it gets a lot colder, and walking down the street can actually be painful on the face. However it's quite dry so at least there isn't ice all over the place. Both Sonia and I now have coats, so at least most of us is warm. A scarf takes care of other parts, just leaving the nose and tips of the ears. And the hands!

She is so rude

The flights were booked in accordance with the instructions given!

Itineraries

Believe it or not he not only made a decision but he got it wrong. Typical! Instead of flying out of Tokyo on a Thursday night as originally planned we are now flying Friday night. Goodness knows what we will do with the days leave we have booked for Friday :-)

The tickets are booked and here is the plan
Tokyo - Brisbane Friday 7th March
Brisbane Auckland Sunday 9th March. We are conveniently arriving at 3.55 in the afternoon, so if anyone wants to come out to the airport it will make a nice Sunday afternoon diversion :-)

Saturday 15th March we are heading to Queenstown, returning Monday 17th. (Sorry Craig, even knowing that you were organising it I could not convince Andrew that church camp was what he really wanted to do with his one weekend back in NZ...)

We are heading out again on Friday 21st March and spending Easter in Melbourne before returning to Tokyo on the 26th. A bit of a flying visit all around, but it will be good to catch up with everyone again.

Let me know if there is anything anyone wants bought back from Thailand or Japan. Dried fish snacks anyone????

An update

Well the snow arrived in full force. From about 6:30 in the morning yesterday, it snowed. It was still snowing when I walked back to the office from a meeting at 1:30. Then sometime before 5pm it finished. Unfortunately it was not really enough to actually settle on the ground, but it looked great while it lasted. I got a couple of photos that I will transfer from the camera soon, and will post these so you can see what it looked like from the apartment window.

Today has dawned sunny with a bit of cloud, so I guess there will be no more snow today.

Trips

Grrr - Sonia will not make a decision on which itinerary! She insists that it is my decision, except that I know from many,
many,
many,
many,
many,
many,
many,
many,
many,
many,
many years of experience that whatever I choose will at some stage be considered the "wrong" choice.

Oh well, here goes again!

Weather forecasters

Are not much better in Tokyo than anywhere else. Usually the forecasts here are quite accurate, however the snow has not materialised!

Some more pictures

A shot of the crowds waiting to get into the shrine in Kamakura. It took about 30 minutes of inching forwards to get to the shrine itself.



Guards at the bottom of the final steps up into the shrine itself.


Lovely sign!

And looking back down the stairs at the next group of people who

And I've just found this picture of the gate into a small shrine in the centre of Tokyo - actually from last winter:

Snow!

Sonia has just left to go to the airport for the week in Bangkok. As we walked to the bus we stopped at the local 7-11 to get some cash. There is a friendly guy there who likes to practice his English on me, and he was kind enough to pipe up and tell us that the forecast is for snow at 6pm tonight - in about and hour and three-quarters!

And one morning last week I got out onto the street and noticed that the ground was wet. Strange, but it had not been raining that I'd heard. I found out later that there had been a small amount of snow overnight. Not enough to stay on the ground, but enough to make it wet!

I have just got around to saving a few photos from the camera onto the PC.

This is one example so far for our new collection of dog photos. We saw this one at the shrine in Kamakura in the New Year week...


And these two of Mt Fuji from our trip to Gotemba. The first one is from the train station where we had to change trains part-way through the trip. You can see clearly that there were no clouds anywhere in the sky. Apparently this is a bit unusual.


Not long later on (we'd arrived at the Gotemba outlet shopping village), I saw that clouds had built up:

First week at work

This is the end of the first week back at work in 2008. An interesting week in Tokyo, as many people are trying to ease into work as slowly as possible. However, we are trying to launch a call centre for Direct Marketing (you know, the people who call you at dinner time to try and sell you something). As such, we have been working with a few external companies to put the project together. This week was getting things finalised and a budget submitted to our regional office in HK for approval.

I have also been recruiting my replacement, and this came to close on Friday when the preferred candidate signed a formal acceptance of our job offer. Sigh of relief... This means that instead of double-hatting (Acting Head of Direct Marketing was now what I came here to do) I can focus my attention back on the projects side.

Sonia did her first week trip from Tokyo to Bangkok (and back). Seems to have worked ok.

The weather has been cold but sunny most of the week. Today dawned cold and rainy, so I guess everything comes to an end.

Grocery shopping this morning, and the gym this afternoon. Tonight off to dinner at the boss's house.

