Blow me if my first post since coming back from Japan doesn't have a Japanese twist to it. I'm usually somewhat dilatory about going to see exhibitions and that proved to be the case for Beyond the Little Black Dress at the museum which I saw yesterday, its penultimate day.

The photo above was snatched from a video that featured in the exhibition of a 2013 collection by Victor & Rolf.  I quote from the label beside the video - 

The Zen Garden collection was composed of 20 all-black austere artworks. Sculptural and voluminous gatherings of a heavy black fabric, a technical silk with the spongy look of neoprene, were manipulated to recreate stone surfaces. Meticulous embroideries comprised of hand-crafted piping resembled stylised grass and moss.
Guided by Viktor&Rolf, each model was arranged in a tableau vivant, collectively forming the stark rock formations of a Japanese Zen garden. It was a rigorous exercise in pattern- cutting, volume, structure, silhouettes, and minimalism, with each garment specifically designed to unfurl around the pose the model assumed.

To my mind that was one of the oddest exhibits

but some might refrain from rushing to the shops to buy this dress made from nettles gathered from King Charles' garden.

Above is one that looks reassuringly normal but what about the one below for the last straw.  Yes if it looks like a straw and sooks like a straw it probably is one.

Joking aside it was a great exhibition and I'm glad I caught it.

So what else have I been up to?  Fiona came up to go with me to a schoolfriend's funeral.  I knew I hadn't seen Ian for a while but when I checked up it turned out to be five years.  I've reached that stage where time vanishes as friends and acquaintances disappear.  Mike Young who was a stalwart of the Grads some years ago has just died as has Douglas Currie who embodied the spirit of the SCDA for decades.  Mike was relativel young but Douglas made it to 94.  I regard that as most encouraging.

Ewan happened to be staying en route back to Houston from attending a Scotland match at the Rugby World Cup.  While he and Fiona were both here we went to the National Theatre of Scotland's production of Dracula - Mina's Reckoning.  I think most of the critics liked it.  This one did and so did I but I could have done with something original from our national company rather than a rehash however clever of a tedious 19th century vampire story.

I've been to a couple of jazz events - the Tommy Smith Youth Jazz Orchestra at St Brides and Tommy Smith again, this time as a sidesman in Peter Johnstone's quartet.  This featured Joe Locke on vibraphone.  He was brilliant and well worth the ticket price. Not terribly many people shared that view as it was pitifully attended.

The RSNO kicked off their season while I was away but I got to their second concert which was ok but none of the music really held me, even the Sibelious symphony.  

What was wonderful though was Scottish Ballet's double bill Twice Born which Claire and I thoroughly enjoyed.  I'd have missed it had she not given me a heads up since I hadn't got back into checking out the culture mode.  Both pieces in this presentation were absolutely brilliant.  Scotland's newspaper critics admired it but you can't nowadays read their stuff online without subscribing to the paper so here's a review you can read.

I've lost count of the number of Covid jags I've had but I added one this weekend and a flu jag as well so if I could only get rid of my cold and my cough I'd be fighting fit.

My last train trip was a long one back to Tokyo from Kagoshima, passing Mt Fuji on the way.  I got to my hotel about 5pm and left almost immediately to meet Momo for dinner.  We went to a restaurant in some multi-storey block in Ginza.  The restaurant was very busy and we had to wait a bit before getting a table, though it wasn't in fact a table it was two adjacent spaces at a counter looking out over the city.  We sat on a sort of two person bench.

Often in Japanese restaurants you get menus with pictures of the food that's available.  Here they'd gone a step further and provided a tablet with illustrations of all their food and drink and which you used to place your order.  I'm not very sure what I had.  It was similarly presented to many others I've had.  A big bowl of liquid containing noodles and stuff.  I'd asked for seafood stuff and although it was all very tasty apart from prawns I couldn't name what else was in it.  The noodles in this case were thick udon and the liquid was reminiscent of a cream soup.  It was mushroom in colour if not in taste.  Udon are white wheat flour noodles and come in both thick and thin versions.  As I said I had thick ones and I had a side-dish of deep fried shrimp.  For drinks I stuck to beer but Momo had some fancy concoction.

