Tokyo Heart

Funny News, Weird News, and I met the author!

Browsing through the news this weekend I ran across some bits and pieces of interesting and in some cases, funny articles.

We all know that walking through a forest gives our hearts a lift (see, I DID get something about "heart" in here!) from all the oxygen that those grand gifts of nature exhale. Oh yeah, trees do breath.

Well, it seems this fellow in the city of Izhevsk, Russia decided to bring the tree's oxygen a little closer to his own heart.

Mr. Artyom Sidorkin had sharp pains in his chest and when he went to the hospital the doctors suspected he may have cancer. They took an x-ray and saw what they thought was a tumor growing in his lung. Surgery was set and when the doctors opened him up they were shocked to find a 5 cm fir tree growing in his lung! The doctors surmised that Mr. Sidorkin had inhaled a seed and the seed had sprouted and taken root in his lung causing the tiny tree to grow and the tree's sharp needles to cause the pain he was feeling.

Now here's one for smart Hearts to stay away from! The "hospital themed" Heart-Attack Grill in Chandler, Arizona is a burger joint that dishes out SUPER!sized burgers. The biggest is their Bypass Burger which weighs in at 2 pounds of beef and a whopping 8,000 calories! That's about 5 or 6 days worth of calories for a normal healthy diet and you can get it all in one meal! But wait! They don't stop with this glutton's gastronomic gargantuan. Oh no! If you're gonna stop your heart you might as well do it right and order a side of lard soaked "flatliner fries." Why not get a month's worth of calories at one sitting after all? And, if that isn't enough to stop the old ticker they also sell nonfiltered cigarettes, Jolt Cola, whiskey, and beer. They do offer one side benefit. If you can finish the entire meal you get a wheelchair ride to your car (assuming you can still fit behind the steering wheel) and your wheelchair will be pushed by a sexy nurse. Die with a smile on your face?

This past week I had the honor & pleasure of meeting blogger & author Michael Phillips. Michael & his lovely wife, Sonie, were winding up their annual stay in Tokyo before heading home for San Francisco. Michael has authored several books and you should read his blog at (http://phillips.blogs.com). One of Michael's books, "Marketing Without Advertising" is a must read if you are looking for great ideas to promote your business. I recommend it.

Sad Heart, Naked Heart, Greedy Heart, Good Heart

I thought I would take a little different approach and write about some of the things that happen in Japan - not just things I do - for a change. What do you think? Tell me if you like this or not (there I go! assuming I actually have readers!).  Not that I'll change my approach, but it would be interesting to hear what you think about it.

Tokyo (all of Japan perhaps) hearts are sad today from this news article. Monsters do exist everywhere in the world and Japan is no exception. What sort of punishment should this couple have for killing an innocent child?

Well, this fellow's punishment will be less severe, but he's going to feel the pinch in the wallet as advertisers drop him like a hot potato. Hey - SMAP man - if you can't hold your booze here's a little tip for you - DON'T DRINK! Video here.

Good friend Rick lost his briefcase on the train the other day and it hasn't been found yet. Luckily, nothing of importance in it, but if he had the BoomerangIt label attached his chances of getting it back would have been a lot better. I've been a member of BoomerangIt for years. Yep - I highly recommend it. If you are in Japan see the website www.bij.jp (one page is English) and if you're not in Japan see www.boomerangit.com .

Corrupt Japan - oh yeah - there is corruption in the land of "wa" (peace). Seems like we read about someone taking a bribe, or paying someone off, or using the discounts for the handicapped at the post office illegally, or more almost every day. And now, Chiba's (Chiba is right next to Tokyo) mayor has decided he will resign after accepting a million yen for helping a contruction firm win city contracts. The story here.

But wait! All is not doom & gloom in Japan. For the travelers amongst us JAL & ANA have announced that they plan to end surcharges come July. That should bring on more smiles to the old wallet 'heart!"

 

 

Dogs, blondies, hay-haired guys, and a bit of Nikko

As I trekked over to my local train station one day last week it was fun to see the stream of new students heading to the neighborhood university, Takachiho University. This is truly a sign that spring has sprung here in the land of the Tokyo Heart; students from pika-pika ichinensei (shiny first graders) to bleached head college students off to start their new school year.

Coming at me was what at first appeared to be a rather rag-tag group of young people, but it soon became apparent that they were actually freshmen heading for their newly found "adult" lives (well, some of 'em may be adults, others - gotta wonder). Here came a guy with hair the color of sun dried hay, followed by a girl with Marilyn Monroe blond tresses (What? You mean...those are NOT natural colors for young Japanese? Oh my, oh me!) Well, at least they're doing their best to be different - just like everybody else! :-)

Amongst this colorful tribe was a young lady dressed much like Pippi Longstocking with the difference being that her skirt was much more frilly than anything Pippi probably ever owned.

Bringing up the rear of this gaggle of students (and they were definitely all babbling along like geese, but in a fun & lively sort of way) was a chocolate (in color) poodle who was also dressed in a frilly little skirt. No outdoing THIS young lady.  She pranced! Oh yeah, dogs in Japan do like to be dressed up (or shall we say, dog owners in Japan sure do like to dress up their dogs!).

Come to think of it, the poodle was actually the cutest of the lot!

