The Bjørner Japan Diary
Trivia & Photos: "Blow-by-Blow"
Mid April - Late May 2006

Kari & Dines Bjørner

December 22, 2006

Contents

• Further Musings on Japan
• Kari in Tokyo, 14-19 April
• Dines in Vienna and Budapest, 15-21 April
• Golden Week 2006
• Earlier/Later Diary Entries

Further Musings on Japan

I say `further' because in the February - Mid April 2006 diary there are some "first" musings.

• Walking, Legs, "Shoes", and Dressing:

  (19 May 2006) To walk down our local `High Street', Tetamachi, a youth-oriented shopping street with "smart" stores, and observe especially the young people is somewhat of a pasttime for Kari and Dines.

  1. The legs of most young people, young men (boys), young women (girls), are terrible. Crooked and with inward pointing feet.

  2. They walk slopily: the boys/young men dragging their feet/shoes after them, making a whistling noice after them. The boys/y-men usually wear baggy trousers, hanging extremely low on their hips and rather extremely baggy across their behind. The trousers fold multiply around their feet. Shoees are often too big. The girls/y-women wear very high heeled shoes, usually. Some are just very high heeled slippers! Terribly badly looking. Thse girls/y-women very often have very very skimpy shorts on, barely covering - well, whatever.

• School Children:

  (19 May 2006) On Dines' week day commute, by train, 32 minutes, he has ample time, when not reading, as he normally does, to watch the loads and loads of middle and high school children.

  1. They are all in very nice and chique uniforms.

  2. The girls wear them smartly, the boys ``baggedly''.

  3. The girls usually have very nice looking loafers, moccasin shoes, well-made - but alas, they sometime, say 40% of them, step on their back-heal, as if these nice, 60 US$ shoes were slippers.

  4. The boys usually wear Nike or Adida shoes or wide boots, sloppy again.

  5. But we like the uniforms. We both think that all school children must wear uniforms. Save on dressing. Avoids bare mid-riffs, dangerous, Dines is told, for weak male teacher minds.

• English Communication

  (19 May 2006) Communicating across the laguage, and especially the culture gap/divide can sometimes be amusing, sometimes frustrating. The below only pertains to such wonderful Japanese who give the appearance that they speak good English. In fact, the ones we are referring to, anonymously speak so well English that it obviously is deceiving.

  1. When communicating, clearly, slowly, in 6-7-8 word sentences, carefully build up, asking someone (local staff, for example) - similarly when communicating likewise by e-mail - we often find that our otherwise apparently "well-English-speaking" Japanese hosts have simply not understood what we said. Well, they sort of understand it, but then their actions reveal an oftentimes rather unfortunate misunderstanding.

  2. So we are constantly preparing our requests, our inquiries, our questions. Chopping them into hopefully not-possibly-misunderstandable sequences of a few, very short sentences.

Kari in Tokyo, 14-19 April

• Kari spent 5 days in Tokyo: Friday April 14 to Wednesday April 19. We flew in together and spent Friday evening with Peggy and Peter Stark, a reunion after many years. We have shared may a jolly event with P&P since that mid February Saturday in 1969 where Dines - with many others - helped them to move from an apartment in Menlo Park to a grand house in Saratoga.

  Dines flew out early Sat. morning to Vienna - see below.

  Kari spent the days getting around to a "zillion" texttile fabric stores, searching for and buying "millions" of fabrics for her P&Q activities. These usually 110 cm by 110 cm "samples" are now all washed, cut up in half sizes, folded and most of them are also photographed! They adorn "dozens" of shelves in our apartment - and Kari is already working on several of these fabrics.

Dines in Vienna and Budapest, 15-21 April

• Wien:

  Dines flew with Austrian Airlines (AUA) non-stop Tokyo-Vienna on a fine Saturday from 10:40 am Tokyo time to 15:40 (3:40 pm) Vienna time. A limousine from Hotel Wandl fetched me and after checking into a very nice room with a view, high up, of Sct.Peter's church, followed a stroll via Trzezniewski, (also click this!) to a sumptuous dinner at Palais Coburg ending with a coffee at the venerable Cafe Hawelka. After a good nights sleep, up Sunday at 6 am, early breakfast, long stroll around the 1st district, early coffee, looking at easter eggs at the Easter market on Freyung, off to the Augustiner church. Wnderful choir song from 10-11 and then the high mass with marvellous music by Händl and Mozart. The restarant at Hotel Sacher - although I showed them an e-mail confirmed reservation shrugged their indolent shoulders and sai, sorry. Well, I saw the restaurant, and instead had a much more charming lunch at Plachutta on Wollzeile. At 3:45 pm the train took Dines to Budapest where he arrived at 6:38 pm.

  Dines has booked room Sat.-Mon., Sept. 16-18, 2006 at Hotel Wandl for Kari and Dines, and lunch at Plachutta for 13-16 Sunday 17 Sept. for some 20 of our Viennese friends and colleagues from 1973-1975.

  The below list indicates some good places

  • Hotel Wandl
  • Buffet Trzezniewski
  • Restaurant Palais Coburg
  • Cafe Hawelka
  • Augustiner Kirche
  • Restaurant Plachutta
  • Cafe Sperl
  • Restaurant Figlmüller

• Budapest:
  • Monday Peter Szeredi festched Dines and drove to his house in Pomasz, a bit inland from Szentendre. A lovely day in the country: Visit to Szentendre, stroll in town, Dines bought 14 diff. blue indigo, patterned fabrics for Kari, 110 cm by 110 cm. Hungarian lunch at the Szeredi's lovely five staggered offset-floor house. Home at almost 5 pm. Dinner at Belcanto.

