August is Festival time in Edinburgh and I suspect this girl is a performer using her bus journey to get ready.  That's not street makeup.

I haven't been to anything like the number of events I usually manage.  I haven't for instance been to a single thing at the Book Festival and that's without the excuse of being in a show myself to explain away my lack of get up and go.

What I have seen has been good on the whole.  

Make it Happen Brilliant production about the rise and fall of the Royal Bank of Scotland under the leadership of Fred the Shred. A nicely comic cameo by Brian Cox of Adam Smith.  A small grumble about the stereotypical treatment of amdram at one point.

Consumed Very entertaining play in which four generations of the women of a family are gathered to celebrate great granny's 90th.  Mudslinging and mayhem ensue until the final reveal of why daddy hasn't turned up.

The Veil of the Temple The EIF's opening concert was a gigantic undertaking, lasting for 8 hours and involving 250 singers from 3 choirs. I not only endured it but enjoyed.  Read the Guardian's review. 

Lauder A one-man show tracing the career of Harry Lauder performed in Portobello town hall a stone's throw from his birthplace. On the couthy side but good songs and a good reminder of the Scot who was the highest paid entertainer in the world in his time.

Kolesnikov and Tsoy, Fibonacci Quartet, Sitkovetsky Trio, Ryan Wang All Queen's Hall morning concerts that I enjoyed.

The Virtuous Burglar and The Children The Grads' shows.  The former is a farce by Dario Fo that carries lightly the weighty themes of hypocrisy and classism and the latter a serious piece about the responsibility of the older generation to the younger in an incident of nuclear disaster.  Both well done and satisfying in their totally different ways.

Dance People An open air performance in the Old Quad in which according to the show blurb "Democracy, dictatorship and culture are placed under the spotlight, their tensions explored through dynamic choreography and unflinching physicality." I'm afraid none of that came over to me.

Cooking with Kathryn I set out to see another show that was sold out and was persuaded by a charming young woman in the box office to try this which was playing around the same time. Despite the 4 star banner on its poster I thought it was poor fare.  Most of the audience were in hysterics with enthusiastic laughter.  Hard to fathom one's fellow man.

The 39 Steps and A Midsummer Night's Dream Produced by Arkle as the final productions in the 30 year history of Michael and Rob's enterprising theatre company.  They are their favourite pieces from their repertoire it seems.  Both were competently presented and performed.  While the Steps was new to me and was fun my loyalties as far as the Dream is concerned lie with Claire's production in which I played Bottom.  A few days later I went to an Arkle farewell do which was a pleasant social event.  Michael and Rob were each presented with a large photo book of all their productions and jointly with a fine sculpture representing their last two plays.  That seems highly improbable but I think it works extremely well.

Rob, the sculpture, Michael and the sculptor

 I am spottable in the crowd below.

Breaking Bach The combination of baroque music and the dance of urban America performed in the Usher Hall and watched by me from the dubious comfort of a bean bag in the stalls area.  It was undeniably excellent although my imperfect knowledge of break dancing had envisaged something a bit more frenzied.  That might have been too much to expect from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. I was pleased and relieved that at the end I was able to rise from my beanbag without calling for assistance.

Faustus in Africa A retelling (one of many) of the tale in which Faust sells his soul to the devil in return for some earthly benefit. In this case the benefit appeared to be the ability to swan around Africa picking up trophies and wealth of one sort or another and to generally make a mess.  There seemed to be a woman he was after as well and a would-be emperor and a general but to be honest I didn't follow it too well. I musn't forget that there were puppets.  Joyce Macmillan in The Scotsman thought it was wonderful and she's my goto reference point so I'll conceal my indifference to the show.

3 Chickens Confront Existence A show that is food for thought although it doesn't let profundity get in the way of humour as we watch three actors in beautifully fashioned feathery chicken suits fill their final hours musing philosophically and in one case working ceaselessly to devise a mathematical formula that will predict the precise moment at which they will be swept off to become food for others.   

