According to a survey I read recently (the Japanese love surveys, and the newspapers are full of them) the two aspects of Japanese life that foreigners who have lived in Japan want to maintain when they return home are no shoes inside the house and Japanese style bathing.  To understand why, both of these customs need a little more explanation, so if you are interested I'll explain (if not, feel free to leave an insult before navigating away - I do so enjoy your shining wit (as the good Dr Spooner would have said)).

Traditionally the Japanese home has had very little in the way of furniture, and people would sit and sleep on the floor, eating from low tables.  To make the most of what space they had, furniture had to be packed away, the bedding rolled up in the morning and pushed into a closet, and the trappings of daily life taken out in the morning and put away before taking the bedding out at night.  Flooring was traditionally woven grass panels called tatami, which are very comfortable ... Read more ...

Today its been hot and wet - and to quote Robin Williams that's nice if you're with a lady, but it ain't no good if you're in the (urban) jungle.  When I went out (all the daily chores need doing, letters to post, groceries to buy, had to get my hair cut) I got soaked from the inside out, and the outside in which left me miserable, irratable and seeking diversion.  So once I was home, bathed and dried, I was looking to the magic picture box in the corner to provide some distraction.  That distraction came in the form of the summer Grand Sumo tournament taking place in Nagoya.

Like many gaijin (foreigners) here, Sumo holds a real fascination for me and I have found it to be both dramatic and absorbing.  Part religeous ritual, part martial art, the real thing is so far away from the 'fat men in nappies' image prevelent in the West that it is hard to convey the tension and drama without sounding like a joke.  Its origins lie in the Shinto religeon, the native animistic relige ... Read more ...

So what do you know about Japanese food?  Raw fish and rice?  If you are interested I'll explain a bit about the food here (if not feel free to get back to the thut and crust of the EBW blog wars).

This is about what we eat at home... eating out is a whole different story, and certainly enough for a blog entry on its own.  We eat Japanese style four or five times a week, and Western style (although sometimes with a Japanese slant) the rest of the time.  The most common Japanese meal consists of white rice (short grain, and quite starchy so it can be picked up with chop-sticks) and miso soup (basically a soup made with salty soya bean paste, to which can be added all kinds of meat, seafood and/or vegetables).  The rice is usually served in a small bowl called a chawan (literally 'tea bowl' a style originally used for the famous Tea Ceremony), with salted vegetables (tsukimono) on a small side dish for each person.  Then there are always several main dishes (O-kazu) that are shared between th ... Read more ...

After all the stresses of finding an apartment, moving, white goods and furniture shopping all while trying to entertain bored children and struggling understand what's being said in Japanese (so my wife doesn't have to translate everything shortening her already limited fuse) I finally have an internet connection (this being Japan they claim 1000Mbps, but given the equipment at either end it's unverifiable and quite frankly faster than anything I need).

We have moved to a type of apartment called a 'mansion' in Japan.  This seems to mean an apartment in a block (building 5 or more stories high), where bedrooms and living area are seperate, but solid definitions are hard to find.  Apartments in smaller blocks, or smaller apartments, tend to be called 'aparto', the Japanese appropriating English vocabulary and moulding it to their own sensibilies as is there wont.  The Japanese word for mansion (in the English sense) is Yashikki, and they are quite amused when I tell them that 'mansion' mean ... Read more ...

Before I move house and (temporarily) lose my Internet connection, I thought I would write about a few things raised in the comments of my last blog.  If there's other stuff about life in Tokyo that you want to know about, leave a comment and I'll try to write about it.

For those who don't know, pachinko is a Japanese game designed to tap into the desire to gamble but avoiding the nasty business of actually giving the winners any money.  Gambling (apart from the state lottery and on-course betting on horse racing and (weirdly) bicycle racing) is illegal in Japan, so the ingenious Japanese have come up with a substitute.  In the 14th Century the Italian poet described Hell as 9 circles of horrors in his poem 'Inferno', but had he visited a pachinko parlour he would have undoubtedly added a 10th.  The first thing you notice is the noise - imagine an enclosed space where thousands of steel ball bearings are being dropped onto metal sheets (this is actually what happens, not a metaphor, as you ... Read more ...