Good afternoon,

Well, the sun is shining here in Tokyo today after what has been a really cold week.

It was actually snowing on Thursday night as I came home from work, a kind of wet and heavy snow, not the light and fluffy kind I usually see. When I was leaving the house at about 4.30pm, it looked as though it would either rain or snow later that evening, however, stupidly, I didn`t take the advice of the old man, watching me eye the sky somewhat skeptically from across the street, to take an umbrella. I should have listened to him and prevented myself from having a free hair wash!

Also this week, as well as having a very heavy cold, I also managed to get an excrutiating toothache on Thursday afternoon before I went to work. As I didn`t have any classes on Thursday afternoon I had taken a short nap, but when I woke up it felt like someone had stabbed me in the cheek, so bad was the pain. Although it did subside a little, it definitely came back to bug me during the evening classes and the small social gathering after. Although I guess I have never really experienced terrible pain, I do think toothache is pretty bad - its the recurring thrusting of the pain and the constant aching that seems to make it so bad. So on Friday I went to the dentist - the first time I have done so in Japan.

After not having been to the dentist for two years (!), I guess my teeth must have been in pretty good shape as the dentist didn`t start moaning at me for not brushing etc! However, he was pretty concerned about the fact that I had an infection in my right wisdom tooth and after an x-ray, he told me I would need to have it removed sooner rather than later. He then proceeded to give me a couple of injections (which I had forgotten can really hurt) and clean the infected area. To cut a long story short, I will have them removed on March 9th. The dentist seemed pretty concerned because I have a double root on my wisdom teeth which means a rather more complicated procedure than for people with only a single root, which he said was more common in Japan. So I have to say I am not really looking forward to it that much, but I guess it needs to be done!

I have some other news for you too. On Monday March 14th I will start a new full-time job, working at a financial outsourcing company in Shibuya, about 20 minutes walk from where I live. Therefore, I will quit my current job as a teacher and once again work in a finance role. I have really enjoyed teaching since I came here just over two years ago and I feel it has helped me to better understand myself and develop my confidence and character. However, I want to try to get back into a job in finance and see what happens. I still have an interest in this kind of job and want a little more job security and regularity of hours and location. I will let you know how it goes, but at the minute I am working out the notice period on my teaching contracts.

What else is happening in Japan these days you may ask? Well, not so much, that I know of, apart from anticipation of a large earthquake in Tokyo. In the last two weeks we had a couple of very large tremors, but no major problems (unlike the poor souls in Iran). I just read a very disturbing article which discussed a recent government report which estimates the economic cost of a big earthquake hitting Tokyo (which is long overdue by the way!).

The article said that when Tokyo gets hit by the "Big One", it will probably face an economic loss of 112 trillion yen (about 550 billion pounds - I think!), split between direct damage to repair and reconstruct buildings, utility lifelines, traffic routes etc, and indirect damage arising from downtime at factories and businesses, and loss of tansportation services, which could last six months.

The report also suggested that 13,000 people would probably die if an earthquake of 6.9 on the Richter scale struck western Tokyo. An even stronger tremor of 7.3 in the northern tip of Tokyo Bay, would apparently force around 7 million people to evacuate their homes, and of these, up to 4.6 million people would be expected to remain at evacuation facilities for lengthy periods. Possible derailments of bullet trains were also looked at for the first time in this report, and it concluded that about 200 people would be likely to die in the immediate aftermath of an 8 a.m. quake, and in addition, another 200 commuters could die in train and subway derailments. However, the better news for drivers was that, due to past reinforcement of major highways to resist powerful quakes, the number of people expected to die on highways or conventional roads was put at only 30.

You might ask what are the chances of all this happening, well, they are pretty high. There is a 30-percent chance that a powerful earthquake will hit the southern Kanto region, including Tokyo, within 10 years, with the chance rising to 70 per cent within 30 years. So, starting this summer, the government will start to work out estimates for measures to reduce damage, including strengthening the current quake-resistance of buildings and infrastructure and planning aid for people who find themselves stranded. Its all quite scary when you read the black and white of it, however, you just continue to function as normal as you never quite know when the "big one" is going to strike - what else CAN you do?

I hope I haven`t scared anyone back home too much by what I have written about above - Ann, are you OK? - but I guess earthquakes are part of life in Japan, and a big earthquake in the Tokyo area is long overdue. So hold on to you hats folks.....

OK, that`s enough pessimism for one day, but unfortunately, there is not so much optimism today to counter it with, apart from telling you this. According to an recent opinion poll in a leading newspaper here in Japan, seven out of ten single Japanese women believe they can be happy remaining on their own, with this figure having risen by 10 per cent since 2003.

I guess this seems to suggest that staying single is no longer the social stigma it used to be, and the survey found that about 73% of single female respondents and 67% of male respondents agreed that women coule be completely happy living on their own. I am not sure whether this necessarily optimistic news for me, however, after reading the earthquake report I talked about above, anything seems optimistic.

I wish you all a good weekend, and I will do my best to post something new soon,

Kevin

Hi all,

Another cold and miserable day here in Tokyo - I just ventured out of the house and walked about 20 minutes to he gym only to find it is closed on the 20th of every month - I had known about this but I guess my brain wasn`t really in gear when I left the house. I decided to stop by Starbucks on the way home and treat myself to a Chai Tea Latte and a few minutes in a really comfortable old arm chair (in which it was very difficult not to fall asleep!).

