Home from Tokyo

Sorry that last one is a bit blurred but I took it from a moving vehicle - hence the signal gantry captured as well!

Although I just love the place, find it absolutely fascinating and would really love to get back there again to see some more of the country, I am certainly glad to be home. The 12 hour flight and a time zone difference of 9 hours certainly plays havoc with your mind and body!

I am glad that Blogger has decided that I am English again and isn’t giving me loads of unintelligible Kanji character buttons and instructions when I am posting. That was awfully confusing.

So now that I am back, I have realised just how close Christmas is and I am spending most of this weekend dressing the tree, wrapping pressies and getting my final Xmas cards posted.

I also need to cram some guitar practice in as I have another lesson on Wednesday and due to not having my guitar with me, I still have not mastered the homework from last week. I am getting better at remembering chords and even getting the transitions without too big a delay, but I am really struggling with the strumming pattern he has given me for House of The Rising Sun. I seem to be going up when I should be going down and vice versa.

Sorry for the delay in posting my Tokyo photos but I seem to have such a lot of work on at the moment I am not getting much chance to post or even read my regular blogs, so apologies to all of you who think perhaps I have deserted you.

I am back in the U.S. again next week so things are not going to get much better very quickly.

So anyway back to Tokyo. Here are some photos taken there: -

First some skyscrapers. Can you believe this is an earthquake zone! We actually had a tremor on our first day – earth tremor that is, don’t be so smutty!

A Japanese Dinner. I can only describe it as a beef Fondue, but in boiling water instead of oil.

Another night we dined on Kobe Beef at a Teppenyaki restaurant which was a load of fun.

Street Scenes. They were so colourful and immaculately clean. I literally only saw one single piece of litter the whole time I was there!

Piéce de Résistance. Well we just HAD to do it – Karaoke!! But we were well oiled before we did. Come to think of it, during as well.

Other recent news.

Californian Fires. I am so glad, in fact relieved, that they are now all but doused. Not only for all of those poor people who either lost their lives, were either made homeless or were severely threatened by the fires, but my eldest son is a firefighter in San Diego and was in the heart of it all. Although I know he has been well trained I couldn’t help but worry about him all week. He worked several 32 hour shifts on the fire line and although his crew lost some houses they managed to save others and had no loss of life on their patch.

My Baby IS BACK! I collected my beautifully repaired bike yesterday and besides the fact that there is nearly 10,000 miles on the clock it looks like new. Most of the fairing panels were replaced as well as the footpegs, gear change lever etc and it looks as though it has just come out of the showroom again. Maybe the moron who crashed into it did me a favour?

My 30 minute journey home from the garage took me at least an hour and a half – it was so good to be riding a real bike again J

What a weird but wonderful week in Japan so far

I hope this pots OK as Blogger has given me all of the template in Japanese!!!!!

Weird

mainly due to the journey times and the time zone differences plus of course the drastically different culture.

The week began with a 12 hour flight with its necessary additional travelling time to and from the airport and the inevitable waiting times and an 8 hour time difference resulting in a total journey of 22 hours!!

Having left Heathrow at lunchtime, no sooner were we in the air then we were offered lunch shortly after which the lights were dimmed and everyone went to sleep as we flew into darkness. The problem was that no-one actually wanted to go to sleep as it was still only the equivalent of late afternoon.

You would have thought that with that behind me I would have slept well but even after 3 days I am still not sleeping for more than 3 hours at a time!

Wonderful

Due to the amazing people, culture and totally different environment.

Japanese people in Tokyo are the most polite people I have ever come across in my travels.

Added to that the sense of community is amazing with the total absence of litter and graffiti.

My colleagues and I have enjoyed some terrific meals and meetings with our hosts and have been overwhelmed with the amazing service culture. We have even been assured that it is not customary to tip for service, even to the point that offering a tip would cause embarrassment.

We have two more days here before repeating the arduous return journey although travelling West will probably be less of a problem to our body clocks.

Further posts and photos will be forthcoming when I get home to upload them to my home PC as I cannot do so to my company laptop