Remains of the day

Was rather taken aback by the amount of rubbish at the Notting Hill Carnival, and the absence of bins! One had to dispose of one's skewer/curry bowl/coconut/can & c by balancing it precariously on the corner of a Box, which was stacked in a teetering pile of Boxes, serving as Bins of a Sort. Others tossed chicken legs and leftovers on the ground. It is hard to remain dignified whilst rolling one's heel over a greasy chicken leg when dancing and wearing Lolita shoes (with bows) & a sarong-trouser suit.

In Japan, recycling bays were everywhere at big events like this. Interesting too is that since my move to Blighty, my everyday household bins have been reduced from this ...

to this...



The bin at the front, right, is food waste which will of course break down fragrantly and naturally. Behind that, the tins, paper packaging & c are said to be recycled (although their lack of separation at home has me suspicious they are not recycled properly by the collectors). The bin on the left goes straight to landfill: mostly plastic packaging and everything else. Ye Guide to Recycling brochure places lots of emphasis on the food disposal, as if this is a radical idea. Please refer to the Far East for some recycling tips, Bury-Me-Under Park Council! *waggles finger in an easterly direction*

The Carnivalesque

The interwebs sagely advise that the Notting Hill Carnival began in the '60s and was organised by the local Caribbean community as a protest against race riots of the time. The carnival continues to celebrate Caribbean culture as well as embracing the wider cultural diversity of Modern London.





Sir S, Her Mazness and I were swept along with the tide of people on Notting Hill's suburban streets. We snacked on orange paddies (spicy pasties), supped coconut water, and grooved to reggae and electronic offerings at the various street dance parties around the carnival. Many a rump was shaken in a provocative manner, and many a spangled cleavage glittered in the sun as the carnival parade wend its way through the burgeoning streets. I kept my eyes peeled for Mr Brett Anderson, who is known to live in these parts, but he and his fringe were most likely safely ensconced somewhere more subdued, such as Hampstead Heath. We caught the Tube just in time before wanton hooliganism marred the day's festivities.





I say, I have never lived in so multicultural a place as London and I am simply absorbed in observing the array of people, interesting fashions & c. Near my lodgings here in Bury-Me-Under Park, whilst waiting in line for the omnibus, or wandering the markets, it is not uncommon to be standing next to a woman in a flowing burqa, or a bejewelled sari, or a towering African headscarf, or next to a man in a kurta shirt, or with a sweep of long dreadlocks. As I telegraphed to His Edenic Maj only tonight, I feel as if I'm not in England at all, but in a futuristic metropolis in the sky.

Parklife!

And in this case, garden life. This little squirrel, along with his/her family members, go on daily raids of the apple tree in our garden. As shown here, the squirrel is gathering up cunningly placed hazelnuts, and thus lured into our kitchen and sneakily filmed by me.

Things that one doesn't see in the Nippon ...

... but can see a lot of in London:

(1) people shouting / arguing / gesticulating madly / cursing / complaining loudly in public;
(2) open demonstrations of road rage, such as a driver slamming their brakes on their automobile, clambering out of said automobile as if it were on fire, running to the car behind them, doing a little dance of fury before the driver of the latter car and shaking one's fist at said driver, screaming in a high pitch at said driver and using multiple swear-words before dashing back to one's automobile and screeching off at high speed;
(3) kissing in public (with lots of tongue);
(4) footpaths besmirched with mounds of dog poo, so that clouds of flies arise from them in passing as one walks by, evoking disturbing images of Biblical pestilence;
(5) run-ins with mad people in front of the supermarket;
(6) supermarket staff at the register tossing food items in one's general direction;
(7) a complete and utter lack of customer service;
(8) lattes the size of a small baby's bath;
(9) men and women spitting great globs in public, of similar proportions to (8);
(10) men and women wearing heavy amounts of fragrance, perhaps aiming to mask the stench of (4).

Elegant Bath

Back in Blighty!

Born here, and decades later, I'm back. Hello Britain!

The visiting Craaazy A, overwhelmed by British food and its mammoth proportions.

Last view of Japan

The love-hotel wilderness of Juso, Osaka.

