Shibuya Crossing

The other Sunday got up a bit earlier than usual wasn't sure what i wanted to do so ended up catching the train to Tokyo. It was a bit later in the afternoon than i would have liked but if you get the fast train you can be there in 50 minuets, costs about 30 quid but it's not like i do it ever weekend and Tokyo's a bit more exotic than going to London. There again i am a Brit, I'm sure if you're Japanese and going to London would be more exciting than going to Tokyo, just different points of view.
So there i was on the train didn't know what to do or where to go in Tokyo, decided on an area called Shibuya, i remembered the name from when my son Ben was here last year. We went there one night, apparently there's is one of the busiest crossings in the world there and we though we were on it but we weren't, i remembered that and thought i would go and check it out and try and find this bloody big crossing couldn't be that hard to find could it.
When you get the train in Utsunomiya to go to Tokyo, you normally travel to Tokyo central station and get the underground from there, well at least i do. Got to love the train systems here, not only is everything on time, lots of the ticket machines are automatic with an English option, even i can use them and that's saying something, this saves loads of time no queuing up which is great.
So I'm in Tokyo station had to get underground or metro as they call it here, got on the Marunouchi line to the Ginza line than off at Shibuya, sounds so much more exciting than getting on the Central line and Circle line, but there again i guess it depends where you're from.
While i was on the metro could not resist taking a photo of this guy and his bag, may just be me but i don't think i would have had a bag like this when i was his age unless i had a death wish, there again different cultures and outlooks. There doesn't seem to be any problems over here with what most young lads in the UK would probably think was a bit effeminate or girlie, and if they didn't someone would and most likely would and pick on them, none of that seems to happen over her, at least from what i can see it dosen't










Anyway get of in Shibuya go out of the station and nearly get killed walking onto the busiest crossing in Japan, didn't really just thought i would say that as the crossing is right at the station and i don't know how we missed it last time, except to say we had all have a couple of beers.
Like i say it was getting a bit late, so i just did a bit of people and crossing watching, while i was at the crossing and took a bit of a video. There was a Starbucks close to the crossing, though I'd go and sit on the second floor and look at the window and take the video, when i got to it realised that I wasn't the only one who had that idea there was a queue to get in, this Starbucks must defiantly be the busiest in Japan and probably one of the busiest in the world, was worth a photo in it's own. Check out the coffee shop above and the crossing below.

That was it for the crossing now for a look round Shibuya and for something to eat, and then on to Roppongi later for a few beers. Not much to report as it was getting late, decided there was not enough daylight to go to the park, apparently there is a nice shrine there, seen one shrine seen em all so to speak maybe next time. So just a couple of shots from Shibuya one as it was still light and one when the lights came on, need to get here earlier next time next time.

Back on the Ginza line and head for Roppongi, it's Sunday night so i don't expect there to be much going on there. Friday and Saturday nights the place is heaving and i doubt if you could walk from one end of the street to the other without getting accosted by the bar touts at least 20 time. These guys all seem to be from Africa, somewhere like Nigeria or Kenya and are usually pretty big and persistent, there's no problem with them but if you are not used to it it can be a bit intimidating, as i say no problems just ignore them is the best way and they leave you alone, thry never to make eye contact or talk to them.

As i though it was pretty dead and hardly got approached to go in any bars, which was good.

Did go to a couple of the places i went with Ben and Tristan when they were here. One of them was called Geronimo's I'm sure they will remember it. Geronimo's is a shot bar, the idea is if you bang the drum when in there you have to buy the bar a round of shots, would not recommend it as it can be expensive. When we were in there last year bet we got at least 4 drinks or shots bought by strangers or suckers depends on how you look at it, no one was buying today though. Like i say it was a bit dead Sunday and all that with work tomorrow. Other place i went to have a look around was Roppongi Hill, Ben and Tristan can probably remember the spider as well.

