This is minto's private diary - be updated as there are some daily happenings, noteworthy happenings, mysterious happenings and paranormal happenings...no chance at all!

9/08/2008

Juliana's Tokyo-----!!!!!

Oh well, so long time no see. I've actually neglected to write my blog for a couple of months.
But I had an remarkable experience last Saturday so I decided to do it at this time.

The experience I had was one night event of Juliana's Tokyo.


Although the article which is linked above would be much detailed about the event, I try to describe my feeling then.

Actually I was one hour late for the party beginning because of an English regular lesson. But one of my friend got the special invitations from her friend so I just need to meet her near the venue and get the ticket to enter it. When I got to the venue, at about 7:30pm, there were hundreds of people and was a lllloooooonnnngggg queue there. They were probably who had wanted today's tickets but seemed not to get it after all...
After hanging around there for 15mins or so I finally met my friends and I got feather fan there!.

So what do you think I can dance with such a big fan??? Answer is - No!!! There's no room to dance
enough!!! Many standing people there...So the dance floor was as if it was a very crowded train or a sauna. We could call it hell...You could sweat when you were just standing there!!!

But we also had a ticket to the heaven though - actually our tickets were really exclusive ones, so we could access all area in the venue even the backstage! The backstage was really nice place - there was completely air-conditioned, cold free drinks were prepared and also quiet restroom. So we escaped from the main floor to the backstage when we felt terrible and sweaty. But it's sure we weren't DJs, dancers nor staffs...Anyway if we didn't have the special rescue we couldn't be alive there at the end of the party.

6/02/2008

My First All Blacks (Classic) and 15 a-side Rugby

Japan XV vs Classic All Blacks on May 31st. – this match was full of new experiences for me. Not only was it my first time to see the All Blacks (even though it was only the Classic version) but also my first 15 a-side rugby match.

What did this mean? It means…finally I could see The Haka – the NZ performance before kick off which is dance-ish (and I succeeded in recording the real Haka with my camera).




Though the audience wasn’t so large because of heavy drizzle, the game was so nice.
Surprisingly Japan played very well against CAB. Specifically they tackled successfully many times. Unfortunately, I think Japan has never beaten the CAB. Anyway I’m really looking forward to next Japan game in the Pacific Nations tournament.

4/13/2008

Hong Kong Part1

I recently traveled to Hong Kong for 10 days - I was there about 10 years ago when HK was still governed by the United Kingdom so I was really interested in how different it would be.

However I can’t really remember how HK was then…but I realised a massive change straight away - the location of the airport!!!! It used to be close to the center of city, so the aircrafts flew above the towering buildings and it seemed likely to hit something…but this time the flight was quite safe and I couldn’t see such buildings or anything else (although this was partially due to it raining).

I suppose I’ve been to the popular places in HK before so I’m going to tell you about the more obsecure ones where I went this time.

Conrad’s Executive Lounge and Room on 59F
What a fantastic room it was!!! I haven’t been to such a room before. If you want to know how the room was, well, please try to book it! But let me show you the landscape from there (though the weather wasn’t so nice then). Well I know this issue isn’t concerned about HK at all…but that doesn’t matter to me!




Kowloon Walled City Park
There used to be a notorious slum here until the mid 80's in HK but now it has become a quiet park. There were a few of walls with a round entrances, which seems to be quite popular among Chinese historical architecture.
Though the area around the park was still a bit unorganized it was very interesting as I could feel real local life in HK.




Ngong Ping Cable Car and Tian Tan Buddha Statue
These are located on Lantau Island and I guess many Japanese tourists wouldn’t know about them and also my guidebook (in Japanese) doesn’t have so mach information about them. I guess this is because most of all tourists from Japan go to HK for only 3 or 4 days. So if you have more time in HK I think they’re good to visit...anyway have you been on a cable car for around 30 mins !?!? Ngong Ping Cable Car runs about 5.7km and it turns left within 10 mins so you couldn’t see the last terminal from the starting terminal. Finally I’ve found the big Buddha statue on - I haven’t seen such an outside Buddha statue which was on the top of a mountain before so it seemed quite interesting view for me.





