Monkey In A Bottle

Thought I’d post a blog mainly photos of Utsunomia and a couple of the surrounding area. Utsunomia’s the city where I’m staying it’s about 100kms from Tokyo and in Tochigi prefecture which is just like a county in the UK, so it would be like Leicester in Lestershire.
Anyway like I say a few photos of the local area, there are a couple of a shop I passed almost everyday on my way to the gym, pretty nondescript shop run down really so I’ve never even looked in the window except for the other day when I was passing and something caught my eye, guess what I saw, you’ve guessed it it’s the title of the blog “ Monkey in a Bottle” not sure if it was real or not but it looked pretty real to me. The next thing I saw was a bottle full of what looked like pickled snakes skins, the shop must be something to do with herbal remedies or something like that anyway check out the photos. Since I’ve been over here everyone generally has been really polite even the young kids, The main problem is no one wants to speak when you first meet them even if they can speak a little bit of English in case they make a mistake, if you meet them a few time they gradually start speaking if they can speak English a bit. Then you get the other’s who are leaning English and just want practice there English on you, no one is pushy and everything is polite but people who can speak English just like to practice with native English speakers which fair enough if you ask me.
The other day though I was quite surprised went up the steps to the local shrine which just happens to be round the corner from the gym, there was a little old guy there drinking form the fountain. Got talking to him and he spoke great English and even wanted to pose for me while I took a photo of the fountain, turned out that his favorite county was England and he went there two or three time a year, think he would have gone on talking all day if I’d let him, nice guy though and very polite.

There are some other photos of the temple which was nice and peaceful, people bowed to the shrine on the way in and again on the way out, they also left what i think are prayers tied to railings near the shrine.

Couple of photos outside town of the rice paddy's which at this time of year are a really nice shade of green.

Just changing the subject a little was in a book shop the other day just looking at some of the books, had to take some photos as the covers were had such vivid covers think they call it Manga over here bit like comics am sure some of the local were wondering who this crazy foreigner was taking photos of books. But wait look what i came across lurking on the shelves in among the Manga, it seems they get everywhere and there's no escape even over here, yes good old Tony and Hilary.

Enough of this waffling on just wanted to down load a few photos, this Manga stuff is really big over here, comics for grown up really. The other thing that takes a bit of getting used to is that in the book shops is that the books all seem back to front but most are read from the back to the front so the back page is actually the front page if you get my drift.

I'm going back to the UK on the 25th July for a week for my mums 90th birthday party so don't know if I'll post again between now and then. In fact as I'm posting this I've actually been to the UK and am now back in Japan, had this post pretty much complete before i left though as a draft before i left so just posted it.

Other thing is my oldest son Ben is coming over with a mate of his to visit on the 13th August for a couple of weeks, they're having to fly to Nagoya first and then get the train to Utsunamiya from there it worked out cheaper that way, flying into Tokyo was over twice as much as flying into Nagoya, work that one out. Anyway am looking forward to that, August though is the hottest time of the year and the most humid so hope they're prepared for that.