Off to Tokyo today for a couple of nights, so I've created this album to share any interesting photos I come across during the trip.

Photo Key:

1-3) On the journey to Tokyo the bus always stops at the Yokokawa (横川) service area. (Props to the BMW GS1200 motorbike parked up, very envious.)

4) The queue outside きじ when we arrived for lunch on Sunday. More photos and a write-up here.

5) No accounting for taste! Hato Bus is a company in Tokyo organising bus tours in and around the city. Never been on one myself, but their buses are easy to spot because they're bright yellow. Obviously somebody working there loves Hello Kitty.

6) Something I haven't seen before. It's a price list of train tickets to all available stations, written in braille.

7) Tommy Lee Jones looking up at Tokyo Tower while enjoying a can of Boss coffee. Some of his amusing adverts for Boss coffee are on YouTube.

8-14) These were taken in and around Shiba Park (芝公園). I like the fact that in photo 10 the Tokyo Tower is reflected in the windows of the modern Atago Mori Tower. Photo 11 is the gate at the entrance to the Zojoji (増上寺) temple grounds, and numbers 12-14 combine Zojoji with Tokyo Tower.

15) View from the pedestrian bridge south of Shinjuku station, looking towards the huge Takashimaya Times Square department store complex and NTT Docomo's Yoyogi Tower (which looks a bit like a huge Big Ben).

16) Back at Yokokawa service area on the way home, a drink vending machine like you've never seen before! More than just giving you a huge range of hot and cold drinks to choose from, numerous cameras inside the machine actually show you your drink being made on the screen near the top. My "chocolattino" with Cinnamon topping took a couple of minutes to make, from the Columbian coffee beans dropping down, to the cup with lid making its final journey out of the hole at the bottom. Very impressive! And 200 yen per cup (about £1.30).

But no, I won't be buying either of those. Instead it's for a Lasik eye operation early next week.
 
I drew out the 310,000 yen (just over 2000 pounds) on the way home today, but I'm not relishing the thought of carrying that much cash with me to Tokyo. I'm not worried about it getting stolen; just that I might lose it or something. Guess I'd best be extra careful with my bag!
 
Hoping for a good result from the op, to go from about -12.5 to about -3 or so. Fingers crossed!

After our Jingisukan lunch we had already planned to go for a relaxing bath in the onsen constructed inside the same building as the restaurant. As there was nobody else there in the men's bath I managed to get some photos of the bathing and changing areas. It's a very small onsen with just a single bath - and no outside bath despite initially looking like there might be - but there was a nice view from the window.
 
The place is called Sagirisou (さぎり荘) in Shinshushinmachi (信州新町), which is about 30 minutes south-west of Nagano city by car. It was a great day out in all, and the weather was pleasantly cool.

Great title that. In Japanese, our lunch for today has the name Genghis Khan (ジンギスカン). Basically it's mutton and vegetables, which you cook yourself on a grill at your table yakiniku-style - which allows you to decide yourself how rare you want the food - then dip it in a sweet garlic sauce before eating. The plate of meat and vegetables in a size meant for three people came with rice, tofu, miso soup and kimchi for each of us.
 
It was pretty good, but a little chewy for my taste. Quite pricey too at 1500 yen each (about 10 pounds) but something I had to try having not had it before. On the way out I noticed some posters on the wall introducing some of the sheep that they've presumably bred and then slaughtered to serve to their customers. I found myself wondering if these photos were supposed to tempt you into eating the mutton here. The girls of course just said 'かわいい' ("cute") which was a little surreal considering they had probably just eaten one of their siblings.

Due to a chain of unforseen events involving a thunderstorm and the consequential stoppage of all outbound trains(!) we ended up at Ichibun again this evening.
 
After stepping inside we were immediately given a dish of おから (okara - fried soy pulp and vegetables) - I wish I'd taken a photo but unfortunately I was so surprised to see it (as I love the stuff) that I wolfed it down before I remembered to take one. After seeing the evening menu we immediately decided to try the モヤシのオイスターソース炒め (bean sprouts and pork fried in oyster sauce) and salami pizza and they were great, particularly the bean sprouts as they were really salty (I love salty).
 
Of course those were just a starter really (erm) so we then went with 生姜焼き (pork in ginger on rice) and their ramen. Finally the restaurant owner brought us out desserts of home-made orange-flavour jelly (again no photo due to wolfing, sorry) which was a great finish.
 
