Category Archives: freetime

Setsubun (節分）

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So we just finished celebrating ‘setsubun’, which is traditionally the day before the first day of a new season, mainly, in modern times, before Spring, by the lunar calendar, and falling on February 2nd or 3rd. That to me sounds a little optimistic for Spring, but that’s how it is.

Perhaps the most popular aspect of this is ‘mamemaki’ (豆まき） is which is essentially the throwing of beans in homes, and at shrines and temples, to welcome good fortune and drive out evil spirits. In a home then, someone will throw beans both in and out of the house/apartment, saying “Fuku wa uchi, oni wa soto” (“Luke is inside, demons are outside”).

We did the version where someone wears a demon mask, and the family pelts them with beans until they leave the house; often this is the returning father, though we actually took turns, since wailing like a banshee and running around with a mask is quite attractive to kids! Interestingly, the Wikipedia article said this home event was not so common anymore, but it seems that most people I know with children do it, and there are plenty of simple masks and beans in the shops.

Mask and Beans

Oni mask and Beans

More Beans

More beans

As usual, there are some variations, with many of them I suspect being regional. When I read it up in my “Dictionary of Japanese Culture” book, by Setsuko Kojima and Gene A. Crane, it also mentioned some homes would hang some Japanese holly, and a sardine head on their doors to keep bad spirits out. I haven’t seen that myself to be honest, but now I’ve read it, I’ll be keeping a closer eye out. Some other people also eat beans to the number of their age, plus one, to guarantee health and luck this year, and this eating of beans largely comes from the Kansai region and the west of Japan.

In all then, it’s a fun event, a reflects the country’s agricultural, religious and historical connections, and is perhaps one of the lesser known festivals outside Japan.

I think I’ll be cleaning up dried beans for a few days to come though.

Out in the Hills – Jan. 2012

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As it was a national holiday here in Japan (Coming of Age Day I believe), a few of us headed up into the hills of Izu and Hakone and spent a few hours riding the twisty roads and taking in the sights. I have to say it was quite cold up there, especially on the bike and when out of the sun, but it was a good ride with clear skies, and not many people on the road. A great day out, and I clocked up 187Km door to door, which is not too bad for the first run of the year.

Ready for the Off

Black and White Mountains

Tokyo Toy Run 2011

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Last Sunday – December 11th – I joined in the third annual Tokyo Toy Run, where a group of bikers meet up in Tokyo and Ride out in convoy and in groups down into Kanagawa prefecture to deliver toys and other gifts to a couple of children’s homes, and then spend some time with the kids.

This year I thought I’d have some of my own drama the night before when I had to announce my 5.5 year old battery to be dead, and so I headed out to NAPS in the car at 6.30pm to pick up a new one, and give it a test run. The next morning I was up at 5.30am tying on bits of tinsel and such onto the bike, taking care again to make sure nothing was going to sit on the hotter parts of the engine but still look festive. I’d also managed to obtain a Santa suit from Don Quixote which actually fit not just me, but also go over the leather jacket and the Draggin Jeans. It’s still a mystery that many nations see Santa/Father Christmas as a jolly, large fellow, and yet most Santa suits are for people who weight 60-70Kg. Indeed. I decided to attach the white beard set to my helmet, which worked much better than I expected.

Xmas Bike 2011

Xmas Bike 2011

I met up with a couple of riders locally at 6.30, and we were running in towards the meeting space in Odaiba. It’s a beautiful urban ride in, going past the docks and cranes and factories on the expressway as the sun comes up, and see the planes taking off from Haneda airport as we go under much of it, and then over the rivers on the bridges, getting another great view. Once again, the weather was great – we’ve always been so lucky for the weather on these runs.