She poor woman was giving an online lesson at 10pm so we left the restaurant around 9 for her to get home and get ready.  It had been fun to see her again even though she's a hard taskmaster when it comes to my struggles with Japanese.

I just went back to the hotel and more or less straight to bed.  I'd had to use the dreaded Otemachi station but in contrast to my previous and bitter experience, using it to move between two different subway lines was very straightforward.

This morning I was up bright and early for the Imperial Palace tour that I'd booked at 5am JST on 1st September.  This time I fell foul of the fact that Tokyo has two underground systems.  I bought a ticket from a machine but when I tried to go through the gate alarm bells sounded and the gate slammed shut in front of me.  There's this so called Fare Adjustment booth next to the gates where the guy informed me that I'd bought a Toei system ticket which I had attempted to use to get through a Tokyo Metro gate.  I had to go and buy a ticket from a different machine.  I put the first one in my purse determined to use it later in the day.

Equipped with the right ticket I got on the wrong train, that's to say the right line but going in the opposite direction.  No problem, jump off at the next station, cross to the opposite platform and go back on my tracks.  I've done it before.

Not quite so straightforward on this occasion.  Instead of both platforms being within the same domain as it were I had to exit, buy a new ticket and re-enter at a different point.  Annoying and time consuming but eventually I got to the palace gates psychologically intact.

Building in palace grounds and explanation

The tour was a bit underwhelming.  I knew it was only the grounds and that we wouldn't get into any buildings (with the exception of a holding pen prior to starting the walk about) but the grounds or at least those parts we were shepherded through were not very attractive.  I visited two gardens later in the day that were more enjoyable to walk around in.

There were a great many visitors and we marched off in four language groups each led by a guide who described what we were seeing and filled in bits of history and so on.  That was all very interesting in fact.  I went round in the French group because there were only a couple of dozen in comparison to the English one's God knows how many so I was able to get close to the guide and get the benefit of her commentary.  There was a large Chinese group as well and their guide had her public address thing turned up to the proverbial 11.  I suppose our group had one as well but it wasn't at all intrusive. In addition I'd downloaded an app that provided a commentary at different spots having worked out from your phone where you were.  I turned that off after a while because all these commentaries were just blocking one another out.

Going in

A bit of the palace

As well as the guides there were various busybodies scurrying around waving light wand like things that traffic policemen and suchlike have.  Their job seemed to be to keep people from straying and make sure you obeyed invisible and pointless rules and clear the way for various dignitaries in large flashy cars.

End of tour

Part of the Imperial Palace grounds is a public park where you can wander at your leisure.  I'd have liked that but unlike most public parks they close the gates two days a week Friday being one of them.  So I didn't do that.  I spent some time pottering about before heading back to my part of town.  I had to go there at some time to get my luggage from the hotel.

I would use a combination of Tokyo Metro and Toei for the journey utilising the Toei ticket I'd conserved from earlier.  I bought a Tokyo Metro ticket and got to within one station of my destination where I would change to a Toei line.  I fed my unused Toei ticket into the gate and flash bang wallop, no joy.  I presented myself to the Fare Adjustment man full of righteous indignation and puzzlement.  He examined my two tickets, asked where I was going, fiddled with his screens and said that'll be 110 yen then.  I attempted to put my case re the unused ticket but 99.9% due to my inability to express such a complicated matter in Japanese and 0.1% to his indifference got nowhere and had to stump up.

When I got to Kiyosumi-shirakawa I headed for a garden that looked the perfect place to recover my sangfroid.  I stopped en route for lunch.  Again I believed I was ordering seafood.  No helpful pictures nor tablets in this little place.  I was putting my faith in Google lens and translate.    

That's a raw egg in the middle, some wasabi near the top of the bowl, a bit of a lemon, little flecks of a green veg/herb and a bed of rice.  Not a lot of seafood there.  The little orange spheres are probably fish roe and the brown bits must be seafoody.  Didn't taste of anything in particular to me, but you know my tastebuds lack sensitivity.  The little bowl on the right by the way is thin udon in a tasty broth and I'd already polished off a bowl of dressed lettuce.