That's pretty much it time to get the last train back no stopping all night this time need to be a good boy as it's work tomorrow

Rice and Golden Week

It's almost the end of April and a big holiday is coming up in Japan called Golden Week, this also coincides with when the rice planting season starts or is in full swing. Golden week's really just a term the Japanese use for a week when a few holidays coincide, things like Emperors day, Children's day and Constitution day. Anyway a few days holiday in the same week, it's a pretty big thing here, they won't even let us into site on a couple of days and we really, really, really, wanted to go in "NOT". So we've got a couple of days holiday we weren't expecting not really time to do much with it though will probably just go to Tokyo.

Back to Golden Week, the farmers have been flooding the rice paddy's over the last week or so, when you leave site looks like you're about to drive through a big lake, site is sort of on a hill and as you drive out and down the hill all you can see is flooded rice paddy's it's bit surreal.

Been taking a few photos as they've been progressing, these guys work hard all the time they're in the fields when I go to work and when I'm on the way home. Mostly its older guys, and from and what i can gather the younger kids don't really want the long hours and hard work so clear off the the city, works too hard in the fields, you don't very often see a young farmer here. I'm not saying i blame them going to the city it's bit like in the UK not a lot of people want hard work me included, but there again as my son once said to me I'm no spring chicken anymore so i guess i can be excused.

Like i say no one wants to work in the fields so of they go off to the city's and sell sub prime lones, well in the US that's what they do, I'm sure it's something similar in Japan. What the hell is a "Sub Prime Lone" by the way and who thinks of these names, guess they called it that because it better then calling it a "F...g Stupid Lone " FSL for short, you know what happened after that, but i digress this ain't a political blog.

Work in the rice fields must have been hard years ago before it got mechanised cos you see a lot of old lady's that must have worked in them from dusk till dawn. Some of these lady's are so bent over there noses nearly touch the floor, they can't straighten up from being stooped over all day planting rice and stuff, kids have got it easy now i bet they say to each other, that is if i could understand Japanese

It's nowhere near that bad now but it's still hard work, but they do have a lot of machinery, come on this is Japan the second biggest economy in the world and they have robots here for f.... sake so a tractors not exactly hard is it, they also have these neat little rice planter.

The photos above are from the rice paddy, one when its been planted and the thing that does the planting, not sure how quick it goes but when i was watching it it seemed to belt along, photo on the left is one i took one night leaving work.

Like i said above one of the day of golden week is Children's day, or "Kodomo no hi" think that right anyway.

Children's day is supposed to be to sort of respect kid's personalities and bring the health and happiness. Traditionally Japanese family's hang out what they call "Koinobori" which i think is flag in the shape of a carp. The black ones are for the farther the man the red for the woman and the blue for the oldest son smaller blue ones are for younger sons not sure about the girls.

Move, Moving, Moved.

Well the time has come we are just about finally to be thrown out of our old office, to be honest it feels or felt like home and nobody wants to move, but we have too.

We've stayed in our old place as long as possible but the power's gonna to be cut off in a couple of days and the the cabins will be moved, so this weekends it's now or never so to speak for the moving or be office less.

The Job for this Saturday is to move our furniture and stuff to our new office, well its not really an office more a bleeding big room which will be used for vehicle preparation when the facility is up and running.

Tho other reason no one want to move is there isn't a phone line and the Internet isn't connect up yet either, we can do without a phone line as we all have cell phones but nowadays it's difficult to live or work without an Internet connection. Been promised the Internet will be connected on Monday but I'm not holding my breath neither is anyone else but i guess we'll see on Monday, got to give em the benefit of the doubt.