We all met up with the other riders at the RicoLand Carpark, and it wasn’t a bad turn out with plenty of bikers, bikes, decorations and a couple of vans to fill with gifts. We then went through a quick run through of the plan, including the one stop we’d be making en route, and the groups we’d split into from there to go on to the two children’s homes. The runs are always great, and each year it seems to get smoother getting through the ETC toll booths, the gents in the booths seem that little less freaked out at a group of (largely gaijin) bikers, many dressed as Santa, trying to get on the expressway. It also reminds me how happy I am to have invested the outrageous sum into getting ETC fitted to my bike a few years ago.

On the road as a bike convoy is always fun, we just have to be careful to make sure we’re not stopping people getting on and off the freeway – sometimes not as easy as it sounds. One point of having this many bikes in one place is that the tunnels are deafening – the only way you know your engine is on is to look at your revs.  We stopped at Daikokufuto, which is a service area in the centre of doughnut upon doughnut of roads, to meet up with a few more people, get our photos taken with a lot of very curious people who themselves were on trips – including with small dogs with santa coats…

Daikokufuto
From there we split into two groups, and again I went with the group for the Chigasaki Farm children’s home, and whilst we may have taken a wrong turn, we did get to the venue not too far behind schedule, after a run through historic Kamakura, and along route 134 along the beach which was fantastic – riding along looking at Enoshima to your left, and Mt. Fuji in the distance to your right: fantastic.

Xmas Tree

Xmas Tree

The venues, the children’s homes are really where the days start – rolling in as a group, all bikes and vans and filling up the small parking areas, then meeting the kids, playing sports and really getting to know them. As I’d been here twice before (the Toy Run last year, and a BBQ we did this last Summer) it was was great to see some familiar faces and catch up with what was going on – some were even getting jobs and going out into the world, which is great.

For once I missed the sports, but chatted with a lot of the kids, had photos taken with the smaller kids with the rest of the Santas, and once the pizza we ordered for the event arrived, sat around for a while talking, playing Uno and enjoying some of the gifts we’d brought. I should say, Chigasaki Farm made a fantastic soup for us, which, after a few hours on a bike in winter felt so much better than that pizza! A lot of the kids were playing volleyball, and throwing American footballs and just spending a good afternoon outside on a nice day – even if the resident dog did destroy a couple of the balls!

Once people had eaten the food, played a lot of games and energy levels were dropping, we all sat around one of the patio areas and played a couple of rounds of bingo, before having more photos taken with the kids, this time on the bikes (now that they’d cooled), and finally, somewhat reluctantly, got back on the bikes and headed off home as the sun was beginning to set.

It’s amazing how fast the time goes on the toy run, from that early start to getting to the kids over 120Km later for me, to doing some games and sitting and talking, to leaving feels like just a couple of hours – not essentially a whole day.

OK, so what are the benefits? Well for one, the kids get to spend a day with people they don’t usually meet and just talk and have fun – this is what we often hear from the staff and volunteers at the homes – they love the gifts and the toys, but what they like is that these often funny and a bit whacky bunch of bikers are happy to come in dressed as Santa and just talk, throw a frisbee, be chased, have reindeer tails pulled and just relax with them. I know one thing debated on the forums after the event is always that of who got the better deal, us or the kids! In the last three years I haven’t seen a single biker, even the tough military ones, who aren’t putting the smaller three- and four year old kids on their shoulders and running them around the yards, and for those of us with similar aged kids, feeling that concern that these kids will be OK. The truth is, I think most of them will be, they’re fun and smiles, they’re resilient, cheeky and witty and easy to get on with, but the places also need the odd day of distraction.

2011 has obviously been a tough year on Japan, and it’s going to be for a while to come, and it’s fair to say that for some of those outside of the mainstream society who rely on government support and volunteers, things are very tough, and its rewarding to know that it’s actually quite simple even for a relatively small group of people to pick a day, pool some money and really help out some kids who themselves are going through a lot as it is – we should all do it more often.

(NB/ There’s one more Toy Run in Yamanashi next Saturday – Dec. 17th!)

Tokyo Toy Run 2011 – December 11th!