After that I went to the garden where being over 65 I was allowed entry for 70 yen instead of the standard 150.  Here as elsewhere I had to produce my passport to permit verification of my being over 65.  Scout's honour not acceptable and visual inspection of my face and body clearly being inconclusive.

It's a lovely garden.  On a little island were several heron

After a while there I fetched my luggage from the hotel and braved the dual metro sytem once again to get me to the point where I intended to catch the monorail to the airport.  Happily there was another pretty garden there for me to rest my weary legs and watch the reflection of the sun make its way slowly down the face of a skyscraper.  When I judged it was far enough down I went to the airport where I've written this, my last post from Japan, for this trip at least.    

A short coda:  My flight was scheduled for 00:10 subsequently put back to 00:35 but no matter.  When I checked in they told me that they would not be serving a meal during the flight.  Quite sensible given the hour you'd agree.  Instead I was welcome after passing through security to eat in their lounge.  I did so, and drank a very agreeable Austrian Gruner Veltliner as well.  Absolutely the best airline meal I've ever had and in the most comfortable surroundings.

 

There's that Halloween fever I warned you about.

Today then I made it over to the volcano island where I walked about a bit and took a bus around a bit and wondered at the immensity of it all.  There are three cones on the the mountain and they say there are eruptions in the south cone more or less every day.  In all the pictures I've taken there's certainly smoke coming out of it and I feel in some a tinge of orange where the smoke leaves the mountain but that could be my imagination.

What I'd really like to have seen of course is massive chunks of rock being thrown in the air and streams of red hot lava running down the sides,  It was pretty cloudy all day so the photos are not too exciting.  Here's one to illustrate the electricity cable situation I was moaning about.

My walk took me by the 100 metre long set of foot bathing pools that have been set up for the relief of weary walkers or just to show off the presence of volcanically heated water.  

I didn't feel the need to wash my feet but I did check that the water was warm.  There were nice big chunks of rock and views back over to the mainland.

The bus took us to what is the highest point you can get to by road and where there's a viewing spot.  

I spotted this odd looking set up high up on the mountain but there was no knowledgeable person around to ask about it.  I know that the authorities are keeping an eye on things all the time and taking measures to improve the safety of the people who live near volcanoes and I suppose it's something to do with that.  They practice emergency responses all over Japan because of earthquakes and tsunamis and the like so I suppose they have their eruption drills on Sakurajima as well.

After a few hours enjoying a good slosh around I filled up on coffee and headed back to Kagoshima to visit Sengan-en.  No mucking about looking for buses and trams today.  It was straight from the ferry into a taxi.

It's an impressive place.  You can visit both the house and grounds and a couple of nearby industrial sites because the family who lived here for 300 years or so were not only politically active aristocrats but took a major part in the industrialisation of Japan in the late 19th/early20th century. 

Here's the house's inner garden.  Sorry about the intrusive tourist.  I'll get rid of her with Photoshop.  There's another little inner garden with just a couple of rocks in it.

The house is quite swish inside and there's info about all the bigwigs who were visitors in days gone by like Edward VIII, Czar Nicolas and various Japanese notables.  I'm sorry to note that I've chopped off the tiger's head in this picture, kind of ruins it.  But forunately I've got the head in closeup

with the bonus of a good view of samurai body armour.  I've noticed this in other houses I've been in.  I don't know whether that's an addition dictated by modern curatorial ideas or whether your samurai kept his gear handy just in case he needed to leap on a trusty steed and swing his sword about a bit.

One of these perhaps.  A label told me that there was something religiously important about the big one and it got taken to the shrine every day but what it was I don't remember and furthermore I don't know whether it was this model horse (lifesize) or its real counterpart.

Prince Shimadzu Tadayoshi got a grand view of his garden and the mountain as he sat contemplating what improvements he could make to the reverberatory furnace a hundred yards down the drive.