Starbucks in Japan is almost the same as Starbucks anywhere else, although while the prices are roughly the same, the cup sizes are smaller. A short size in the UK is a medium in Japan, and a medium a large in Japan, and so on. They are offering a "Coffee Jelly Frappuccino" at the moment but I haven`t tried it yet. Its a bit cold for frappuccinos these days! They also sell lots of delicious (but vastly overpriced!) sandwiches which I refuse to pay for. The only good thing about Starbucks in Japan is that it is completely "no smoking" unlike some other coffee shop chains in Japan.

So I recently moved house as I said last time - no I haven`t been to the sento again yet, although after a lot of work outs this past week, I feel my body is owed some relaxation time. I thought I would show a few pictures of my neighborhood, and some from the main square in Shibuya taken in a recent typhoon. It probably looks like any other residential neighborhood of Tokyo actually, although we are only about fifteen minutes walk from Shibuya - the centre of young life in Tokyo. I guess I will add to this collection (which is not so fantastic at the moment) as I take more pictures. There are also a couple of picture of two "interesting" shops I took recently- I will let you make up your own comments.





So, not much else is happening here at the moment - life goes on pretty much the same as usual. I think I am catching yet another cold so need to take care I guess, not sure if its my diet or just because I experience a great number of temperature changes from day to day, going in an out of different places. As a kind of freelance teacher, I seem to be moving around an awful lot in order to teach in different places, although I am getting to walk a fair few kilometers everyday which is not a bad thing for the old frame.

Have a good day,

Kevin

Good afternoon from a sunny, but somewhat chilly Tokyo.

Yesterday I visited a Japanese `sento` for the first time. If you ever want to see your neighbours in their birthday suit (your male neighbours that is!) this is somewhere you should go! Actually, a sento is a Japanese communal bath house. The sento in my neighborhood is about five minutes walk from my house and has, I guess like all other sentos, one large room with a tall barrier separating the sexes, a line or two of showers, and a single large bath (although it is divided into three different parts - one like a jacuzzi, one with jets of water to massage your shoulders or back, and another which is a little bit warmer than the other two) for the bathers who have already washed to sit in and relax. The sento near my house also has small sauna, although you have to pay extra to use it.

In the past, every neighborhood had one and since small houses could often not accomodate a family tub, a local sento was the equivalent of something like a village hall or village green, a place to catch up in local gossip, as well as to warm yourself up during the cold winters. Actually, I didn`t have a `good old chin wag` with anyone, and I didn`t hear any good gossip, although that may probably have been more due to the fact that I don`t really know anyone in my new neighborhood yet and my Japanese listening skills are far from perfect!

I read on a website (the link is below) that since the 1980s, these communal type bath houses have been decreasing in numbers as more and more Japanese bathe at home. To encourage fir prevention, private baths were outlawed in the Edo Period (1603-1867), and there were as many as 600 public baths in Tokyo in 1868. As more and more old Tokyo buildings are torn down and new homes are equipped with private baths, this trend will no doubt continue.

Actually, some Japanese people are concerned that without the "skinship of mutual nakedness, children will not be properly socialized". Its strange for me to agree with this as I grew up without ever going to a sento (nor anywhere where I took a bath naked with my friends or my family). After having visited countless onsens, and now one sento, I have grown accustomed to this tradition and I think I would have liked to have had the chance to experience them from being a child. I don`t think there are too many more relaxing places in the world than an onsen. For those of you who are wondering, an Onsen (which I have talked about before) is a special form of sento, which is a sento using water from a natural hot spring.

If you are interested in reading more about sentos here is a good link for you to read:

http://www.japan-101.com/travel/sento.htm

The parts about "Voyeurism and related problems", and "Foreigners" are especially interesting to read! - after you get to the site, you need to scroll down the page to find them.

Another place I visited recently, actually it was before Christmas, was a place called "Oedo Onsen Monogatari(translated as "Great Edo Hot Spring Tale") in Odaiba, Tokyo. This is a kind of bathhouse themepark opened in March 2003 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the Edo shogunate, offering onsens in an atmosphere reminiscent of old Tokyo streets and towns. On entry, you can choose from 19 different types of yukata (which is an informal cotton kimono) worn in the summer) and be transformed into a resident of Edo (the old name for Tokyo).

The naked bath area (offering a variety of baths) is divided between men and women, although there is only one natural hot spring. There are also saunas and an open-air foot bath ("ashiyu" in Japanese) which is similar to a trail that you can walk along or sit down. It is a mixed bath where you bathe in your yukata and the footbath is calf deep and paved with stones to stimulate your foots`s pressure points. The onsen also offers sand and stone baths, facials, beauty treatments, scrubbings, and foot and body massages for an extra cost and it also also has a variety of Japanese food and souvenirs. The cost to enter for one day is about 2,600 yen - about thirteen pounds.

Here are some pictures from when I went there:







OK folks, that`s all for today. I hope you have a good weekend, and please come back and visit my blog soon.

Kevin