My apartment: Part 1

Since I haven't made a Blog post in a couple weeks, and golden week is long gone, I thought I'd do a few posts about my daily life in japan, starting with my apartment!

From the outside our apartment is fairly typical: The exposed concrete stairs, the tiny elevator shaft, the bike parking port. Like most japanese buildings of this size and purpose, the outside is primarily raw concrete and tiny tiles. What made this effect so popular in japan? I probably will never know. (Actually I'll probably look that up when I'm at school next year with access to a large architectural library)

Because bicycles are such a popular method of transportation in Japan ( I estimate the bike population of Japan to be something like twice the human population, and I'm being conservative here to avoid sounding like I did no actual math)
Every apartment building ha some sort of bicycle parking. Ours is very simply a roof to keep the rain off. The thing is always full of bike, but you can tell that only a handful are ever used because most of them are covered in the brown dust that floats over from China.

Going up the little elevator you reach our landing at the third floor:

Our hallway is directly exposed to the elements if the door is left open. It's usually stifling hot if its left closed.

Entering my actual room , it looks much like any Japanese Room. There is a little area for me to take off my shoes, next to my laundry and garbage. 

 I have a nice little japanese washing maching. Its maximum capacity is pretty small, but I suits the amount of laundry I need to do.

The catch with Japanese laundry machines is that they don't use hot water. At least mine doesn't. When I do whites I usually fill the thing up manually with buckets of hot water which,  thankfully, is extremely hot in Japan.

More over, the washer has a really loud and violent rinse and drain cycle. This usually involves knocking over my brooms and umbrella.

You can see my collection of plastic bottles and milk cartons in the bottom right.

My bath room is again, fairly typical. A small plastic walled room, separate from the toilet, and raised further above the rest of my floor. The tub is pretty small, but very deep, and the shower is  naturally much too short for me to stand under it. I have a small mirrored cabinet above my little sink to store my things. The funny thing is, I can remember now when this was all very small, but after living here for three months it feels quite natural.

The kitchen area is pretty minimal. A tiny sink that I can barely fit my pans into, and a small electric element sit below a little storage shelf. The counter is about up to below my crotch, so I usually kneel when I do dishes.

My little appliance corner. Along with the ubiquitous fridge and microwave/ oven combo, I also a have a rice cooker (most useful kitchen appliance since the electric stove) and an insulated electric kettle. I was luckily enough to land a toaster when I came here, and  in spite of the relative strangeness of Japanese bread, it has served me well.

To round the team out, a broken VCR to add some height to the microwave and cut my back 4 inches of slack. Lord knows the ball height kitchen counter isn't doing anything for me.

Toyota Commemorative Musuem of Technology

 

Since Nagoya is rich with cool museums, and this Saturday was rainy, James and I decided to go take a look at The Toyota Commemorative Museum of Technology.  The Museum is divided overall into two segments, exploring the history of the original Toyota Automated Loom Corporation, and its eventual subsidiary companies after it diversified its industries into Car Manufacturing, Electronic.

There are over ten companies in the Toyota Group, And only one or two of them have anything to do with cars. This is standard accoording to the "Zaibatsu" system, around which many Major Japanese corporations (All Japanese Corporations?) are arranged. In this system many large companies from diverse sectors provide mutual support to the group members. These companies are usually descended from a parent Corporation (e.g. Mitsubishi) or have been acquired by a larger group.

The point is, Toyota does a lot more than cars, and because of its early history as a loom builder, and then automobile manufacturer, it produces everything from textiles, to modern automated looms, to of course, cars. This allows the group to be very independent of other manufacturers. For example, Aichi Steel Corporation, originaly Toyota Steel Works, a subsidiary of  Toyoda Automatic Loom Manufacturer, likely produces the steel used in many Toyota cars manufactured in Japan. Toyota also produces the textiles it later uses in its seat belts under the name of a separate company in the Toyota group, which was in fact the original parent company of the Toyota group.