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Just a rather late note that this year’s Tokyo Toy Run will be on December 11th – that’s next Sunday – so grab your motorbike, some gifts for the kids, and meet at 8am at the Tokyo Bay Ricoland bike shop.

If you want some background, check my posts of the 2009 event, and the 2010 events. Essentially it’s a group of bikers (usually 100+) who ride from Tokyo out to two children’s homes in Kanagawa, give out a pile of gifts and spend the day doing sports and games with the kids, so everyone wins.

Tokyo Toy Run 2011

If you have a bike then, check out the route and rules on TokyoToyRun.com and join us all next Sunday, and follow @tokyotoyrun on Twitter.

Bird on a Feather

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I thought I’d just break up this NaNoWriMo post obsession with something completely different – and no, not that I’ve just put my motorbike battery on charge.

An old friend from back home who used to run the karate club I go to whenever I’m back there, has an interesting talent for painting on bird feathers. I can’t say I’ve seen it very often, and I can’t remember where he said he learned it, but here’s a quick sample:

Bird on a Feather

Bird on a Feather

For some reason I find the concept and the execution quite relaxing. Anyone seen much of this before?

A Cover for the Motorbike

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For some reason, this month seems to have become the month of motorbike covers. Just to go over the history a little then.

My previous cover was one I bought at NAPS a couple of years ago based on the recommendation of a friend. I can’t remember the brand, but it felt thick, and seemed well made. Indeed it started out well, kept the bike nice and dry, but sometimes the local cats would sit on it, and scratch it, and chunks started to come out of it. It’s difficult to describe the material – it was like a thickly woven paper, a bit like the one-shot oil change overalls material, but several layers of it bonded together. After a year, I found it left a lot of ‘dust’ from the inside layers on the bike after putting it on and taking it off again, and finally after two years I’d decided I really didn’t like it, as now some of the seams were ripping, and some holes exposed the bike, so I planned to buy a new one.

I could have gone for something from NAPS since it’s just down the road, but decided to ask around, and ended up getting a few suggestions from Jason Fullington, and after reading some reviews and thinking about it, I decided to order a cover from Nelson-Rigg – the Falcon Defender 2000 – through Jason’s company AFGMoto.

As it was coming from the States, I expected it to take a week or two, but it made it within a week, and since I was looking to go to the AFGMoto shop anyway, I decided to drive on up there, though in a four wheel vehicle and in traffic, it took a little longer than expected – it’s just outside the Yokota airbase on Route 16, which is not a quiet road.

In the meantime though, and in an odd twist, I went out on my bike for an hour last weekend, leaving the old cover neatly folded next to the conifer tree in front of our house, so it wouldn’t move, and when I got back, it had gone – yep, someone stole my old, hole-riddled cover in the hour between 9.30-10.30 PM.

Fortunately the bike was only under a tarp for a few days.

As you can see from the image below, the Falcon Defender is a rather tasteful black and silver. The black is a thick polyester weave, which feels very sturdy; the silver is a heat treat version of that. Unlike previous covers which had straps, this one has an elasticated skirting which I actually find feels far more secure, and should prevent flapping in the wind. Under  the silver logo triangles are some holes to allow some venting, which the previous cover lacked, which I think was also an issue.

It feels very good, it looks very decent too, so frankly I’m very pleased with it, and it’s far, far easier to get on an off. As a package, it also comes with a backpack to pack it in if you want to take it with you, or store it – something else I just couldn’t do with the bulky cover before, and actually something I’d want to be able to do. One minor issue for me is the eyelets for a bike lock are just a little too small for my lock, which isn’t a major issue, and they eyelets are re-inforced, which is nice. This may be more or less of an issue depending on where you live – I don’t think my old cover would’ve been stolen if it was on my bike.

For sizing, buying from a US site for a Japan only bike was a little concerning, and from their sizing, it seemed a medium size would do, but I saw a couple of reviews which praised the cover itself, but advised going one size up, and I would agree – for my Honda CB400 Super Four, that’s a large size cover on there. The only downside is that the heat shielded material stops just short of the end of the exhaust, but I generally let my bike engine cool anyway before putting any cover on it.