2/24/2008

Removing my bad luck in 2008

I’m going to tell you my third visiting a temple in 2008 last Saturday. Last 2 visiting were for praying for good luck in this year, on the other hand this one was for removing bad luck for me.

We Japanese believe that every man and woman has 3 years bad luck terms in their own life 3 times.

Women’s bad luck terms:
1st - 18 years old to 20 years old
2nd - 32 to 34
3rd - 36 to 38

Men’s bad luck terms:
1st - 24 to 26
2nd - 41 to 43
3rd - 60 to 62


Basically the age is usually counted from 1 year old at a shrine/temple, so the age on the list above is one more than your actual age. In addition, women can allegedly remove their own bad luck by themselves by having a baby. It’s a useful custom...

This time I went to Jindai-ji in Chofu-city, the suburban area of Tokyo. This temple is the second oldest temple around Tokyo (the oldest one is Senso-ji in Asakusa). This temple is good at removing people’s bad luck. Though it is famous, I’ve been there just twice to just get off my bad luck in these 2 years.

We generally pray from outside the main building in the temple, but to remove the bad luck we do special things – we pay for the special praying fee and enter it. Actually we can enter it whenever you pay the special fee to pray something. Here’s the main building of Jindai-ji:

There were about 50 people there, but I’m afraid I couldn’t show you any view of inside. So I’ll try to introduce what it happened then. At first 6 monks were coming into the building. One of them blew a triton, and another one started to beat a drum. After that three of them started reading Buddhist sutra and a monk lit a holy fire to purge our wooden plate for keep off bad luck.

In fact we had to keep folding our legs under ourselves during the ceremony. After a half an hour, all the ceremony was finished and the lead monk told us to stretch them and lecture. Then I had pins and needles in my legs too much to hear his story and was worried about whether I could stand after all…Finally I managed to stand by myself without any problems and got a wooden plate.

Now I’m assured a peaceful year, that’s a relief for me.

2/10/2008

The Stereophonics

This Thursday I went to the Stereophonics concert at DUO in Shibuya , this was the first concert in 2008 for me. Basically I had to leave the office by 6pm for the concert, so I could get to the venue on time - this is earlier than usual.


I brought my wallet with me but checked all my stuff and coat to cloak so I couldn’t take a picture then…anyway the concert was very nice.

First was “My Friend”, it is really nice song even though I’ve only listened to it by Myspace. Although I didn’t know second song, the third one was “Bartender and the thief.” Every song is up beat so everybody was getting excited.

Oh I found 2 things odd there; one was Kelly’s guitar strap. It was edged with a bunch of red LED ramp and they kept twinkling. At first I thought they were silver buttons or something that reflected spotlights but it seemed different so I stared at the strap for a while. Then I found it twinkled autonomously…might it be cool?

Anyway, the other one was among the audience. There were tens of Western people there and 2 guys raised their hands with Negi – Negi is a kind of onion in Japan, which is similar to leek.

Anyway, the last song was “Dakota”, my favorite song. Good vibes.

2/05/2008

Afterward heavy snow in Tokyo

Occasionally it snows heavily in Tokyo. It did snow yesterday, and was a bit heavier than before. People in Tokyo basically don’t get used to heavy snow, so many accidents always happen.

For example, the number of injured people was increasing over 200 and 16 of them broken their bones. And this story is always a main topic for the news of the day.

Most of all trains around Tokyo were delayed and some of them stopped until next midday (because the railway and the overhead wire are frozen by the snow).

And most horrible thing is icy street in the next morning like that…

As people in Tokyo never have snow purpose shoes, we’re usually confused which shoes are better to walk such a terrible road. Fortunately I didn’t fall to the ground this morning though slipped a little.

1/24/2008

First Snow in Tokyo

Finally it snowed in Tokyo today. I suppose it was the first time in this winter. However the weather forecast these days said that it would snow in Tokyo, it didn’t at all.

I managed to take some pictures of Tokyo’s snow view on the way to my office, but they didn’t convince me so I’ll post the picture I took at home.