So Saturday comes around and we get stuck into moving, didn't realise how much furniture and other crap we had accumulated over nearly a year in the old place, time to throe some stuff away me thinks (photos below show the old office lived in and when empty)

First problem we came across was getting into the building, it's all secure now with electronic access cards and all that, you can't even get into the vehicle lift with out a card. Honda had given me an access card a couple of days ago but we could only get one even though i asked for four, so no problem you would think just use the card. Unknown to me when i got it seems it was only set up for weekday access and not weekend access, when i tried to use it Saturday got a very sweet Japanese lady's voice coming out of the speaker basically telling me to sod of and come back Monday. (photos below show new office told you it was just a big room)

So that's why I'm not real hopeful about the Internet being connected on Monday, anyway plan B sprang into action. There is all this electronic security on the building now it is finished but i still know of a way to break in, like i say use plan B if all else fails break in. Technically its not breaking in as i am not breaking anything just something they have forgot to do, I'll tell them when i know my card has the right access on it.

So back to the move, plan was to load the cars up with all the furniture and the other crap take it to the vehicle lift off load on to trolleys then out of the lift to the new office. Our new place was on the second floor so the lift would save a lot of humping and lifting and take hopefully half the time.

Everything went smoothly we moved almost everything but left a couple of chairs and tables in the old office along with the router and stuff, we could move these at the last minute still being in the old office would give us access to the Internet for as long as possible, all depended on when they cut the power.

Turning up Monday did not look very promising to be able to stay in the old place for a bit longer and use the Internet, power had already been cut ready to dismantle and move it the next day. We moved everything to the new place, definitely did not feel like home and no one liked it but, as they say time will tell.

The only good thing about the move at the moment is we are actually in the building we are moving to so no walking backwards and forwards, especially when it's raining.

So that if for now we're moved in the new office but with no phone line and no Internet connection, sort of seems like we are stuck in the middle of nowhere, on view for everyone to see not nearly as cosy as the old place.

Check out the photo on the left, one weeks supply of fags from the office next door, well maybe two weeks, to say that people smoke a lot over here is a bit of an understatement.

Saga Of The Lost Phone.

Sunday morning and i normally get up late but today i got up a bit earlier than normal, didn't go out last night was still recovering from Friday night. Anyway got up around lunch time, yeah i know that's not early but it's my only lie in of the week we are working 6 days a week now and have been doing of the last couple of months. So as I'm up earlier then normal in the back of my mind is catching the train and a trip to

Had just made my first cup of tea and the bell goes to the apartment so i check the phone to see who it is, it's one of those video thingies you pick up the phone and the camera comes on you can see who's down stairs trying to get in, then you either choose to let them in or not usually if you know them you let em in but not always.

It's Scott am thinking what the hell does he want at this time on a Sunday, he knows I normally don't receive visitors this early on a Sunday, come to think of it he's usually asleep as well so I'm intrigued and let him in so he can get the lift and come on up.

Turns out he'd had quite a heavy night last night but was up early cos he's lost his phone, i mean what does he want me to do if he cant find it. First thing i asked him though was are you sure it's not in your apartment, definitely not he said he had rung it a couple of time using Skype and it didn't ring and it was definitely not there. Apparently he'd had the phone when he went to the 7/Eleven last night or early in the morning but then when he got home or got up this morning he couldn't find it. Had the whole story which took about an hour, he was still a bit hung over so it was hard going at times and he kept repeating himself and going off at tangents but he got there in the end.

Tried to tell him if it's laying anywhere obvious and someone spots it they will probably hand it in at the police station, they can find out who's it is by checking the number and who it's registered to. Tried phoning up a few times on the off chance it rings and some one answers it, no luck.

Time to retrace his steps not that that would do a lot of good as he had already done that, but think he wanted moral support and i was it, so off we pop retracing his steps to the 7/Eleven turns out he had been to two 7-11s, don't know why but anyway we go to them both but no luck on finding the phone.