I left my friends at Matsue Station and my heart in Japan

And so it was, after I had dusted down the blackboard at St Hearn's, emptied the inkpots, marked the last paper and put my red pens aside, it was time to leave my beloved Nippon. Sir S had already left a few months earlier for a good job in London, and Britain beckoned. My last days were a hectic and delightful blur of sayonara shenanigans with friends old and new.

Misses S, M & Usagi

Misses K & T

Fare thee well, Hiroshima friends!

Japan was home to me and although I was an outsider in some ways, I felt like I belonged there, like I was a part of the place and it an important part of me. Beautiful Nippon, you will be much missed.

A midsummer night's sayonara party

Mata ne, Matsue!

One day, I'll be back.

Last summer in Nippon

I arrived in Japan three years ago, in the tormenting humidity of a Kyoto summer. I temple-hopped with a fan in one hand and a parasol in the other, and stopped regularly for green tea ice cream, wiping the sweat away with my trusty sweat towel. My time in Japan came full circle and I spent my last days here again bathing in my own sweat, and listening to the urgent refrains of the last cicadas. Temple rhythms from Okudani-cho.

Old Matsue

As students at St Hearn's hurriedly scribbled their last assignments and readied themselves for some serious swotting for finals, I savoured my last month in Japan living at the house of friends in the charming older quarter of Matsue, Okudani-cho. The local streets were narrow and lined with shambling old wooden buildings, windows gated with wooden bars like insect cages, and some buildings were hung with ornately written kanji signs advertising various businesses, from soy sauce to sake, and kimonos to tailoring.

Precarious during peak hour, the narrow alleyways were abundant with anarchic school students riding along the wrong side of the road, messaging on their keitais and going like the clappers, completely oblivious to wandering ojiichans, little kiddies and the likes of law-abiding citizens such as Miss Ember. Things became more complicated when Strawberry Cones delivery boys on scooters or an omnibus were thrown into the mix. The omnibus in particular would hoon down the narrow streets, scattering gossiping elderfolk, vegetable sellers and snoozing cats in its wake. When crossing the road, most Japanese wait for the green man to doff his 30s gangster hat before walking forth onto the tarmac, but when it comes to riding bicycles or driving any kind of vehicle in a confined space, the traffic is as heart attack-inspiring as an autorickshaw joyride through New Delhi.

Red post boxes are most cheerful.

Despite these palpitations, I was delighted to cycle about the town. Nearby, temples and shrines were tucked away in the back lanes behind houses; a sultry tang of something like banana emanated from the open doors of the soy sauce factory; cats dosed in the street and kitsch flowerpots bloomed around doorways. The soy sauce factory was painted a cheerful red, and I liked to admire the ceramic pots on the windowledges which bore the crisp blue kanji of 森 (mori; forest), the owners' name.



Around the corner was the samurai district and the castle, perched above a forest that vibrated with the percussion of cicadas and, in the evenings, echoed with the alarming lowing of the bullfrog. From here I would cycle to Kyomise, a charming area of Taishoroman style, coasting through the mix of European-style buildings and Japanese wooden ryokans and other places of entertainment, to the elegant bridges aglow with flickering faux-lantern light, and along the rivers lined with weeping willows and the warm buttery light of old-fashioned yellow street lamps that budded between the foliage.

A random canal in Okudani-cho.

San-in Beach Party

Golly, it's been a while between posts, and much has come to pass since my foray into host bars. But first, after my birthday celebrations in June came the San-in Beach Party in July. With Miss T and the team from Matsue and some Tottori tomodachi, we pitched tents on the beach after sunset, gulped down some Cassis Orange from the beach bar, pranced to trance on the sands, chilled out in the chill-out tent, then got down and dirty in the dance halls with the Dex Pistols who mixed up 80s and 90s faves with funsome bleepery. Miss T spent much of the daytime bobbling on the sea upon her inflatable softcream, and Mr C and I took to the waters in his rowing boat, and ended up floating backwards in the wrong direction towards North Korea. The gals and I took a bellydance workshop on the sands, and in the evening twirled sparklers by the sea and admired the glow of ships on the horizon. Fun times!