A Pound of Flesh Martin Foreman's adaptation of The Merchan of Venice in which Portia dies of the plague so cannot plead in court, Bassanio takes poison and Antonio is left with a knife in his hand with the choice of self-destruction or surrender to his bond.  A neatly told and well performed tale.

Transfers Martin's other production which is well reviewed here by All Edinburgh Theatre.  I'd have given it a third star so perhaps it had been tightened up as the reviewer suggested it should by the time I saw it.

1472 The Boy at Rest Given that this was the story of a boy king deposed and eventually poisoned by his uncle this was quite a jolly show.  First there were the lovely traditional Korean costumes, then the tuneful music and colourful projections but mostly it was the performances of the three cheerful Korean goblins who led us through the action.    

Mary Queen of Scots This Scottish Ballet production was my top show.  The dancing was terrific, the music gripping and the costumes gorgeous.  Initially the narrative thread was a bit tricky to follow but it got easier.  I went with Ross and Claire and we enjoyed it so much that we have already booked to see it again when it comes back to Edinburgh after its post Festival tour.

Fava Not a show but a Greek restaurant where I had lunch with old friends Chus and Eduardo.  They'd escaped 40 degree plus temperatures at home in Spain to enjoy a week cooling down in Edinburgh's less demanding climate.  Here technically to support a compatriot's appearance at the Book Festival they were revisiting old haunts from their years in Scotland.  Lunch was good, the craic was excellent and my Spanish got a good workout.

This was one of the Jazz Festival gigs that I most enjoyed.  Martin Kershaw had been commissioned to write some music to accompany the John Lavery exhibition at the National Gallery of Scotland last year.  He wrote eight pieces in response to eight of Lavery's paintings done in the open air and reprised these with a trio of other musicians, guitar, double bass, and piano, for the festival.  

I went to see the Napier summer school concert and recognised about three players from one or other of the years in which I'd taken part. They played in St Brides this year which was fine but I feel lacked the atmosphere that the same gig generated in previous years in the Jazz Bar.

This year in the Jazz Bar I enjoyed a group led by Sue Mackenzie that played a fusion of jazz and folk.  They featured bagpipes on one number and in the confines of the Jazz Bar wonderful though it was, that was probably enough exposure to the pipes.

The other gigs I went to were fine but not paricularly memorable.  There is such a lot on that it's hard to choose.

I've only been back to the Filmhouse once since the re-opening.  Although what's on is easily ascertained on their website I miss the monthly arrival of a printed programme to leaf through and choose from.  What I went to see was the 40th anniversary restoration of Kurosawa's historical epic Ran. I'd never seen it but I'm glad I made the effort after 40 years.  It was absolutely brilliant.  The colour, the scale, the battle scenes, the drama;  all fantastic.  The acting style I suppose we might call heightened but the story deserves it and I don't think it quite tips over into ham.   

Filmhouse were having a wee bit of a Kurosawa fest that week so on the same day I also saw The Bad Sleep Well, an even older film.  It came out in 1960 in black and white.  A good revenge drama with most characters dead by the end.

Claire had a barbecue at the weekend.  The weather was reasonable though light rain drove us indoors eventually.  We were however annoyed by wasps.  They've apparently had a good year and are consequently more plentiful.  I know they play some vital role in keeping the planet spinning but couldn't they do it less publicly.  Someone put out a dish with honey in it to divert them from our plates but it turned out they preferred chicken, or more probably whatever the chicken had been marinaded in.  So we dumped chicken remnants into the honey dish and that helped.    

Filmhouse has been brought back from the depths of bankruptcy in what seems the doublequick time of less than three years by a hard-working team with the help of funding from public bodies and donations from film fans.  I went along on the night it opened to the public and saw Godland, the sort of arthouse movie we've all missed these last three years. I thought it well deserved the five stars it got from The Guardian. 

I've taken a rest from blogging since I got back from Japan in mid May.  I've been too busy doing not very much.  Watching the French Open Tennis Championships and now Wimbledon has ungainfully occupied many hours.  Now that Cameron Norrie has been knocked out I'm rooting for Novak in the hope that he'll get that 25th Grand Slam.