With the story and the retracing of the steps it was about 2hrs later by this time, so any thoughts of going to Tokyo were out and i was getting a bit brassed off by this time. We ended up back at his apartment as that was sort of the end of the line inside i just though I'd try ringing from there, not thinking it was in the apartment cos after all he'd already rung it twice right. Guess what rang the phone and heard a ringing straight away coming from the bedroom went in and there it was on the floor by the bed, i mean the guy must be an "idiot" not to have seen it he must of had to step over it when he got out of bed. Phone was in the middle of the floor, to say i was a bit pissed is an understatement, we'd been talking and looking for this thing for two hours now and he'd told me it "definitely was not in his apartment" cos he'd rung it "idiot", i mean it was not even under the bed or anything or out of sight. Anyway that was it for the phone and for me off i go home chuntering away in my head about stupid people, and just open your eyes you moron that kind of thing.

Anyway "forget about it" tomorrow we were going out with the Electrical contractors for a meal as one of the guys was leaving site and not coming back, not sure where we are going but is should be good.

Went to a Izakaya for the meal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izakaya love these places food is usually great and the price is as well, as i happens we did not have to pay but that just makes the food taste better. We started with little bowls of raw spicy squid, i know it doesn't sound good in fact squid by it's self doesn't taste of anything much and is real chewy, but in a spicy sauce it wasn't bad nice. Next course was some Sashimi which is just raw fish no rice, once again with a bit of a sauce on top real nice, then for the obligatory Sushi with is raw fish usually on top of a ball of rice, some times with a bit of Wasabi Mustard (real hot if you have too much). After that a lot of other courses fish, chicken, Japanese Pizza, even sort of fried potatoes, soup the whole nine yards all in all very nice, of course we didn't do the ordering. I'd never been to this place before and would never have know it was there as it was tucked away in a back street, when we got in there it was done out with in a sort of beach , jungle type to the decor, check out the photos, like i say very nice and as usual the service was great.

The Japanese guy in the photos with the goatee is one of our electrical contractors, he's leaving site and won't be back, so the meal was sort of a going away party for him, anyway check out the photos below.

Oh nearly forgot to mention did find one new thing that i really liked during the meal "Plum Wine" its called "Umeshu" and it's great on the rocks.

Money Laundering

Money Laundering, sounds like something from a novel i know, but let me tell you a story.

A few days ago before my mate Lee left i agreed to pay for something that he had arrange to have shipped to the UK, you are probably wondering why he didn't pay. He'd arranged it as a last minute thing, just so happened our shipping agent come into the office the day before he was flying back to the US so Lee arranged shipping, Tatsuno san was not sure how much it would cost, so Lee asked if i would pay and he would send me the money, no problem i said thinking that there was none, there i go thinking again got to stop that.

Turns out it cost 33,000yen about $330 so i just paid a few days later got the receipts scanned them sent them to Lee along with my bank detail here so he could arrange to have the money sent to me. No problem, i mean only about $350 including charges right, did not even think about it i mean i can draw more than this out of the ATM every day and just put it in my bank account so what's the problem.

Woo a few days later i get a phone call that i missed so got a voice mail in Japanese, got our interpreter Chris to tell me what it said, turns out i someone "Lee" had sent me $350 and they wanted to know why and what it was for, and was i a member of the Mafia.

Chris got a little pissed off at this apparently he had come across it before and though it was double standards as "they only picked on people with foreign names" his words not mine and left Japanese people alone, apparently the rule is 1,000,000 Yen or $10,000 transfers should be no problem, which i think is pretty much the rule every where or at least similar, but no it seems if you have a foreign sounding name here and are transferring money you may be doing something illegal, i like to think it is just their way.

Anyway i wasn't as bothered a Chris who was getting a bit irate on the phone, probably a Polish thing and the whole of Japan is against Poles (Chris is Polish by the way) anything for a quite life that's me. What did piss me off a bit though was they wanted me to go down the bank with my passport and Alien Registration card and fill out some paperwork and prove who i was, it's not like the bank did not have copies of these as they took it when i first opened the account to prove who i was and to see that i was not here illegally.

