Ep 15 Big Blog Adventure

The Blog adventure included a trip into the mountains. Given the Blogs are domiciled in Scotland, mountains are something they are accustomed to. After several hours of climbing upwards, Mr Blog asked Eric-the-guide-Blog how high up we were and was told that we were close to the height of Ben Nevis.

"Wow. So how big are those mountains over there?"

"They'll be over ten thousand feet."

Wondering if we might see some snow (despite this being springtime in Japan) Mr Blog noticed a sign on one of the gantries above the road warning of this very weather hazard. The Japanese department of transport thoughtfully used an image to warn drivers who struggle to read Japanese...

Sadly no signs to warn about the bears or large groups of snow monkeys!

Ep 14 Big Blog Adventure

It would be foolish to travel all the way to Japan and not experience a tea ceremony. The Blogs are not fools. So impressed was Mr Blog, that he recounted in detail the entire 45 minute ritual for Mate-Mike-Spoiltheparty-Blog. 

Here is the short version...

A venerable, well established tea house had lowered its standards far enough to admit us.

On entering the bamboo and paper-walled room, Mr Blog noticed a few things were missing, carpets, seating, tables, plug-in kettles and sugar. Instead there were tatami mats, cushions and a woman in a kimono with some pottery.

Sitting cross-legged (or at least the nearest the blogs could manage) the centuries-old ceremony was explained by our host. A mix of Zen, socialising, honouring guests, cultural conversation and tea drinking.

The tea is made following a very srict method and takes years to perfect. The host judges the temperature of the water in the kettle (non plug-in) from the sound of the bubbling water. The tea is a green powder which is whisked with a carefully crafted bamboo whisk. The cup is presented to the guest with both hands and with the decoration on the cup facing the guest. The guest drinks the tea and turns the cup so the decoration faces the host.

(And there is so much more.)

Back to Mate-Mike-Spoiltheparty-Blog, who, hearing all the above says...

"Forty-five miuntes for a cup of tea? You could have gone to Costa for that!"

Ep 13 Big Blog Adventure

Some things in Japan began life outside Japan.

One of those is the wooden stirrer for stirring your tea/coffee. For hygiene reasons the stirrer is individually wrapped. 

For avoidance of doubt about what the wrapper contains, (for English speakers), the contents are described in English. 

However the translation took an unexpected turn ...

Stirrers in Japan are referred to as...

Join the Blog campaign "Rename all stirrers in the UK as Muddlers" The world will be a better place!

Ep 12 Big Blog Adventure

These posts are affecting Mrs Blog's cognitive functions. After reading two consecutive episodes on weird food...she decided to have a bowl of granola with lashings of double cream for breakfast.

Having survived a bento box full of dead things looking back at him Mr Blog was all ears and eyes for the tour of the tea plantation. Just as well because there was a mountain (pun intended) of information to absorb. 

(To assist the reader it is summarised in the bullets below)

• Eastern Mountain Teas is a plantation on a big mountain with a trail up it of 4.8 km 
• At the top of the mountain is a Shinto shrine
• Japanese people like to visit shrines at the top of mountains repeatedly
• Records are kept which show that two people have been up Tea mountain 20,000 times
• One old fella managed his 2,000th ascent when he was 94
• One old lady and her daughter were walking up the trail while we were there
• They didn't make it because the old lady took a tumble
• We were part of an impromptu rescue involving four tourists, one guide, two tea plantation workers and a small Suzuki people carrier designed for 8 people
• With 9 people it makes sense to put the youngest (the old lady's daughter) in the boot, squash the shaken old lady in between two plantation workers and hope for the best
• Everyone was very happy when we got back down to the plantation 
• Not everyone was happy with the tea because it tastes very bitter

Episode 11 Big Blog Adventure - Food worse than Veggie

(It seems appropriate that this post should be about food given the veggie update in the last one)

Japanese food is the stuff of legend so the Blogs were keen to sample all that the country had to offer. That is, until we were handed our "Bento boxes" on a coach trip from a mountain railway to a tea plantation.

Our guide, Eric, was quickly tucking in and savouring the contents whilst offering helpful advice like,

"There's a whole fish in here, you can eat all of the fish, the head and everything!"

Mr Blog opened his box slowly and sure enough found a whole, dead, cold fish looking back at him. Next to it was a section of the box filled with what looked like red crisps with nigella seeds (but without  his reading glasses on, Mr Blog was only 90% sure). Next to this was a collection of translucent crunchy noodles with sesame seeds, something that looked like a shrivelled kiwi fruit and a rice ball.