Anyways the result of all this history lesson in Toyota's history, is that the museum they have set up is an awesome showcase of the history of both weaving technology and automobile manufacturing in Japan

  

To begin, here is one of the older automated looms on display in the museum. Many of the looms actually work, and the employees demonstrate them every few minutes. This particular model was based on a french design, powered by a waterwheel. The interesting thing about toyota, and likely many Japanese corporations, is how they took the models of cars and looms made in Europe, used them to start up their own companies, and then improved upon them in the decades after, to become world leaders in the same technology. 

Its a promising story of how much any people or nation can achieve from humble beginnings, if given the chance.

  But enough wishy-washy philosophy! God knows America's not going give any mostly rural countries the chance to do that again! Better to just bomb them and take their resources and be done with it!

On to Robots! TRUMPET PLAYING ROBOTS! This guy here isn't the actual model you might have seen on the news or in documentaries. But it is a prototype of the one that actually walks around and plays the trumpet- With its lips!

 The musuem is amazingly demostrative, all of the looms they have, including the older ones are fully operational, and they demonstrate them regularly. This is a demonstration of the forging process used to produce car parts.

 Moving on to the car part of the museum!

The Museum has a large pavilion where you can see display models of Some of Toyota's most iconic cars through its history. Two of my favorites were the original American inspired Toyota Passenger car, and the first Corolla, with all its late fifties classiness.

The Majority of this part of the museum, however, is dedicated to displaying the manufacturing processes that Toyota used when first making its cars in the 1930's up until modern processes which ar heavily automated. There are simulations of robotic part fitting, forging, and machining. And when I say simulations, I mean that the actual machines are there working in front of you, they just don't produce anything!

Here is the rig used to automatically assemble and weld the frame of one passenger car.

James standing under a 120 tonne forging press from chicago Or maybe it was a 6500 tonne press. In any case it was about four stories of practically solid steel.

It wouldn't be a good museum dedicated to a currently operating company if there wasn't sometime of modern marketing included on the display floor. A sudden departure from the rest of the collection of cars on display, whose models seem to span up until the late 80's, there was a display of a a cut away Plug in Hybrid Prius.

 

As we were leaving the museum at closing time and the rain was coming down, we checked out one last piece on display. A large steam powered wheel, which would have run the looms when the factory was first being built. A nice way to end the trip through the museum, which does a really good job of presenting the history of the Toyota company, through interactive and authentic displays of the company's machines in technology.

Aside from the fun of seeing so many industrial machines in action, the museum is an inspiring reminder of the things humans can accomplish.  Automated Looms were some of the first automated technology humanity ever produced. To see the progression in a few hundred years of those at once simple and fascinatingly complex steam powered machines to their modern equivalents, is an inspiring reminder of what humans are capable of. As much as we lament on the human condition, and the dire situation we find ourselves in, it is impossible to forget, when confronted with the brief history of our technological advancement, the genius of which we are capable. Men throughout history have dreamed up ways to make our lives easier and more comfortable, life less full of hardship. And they have succeeded again and again. Thinking about this inspires me not to look back on our terrible mistakes,  but to look to the future with the hope that there are clever people who will wholeheartedly work towards the resolution of our problems.

Golden Week: Kyoto

 

I'll admit this post is being published almost a month after I got back from golden week, but I couldn't leave out the last leg of our journey, Kyoto! We arrived in the evening quite late, and found our hostel, the khaosan guest house: a very clean and modern youth hostel, if a little expensive. After a really proper night out on the town in Gion, (so awesome I don't have any pictures), we set out early in the morning.

The weather, like most of the week was gorgeous, we couldn't ask for anything better! 
We first headed to the Fushimi Inari Shrine, which is probably one of the coolest places you can go in Kyoto.

The shrine it self isn't too special, but behind the shrine, winding its way up the mountain side, is a trail, along which are build thousands of red tori-gates.  You can spend hours walking up the trail to the small shrine atop the mountain, most of the time underneath the wooden cross pieces of the gates, with the peaceful green forest peeking through the finger width cracks between each individual gate.