Now the bank opens 9am and closes at 3pm and i work an hour away, so it either meant going to work late one day or going home just after dinner time, which i principle i don't mind having time off work but not to go to the bank. After conversations back and forth between Chris and the bank they decided they would phone back and see if they could do it by post, Chris told to make sure they phoned back with some one who could speak English as he probably would not be around. You guessed it far too easy they did phone back i missed the call and they left a message in Japanese. This phone tag happened a couple of times every time in Japanese duh, finally got it worked out but i had to go down the bank and prove who i was, saying it's me over the phone did not seem to work very well.

From what i can make out they do this with all bank transfers even though it's only required for large ones, go figure it's that Japanese attention to detail, i mean it is a bank transfer after all. Finally got it sorted and went down the bank filled in the forms everyone was as I've come to expect in Japan so polite and apologetic it's hard to get pissed off with them even if you want to. Just go along with everything and it usually works out fine, there is usually a lot of bowing and "arigato gozaimasu'ing" when your finished which is thank you very much, they even sometimes throw a domo arigato gozaimasu or two in which is thank you very very much and very polite, i challenge you to get pissed off then.

After all this off i trot back to work via some where for dinner first, actually went to "Freshness Burger", i mean you could only get a chain of burger restaurants in Japan called Freshness Burger, burgers were fresh though. Got back to work and got another phone call when i got back the bank and again in Japanese, had to find some one to translate Chris wasn't there. Turns out i filled my name in wrong, now i know I'm the the world greatest at spelling but i can spell my name for christs sake, I'd put my christian name first as you do or i do and it should have been my surname first. Told the lady via Fumio who was doing the taking just to change it, but oh no she couldn't far too easy she would have to post me the form so i could change it then post it back. So here's me thinking if they can post it this time for me to fill in why the hell couldn't they post it the first time, another mystery of the east. The other thing i had noticed when i have done anything official is that no one will fill any on the form in for you they point to areas to fill in but you have to actually fill it in. For instance when i was in the bank there was a date to fill in which the lady pointed to, bear in mind it's all in Japanese now she's said date but i thought it was my date of birth for some reason. I filled it in, she pointed again and i thought I'd done it wrong you know the UK way or the US way, we go D/M/Y they go M/D/Y so i change it to the US way. Turns out it was today's date she wanted, she had seen me do it wrong twice so knew i did not really understand what she wanted but still would not just take the pen and fill in the date, it's little things like this that are real frustrating over her.

So that's it the saga of $350 money laundering racket, no photos on money laundering so I'm just going to add a few random shots. The one on the left is from Chris's desk, he's now moved into our office as his contract has finished with Honda and we have taken it on for a few months, we need an interpreter, which he is good at the other thing he seems to be a wizz at is Origami, make of it what you will.

Check out the ones below, have you ever seen a vending machine like this, its just down the road from the site and is the first and only one i have ever seen that dispenses eggs.

Cherry Blosom Season

Well apparently it's that time of year, cherry blossom time doesn't mean a lot to me but if you are Japanese it's quite a big thing. They have Hanami party's which are basically parties under the cherry blossom trees or Sakura as they are called in Japan, which is a bit of a coincidence because where i am working is called Sakur city or "Skura shi" which probably means cherry blossom city i guess. Just Wikipidia'd Hanami, apparently it literally means flower viewing in Japan so there you go.

Anyway i was out in town Saturday up in Birdland and got invited to a Hanami party on Sunday in Utsunomiys central park, which was news to me cos i didn't even know there was a big park here, know where a couple of parks are but apparently they weren't the ones.

Had been meaning to check out this cherry blossom thing anyway and see what all the fuss is about, it's all the rage over here and people have been saying for what seems like ages that it'll soon be cherry blossom season and what am i doing. These Hanami parties are basically in the parks and under the cherry trees all over the place every town has one, from what i can gather they sort of bring in the spring, the rice planting season stuff like that. You'd think Japan would be the worlds biggest exporter of cherry's from the amount of cherry there are but these trees don't produce any Cherry's only flowers, cherry's are actually really expensive over here.