The servants meanwhile were probably dreaming about when they were going to move on from the palaquin age to the steam engine or the horseless carriage.

A couple more pictures to illustrate how beautiful a place it is.

On my way out I passed a gate in a wall with what looked like a watchman's hut beside it and beside that this little statue.  Grasping a club in his hands he could be the God of watchmen and someone has been making offerings to him.  Let's hope the contents haven't reduced his ability to keep baddies at bay.

I was on a train out of Tokyo at 07.03 on Monday morning and paused for a moment on the way to the station to snap a Nihonbashi bridge lamp-post.  I hadn't slept terribly well and there didn't seem much point lying in bed moaning about it so I abandoned my seat on the 09.03 and got onto an unreserved coach on the earlier train.  It's actually hard to cancel a reservation.  It makes no financial difference to a tourist with a pass like myself but for someone who's paid £25 say for a reserved seat a simple way of doing it would be a godsend as well as making another seat available. 

That meant I got to Kagoshima about 14.30.  It is a long journey.  I bought some breakfast on the platform at the one intermediate station where I had to change trains.  It was a terribly painless change.  I arrived at and left the same platform about 15 minutes later having bought and mostly consumed said breakfast on the same platform.

There was a bit of a guddle when I did arrive.  There are two stations.  I knew that.  Booking.com knew that.  Google knew that.  I got on a tram to go to the hotel, having confirmed with another waiting passenger that the tram did go to the place I'd worked out with the help of Google etc at which I should get off to go to the Richmond Hotel.  I had asked the lady because I couldn't make head nor tail of the route information panel at the tramstop.  I still need to work on that because I went astray by tram this afternoon.

Anyway I decided to get off and proceed on foot in a Google inspired direction and after some time and some twists and turns I arrived at the Richmond Hotel.  Concern from the receptionist that he couldn't find my reservation.  Why?  It turns out there are two Richmond Hotels in Kagoshima and I was booked into the other one and the directions I had would have got me to the right one had I started from the other station.

I was still bothered about my camera lens problem so after I'd got installed I set about finding a camera shop.  That didn't prove entirely straighforward either but eventually a man with a banner took me round a corner and pointed to the giant camera sticking out of a wall at second floor level in a busy arcade.  I climbed a narrow staircase to the shop.  The man what knows wasn't in but would be back.  I left the lens and went for a dawnder and a coffee.  When I went back he said he couldn't fix it but he did happen to have the self-same lens in stock and obviously it was available should I wish to divest myself of some of my liquid assets.  I hummed and hawed and internally debated then said thanks but no thanks.

It was early evening by then so I looked around for someplace to eat and settled on a Nepalese restaurant where I had some excellent vegetable pakoras and a tasty coconut chicken curry washed down with a Kingfisher beer.  There was almost inevitably cricket on their telly so I watched that for a while before retiring to the correct Richmond Hotel. 

I'd got some information from the tourist office during my pottering about yesterday and went back there to buy a pass that would let me use the trams, buses and the ferry ad libitum.  I had breakfast of course.  This time in a branch of Mr Donut.  In Kanazawa my language classes were next door to Mr. D and I occasionally had coffee there.  They do excellent coffee but are surely in league with some dental repair company because their wares are fearsomely sweet.  They should have beware of tooth decay written all over them. 

Then I took the tourist bus around town and made mental and written notes of which spots seemed worth a visit.  I ended up back where I started in time for lunch.  I went up to the restaurant floor of the shopping centre adjacent to the station and had a lunch that included soup, rice, fried fish, chicken, various vegs and a raw egg.  I didn't eat the raw egg.  I'd assumed it was hard-boiled but it wasn't. I didn't fancy it especially since I'd left it till last.

I was still thinking about my lens.  Did the fact that the guy couldn't fix it mean it was irreparable or that it was beyond his particular competences?  I didn't want to buy a new lens and then find I could get the old one fixed in UK.  Nor did I want to miss out on getting some good snaps of the volcano.  I went back to the shop, put the lens on the camera, fiddled with it and bought it.