Price wise, given the exchange rate (Yen wins) and buying through AFGmoto, it was much cheaper than I think anything I could have gotten from NAPS, coming in under 7,000yen (though I picked it up of course), making that previous cover at 10,000yen even less of a deal.

Defender 2000

Nelson Rigg Defender 2000

NaNoWriMo 2011

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As a bit of a hobby for the last few years I’ve written a few short stories – I even almost finished a full length story (60,000+ words and counting). It’s just mental exercise, a stab at creativity, writing something down.  In 2006 I first read about the National Novel Writing Month initiative, where people are invited to write a novel of 50,000 words within the month of November – not to a polished conclusion, but really to get at least that first draft in, and thought that some year I should give it a try.

You can have outlines and such prepared beforehand, but the novel must be something new and original, started on November 1st, and ‘finished’ by November 30th, midnight local time. It’s not deathly serious as you can tell from the site; you become a ‘winner’ simply by uploading your text to their servers in the last week of November to see if you’re over than magical 50,000 word count – it’s largely honour based to get people to actually get something into their PC.

Anyway, after 5 years of watching NaNoWriMo come and go, I decided to give it a go this year, so blog posts to this site might slow or stop next month as the small amount of my personal keyboard time flows into writing some epic work of fiction. How bad can it be? I don’t have anything else on apart from studying for my Japanese test in December, family and work commitments!

All I know so far is that I’ll mostly be writing it on my Mac in Scrivener, and that it’ll most likely be set in some kind of steampunk world, a genre I’ve always kind of liked. More updates on this in a couple of weeks.

A Couple of Days at Ernest House

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Every now and then you just want to get away and relax for a while. It’s easy to see ‘getting away’ in Japan as more of a chore if you’ve been through the over-priced ryoukan grinder with drill instructor hours and mediocre foods, or have opted for the very generic Prince Hotel route. However, as many have found, there are some great independent places out there, though finding them seems to be more work than it should be, so I thought I’d pass one on.

For us, even with the kids, we want to go somewhere not too far to get to, or at least, not too far and not too uninteresting to travel to, and somewhere where it’s all relaxing.  One of the places we like to go to then is a guesthouse in Shimoda called Ernest House. [location]

Ernest House

Ernest House

Ernest House

Ernest House

I heard about this place a couple of years ago on the motorbike forum GaijinRiders, and people raved about it – great location near good beaches, lots of local places to eat and drink, and a calm feeling around the place, and it’s own great restaurant.

We first went down as a family last April, and just got back from a couple of end-of-week days – we tend to go out of season. The area really is beautiful to look it, even for those familiar with some of Japan’s stunning coastline – white sand beach, plenty of waves, some rocks, all in a fairly isolated bay. It’s a surfer place to be sure, the car park housing some of the day boarders, a smattering of seemingly dilapidated shacks pock the treelines, perhaps at one time, or in season, places to eat and drink, but out of season,  they’re either shut down or weekend only.

Ernest House is a wooden guesthouse, named after the enigmatic writer Ernest Hemingway – though more after his calm writing locales, rather than the rest of his storied life I suspect! The interior has an open lounge, sofas, wooden floors, posters of Hemingway himself, and seems sure of itself – there are bookshelves of real books guests can borrow, in both English and Japanese, and not just Hemingway’s, there’s a selection from a cross section of writers.

In the lounge is a large TV (seldom used as far as we could tell) and guests are invited to borrow DVDs to watch in the lounge, or in their rooms (each now now has a large TV – when we first went it was a small CRT). There are also several acoustic guitars about the place people can strum on. The lounge and each of the rooms also have (old) Mac G4s for guest’s use, and free wifi for those who brought their own machines.