The Shrine Maidens make their rounds in their standard shockingly orange robes.

We met up with the girls a few minutes up the shrine, stumbling into eachother as they came down from their aborted attempt at walking up the whole trail. In Olivia's words "It's just more gates". We didn't end up hiking the whole way that time, but I can hardly imagine a more unique, if homogenous, hiking trail.

 

After leaving the shrine, we biked over to the venue for a horse-archery tournament.

It took a while for the thing to get started, mostly the three archers pacing back and forth along the pitch on horse back. Some people in Kimono dressed up like edo period aristocrats  paraded along with them for a while, and then the action started.

Our view wasn't very good because of the packed venue, but I managed to get a few rapid shots of the actual bowmanship. The thing is, It's over so quickly, that you can hardly see if with your eyes. The rider gallops full throttle towards the target, which takes very little time; you see a flash of color, and then you hear the crack of wood breaking. A few pieces fly through the air, and then the rider slows to a canter and doubles back to his starting place.

 

Our last stop in Kyoto was the famous golden temple. True to its name, the temple's top two stories are entirely coated in real gold leaf.  We only managed to see it in the overcast weather that afternoon, but it was still a pretty spectacular sight!

 

 Because we loved Osaka so much, we spent very little actual time in Kyoto. But it is definitely an interesting city to visit, a far cry from the dense urban centres of Tokyo and Nagoya that we are used to. Every where you go there are older buildings, the city is far less built up, and preserves a lot more green space. Not to mention the fact that the streets in Kyoto are more like North-American streets, running primarily along compass axises.

Kyoto brings to an end a wonderful week of exploring Japan, with some of the best weather I've seen in my life. I hope I get to see alot more of Japan in my remaining months here, but even six months is too short to really explore all that Japan has to offer, Its a country with so many interesting places, and Golden Week has only given me the taste to see more!

Golden Week Osaka

We arrive to Osaka to a rainy morning. Infact the first day in Osaka was about the only day that we had poor weather over all of golden week. We've been told that in Japan May is a good month for nice weather, but James and I are convinced that the Japanese have found away to engineer good weather over golden week. (According to James they did invent the technology to create clouds by dispersing a certain type of metal into the atmosphere)

After dropping our bags off at our hostel, and having a much needed shower, we hung around with Phil and Thomas, A couple of friends from Canada and France, respectively. It was nice to be able to speak some French for once.  Osaka is flour country in Japan, and so I was on a mission to eat as much flour based food as possible in Osaka. To that end we all decided to hit up a dirt cheap Udon place we saw on our way from the subway. With freshly made udon whipped up infront of us by a team of old timers for around 300 yen, we couldn't have gone wrong. 

Despite the overcast day we made an afternoon of visiting Osaka castle and wandering around that part of Osaka. The pictures don't quite do the castle Justice, but even in the overcast day the gold gleams, and the minimal palette of the grounds (White skies, black roofs, white walls and newly green trees) is very striking.

Osaka Castle was once the largest in Japan, and It still is probably the second or third largest.
Definitely a cool place to go if you are in Osaka.  The grounds of the Castle are a nice place to take a walk, if nothing else. Some of the stones that are used in the foundations at the main gates are simply massive. Over all the grandness of the construction make Osaka one of my favorite Castles to date.

We got lost around Shinsekai and wandered around Kuromon "Blackgate"  market.
It was a good place to hide from the rain, and check out all the fresh fish and meat that we would later pay way too much money for.

 

Apparently this is where the cities restaurateurs go to get their supplies. There are fish and seafood galore as well as bakeries and pastry shops. I bought some nice looking french bread, but despite the looks it tasted like all the baguette I've had in Japan: Plastic. We even saw a blow fish for about 11 600 yen. Or was it 116 000 yen. I don't remember.

In the evening we hit up Shinsekai for some food a drink before meeting up with the Girls from the other placements. At night Shinsekai is basically just street after street of Izakaya and Kushi-katsu places. The very south of Shinsekai around where our hostel was is where all the Japanese working class guys seem to go to get their fill of fried food and drink. It gets abit seedier around this area, and that means the food is a bit tastier! If you're lucky you might even get accosted by a drunk Japanese guy at 10 o'clock in the morning the next day.

