Puppy world
The people of Tokyo seem to have taken pets to their hearts and some of these animals get treated better than some people treat others. There is not a day that goes by when you do not see a dog in a handbag or stroller being carried around town by their caring owners or sitting under their chairs at cafes and enjoying a bowl of water provided by the cafe owner. You can even get caught out when you go to a convenience store and end up buying nappies for dogs that are in the same aisle as the nappies for human babies.




There are large shops all around Tokyo that provide all manner of products for dogs including “Puppy the world” that carries everything including toys, food and coats for the best dressed four legged canine.




Next door to the world you can find “Puppy’s dining” that is a restaurant specifically for man’s best friend. The whole restaurant is set up with tables and chairs for people and dogs to share a meal. Beside the resturant is a cafe where you can watch the staff groom dogs and make doggy treats. Have you ever seen a Labrador sitting in a cane wicker chair at a table? I have now.




For those that have forgotten to bring their best friend along for the day and do not want to be pointed at because they do not have a dog in a bag do not worry you can hire a dog and have them as the must have accessory until it’s time to go home.






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Would you eat here?
When you walk around Tokyo you see some amazing things and also occasionally some weird things. Wandering around the local suburb we saw a shop that is very happy about where their food ends up.

No matter how good their work was would you take your friends to enjoy this dining experience?





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Sensoji Temple
The Sensoji temple is a Buddhist temple located in the Tokyo "suburb" of Asakusa. It’s only about a 20 minute subway ride from where we are staying but unfortunately when we visited the temple we got a little “confused” in the subway station and it took that long again to find the right exit and make it to the temple.

The first thing you see when you get to the front of the temple is the Thunder gate with a huge lantern hanging in the middle of the gate (the lantern is also the symbol for the suburb).



Once you go through the gate you enter an area of stalls that is a few hundred metres long selling everything that you could ever want (if its touristy trinkets that you want) with the smaller alleys around the outside of the stalls selling kimonos and other traditional Japanese dress. One thing that constantly amazes me about Tokyo is that given the number of people in the city you very rarely get hassled by people trying to sell you things. Imagine going to a large market in any number of other Asian cities and you wouldn’t be able to move for the people trying to get you to buy their wares.

When you get to the end of the stalls you enter a wide courtyard and see the main building of the temple and the famous five story pagoda. If you were to only read the guide books you would think that the only reason for coming to the temple is to see the pagoda.







Like many things Japanese there are a range of contrasts and as you head to the back of the temple you come across these amazing gardens with small streams running through them, full of carp and the background noise of little waterfalls. When seated in this tranquil place it’s hard to remember that you are in the midst of all the noise of the city. There is also a shrine in these gardens that dates back to the mid 1600’s.


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Barbers
I visited my first Japanese barbers today and was again astounded by the differences between what is normal in Australia and what is normal here. The only similarity between this barber and the barbers I have been to in Australia was the red, white and blue pole out the front of the shop.

The tinted dark windows and profusion of black marble on the exterior of the shop should have been an indication however the first thing that really caught my attention was when I entered the reception area, looked across the shop floor, and felt like I was in a cigar bar.

The shop was all wood paneling, black marble, black leather chairs and acid etched glass. The waiting area was fitted out in those large club style couches that it’s very easy to get lost in - huge - more than a herd of cows needed for each couch. The actual shop was mainly subdued lighting with a series of spot lights on the chairs and the mirrors with smoked glass dividers between each work station. The barber’s chairs were full grain leather, fully electric and included a great massage function that they ran for the entire 30 minutes it took for the haircut.

While sitting and waiting the only "weird" thing (maybe I've already been here to long) of the visit happened. That was watching an old guy, who obviously goes in there every day to have his shave and facial, being laid out flat on one of those amazing barbers chairs, having hot towels applied to his face, shaving lather applied to face (his whole face) and then a shave with a straight razor. The barber working on the old guy started by shaving his chin and then proceeded to shave his forehead and between his eyes.

When it was my turn I was escorted to the massaging (did I mention that the chairs massaged you?) barber’s chair had myself wrapped in three towels and two smocks, then had water misted on my head and a warm towel wrapped around my head followed by a head massage. From there the haircut preceded pretty normally until they finished with another 5 minute head massage to help me face the outside world and then escorted me up onto the street and waved me goodbye.

The cost for all this – about 35 Australian dollars.
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Autumn arrives in Japan
Autumn has arrived in Japan and while it does not evoke the same passion in the Japanese as the cherry blossom season there is a tradition in Japan that also follows the autumn leaves as they move their way down the country. There are no news reports that are complete without some update on the progress of the autumn leaf colours as they move down the Japanese islands letting people know where and when they are to be expected.




Getting into the local swing of things I thought I’d best take some autumn photos and try to experience the whole autumn thing.




When spring arrives in Japan there is a tradition of following the cherry blossoms down the country and the news carries the likely progress of the cherry blossoms in each area to allow people to organise their parties.


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Finally, a trip out of Tokyo
Well I finally managed to get out of Tokyo and spend some time in the country. While the trip was solely work related it was good to see a little of Japan and to see some areas that I now want to visit later. We went to the city of Fukushima in the Fukushima prefecture, about 250 km north of Tokyo.


www.town.hirono.fukushima.jp/english/traffic.html

This was a trip of many firsts with the trip on a one of the Japanese world renowned bullet trains (shinkansen). It’s a strange feeling, to me at least, sitting inside a train doing a couple of hundred kilometres an hour across the flat lands around Tokyo but one look at the people around you in the train and you realise that you are the only one and the people around you think that it’s just another day commuting.



commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shinkansen.jpg
Fukushima is only 100 meters above sea level with a rainfall in excess of 1000mm but the mountainous land around the city rises very quickly and there are many ski resorts scattered through the hills that surround all of the major river valleys. The big buildings in the picture below belong to one of the many fine beer brewers in Tokyo - Kirin.




While the river valleys look a lot like some of the lower rivers on New Zealand’s east coast there is a distinct lack of any sort of fish life (I was caught leaning out the window looking for fish) as the entire substrate of the river has been removed and used for building and there is nothing left for the invertebrates that the fish require to survive. Those invertebrates that have not been eliminated following the removal of the substrate have had to endure generations of pollution going into the rivers that has also resulted in fish kills.




Luckily there are programs to restore the lower rivers to their former state and the pollution levels have been reduced markedly. The Fukushima prefecture (towards the south in the mountains) is renowned for its fishing in high mountain streams that are surrounded by virgin forest. Now I have another place to go and another thing to tick off the list.


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