Mr Blog munched and crunched and only later found out,

1. the red crisps were shrimps (the seeds were there eyes)
2. the translucent noodles were whitebait (the seeds were their eyes)
3. the shrivelled kiwi fruit was a salted plum that made your face pucker up to half its normal size, and
4. the rice ball was a ball of cold rice
5. Mrs Blog didn't eat very much

Had he known then of the delights of Tofu Chilli without chilli, Mr Blog might have gone vegetarian before arriving at the tea plantation.

A pause on Japan

My intention was to write a seamless series of blogs about the Big Blog Adventure to Japan. This was scuppered by the interruption of a walking weekend in the Cairngorms which has forced Mr Blog into therapy.

Mate-Doug-Blog has been organising weekend walking breaks in May for over twenty years for his friends. On one of the early trips to "The middle of absolutely nowhere" (somewhere left of Loch Ness) Mr Blog was introduced to taking baths in a midge-infested loch boasting a maximum temperature of 5 C. He was also re-introduced to outside toilets.

Much has changed over the years. This May, Mr Blog realised that Mate-Doug-Blog has gone soft. He booked a place to stay with inside toilets, hot showers, running clean water...and no midges! 

The blame for this backsliding seems to lie with his new found, younger friends. These millenial types like all that the modern world has to offer, sanitation, comfort and vegetarianism. 

Mr Blog can deal with all of this except being forced to go veggie for three days. 

Evening 1 dinner: Vegetarian Lasagne. Large helpings of uncooked red onion and slimy mushroom served in a sauce that looked and tasted like grey milk.

Evening 2 dinner: Tofu Chilli, served without the chilli in case it upset anyone. A bottle of hot chilli sauce was provided for any weirdo who actually wanted to taste chilli.

Evening 3 dinner: Pasta with all the trimmings except flavour

Never in his long life, has Mr Blog ever gone three days without meat. 

But there was worse!!

One of the guests brought home-made rhubarb muffins, made with home-grown rhubarb from the guest's allotment. You could taste the fertiliser :-(

The therapist said writing this all down would help so hopefully Mr Blog can return to the subject of Japan before too long!

Ep 10 Blog Adventure - Bullet trains

Having seen all that Tokyo could offer in three days the Blogs headed for the station for a train ride to Shizuoka.

On the way to Tokyo Station for the next leg of the big adventure Mr Blog reflected that this city was city of 37 million people was missing a few things, namely,

1. Car horns - no one uses them. They sit patiently in traffic rather than shouting and getting stressed with jams they can't unblock
2. Graffiti
3. Litter
4. Aggression/impatience
5. Late trains

When it was first launched the Bullet Train didn't have the aerodynamic design to the front of the lead of the lead carriage. As a result the train would barrel through tunnels at high speed causing a rush of air out of the tunnel, that made a booming sound which scared the wildlife. A nation which prefers to not use car horns is filled with people who worry about birds and small animals being deafened.

One of those people was an engineer who had worked on the project to design the train. He was also a bird-watcher. He'd noticed how Kingfishers make almost no splash as they dive into water so he set about mimicing the design for the front of the train. No more sonic booms... happy birds.

Charming!

Buller Train

Kingfisher

Ep 9 Blog Adventure Pics of the Meiji Shrine

 Meiji Shrine

The gate to the Meiji Shrine (above)

Sadly they are all empty (Sake and wine casks)

More of the Shrine 

Ep 8 Sightseeing in Tokyo

Eric-the-guide-Blog ushered our group on to a coach with 30 seats for our whistle-stop tour of Tokyo. Nothing strange there...except that there were only four us. (It turned out 10 other folks changed their mind at the last minute and decided not to join us)

Mr and Mrs Blog began a game of "not sitting in the same seat twice every time we got on the coach" that day.

Here is what we learned...