The whole meal cost us 1800 yen (about 12 quid), superb.

I thought I'd write something about my love of languages, as aside from food(!) it's my main interest and I guess you could say hobby; it's where I spend my available spare time. One of the people I respect in this area is polyglot Steve Kaufmann who, despite being in his early 60s, speaks twelve languages, and recently managed to attain a reasonably-high level of Russian within just 2 years! Well I can only dream of reaching that level, but I do plan to enjoy trying.
 
Japanese
As of right now I've been living in Japan for just over two years, and during that time I spent about 18 months at a Japanese language school learning Japanese, graduating back in March. In December 2007, a short few months after arriving in Japan, I passed the JLPT level 3, and then last December I passed JLPT level 2. After taking the exam though I was feeling pretty burnt out from exam preparation, and almost completely stopped studying Japanese. Even since then despite numerous people asking me if I'd go on to take JLPT level 1 (the top level) this year, I haven't felt the desire to continue the intense study required, and consequently I think I will leave it as a goal for a few years' time.
 
Spanish
However that burnout in Japanese hasn't stopped my desire to pick up other languages, and since I left the Japanese language school I've started Spanish. It should be reasonably straightforward with my previous knowledge of the Italian language, and I have a Mexican friend in Japan, and thus an opportunity to use it.
 
Italian
Recently though after becoming a little disappointed with my lack of ability to recall and use the (conversational-level) Italian I'd gained 7-8 years previous, I've decided that recovering that ability should be priority number one. So aimed with a couple of books using simple pictures and only Italian, I'm moving through it at quite a quick pace.
 
Back in 2001 I moved to Italy (Milan) with my company, and although I only lived there a very short six months, I picked up a reasonable knowledge of the language through the opportunity of speaking it every day. Unfortunately after that time was up I stopped using it completely, and so it became fainter and fainter. However that opportunity kicked off my interest in languages, as my only experience before that was GCSE French back in high school - and although I studied French from ages 11 to 16, I retained very little as the classes just weren't made to be very interesting.
 
Mandarin Chinese
In the middle of last year I also kicked off some Chinese study, as I have a real interest to visit Taiwan and to re-visit China, and figured it was a bit of a natural progression from the kanji characters of Japanese to the hanzi characters of Chinese. Japanese kanji characters came from China originally, but although the way of writing and meanings are often similar, the way of reading/pronouncing the characters is very different. That plus the fact that there are many thousands more hanzi than kanji required for daily use, and with its having four distinct tones when speaking, meant it would certainly be a challenge. But armed with ChinesePod - and later a book on Chinese written in Japanese - I managed to pick up (and retain even now) a few basic greetings which I plan to build on at a later date.
 
French
Returning finally to the French which I learnt back in high school, last year on a visit to the UK I was able to hire a motorbike and I rode over to France with a friend. It soon became apparent that I really couldn't remember even a little French. Any time I tried to think of the words, Japanese (or even Italian) came out. I was pretty shocked and embarrassed that I couldn't even muster the words to order a drink, and after returning to the UK I swore I'd get some of that French back doing some evening classes. This remains a goal for 2010.
 
With that all said then, I'd like to imagine that eventually (i.e. within 10/20/30 years) my list of languages and abilities will look something like this:
- Japanese (native)
- Italian (advanced)
- Spanish (intermediate)
- French (intermediate)
- Mandarin (basic)
 
That's my goal. Merely a fantasy? Perhaps, but it's good to dream. Here for amusement is my current collection of language books (thanks to the wonderful Delicious Library software). There's quite some bias towards Japanese, however I still possess a reasonable amount of Italian language books which are stuck in my parents' loft and thus haven't been entered into DL as yet.

As I was due to be travelling on the bus back to Nagano between 17:40 and 21:30 I thought I'd get a bento box from the Takashimaya department store food hall.

Have to say it was really good! Under the katsu were caramelised onions and the sauce was a bit sweet, not like normal katsu sauce. A winner for sure, and not too expensive at 999 yen (about £6.50).

A visit to Tokyo means a visit to Din Tai Fung (ディンタ イフォン in Japanese), a Taiwanese chain restaurant. We had a couple of plates of both the 小龍包 (pork and broth-filled dumplings) and the 海老蒸し餃子 (steamed prawn gyoza). Very satisfying!

Lunch at The Great Burger: http://www.the-great-burger.com

Let's go!