And now, the weekend is nearly over. No biking today. Instead we decided to take a drive north to Lake Chuzenji near Nikko. For someone who never went to Nikko after 18 years in Japan till last year I am certainly making up for lost time with 4 trips under my belt since just last autumn. We thought we would get there to catch the last of the sakura blossoms and we were fortunate to find a few trees still blooming in the higher elevation and cooler climate of that region.

We took a new route today & drove along route 121, which is lined with ancient cedar (suginami) trees. This route is known as (are you ready?) The Cedar Avenue of Nikko. As you can read if you click on that link there are nearly 13,000 cedar trees along this road and although it can be narrow in places (be careful if you are driving) it is truly a peaceful road to drive and the cedar trees really are majestic. One can almost see and hear the old daimyo (feudal lords) making their way to the capital for their visit to the Emporer.

Turning off the road just a wee bit we came across a small park called - hold your hats - Suginamiki Park - imagine that! Actually, it's a nice little park with quite a number of old suisha (water wheels) and a few places to sit & enjoy your onigiri or sandwiches amongst the greenery & cedars.

A couple of the water wheels are shown below.

The park has several flowering trees and shrubs with flowers that were just beginning to open on this one. The darker pink ones are the soon to be opened flowers.

Next to the park is the train station, Kami Imaichi, which houses a small gallery so we stopped in to view the sumi (ink) sketchings on exhibit. Next to the station is a stone wall with moss growing on the old stones and a few sakura petals were "resting" on the moss after wafting their way down from the park's sakura trees:

Okay, okay, no prizes for the photography, but bet these won't be there when you go to see for yourself!

No prizes, but oh well, at least we've got Heart!

Till next time - O-Genki de! (Be well!)

Spring biking along the river

Today was a continuation of the great spring weather we've been having in Tokyo so we broke out the trusty steeds (our bikes) and headed over to the Kanda River for a ride to Inokashira Park.

Sunshine in our faces, a gentle spring breeze at our backs, as we pedaled along the river we were assaulted by hundreds, if not thousands, of gently drifting sakura (cherry tree) blossoms making their way down to earth to join their pink friends on the path and in the river. Have you ever been bruised by a sakura blossom? Oh, the pain. And, if you believe that, I have this wonderful bridge for sale on the Kanda River..... 

Along the way I spotted this small island flanked by the reflection of a majestic old sakura tree. You can see that the little island is almost covered in delicate pink blossoms.

Following along the river we came to this rarest of creatures, found mainly in Japan, known as the fence panda.

Lots of roadside and riverside fences have these sort of pictures painted on them and as you move along you see the animal, or fish, or flower, etc. slowly change from a picture to just paint on the fence rails.  Here's another one that is carefully watching Madam Wife as she gets ready to ride by.

After about a 30 minute ride we found ourselves in Inokashira Park where we stopped to have our picnic lunch and watch the happy rowers & paddlers, and as you can see, many people were out on the park's pond in the ubiquitous Swan Boats.

I used to think that only Japan has Swan Boats (and almost every pond & lake in Japan has them - from small ones for 2-4 people to huge floating mega-swans that hold a hundred or more). Imagine my surprise when I saw a movie a while back (can't remember the title) that was filmed on a US lake and lo & behold - Swan Boats!

It seems that last weekend was a bit cool in Tokyo (we were in Hawaii - Aloha!) and I understand that though many braved the chill and had their hanami (sakura viewing) parties many more decided to wait for the sunnier skies of this weekend. As you can see from the photos below there were thousand, literally thousands, of folks in the park today, parked on their blue or green plastic grounds sheets, bottles of wine or beer at the ready, food in hand, cameras clicking, enjoying the last blossoms.  With this warm weather the trees are greening up fast and the blossoms are falling quickly.

Heading out of the park we made our way over to Mitaka to see the sister-in-law's "in progress" condo. Construction is coming along nicely and looks like she'll be able to move in on schedule. Great location, only about 3 minutes to the train station, with plenty of shops and facilities near at hand. And, in line with the "dream" of many Japanese as they age, the place will have a floor dedicated to a variety of medical clinics, a supermarket on the first floor, and even a gym for what I imagine will be mainly gentle workouts.

Wending our way back we stopped at a little shop in Kichijoji (about 5 km up the road from us) to buy nikuman (meat filled Chinese buns) and anman (sweet red bean paste filled buns) for our dinner later in the evening. Can't tell you the name of the shop, but it's just past Kichijoji Station, on Inokashira Dori, and on the left - next to a parking garage. Just had the buns and yep! They are good!

From there we wandered off to the side streets to get away from the heavy pedestrian traffic. Lucky we did 'cause we ran across this interesting house.

This Makoto Chan house (click the link to see a video) was built by a well known manga (cartoon) artist, Umezu Kazuo, and his neighbors actually sued him for creating a public nuisance. We thought the house was pretty neat - and fun to see - but I guess if you're a neighbor with lots of people coming by to take photos all day long it could be upsetting. 

Not to be outdone the neighbor across the street has done a wonderful job of planting a good variety of colorful flowers around their gated garden entry.

A fe more kilometers of back streets later and we were back to our own Tokyo Heart abode. Still a bit of daylight left and still warm enough to sit out on our little balcony enjoying some tasty Manchego cheese, those excellent manju I mentioned above, and of course a glass or two of a good red Bordeaux.  After all, red wine IS good for the Heart, you know!