• Emperor Meiji died in 1912 having lived in Tokyo
• They took his body to rest in Kyoto the old capital of Japan (450 km away)
• It was decided that 450 km was a long way away, too far to visit if you lived in Tokyo
• 170 acres of Tokyo were planted with trees to create a shrine to Emperor Meiji to save on the travelling
• With invasive species added to the mix there are over 100,000 different plants in the shrine
• Emperor Meiji would have got on with Mr Blog because he really enjoyed Sake and fine French wine. To remind visitors of this, there are hundreds of sake casks and wine barrels at the shrine
• Shinto shrines have a big wooden gate at the entrance (12m by 9m in this case) which you musn't walk through*
• Big wooden gates attract lightning
• The Japanese know a thing or two about lightning
• Next to the gate was a lightning conductor disguised as a piece of bamboo**
• The Japanese like the Meiji shrine***

Photos will follow :-)

*The gate is for the gods to walk through, not mere mortals

**The Japanese take great care to make sure there are no jarring sights or sounds in what they build (Even nail heads in a wooden house will be covered with a decorative piece of iron)

***The shrine attracts 10 million visitors a year. 3 million of them visit between 1st and 3rd January queuing for up to three hours to get in)

Blog Adventure Ep 7

Japan has long had a reputation for technological innovation. Bullet trains, robots and Atari Space-Invader machines for pubs.  

Very early on on the blog adventure it became clear the PR machine of Japanese tech has failed to adequately promote its best invention yet. 

The "Beer-pouring-machine"!

Quicker, better, more fun and easier to talk to than a barman.

(Video make take a while to load)

Blog Adventure Ep 6

With a population of 130 million people the Japanese government must have its hands full even on a good day. Food, defence, economic issues, international trade, law and order...

It was a surprise to find out that one of the pressing problems facing Prime Minister Ishiba and his government is that of surnames. Japan doesn't have enough of them! 

Guardian readers will already know what Mr and Mrs Blog found out on their recent adventure. By 2531 everyone in Japan will have the same surname, Sato. It seems that this is a genuine problem, (although more than a few Japanese thought it was an April Fools prank). 

Concerns have been raised that, without radical change, people will have to be known by their first names and/or a number. There are apparently a handful of dominant surnames in Japan including Tanaka (which means someone who lives by a field), Suzuki (Bell, tree) and Watanabe (Boundary) and Mr Blog's favourite Sato, (Village, home, wisteria or help)

With this dominance set to increase until the Sato's take over the country, the government is considering allowing women to retain their maiden names on passports and driving licences. 

Blog Adventure Ep 5

There were no diet programmes on the flight to Japan so 2-stone-heavier Mr Blog led Mrs Blog slowly through Narita airport.

Having read up a bit we were looking forward to new and strange foods, cultural differences, ancient traditions, a new alphabet and much, much more.

Food in Japan is a bit different to the food in Scotland. 

Mr Blog has always been a fussy eater. The late Nana-Blog found this out when she poisoned a perfectly good apple pie by putting blackberries in it. A battle of wills ensued with Nana-Blog insisting that (the then five year old) Master-Blog would eat the uneaten slice of pie for his breakfast or his lunch or his next dinner. She lost. 

The first Blog meal in Japan was in a restaurant on the 44th floor of an office block looking over the skyline. Beers and wines were brought and all looked good for our "Hokkaido style meal". The first plate arrived and our guide told us we were looking at raw shredded octopus, raw scallop, raw salmon and raw tuna. Mr Blog wondered if he would be threatened by a sumo-sized chef if he refused to eat it. Forced to starve or give in. With my extra two stone I figured I could hold out a couple of weeks.

Be it the charm of the people, the volume of the beer or the thought of the cost of the holiday... Mr Blog picked up his chopsticks. 

It seems that if you dab a tiny amount of wasabi on raw fish then dip it in soy sauce it does something...quite amazing.

Mr Blog has joined the Japanese Food Culture Association as their UK representative.

(Nana-Blog never ate raw fish)

Blog Adventure 4 (Photos 1)

 

Webpage from "Ho Lee Fook" 

Man Mo Temple

Former HK Police (Parade Ground and Offices)

Former HK Police Barracks

Hong Kong Harbour from Kowloon

Blogs Adventure Ep3

The flight from Hong Kong to Japan was 9.15 am and we needed to be at the airport 3 hours early (to make sure we didn't miss the flight).

The airport was 28 mins away meaning a taxi could pick us up at 5.45 and get us there in time. So the holiday company booked one for us at 5.00 am. (to make sure we didn't miss the flight). 

We had a private transfer organised because relying on the local fellas would mean I'd have been writing this blog from the hotel foyer a month after we started flagging one down.

The hotel were very concerned that we might starve to death in the 28 mins it took to get to the airport so they gave us a "Breakfast Box" filled with all sorts of things Brits don't eat until lunchtime. (And one or two things Brits wouldn't eat any time of the day).