I had a pleasant weekend in Northumberland getting a lift there and back with Siobhan and Kevin through our beautiful border country and I had a day out in Glasgow with Andrew.  That was notable for the exhausting hike uphill to see a photographic exhibition near Blythwood Square only to find the building it was supposed to be in unoccupied and shuttered.  So much for Refuweegee.

I had another exhausting hike up the stairs to my flat for three weeks while our lift was undergoing refurbishment to keep it in good nick and working order for another twenty years or so.  It now arrives at my floor without the little jolt it had developed over the last few years and it talks.

For the third year in a row I spent a couple of days doing patient simulation for physiotherapy students at Napier and have already been enlisted for next year.  I think that may well be the only acting engagement I undertake in future.  I'm not really feeling the call of the stage these days.  I may also have played in my last Dunedin Wind Band concert.  I've been in the band for soemething like fifteen years and could do with a change of scene on a Monday night.

Culturally I've seen a couple of plays, been to two concerts and to a modern dance performance.  The latter was Kismet from Ballet Rambert.  It consisted of two pieces, both of which I enjoyed but I particularly liked the one in which the dancers dashed around in an airport.  That doesn't sound much but the ideas and the movements were terrific.  This five star review says it was " a perfectly constructed, emotionally charged, and frequently hilarious portrayal of airport life in all its chaotic glory".  Spot on.

Ross directed Suddenly Last Summer for the Grads.  It's a slightly weird piece but it was excellently presented and performed though I do sympathise with this reviewer's comments about the action on the stairs.

In contrast I was disappointed by the The Mountaintop at The Lyceum.  Set in a Memphis motel room the night before Martin Luther King was assasinated it morphs from a naturalistic encounter between King and  a motel chambermaid into a fantastical meeting of King and an angel.  I'm not too sure whether that was meant to be before or after his death.  I had trouble following the chambermaid/angel's dialogue which no doubt coloured my reaction to the play.  Critics by and large praised the play and the production: "this play is a sensation" said The Herald but I just didn't like it.

The RSNO finished their season with a Shostakovich evening consisting of his Festive Overture, Second Cello Concerto and Symphony 11.  I very much like Shostakovich and the symphony which depicts the events of the revolution of 1905 was satisfactorily noisy in the right places.

The previous week I'd heard them play another quite noisy symphony by Lera Auerbach who I'd never heard of.  I loved the piece which reminded me here and there of The Quatermass Experiment.   

 

I was in Shinjuku on a bit of a shopping expedition when I saw a crowd of people all looking towards this. Well I thought it must do something when the hour strikes - emit flames and smoke or at least wiggle its head about.  Then the traffic lights changed and the crowd crossed the road.

I'd often wondered where Japanese men bought their clothes.  The square footage allocated to men's clothing in any store or shopping mall I'd been in was generally zero.  Occasionally I'd come across a designer level unit or a rap generation low slung jeans shop, not to mention the office suit chains but where was an equivalent to Frasers or M&S or John Lewis?

Shinjuku has shops galore.  There's a very nice park as well but shops is what it's at.  I had it in mind to find a replacement for my much loved red linen jacket bought from C&A in a shopping mall outside Malaga some time in the 90s and now getting a bit tatty.  Mind you it aroused the admiration of a passing Japanese one day who declared it to be a lovely colour.  He was right.

Anyway the stores I ventured into were almost entirely full of designer concessions.  Boss, Paul Smith, Brookes Bros etc.  I did come across some nice jackets and some that were also affordable but something my size was seldom in stock.  I did buy a cheapo jacket from H&M but suffered immediately from buyer's remorse so it's going straight to the Red Cross.

So the upshot is that the Japanese addition to my wardrobe is a ten quid baseball cap from Muji.  Just the thing to wear on a visit to eggslut.

Most of my interest in Japan is in its old buildings and traditional culture but a touch of modernity does not go amiss and Takanawa Gateway City is a prime example of current developments.