  • Wednesday: AE Meeting: All day AE Membership Nomination Committee Meeting. Some 100 new candidates for membership were discussed, all day, 24 from my section, "Informatics", 23 were accepted and carried forward and accepted at next days. Behind our 24 nominations was quite a lot of work, on my side, and on the side of our "old" membership, during the fall of 2005 and winter of 2005/2006. So, all in all a nice day.

  • Thursday: AE meeting + Dinner with the Bachs: Two third day meeting of AE Councl, til about 3pm. Dinner in the evening with Hedda and Ivan Bach, friends since 1978, at the delightful Kispipa restaurant.

    Some pointers to the good life of Budapest:

    • Hotel Sofitel
    • Restaurant Pierrot
    • Restaurant Belcanto
    • Restaurant Kispipa
    • Cafe Gerbeaud , see also Afternoon tea @ Cafe Gerbeaud

  • Friday-Saturday: Via Vienna to Tokyo: Train early Friday morning, 6:09 am! In Vienna at 9 am. Stored my luggage in compartments at the downtown Vienna airport center and strolled through the inner (i.e., the 1st) district (`bezirk'), snacks at the Trzezniewski buffet in Dorotheergasse, coffee at old-time favourite on Albertineplatz (not the Mozart), and actually on the corner of Albertineplatz - towards Kaissgruft. At he airport at 2 pm for my mon-stop "cattle-class" flight to Tokyo.

  • Saturday-Sunday: Kyoto From the airport one suitcase off by ABC to our home in Kanazawa. Arrived Tuesday as directed. Then train and Shinkansen to Kyoto and taxi to hotel where Kari had just arrived from kanazawa. So I took a rest. kari went out for shopping texttiles. Later we both "shopped" around and visited a wellknown paper maker in the north east of Kyoto. In the evening we met Peggy and Peter. ... more to come ...

Golden Week 2006

• Three day trip to Noto Peninsula and Wajima:

  The Noto peninsula is north of Kanazawa, with Wajima the farthest away, some 2 hours by bus.

  • Noto Peninsula: Practical Information (Transpot)
  • Noto Peninsula: Places to visit
  • Wajima City
  • Wajima Nouri: Lacquerware
  • Wedn.3 May: Bustrip Kanazawa-Wajima: Dines took many photos. Very enjoyable trip. Coastline, inland.

  • Wedn.+Thu.3-4 May: Wajima: Wajima is a fishing town of some 30.000 people. Wellknown for its red lacquerware. We stayed at a simple "modern" ryokan, i.e. "on the floor", on futongs. We arrived well before lunch Wedn.
    Wajima manhole cover - Kari discovered this one
    

    Had lunch in town and walked and walked, saw many houses, the well known Wedn. market, many lacquerware shops, bought a red lacquer necklace for Kari. Thu. we took a taxi up north, along the coast, in the morning, first to a place where some 1.000 rice paddies sloped down to the west coast, rather a sight, then to an old rich farmhouse museum, most delightful.

    Rice paddies
    

    Lunch upon return to Wajima, recommended by the driver, a really enjoyable driver, at probably one of the better Sushi places so far in Japan.

  • Fri.5 May: Bus Trip Wajima-Kanazawa: Home Friday am, 1/2 day earlier than planned. But we had seen and walked and seen and walked and ... enough. Also retrun trip was delightful, but seemed faster.

  Click this for more photos from Wajima .

• Two day trip to Takayama: Splendid week end:

  Click this for photos from the Takayama tour.

  • Sat.6 May: Bus Trip Kanazawa-Takayama: Fascinating bus trip, especially as we entered, from the west towards the east the Japanese alps. Saw many rice paddies.

    We made a stop at a traditional Japanese farmbuilding outdoor mueseum. Up the deep valleys, over high plateaus, into Takayama. 3+ hours on a compfortable bus. A Sat. morning trip.

  • Sat.-Sun.6-7 May: Takayama: And in Takayama by lunch time. Delightful lunch, also Sunday, at a Sushi place ("far from the ocean"). Takayama is worth an own journey, not just a detour. And ours was an own journey. Takayama is wellknown for its city house, sake brewery and tradesmen house architecture.
    Takayama merchant houses
    

    Dinner at a special kind of steak house: You select all the ingredients from a butcher type front of the restaurant room and you basically cook it all yourself on a grill in your table. We drank a Chilean red wine with it.

    Kari buying fabrics
    

    Kari bought fabrics both Sat. and Sun., twice at same place, and a fine 9 meter long piece for a dress from a third place.

    The Sunday morning Antique market
    
    Dines shopping for Atari china, yes, got it.
    Perhaps we should take a rickshaw?
    
    Will two fit? Maybe not even Dines?
    Cherry blossom
    

  • Sun.7 May: Bustrip Takayama-Kanazawa: Sunday afternoon at 3:40 pm we started our return.
    Minka: Traditional Japanese farm house
    

  Great week end. Get information from:
  • Takayama

  • Four Seasons Hotel

  Click this for more photos from the Takayama tour.

• One day trip to Tokyo: Monday 8 May:

  With a colleague Dines had a meeting at a government research lab. in Tokyo concerning possible research collaboration. Dines took the train early morning, 6:09 am and returned home at 21:08 pm. Almost 9 hours of train in one day. Winter, even though early may, was still discernable over the Japanese Alps: black snow in large "dunes". Spring: sun and warmth came as we left the last tunnel towards Tokyo.

Earlier/Later Diary Entries

• Click February - Mid April 2006

• Click Mid April - Late May 2006

• Click Late May - Late July 2006

• Click Late July - Mid August 2006

• Click Late August 2006 - Late January 2007

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About this document ...

The Bjørner Japan Diary
Trivia & Photos: "Blow-by-Blow"
Mid April - Late May 2006

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The translation was initiated by Dines Bjorner on 2006-12-22