Given our experience with taxis so far we did wonder if the taxi would actually turn up. He did. At 4.30 in the morning. (to make sure we didn't miss the flight). It was a good job that Mrs Blog set the alarm 45 mins earlier than I would have done or we might have kept him waiting.

We nodded our farewell to the place, filled with memories of taxis, the Harbour, Man Mo Temple thick with heady incense, HK Police parade ground where Grandpa-blog would have paraded and the old streets filled with stalls selling lucky red charms. (Photos in next post)

When we arrived at the airport we had a nice long wait for the check-in desk to open. Checked in, we headed to the airline lounge where we grabbed a second breakfast (in case we starved in the few hours before boarding) 

Flight called, we duly boarded. Given the timing of the flight, landing early afternoon in Japan, I hoped for a light lunch. However it seems there is more than a little hobbit DNA in our far eastern cousins because we got another breakfast five minutes after take off.

Mr Blog spent the journey looking for lifestyle progammes on how to lose 2 stone in 3 hours. 

Blog's Adventure Ep 2

Hong Kong food/drink can be a bit strange.

Having sat in a coffee shop that ranked No1 in the WHO "dirtiest coffee shops in the world" we discovered a shop in Kowloon proudly promoting...

"Meat Floss Croissant"

In Cantonese it is known as Sum Yuk.

The Blogs passed up the opportunity. 

Later in the Botanical Gardens we stopped for a snack. The cafe folks said they could do a ham and cheese sandwich, just the sort of food we felt we could trust! Mr Blog waited for the order and watched bemused as the chef made the sandwich and then stir-fried it in a wok until it was luke warm. The chef looked very happy so we just ate it without further comment.

According to Tripadvisor one of the top restaurants to visit is Ho Lee Fook. Given our food experiences so far we decided to check out the website first. The landing page boasts...

"Cantonese and proud of it, the tone is an opulent night out, faint memories of wild nights out in Hong Kong, the smell is just as familiar as Mom's dumplings"

The Blogs passed up the opportunity.

Dinner found the Blogs retreating to western food (in our defence it was the nearest place to the hotel and we were flagging). 

"Pizza Express" in Kowloon needs to change its name to "Pizza sometime before we close". It also needs to get the Michelin inspectors round because anywhere that charges £78 for two ham and cheese pizzas ought to be thinking about how many stars they're aiming for.

Thankfully the food, like the taxis, got better when we made it to Japan 

PS Pizza Express Kowloon doesn't have any Michelin stars

The Blogs adventure Ep1

It's been a while since Mr Blog put finger to keyboard, but following a public outpouring (i.e. a suggestion from one nephew blog) it returns for a limited period.

The suggestion was made because Mr and Mrs Blog took a trip to Hong Kong and Japan. (It was a slightly delayed honeymoon which should have happened 36 years earlier). Nephew-blog thought such a trip might be full of classic "blog material". He was correct.

The plan is for a series of posts to cover the Blog-Adventure. Here goes...

Hong Kong has taxis in three colours - Red for urban, Green for New Territories and Blue for Lantau (although there aren't many of them because there isnt much in Lanrau that isn't an airport).

Usually when you think of taking a taxi in a foreign country you have three main concerns,

1. Will the taxi driver take cards or just cash?
2. Will the taxi driver speak English?
3. Will I be able to use Google translate if the driver doesn't speak English?

Not in Hong Kong. There, you face a new and unexpected addition

      4. Will the taxi driver want to have me in his taxi?

In fact, this should be your primary concern because the other three are largely irrevelant if you don't resolve it. Mr and Mrs Blog, on one occasion, standing at a recognised taxi stand, took six goes to convince a taxi driver to take us. The first five were pretty grumpy, and it seems that asking them to take you on a journey to where you want to go is quite offensive. 

On another occasion we flagged a taxi down and got in. After a few minutes of asking to be taken to a restaurant (for which we showed the address in Cantonese) we discovered that this is truly unacceptable to a taxi driver in Kowloon. So not wanting to cause a diplomatic incident we walked the two miles to the restaurant.

You might think this was a specific problem only faced by the Blogs. After all Mr Blog has a history of victimisation from authorities, random strangers and inanimate objects. Not so. Tripadvisor users regularly post reviews of taxis around the world. Hong Kong taxis score 2 stars!

Thankfully the adventure got better!!