Ultra modern though it is it's built on the site of the very first railway built in Japan and there's a beautiful display charting its development in the 1870s.

At the time the railway sat on an embankment and ran along beside the sea.  That area has been since reclaimed.  Some of the stone from the original embankment was rescued during construction and forms part of the landscaping of the area.  You can see it on the left side of the photo below.

From there I walked on to the Bhuddist temple Sengaku-ji in whose grounds are the graves of 47 samurai and their leader Asano. The story is that Asano drew his sword against a chap called Lord Kira within the bounds of Edo castle.  This was frowned upon to the extent that Asano was sentenced to death by seppuku (ritual suicide by cutting one's own abdomen).  I understand that in the compassionate version of this sentence someone stands by with a sharp sword and chops your head off once you've sliced your belly open to spare you further suffering.  Whether that happened in this case I don't know.

Now the 47 followers took this amiss but bided their time and two years later killed Lord Kira and flourished his severed head over the grave of Asano.  They in turn were sentenced to death by seppuku and buried in the same temple as Asano.

When you pay your 500 yen to visit the site you are given a bunch of smoking incense sticks to lay at the graves.

My walks book recommended heading after this to what it said was one of the most beautiful gardens in central Tokyo.  I passed this cupcake shop with its droopy Union Jack on the way.

The garden was closed which annoyed me since I'd toiled up a hill to get there.  Tokyo is quite a hilly city.

No matter.  Close by was a temple whose grounds have been developed by the architect Kengo Kuma (of the V&A Dundee).  Various modern buildings and a pool have been added.  A cool spot lacking the usual little figurines with red bibs and lines carrying prayer chits.  It felt a bit sterile.

I ended this expedition by taking my rest in the shade offered by the nearby hospital grounds.  I might have visited the adjacent Minato City Local History Museum but this being the third Thursday it was closed. 

It was also the day before my departure.  In the evening I met Momo and we went to eat together.  I'd said I'd like monjayaki for dinner.  That's the Tokyo version of okonomiyaki, the Japanese savoury pancake.  The difference is in the batter which is thinner in the Tokyo version.

We arranged to meet in Tsukishima which is monjayaki central.

I'm told there are around 80 restaurants in this street all specialising in monjayaki.  Here's our monja.  Its main constituent was squid hence the dark colouring.

  And here's us

An easy trip to the airport the following day then an interminable flight to London relieved in part by seeing Emilia Perez, an unusual but interesting and enjoyable film and a docudrama about Maggie Thatcher and Brian Walden and a bit of reading.  No sleeping unfortunately, or maybe half an hour after lunch and G&T.

Bit of a delay on the Edinburgh flight.  Got into town on the bus at about 00.15 and staggered to Waverley Steps where I caught the last daytime 16 to Elm Row and pushed my luggage home.

My book of walks that I mentioned earlier suggests that you shift your base every few days and I did that after the Kanda Matsuri.  I moved to an area called Meguro that amongst other things is quite handy for getting to the airport.

I saw this BCC sign on my first wander around but it was a day or so later that I found it pretty much is what it says.  It has a large library and a display of a range of old bikes and promotes cycling.  It was closed when I was nosing around so I had to take photos through the windows which is never very satisfactory but here are a couple of its bikes

Whenever you mention Philippe Starck I think of furniture but he designed more than that and one of his buildings is in Meguro.

Could have been the inspiration for the green tin building in Abbeyhill?

Very green are the grounds of the National Park for Nature Study which is very close to the Starck building.  I spent a while in there enjoying the cool shade and thinking of not very much.  Turtles and toddlers featured.

Almost next door is the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum.  It occupies a beautiful Art Deco building that was the home of Prince Asaka who had lived in Paris for three years and commissioned the house from a French architect Henri Rapin in 1933 on his return to Japan.

The exterior is quite plain but the decor inside is lovely.  Unfortunately you're not allowed to photograph much.

There were also a European style garden and a Japanese style garden in the grounds, both very pleasant.