Yay for the underbelly of Japan!

The crown Jewel of Southern Osaka: Dotombori. Easily the most happening place I've been in Japan, the streets are filled with couples and groups of bachelors or their female counterparts going out for a drink. If you go to certain streets you'll pass by all the Japanese Hostesses and their "Pimps". And cutting through the middle of it is a lovely Canal, where the neon lights and big ads get even bigger reflected in the water. After meeting up with the Girls from the other placements, and their new Japanese friends we all went out and took a look around to find a good Izakaya. Luckily our new friend Taichi knows lots of Izakaya owners so he brought us to a cheap place owned by his friend. Any plate of food or drink for 300 yen. Not a bad deal.

The ubiquitous and exspensive Kani restaurant chain, With its distinctive Animatronic Crab!
Dotombori by night  is very different from Dotombori by Night, But regardless of what time of day it is, Osaka Is a really cool city, with alot of character, and alot to see and do.

Matsuyama

 Leaving Hiroshima, we manage to catch the second last ferry to Matsuyama by the skin of our teeth. Then we pass  an incredible two hour ferry ride through the islands of the Inland sea  with the sun setting along side out boat. The Mountains loom ever more purple in the distance, until as the sun has set they are barely distinguishable from the sky. It was a sublime journey, if a short one, and one of the most memorable landscapes of the trip for me.

We arrive at Matsuyama Ferry port just after dark,  The shores of Shikoku are quiet and still.

 Probably the main reason any foreigners come to Matsuyama is to go to Dogo Onsen. Dogo Onsen is supposedly the Oldest Onsen in Japan, with a history that stretches back over 3000 years. After a long day of exploring Hiroshima, and getting all the way to Matsuyama, the only sensible thing to do was to go to the Onsen as soon as we got into the city.

We met a handful of helpful locals who helped us to get to the city from the port, and then a lovely international student from Malaysia offered to guide us through the city towards the onsen. She ended up leading us towards the Castle instead of the Onsen, but with some help from another local we managed to get on the right tram to Dogo.

We got to Dogo with barely ten minutes to spare before final entry. Let me tell you there is nothing more rewarding for the struggle to get there than plunging into a hot Onsen. If you do find yourself in Japan, you MUST find some time to go to one

An Onsen is fundamentally a Hot Spring but there are many types of Onsen. Dogo is very simply an old and grand wooden bath house with a collection of large communal baths made of stone, their water fed from an underground spring.

We have gone to others with various baths and outdoor facilities, places where you could spend a whole day sitting around relaxing.

The one common feature you will experience in a Japanese Onsen: Every one just walks around totally naked. It certainly takes a minute to get used to just stripping down and sitting round in a bath with a bunch of naked Japanese men of all ages, but after the first 20 minutes at Dogo, it started to seem perfectly normal. Every Onsen since has felt perfectly natural.

Dogo Onsen in the day. 

We stayed in the Sprawling and charming Matsuyama Youth Hostel. As close as it is to Dogo Onsen, it was very hard to find in the dark. After getting some desperatley hurried directions from the staff at the onsen, I ran through the night looking for the hostel. (It's amazing how well you can focus and on a Foreign language when you have 10 minutes until your youth hostel closes and no idea how to get there)

I had to stop and ask for more directions from a local family, and being helpful Shikoku-ans  they ended up driving all three of us to the hostel.

The castle was brilliant in the late April Sun, with flowers in full bloom and the greenery glowing

The next day we spent climbing up the large hill in the middle of Matsuyama. On top of this small mountain sits Matsuyama, which is the only castle we've seen that hasn't been turned into a musuem on the inside. The Castle retains its wooden construction. However, about a dozen signs through out the castle describe each part getting hit by lightning and burning to the ground.