The rooms are again wooden floored and very cleanly designed – simple beds, decent toilets and bathrooms, a TV, the Mac, a fridge and some other basics. The feel of the place is one of simplicity, but they’ve got the touches right there, like the wifi, for what people want. There’s only one vending machine, and it’s tucked away.

The ambience is excellent; no announcements, people wander in and out, and the whole place just feels as relaxed as an open house. I went down to the lounge at night to reply to some e-mail, do some writing of my own, and do some reading, and it was nice to just sit on the  sofa, type away on the laptop and sip a beer, listening to the wind coming in off the sea in the trees.

The guesthouse has an adjoined restaurant for guests, which is open to the public during the day. We booked for both the dinner and the breakfast, and found both to be excellent. For dinner there were salad, fish and steak courses, before dessert and a cup of coffee. Every course was well worth the price, and they even did a smaller, slightly cheaper version of the dinner for our four year old, but it was a very adult oriented meal and she picked a little at it, but still ate enough.

The restaurant also has a pool table, and more books, so after our meal I tried to teach our eldest the basics of pool (and failed), whilst the rest read books. Despite the sound of it, it is fairly child friendly, with some childrens books and games to go at, if you didn’t bring your own. Apparently they also allow some pets.

Breakfast is something a little different at Ernest House – it’s a picnic hamper with fruit juice, cereals, a flask of coffee, some sandwiches and cake slices, with milk and yoghurt. You can choose to eat it in your room, outside at the hotel’s picnic tables, or even down by the beach. We went for the picnic tables, and it’s a very relaxed start to the day, just having a cup of coffee and an excellent sandwich outside watching the surfers go past.

For lunch, we opted for Cafe Marley near the beach, which wasn’t quite what we thought – for some reason I was expecting a ‘Bob Marley’ type feel to the place, and actually it isn’t at all, but the food was very good, if a little expensive. Previously we’d gone to Paradise Cafe, next door to Ernest House, and actually I’d probably recommend that, though there are several guest houses and restaurants down the beach road to choose from, or further inland, there are some good places to eat and drink within walking distance.

Some other things at Ernest House we didn’t do whilst there included the outdoor hot tub, which looked like fun, so maybe next time.

The beach itself is beautiful and clean, split into two by a small bridged river, with a few rocks and outcrops on both sides, which the surfers obviously avoid, but are great places for kids to explore, but take care, the tide and the waves are powerful, which is exactly why the surfers are there. Unlike Shonan and many places in Japan with the darker volcanic sand, Shimoda’s beaches are much whiter.

Beaches of Shimoda - Filtered

Beaches of Shimoda - Filtered

Beach around sunset

Beach around sunset

Each time I’ve gone, it’s been by car, or by motorbike, either down the coast road (#134/#135) or the mountain route (#414), both of which offer fantastic scenery as you drive or ride. A note though, they take time, and they’re very twisty, so whilst I like them, I can appreciate some people may not, and may wish to go via some public transport which Ernest House list on their site. There is parking for cars and bikes exclusively for Ernest House guests, so parking shouldn’t be an issue, but in peak season, it’s probably better to check in advance.

The bottom line then is that even if you’ve been in Japan for a while, and even if you’re near the beach, going down Izu to Shimoda is worth the trip, even from Tokyo, so if you are looking for somewhere to get away for a few days, give Ernest house a call.

There's something about the ocean

There's something about the ocean

New Header Photo: Feet In the Ocean

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After five months with the excellent Alabaster Heads as my header image, I’ve decided to change it. I have to say though, that my photo of Jaume Plensa’s installation at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park got more hits and searches than any other header by a long way. If you haven’t seen them in real life, then seek them out.

The new header image is far less artistic or ambitious – it’s my feet in the clear waters of the Pacific Ocean at Shimoda on a recent visit to Ernest House. I’m wearing my Keen hiking sandals, and it was toward the end of a couple of great days, and it was nice to just stand in the water and watch the waves. I thought it made a nice ‘end of summer’ image, as we go into Autumn 2011.