1/14/2008

My first Yoga in 8 months

Last Sunday I went to a yoga lesson. I started yoga just 2 years ago but it hurt my back and I gave it up last May. I don’t need to pay the admission fee nor a monthly fee for my studio - just a class fee when I drop in. In addition, I can use all the associated studios around Tokyo and each of them have pretty nice facilities (except the narrow changing rooms). So I’m satisfied with them overall.

This time I joined a class named “Relax” and the class, as its name suggests, aims to use stretching exercises to relieve your stressful mind. This meant that the yoga positions weren’t so difficult. Thankfully I could work out better than I thought even though this was my first yoga lesson in 8 months (but now, as of Monday, I have muscle aches in my back and upper arms).

However, he studio was packed full of about 50 people and that meant there was just 10 cm between the people next to me…is this a kind of “Relax” situation!? I don’t believe it so far.

I know the studio has become popular these days so the number of members is getting larger and larger, and now I have to be very careful not to hit someone behind me with my leg or my arm. I don’t like to do yoga nervously.

Well, I’m going to have to find a new studio soon.

1/06/2008

Praying at a Buddhist temple

I usually pray for annual good luck at the same shrine (as I mentioned before), but this year I had to go to a Buddhist temple in Kawasaki city (next to Tokyo) to take my old fortune slip back there. So I made up my mind to pray there too. You may wonder whether it is ok to pray to both the Japanese ancient gods and Buddha but I think it’s no problem because for Japanese Praying on New Year’s Day is like an expression of our appreciation for others (not only the god, and Buddha but also people around me).

The temple is called “Kawasaki-daishi”, whose name comes from the city name. This temple is so huge and famous that a lot of people pray there every year. This is the main gate of the temple.

And here is a view from inside of the gate. Though New Year’s holidays were over (generally New Year’s holidays is January 1st to 3rd), it was so crowded.

This is the people behind me who are also waiting to pray…

After that, I returned my old fortune slip successfully. When we return fortune slips to a temple (or a shrine) we usually tie it to a rope which is prepared by the temple. I failed to take that picture regrettably but anyway, I achieved my aim.

1/04/2008

The outcome of the gods’ looking after…

Despite having had lots of things to do at the end of 2007, I have NO really exciting plans for the New Year holidays after going to the shrine as usual.

Some women might have queued up to buy lucky bags before dawn from Japanese stores. Anyway, we must queue up wherever we go in New Year’s holidays but I’d rather buy what I really want. But I remembered what I needed on Jan. 3rd, so I went out shopping.

Actually what I needed were 2 extension cords and a new hair brush so I went to LOFT to buy a brush first. LOFT is a commodities store in the SEIBU department store in Tokyo, which deals with various kinds of import goods and fine products.

When I paid for the brush at the checkout counter, the checkout person gave me a scratchcard which was available from Jan. 1st to Jan. 3rd. for the so called New Year’s lottery(but surprisingly the store was closed on Jan. 1st so actually it was available for just 2 days!!)


The outcome was hidden by a silver panel, so I should scratch it with a coin or something. I scratched it there and found I won the 3rd prize!! That was a bath powder.


Actually there are 100,000 3rd prizes in total. Anyway, this is the first good luck for me in 2008 so I’m pleased to get it.

How to spend New Year Day

Despite having had lots of things to do at the end of 2007, I have no exciting plan for the New Year holidays. Just one plan was already decided - that I go to a shrine close to my house and pray for good in 2008 . This is a routine event – “Hatsu-mode” in Japanese - not only for my family but for every Japanese family. So my mother and I went out for “Hatsu-mode” on midday Jan.1st.

On “Hatsu-mode”, we must queue up to pray wherever we go, like this.


Although the weather forecast said this New Year holidays would be freezing Tokyo has been fine and not so cold during the last couple of days. In addition, we went there earlier than other people so the queue was relatively short and we only had to stand for about 20 min.


I prayed for 2008’s good and our healthy life (not only my family but also my friends) to the gods. Basically the shrine I went seems to worship 5 gods. I suppose 3 of them are a family(a husband, his wife and their son) but I’m afraid I don’t know the rest of them. Anyway these 5 gods will look after me, my family and my friends all this year.