OK so back to Sunday and had to find my way up to the park which is on the other side of town from where i am, only directions I'd been given were Utsunomiya tower's there as well.

This really helped because not only did i not know where the park was i didn't know where the flaming tower was either. To be fair to everyone though on Saturday night we'd all been drinking and i probably said i did know where it was, the tower i was thinking of turned out to be a telephone mast, well it was sort of a tower just not the right tower, good cell phone reception though when i got near to it.

Finally found the place after a lot of walking good job it was a nice day, park was bigger than i expected and it was crammed with people, mostly sitting on blue tarpaulins spread out on the grass, bit like a really big family picnic. It was getting late in the after noon by the time i got there but it was still crammed with people the problem now would be to find the people i know, so i set about soing that.

Here's some photos, I'm off now for a beer and

something to eat, maybe even a chocolate banana you'll see what i mean from the photos.

Took the photo on the left on my way home, met up with the people i was looking for, took a bit of doing as there was so many people but finally managed it. All in all it was a good day or should i say late afternoon, everyone was enjoying them selves, just like a big family outing kids playing crickets eating drinking and the like and all under the cherry blossom trees what more can you ask for on a sunny day.

Everyones Leaving

Most of the construction work on site is almost complete now and everyone is starting to leave.
Fred No 1 flew out on the 31st March, that's him on the right, some of the other sub-contractors are leaving in the next couple of days as well. Even the gold fish in the other office will be buggering off soon especially as he only lives in a Jam jar, the guys in there have named him Taco as in Mexican food, why they didn't name him Sushi is beyond me,we are in Japan after all.

Talking about food even the small canteens we have here will pull up sticks soon, actually they're not canteens really just sort of cabins that serve food which you take back to your office or cabin and eat, got to say they do a good job though. I use these quite a bit, my favorite is curried rice, yum yum, the other staple is stopping at the 7 Eleven on the way to work. You just got to love 7 - Elevens you can do all your banking there, pay bills, they serve great sandwiches and ready meals, sell drinks and booze what more can you want from one store. We're such good customers at the one on the way to work that everyone knows us, pity only the manager can speak English, I'm sure there profits will fall a bit when we leave. The manager's a nice guy though he's lived in the US for a while and his name's Arrie but when i say it always sounds like I'm trying to say Harry "Arry" apart from him no one else can speak English much but there again none of us can speak Japanese, apart from hello, goodbye, see you later that sort of thing.

Back to the site which is sort of going through a big transition at the moment with the emphasis going on to commissioning, in other words getting it all working. There's been a bit of a hiccup though, bit more than a hiccup really, the contractor who's been doing the acoustic installation has gone bust. Not sure if going bust is very common in Japan but it did cause a bit of a stir, right now they're trying to find a new acoustic installer, felt sorry for some of the guys though as i think they missed a months wages maybe even more.

I though having a contractor go but would be quite a loss of face over here but no one seems to have taken it to much to heart, actually the contractor went bust a good few weeks ago, just forgot to mention it before. It's taken about 4 weeks to go through all the legal winding up stuff and pick a new contractor, customer finally picked it's one of the contractors who've been working on site so they know all the history of what when wrong. I saw the quote or should i say the price, i think it was more than the original quote from the guys that went bust who seriously underestimated the work and it screwed them up. The new guys have have over estimated and it looks like they may make a killing no one else wanted to touch it though with a twenty foot barge pole, can't say i blame them. Talk about being over a barrel the customer did not have a lot of options, no one else wanted to touch it apart from for even more money so it was either shut up pay up and get it done the other option was don't pay and don't get it done, good job it's not our company paying, guess business is business where ever you are, got to make a penny or two as they say

The other thing that is changing is the weather, about bleeding time if you ask me but it was 20C the other day still a bit cold at night but getting there, guess we have the rainy season to come soon though, what joy. Photo on the right is of yours truly my mate Scott and some of the contractors that are leaving, well at least for now these guys have to come back later and finish a few things off.