The wording in English gives one the impression that the various wings of the Castle were each struck by lightning near the end of the 1700s. In reality there werent a dozen lighting stikes, but probably one which burned down about half of the castle.

The view from the Castle was pretty fantastic. Why don't we have hills in Toronto!? Only valleys. 

Brief as it was, I really liked my stay in Shikoku. The weather was fantastic, and Matusyama is a really quaint place. A smilar sized city in Canada would be really boring, but in Japan it's compact, there's plenty happening and it's still a very exciting place. 

Golden Week Begins: Leaving Nagoya and Hiroshima

Finally it's here. The week of consecutive holidays (most of which are on weekends) and our chance to explore central honshu. Golden week. James and I wait for Simeon at the subway (naturally) so we can head over to have dinner and catch our nightbus to Hiroshima.

Before enduring our eight hour bus ride, we met up with Trinda and Su, previous volunteers at our hospital, and Takeshi, a friend of mine from Canada.

Kaitenzushi merits a whole post by itself, but this is a nice picture of our last night in Nagoya.

Riding a bus anywhere isn't all that confortable, but riding a
night bus in Japan is a new world of discomfort for westerners.
There is very little leg room, but luckily we found the
 reclineing release, and we had the seats at the back of the bus.

Apparently I slept

 Getting ready to explore Hiroshima, map in hand. Anyone travelling through Japan without access to a Japanese cellphone would be wise to buy a comprehensive map. Public access to wifi is not uncommon but only accesible if you have an account with a japan phone company.

It was hard not to smile in this Picture with the weather and mood of golden week. However we are standing in front of a monument to the destructiveness of Atomic Weapons. This building is the Gen-baku dome, or "Atom-Bomb Dome". It was almost right underneath the point where the Bomb went off over Hiroshima on August 6th 1945.

Because of the ferroconcrete contruction of the Building, and the angle of the blast its y framework was mostly spared.  On the other hand everyone in the building was instantly killed and the whole structure gutted by fire. Moreover, almost every building in Hiroshima was either knocked down by the blast, or burned down in the ensuing fires.

It is hard to reconcile Hiroshima's past with its present. The city is green, vibrant and full of people. On the other hand, the building pictured here still stands as a reminder to all of us of the dangers and horrors of nuclear war.

We met a man in Hiroshima Named Mito. He was in his third trimester when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, his mother kilometers from ground zero. He suffered poor health his whole childhood. With luck he survived years of illness and he spends his days now educating the people who come to Hiroshima on the truths behind the Bomb, and its aftermath. He presents a very revealing and unequivocal image of the consequences of the Bomb, as well as the cover ups  later enacted by the Occupying Americans and the Japanese government.

The question of nuclear power and the use of its byproducts is even more relevant today with the Fukushima incident and its consequences for Japan and the world still poorly understood. . The Initial horrors of the Bomb in Hiroshima are Now Ghosts of the past. The horrible mutations and sicknesses of its aftermath are also very distant. But look at Neonatal wards all over Iraq and Libya where thousands of kilograms of radioactive material has been dropped inside bombs, and the images of the months after August 1945 come rushing back.

On a less serious note we went to Miyajima! Probably one of the most scenic and atmospheric places I've been so far, and one of the most famous sights of Japan! We went at sunset and lowtide, so we got to walk around the base of the Tori gate.

Miyajima is also one of two places In Japan where there are domesticted deer walking around. Like Nara the deer just walk up to you and... try to eat things out of your pockets. We met one who has a particular fondness for paper. He actually picked things right out of my pockets with his mouth. James managed to catch some of my battles with the deer on video:

 http://youtu.be/qQrt0OFW6b4

We stopped by the hiroshima prefectural Museum of arts on out way out.
The Museum is home to a famous Dali Painting which, if you've seen any Dali Paintings,  you probably know as the Painting of the dripping clocks.  The Staff wouldn't let us take any Pictures of the Painting, despite my explications and requests in Japanese, they just kept on babbling in English about "No Photos".

I did take this one though, of some Japanese screen art. I wasn't supposed to but I wanted to break their arbitrary rules.