Bill's Blog

Striking modern architecture is one of the pleasures of visiting Tokyo. The gold building in the middle is the Asahi beer company headquarters. Reflecting light, it looks like a mug of beer with a foamy head. To the right of it is the Asahi flame and to the immediate left in the background is the Tokyo Sky Tower. The building to the far left is the Sumida Concert Hall.

Family pictured on a bridge over the Sumida river with the Tokyo Sky Tree in the background

To start the day, Nadia and Ocean took a rickshaw to some of the tourist sites near the Sumida river. We walked to the Tokyo Sky Tree, the tallest tower in the world to get some perspective on the city. The Sky Tree is a 634 meter high communications tower and tourist attraction. It is worth going up to the top to see the sprawling megapolis. Despite the crowds, it was only about an hour’s wait to get to the 350 m viewing area. There are also plenty of shops, restaurants and attractions in the lower floors.

There is not a lot of drunkenness and fireworks in Japan on New Year’s Eve. The thing to do is spend time quietly with family and visit several of the thousands of temples and shrines to reflect/pray for blessings in the upcoming year. We saw lines of people all over and the temples have different themes, like mercy, love, money, etc.

I took the boys after midnight across the street to the Higashi Hongon temple. We watched and listened to worshippers strike the gong 108 times, representing the 108 vices of humans in the Buddhist religion. They had a fire going along with sake and snacks. The gong is on the top floor of one of the temple building and they had a live stream showing everyone taking their turn.

Oliver at the Higashi Hongon-Ji

It certainly was a different way to spend New Year’s Eve, and at my age, excessive drinking is not really the way I want to spend the evening. Ocean had a headache so we had a low key celebration in the apartment with glow sticks and party hats. It is good to mark these events with children. New Year’s celebrations may be my favorite holiday as it is a chance to reflect on the year that passed and look forward to what is coming in the future. I can’t believe it is 2016. As a teenager growing up in the 1980s, I never imagined what it would be like in this century. I am happy and appreciative to be here and able to celebrate!

Crowds line up to say their prayers on New Years Eve. The photo above is the Senso temple, the oldest and most important Buddhist temple in Japan. We touched the bell for good luck.

Happy New Year everyone!

We had a really nice Christmas this year at our home. We followed many of the Bolivian christmas traditions, having the kids open their presents at midnight on Christmas Eve, shooting fireworks, etc. We even had a surprise visit from Santa, who politely rang the door bell because we don’t have a chimney.

On Christmas day, we had a huge meal and invited the Tsubaki family to share the night with us. We were lucky to find a store downtown in the warehouse district that sold Chinese fireworks. The kids enjoyed shooting the sparklers and watching the exploding tubes after dinner.

Legos were a hit with Ocean and Oliver and Owen received the wireless, Beats headphones. Nadia got a Kitchen Aid super blender and a beautiful winter coat. I got a drill and a charging station. It was a bright sunny day with temperatures around 10C, so we did spend some time outside.

Yesterday for Boxing Day, Ocean and I ventured downtown to the beautiful Izumi Hall for a music recital. We went out for her favorite chai latte and cinnamon roll at Starbucks afterwards.

Boxing Day Father/Daughter Time – Izumi Hall

Yesterday we visited the UNESCO world heritage site of Nara Park. Nara is about an hour away from Osaka and is the home of the world’s largest bronze statue of the Buddha Vairocana. The temple that houses the statue, Toodai-ji, up until 1998, was the world’s largest wooden structure. The temple is 57 meters long by 50 meters wide.

There are 8 temples located in the large park in the forested foothills on the edge of the city of Nara. The coolest aspect are the over 1,000 sika deer that roam free in the park. The deer were once regarded as sacred because of an ancient legend that claims the Japanese god of martial arts, Kashima-no-Kami (the Japanese equivalent of Scandinavian Thor or Slavic Perun) came to the site riding a white deer. The deer’s status as sacred was dropped after World War II, when the rightist government lost of the war and moved towards a secular democracy. The deer are protected today. They scared Ocean quite a bit. They are everywhere and many lost fear of humans. You can pet them and admire them up close. We saw wild sika or spotted deer last winter in our trip up to Kinosaki, on the Sea of Japan coast. I blogged about my deer behavior observations in my nature blog here.

The deer want Ocean’s ice cream!

The buddha statue is massive and worth seeing once. I read of relics of an former emperor (tooth, swords, etc.) are in the knee of the statue. There are many side temples and garden on the grounds. The main temple is called daibutsu and you can’t miss the size of the temple. Impressive how these were built so long ago. Of course through the years they have been rebuilt, with the last major reconstruction taking place in the late 1700s. The temple was actually larger when it was first built.

Nara was the capital of Japan for almost 100 years about 1, 300 years ago. Japan has had a sophisticated, urban society for a long time! It is certainly worth spending the day at the park. I want to return to hike in the hills near the park. I recommend to bring a picnic lunch and some sports equipment and make a day of it. The park is big enough to avoid the crowds visiting the temples and museums.

An over 1,000 year inscription of a bodhivastu on the lotus leaf statue in front of the great buddha.

 Here is an excerpt from a BBC documentary series about Japan and the park.

It was a miserable day of rain and cold yesterday so we did a double feature of movies. Many movies come out around Christmas to take advantage of families having time off together and also to be eligible for awards, which stipulates a movie needs to show for at least one week before the end of the year to be eligible for the Oscars, etc. It has become a Christmas tradition in the USA to go the movies. A new IMAX cinema opened last month in a new shopping mall (and football stadium) in Expo Park, which is very close to our home in Minoh.

The view of the Expo City courtyard at night

Of course we had to take the kids to Star Wars, the Force Awakens. I’ve read a couple accounts of 40-50 year olds describing their feelings about the going to the new movie, 38 years after the original. I am in the key demographic for this experience, being 10 years old in 1977. I remember going to see the movie. I was never hugely into Star Wars as a kid, but we did have all of the action figures. The media hype for this latest edition has been massive and I was put off by it a bit. In seeing the film in 3D on an IMAX screen in Japan, is a long way away from when I saw it on a smaller screen in Crystal Falls, Michigan. It was very much like the original and I was a bit bored with it. As with many children’s action movies, the heroes escape many close calls against seemingly insurmountable odds time and again. Perhaps I am getting old and cranky…

Futuristic Japan with welcome robots at the theatre

I loved the second movie we saw that day, Spectre. I am a big fan of the James Bond franchise and it was one of the reasons why I lived a global nomad lifestyle. I remember watching ABC’s Sunday Night at the Movies  with my Dad and the James Bond reruns were on all the time. Spectre didn’t disappoint with some great action scenes, exotic locales (Mexico City, Rome, Tangiers, Moroccan desert, London, etc) and for Nadia, some fashion ideas for me based on Daniel Craig’s wardrobe. I highly recommend it!