The exhibition that was on was of graphic design from Germany which I was free to photograph as much as I liked but I wasn't that fussed.  This one caught my eye though because it was advertising amateur theatre.  Like a lot of the other material it was not very current but maybe it wasn't meant to be.

Homing in on what was performed the British contribution was satisfyingly Scottish in its choice of playwright but an odd choice of play.

On my way out I found they had a restaurant and this being 12.30 I though I mighht have lunch before moving on.  The sign said lunch 11.00 to 12.30 and 13.00 to 14.30.  Right enough they'd cleared out the customers and were resetting tables.  I hung about wondering.  Should I go in and book a seat or what. In the event I took a seat at a table outside and observed.  A queue built up and at 13.00 the doors opened and a maitre'd checked them in.

So now they've got around 25 people seated, all wanting their lunch at the same time.  I'm not sure if there were enough waiting staff to take orders promptly.  Seemed a daft way to run a restaurant.

I went on in the afternoon to a pleasant spot called Ebisu where I had some refreshment (beer is made there) and watched

what was going on.  It was mostly people walking about with or without dogs.  Some joined me in a lift to the 38th floor of a skyscraper to look at the city from above. Some coddled their dogs

Some attended to business

After a while I set off to visit an area of art galleries and the like but got muddled at some point.  Street names would help but that's not a thing in Japan except for major roads.  Anyway I ended up near Ebisu station and went back to base.

 

Back at the shrine on Saturday morning things were a bit wet.  Not everyone's enthusiasm was dented though.  People queued up for merch, that's what グッズ means in the picture below.

Drummers lost none of their energy.

Ceremonial continued

Even from the youngest.

And no-one stopped eating

Saturday also includes a parade through some other districts.  Not only was I unsure about the timing and the geography of this but it was also uninviting weather so I didn't try to get to it.

Sunday was a much brighter day weatherwise and from dawn to dusk was devoted to the return to the shrine of numerous mikoshi (portable shrines carried on palanquins with much ceremony).  I didn't spend all day watching them but I was there from around 9am for a couple of hours and when I passed the same spot at 4.30pm there was still a group arriving at the shrine.

The process involved a front party of half a dozen proceeding slowly with a series of steps that took them from side to side as well as forward, then a group of musicians in a tumbril (the wrong word but describes the vehicle) and finally a great swell of singing and cheering palanquin bearers who almost danced along.

When they got towards the entrance there was much whistling and clapping of hands as they turned the palanquin through 90 degrees.  Then someone ahead of it was raised up, banged sticks together and motioned the crowd first to stop their advance and then to continue. 

I've got a bit of video but it's too big for blogger so when I get home I'll try to edit it down.  In the meantime here are a couple of pics.

 

In the afternoon I went to the East gardens of the Imperial Palace which had been closed (because it was a Friday!) when I tried to go two years ago.  There was a lovely section of proper garden with a pool and so forth in which I was able to sit in the shade and relax for a while.  It was bliss. One picture to set the lotus eating mood.

This is the Kanda Myojin shrine courtyard looking towards the inside of the entrance gate.  The shrine is the nerve centre as it were of the Kanda Matsuri which is said to be one of the three most important shinto festivals and takes place in May every second year.  It runs for a week but the events I came to see happen at the weekend.

My hotel was within spitting distance so on the Friday I was able to watch preparations being made including the all important setting up of food and drink stalls without which no celebration ever takes place in Japan.

 

A while ago I bought a book that describes 40 odd walks around Tokyo and later in the day I followed a couple of them.  One handily started at Kanda Myojin shrine, passed through another couple of nearby shrine/temples and over a bridge on which rail enthusiasts hang out to watch trains whizzing by

then past the orthodox cathedral of St Nicolai (sorry about the tree) and on to the district of

Jimbocho famous for its multitude of (mostly second-hand) bookshops.

Then I moved on to a neighbouring walk that took in the Tokyo Dome (sports and concert venue ably supported in my picture by a train that goes through a buiding), an amusement park and one of Tokyo's many green spaces.