recent explorations of kichijoji yield:
... Have you ever seen anyone so happy to be standing in front of a DOG WIZ sign? I didn't think so.
Archive for February 2010
21 February 2010
... Have you ever seen anyone so happy to be standing in front of a DOG WIZ sign? I didn't think so.
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18 February 2010
tokyo snow
This morning when we left the house, it was snowing: fat, wet, lazy drifting flakes that had somehow managed to cover most of our neighborhood in a thin layer. I hadn't realized that I missed the snow in Aberdeen until then; but by the time we emerged from Shinjuku Station thirty minutes later, it had stopped and Shinjuku itself was pristine, if a little wet, with no sign of snow anywhere.
Not much else is going on: there was a small earthquake the other morning that woke both of us up; we are settling into a routine in Kichijoji - class for three hours in the morning, lunch, afternoons studying in the Douter coffee shop, where you can sit for hours as long as you don't mind sitting two inches way from the strangers at the next table, which means it's actually more personal space than the morning trains.
16 February 2010
さいきん きちじょじ に すんでいます。*
As if Japanese wasn't hard enough, my book has apparently been printed backwards.
This photo is pretty unimaginative, but it is a pretty apt embodiment of our return to Tokyo. Since arriving on Saturday to a tiny, warm room in trendy Kichijoji, we haven't been up to much other than study. In part this is because we're taking an intensive 4 week Japanese course at ARC Academy that meets every day and has quizzes (I haven't had a quiz in ten years! I can already feel myself making those 'beginning of the semester' vows that I used to make at the beginning of every class in high school, the kind where you do all your homework and write super neatly for the first two weeks before sliding back into your messier, less overachieving ways) ; and in part this is because we are not getting paid again until the end of April, and so are embarking on a life of monastic asceticsm. Now that we've paid our rent and tuition, we're settling down to see just how cheaply it's possible to live in one of the most expensive cities in the world. It's not that bad - Tokyo is too cold to explore, or at least, too cold to explore when you have six more weeks of it; the awesome Lenora will be coming to visit in two weeks so we can explore then; and, as my as-yet-unread level TWO (I've almost made it to level TWO!) book in the picture shows, we're kept quite busy studying. Or procrastinating studying, by writing in blogs, for example. So much for those vows.
* Or, "These days, I live in Kichijoji." I think.
11 February 2010
harris
Just two photos of the Isle of Harris for now because we're all packed up and just waiting to leave for the train station soon, to begin our 2.5-day-long circus of trains, planes and subways to get ourselves and our meticulously weighed luggage from Aberdeenshire to Tokyo. The beaches in Harris were some of the most beautiful beaches I've ever seen, and there'll be lots more photos on my other website in a few days, hopefully.
06 February 2010
the isle of lewis
The Standing Stones of Callanish.
Iain's father's side of the family is from the island of Lewis, so we spent our first day being shown around the island by his second cousin once removed, who graciously picked us up and drove us around for several hours. We covered all the major roads on the island and saw a lot of the big sights, like the standing stones (above) and beaches at the northernmost tip of the island, all of which were beautiful, even in the freezing February cold.
The port of Ness.
Roderick MacLeod, a chief of the MacLeods who died in 1498. There's sort of a family resemblance if you squint?
The best part of the tour, though, was being shown all the places of historical relevance to Iain's family. As the MacLeods once controlled the island, you can't throw a stone without hitting a MacLeod, a truck with their name painted on it, a monument to a bunch of them who stole bunch of sheep back in the day, and of course, graves with their names on it, including Roderick, above, who was an ancestor of Iain's.
Not far from the crumbling ruins of the MacLeod chief's tomb, Iain's cousin walked us to a patch of grass that was the unmarked grave of another ancestor (they couldn't afford a headstone, and the stone they'd dragged up from the beach rolled away years ago); he also took us to the old houses of Iain's great-grandparents and great-aunts, including this tiny, abandoned blackhouse, above, which is now inhabited by some incongruously friendly sheep.
Anyway, more pictures of Harris to follow, and bigger, edited versions of photo will hopefully appear on the photoblog soon.
03 February 2010
driving to ullapool
Posting from our bed and breakfast in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis; yesterday, Iain and I piled into the car and drove west. Being from the States, it still seems strange to me that you should be able to drive across the entire country in four hours, but that's exactly what we did, past Inverness, through some truly otherworldly snow, all the way to the coastal town of Ullapool:
More on Lewis itself later!