Holiday week

Well it has been a relatively busy holiday week here in Tokyo as we have rushed to keep up with the rest of Tokyo. Having been warned in advance by people at the office that most of the residents of Tokyo depart the city, we felt it was incumbent upon us to follow them. We searched carefully and decided on a couple of places where we felt it was most likely that we'd find them, and then set off on our way.

Sure enough, we'd correctly guessed that everyone in Tokyo would be at the big shrine/temple in Asakusa on Tuesday 1st January. We arrived about midday (45-minute trip on the subway to the end of the line), and the queue to get into the shrine was out to the roadway. Discretion being the better part, we hived off along the road, through small streets of shops and stalls, eventually coming to the shrine through a back entrance. Which conveniently led through all of the Japanese junk food stalls that had sprung into being on the grounds of the temple. After watching the crowds of people (resembling farm animals being herded into the shrine) for a few minutes, we sampled some of the food. Being the adventurous one, I chose a pancake that is grilled/fried with a big handful of shredded cabbage, an egg, and sauce. Sonia chose a plain baked potato with butter. We found a small area to one side of one of the pathways and joined a number of other groups that had stopped to "savour" the food. By the time we'd finished and made our way back through the streets and round to the main entrance of the shrine, we found that the queue had grown and now stretched all of the way down the road (conveniently closed to traffic) and almost to the main road (about 100 metres?). We took this as a good sign, because we now know where Tokyo goes on the first day of the new year.

Wednesday was shopping day - trying to find a winter coat at the sales. However, it turns out that all of Tokyo congregated in one of 3 or four shops. One attraction of the sales is what is called fukubukuro, which is sometimes translated into English as a "Happy Bag". This is a big shopping bag into which the company puts some stuff, seals it, and sticks a price on it. You take your luck with what you get. So if you are wondering where everyone is, they are at the department stores on Wednesday.

Sushi for lunch - there are a few places in Tokyo with the sushi "trains". This one was good, and we got through about 14 plates between us (each plate has two pieces of sushi).

Thursday, we went to an outlet village in Gotemba. This required a train trip of about 1 and 3/4 hours, with a change of lines after an hour. At the changeover point, we had about 30 minutes between trains and decided to have breakfast. The only places in site were a small noodle shop and a 7-11. Since we are now seasoned travellers, we decided on the noodle place, which conveniently had pictures of some of the dishes on the wall outside. When we got in the door, we found the vending machine where you purchase the tickets for the food you want. Which only had Japanese writing, and no pictures. I ended up with my head out the door trying to match the pictures to the writing. In the end we got two tickets for what we expected would be noodles with some pieces of meat. While I waited for the food, Sonia went off the find a table. Which was difficult since there were only four tables in the place, all within one foot of each other. When I saw them dishing the noodles I noticed the guy scoop a big spoon of gloop and put it into the bowls. Turns out we'd ordered noodles with curry sauce. Which turned out to be very nice.

At the outlet village, we were reminded of Cheshire Oaks in UK. Basically the same, but some of the brands were different. And full of everyone who was living in Tokyo. Did I mention it was freezing? This area is close to the foot of Mt Fuji, and I managed to get a few pictures that I'll load in soon.

The following day (Friday) we went to Kamakura - a place outside of Tokyo that one of my colleagues had introduced me to previously. It was apparently the capital at one point? Getting off the train at the station we ended up standing to one side as this stream of people from the train tried to exit the station at the same time. We must have waited almost five minutes as they filed past. Then we got out and walked our way towards the main shrine. Again, loads of people - I guess the people who went to Asakusa on Tuesday must have decided that they needed to hedge their bets and go pray at the Kamakura shrine as well. A number of people were dressed up in very nice looking kimonos.

After standing in line to get into the temple grounds for a look we made our way through and back out to the streets. Since it was past time for lunch we decided on Soba noodles - a place we had passed earlier. I am now at the point where I can manage to get food in Japanese, so we were not too worried about the menu that only had Japanese and no pictures. When you're in a Soba restaurant there is not much choice (would you like hot soba or cold soba?), so we ordered soba with tempura. When it arrived it was a big bowl of noodles in clear soup with a huge tempura prawn on top (maybe 15cm long). Not bad for JPY1300 each, although it is more expensive in this touristy part compared to the soba place around the corner from the office where I normally pay about JPY 1000 for noodles with more tempura (prawn, pumpkin, mushroom, and something else that I cannot identify).

Saturday has been out looking through a suburb called Hiroo for a supermarket that Sonia had read about. We found it, but I think the one I usually go to is bigger and has a better selection of stuff. Expecting to catch up with a couple of friends from UK for dinner tonight, although I am not sure if this will happen because they are not answering their phones. We will have to see...