Tokyo Marathon

Today we visited Asakusa to cheer for the Tokyo Marathon runners. It was a great event to watch, with besides all the runners, lots of entertainment. It was of course very crowded in Asakusa, as many people headed to the course, and were all enthusiastic cheering for the runners. Both the crowd and the runners were entertained by various performances (dances, songs, etc.) and mascots.

 

 

For many (really, really many) runners just completing the 42,195 km was not enough of a challenge and they decided the make it more challenging and complete the course dressed up wearing strange hats, or even whole outfits! This was very funny to watch, and they gained lots of attention from the spectators. Please enjoy their creativity:

(Wait until the end :)

Ueno Zoo

On a clear, sunny Sunday we headed to Ueno Park to visit Ueno Zoo. The zoo was actually not far from our house, so we could easily reach it by bike. (we love our bikes, so convenient!) We had a great time in the zoo, and want to give you an impression of our visit and show some of the photo's and video's we made.

The biggest attraction in the zoo are the two giant panda's Lili and Shinshin. From 2008 the zoo was without panda's (after the death of panda Ling Ling), and only since last year Lili and Shinshin are living in the zoo. Their popularity amongst the visitors is shown by the big queue that has formed in order to see see the panda habitat, and the amount of panda-themed souvenirs. During our visit the two panda's were actually just sleeping, and therefore unfortunately not very good to see.

The zoo has been renovating some of the habitats in the last years, which look great and are good living habitats for the animals. We had sometimes read that the zoo was old, with lots of small cages, but because of the renovations there are now nice, spacious habitats. Further the zoo has an exceptional large collection and great display of reptiles, birds and nocturnal animals.

We hope you enjoy watching our pictures and video's!

Kan-geiko (mid-winter training)

Hello from Tokyo!

Temperatures in Holland are dropping to all time records and there are even rumors about an 'Elfstedentocht'. Though temperatures are not so low here in Tokyo, we had our fair share of cold during our winter Aikido challenge. Hombu dojo held the Kan-geiko (mid-winter training): a course where participants have to train for ten consecutive days in order to complete it. Meanwhile the dojo windows are open and the heating is off, so if you don't work hard you'll only get colder. It was a very challenging thing to do because you can't miss a single day and with outside temperatures around zero degrees its very tempting to just stay home or find some other excuse to keep warm.

In the end we made it. For completion of the mid-winter training we got our reward: our names displayed on the list in the dojo, a perfect attendance certificate, and a Japanese commemoration towel.

Oh, and by the way: this was the coldest winter training in 26 years, so we got our own temperature record as well :).

Trip through our neighbourhood

This time we want to take you on our trip through the part of Tokyo where we are living. We live in a quiet neighbourhood, with lots of small streets and all different kinds of Japanese houses. There are some small stores located in this area, mostly food or dry-cleaning.

These are some pictures we took of our daily views.

The last street car of Tokyo, the Toden Arakawa Line, actually runs through our neighbourhood. As the last remaining street car, this is in itself a tourist attraction. In service since 1911 and now a good opportunity to see the area while travelling.

Cycling Tokyo

Time for a new blog update. In our first week after settling in we had a lot of things to take care of.

First of all we needed to get our alien registration for a long term stay in Japan. This isn't difficult to do but unfortunately it took (a lot) more time than anticipated.

       Secondly, we wanted to buy bicycles to make our travel in Tokyo easier, and cheaper. Public transportation is very efficient in Tokyo but also expensive. So, after school we walked the whole way (about 4 km) to the bike shop, only to discover that the store was actually closed that day. A friendly lady helped us and showed the way to another super big bike store. The day was saved! After choosing two bikes we liked we went to the counter to register them. Registration is mandatory to prevent theft and "bike pollution". Imagine that all commuters who'd travel to/from Shinjuku station each day (almost 4 million!!), would travel by bike to the station. That would certainly create a madness of randomly parked bikes. Therefore, you can only park your bike at designated areas or else it will be removed by the police within few hours, and they need your registration number to inform you where you can get your beloved bicycle back.     

Meanwhile our school started as well. We enrolled in the 'Yoshida institute of Japanese language' and it's quite different from Keio University, where we studied Japanese before. The students are mostly pre-college/post-high school people, so suddenly we're the oldies among our classmates!
       Each day we cycle to school through the narrow streets of Tokyo where it is easy to get lost because of all the 'hey,-I-think-I-found-a-shortcut!' alleys. We still get lost everyday but hopefully next week will be better... We did get to see parts of Tokyo that we would never have seen otherwise. Another thing that became very, very clear to us now that be have our bikes, is that Tokyo has lots, and lots of hills. We expect to be thoroughly trained for the Tour the France after get back next year. The rules for cycling are somewhat confusing in Japan. Sometimes you are supposed to cycle on the road, sometimes on the sidewalk. In practice, we feel that the Japanese are just as confused as we are and just cycle where there is enough space, whether this is the left, right or middle of the road. This leads to lots of evasive maneuvers around pedestrians or other cyclists.
       We have also cycled (and found the way) to hombu dojo. We were very much looking forward to training there again. It was very nice to be back, and to meet all our aikido-friends. It will be great to train here for another year!

Back in Japan

Good morning from Tokyo!

After a long long journey with heavy bags and a broken suit case, we finally arrived in Japan again. We have been planning our second stay since the moment we got back to Holland almost 1,5 years ago, so we're very happy to be here.

Our journey started on January 2 at 03:45 am in Delft. Daphne's parents took us to Schiphol Airport where we said goodbye to our families and friends and from where we would fly to Heathrow to change flights for Narita Airport. Fortunately everything went very well: no delays or other incidents. As always the flight to Tokyo takes a long time but the onboard videosystem allowed us to watch some movies and play videogames. After we landed things went smoothly as well. We picked up our bags, proceeded through customs and headed to the trains. We took the Keisei line and were very surprised to actually see a Dutch Windmill (!!) on our way to Tokyo. Imagine flying halfway around the world and one of the first things you see is a windmill. Amazing!
 
Because of the Japanese new year holiday season Sakura House, our housing association, was closed. So we stayed at an inn in the Asakusa area. Therefore, the next day we had to take our suitcases through the crowded Tokyo public transportation again. To make matters worse, one of the suitcases broke a wheel.... You can imagine how happy we were when we finally arrived in our new home in Sugamo, a nice and quiet neighborhood in the northern part of Tokyo.

We were welcomed by the landlady, a very friendly Japanese elderly lady who lives next door. She gave us a welcome present with Japanese sweets and extra blankets against the cold. All roommates are either working or studying so it's a quiet house where we expect to be able to study hard. We have now settled in and are very happy to live in this house. It still takes some time to get used to the small doors, where we need to bend to enter the rooms. We showed some pictures of our room in the previous post, now we will post some photo's we made of the common area.

In this first week we also had our first visits to Yoshida, our Language School. We had our orientation meetings, and had to do a placement-test. We are both content with the classes we were placed in. Next week our classes start, and we will have to study hard. The teachers are friendly but seem very strict too. We'll keep you posted on our progress.