My test picture

Thus equipped I set off to one of the places I decided from my tour around would be worth a visit.  I quote from a tourist blurb

"Stately home and gardens of the powerful Shimadzu clan overlooking the magnificent active volcano Sakurajima. Built in 1658 by Shimadzu Mitsuhisa, Sengan-en is one of Japan’s most famous traditional gardens. Explore the expansive house and gardens to get a true feel of how a feudal lord lived. The grounds also host restaurants serving the finest local cuisine, an ultra-chic Japanese style café, and exclusive shops selling the pinnacle of Kagoshima craftsmanship."

You can get to it on the city tour bus but it's stop 12 out of 19 and it takes 50 minutes to reach stop 12.  Hard to believe but for such an apparently wonderful tourist attraction that's probably the best option.  My research said I could get to within 15 minutes walk by normal bus and the tram was said to go somewhere along that way.  I tried but failed.  

However my luck turned after an exhausting trudge around when I got on a tram with the intention of heading to the station to regroup.  The tram didn't go to the station.  I don't know to this day where it went but I got off thinking I'd just get the tram going in the opposite direction hopefully to some part of town that I recognised.  When I lifted my eyes there was the volcano.

And I was beside a river to boot.  Nothing better than walking through a town beside a river.  So that's what I did until it got dark and I left the river and more by luck than good judgement on either Google's part or mine found the hotel.

On the way I took more pictures and learnt things.

Here's  the learning bit.  The two pictures below are the two sides of a large internally illuminated panel depicting events and characters from a particular period of Japanese history.  There are eight of those along one stretch of the river.  You are invited to download an app that will tell you more and that will activate the large picture, which in this case is a battle scene.  Unfortunately it must be an iphone only app because I couldn't find in in my Android app store.

They are super but can you imagine them remaining unvandalised anywhere in the UK for any length of time at all?  Bloody sure I can't.

And here's another of the features of Japanese life that we can only dream of.

The map shows the features and facilities along part of the river.  I don't know how long it is.  I suppose it could be a mile or more.  The bridges are only a couple of hundred yards apart and it didn't take me terribly long to walk most of it.

My point though is to look at the facilities.  There is a little logo for public toilets.  I counted 11 of them.  That's 11 in a one mile stretch.  Are there 11 public toilets remaining in the entire City of Edinburgh????

Yesterday I pretty much just pottered.  Quite early I set out to check how to get to and from the hotel I'll be staying in when I go back to Tokyo on Thursday to make sure I have no problems getting to the Imperial Palace on Friday morning.  It was a very pleasant part of town but it took me ages to find a place to have a coffee which I desperately needed because I'd had no breakfast.  That's my cup being roasted in the picture.

I overheard a guy telling some young fellas that the area was becoming quite hipstery.  I think it won't qualify till more coffee spots are open on Sunday mornings than hairdressers.  They were up and about doing business before 10am.

One main street was full of figures tied to lamp-posts and other bits of street furniture.  They all had labels as though they were entries in a competition or something but I couldn't work it out with my limited language skills.  Although only a few had a Halloween feel to them I suspect it may be that.  The American version of that ancient festival has swept Japan  even more I think than here.  They like cutesy and kitchy.

Green haired witch perhaps

Halloween you see

Who knows who?

What's Hockney got to do with it?

There was a fine park, a couple of rivers, great bridges - just that shortage of coffee bars.

Later in the day I went to Shinjuku.  One of its claims to fame is the number of camera shops it has.  I thought I might as well see if I could get any help with my problem.  I couldn't but I had a pleasant time wandering around.

Maybe the other side of the delicacy, elegance and precision that I was on about when descibing the tea ceremony.

There's a lovely park though and although the moon wasn't out it was thronged with people enjoying that Sunday feeling.

 

The hotel I'd been staying in in Nihonbashi was more or less across the road from the main branch of Mitsukoshi, Japan's oldest department store which is celebrating its 350th anniversary. I popped in on my way back there.

Doesn't it remind you of Jenners in its pomp.  Now after an eight hour train journey I'm in Nagoshima eager to tackle a volcano.