bobmcgee

The Meiji Shrine …

The big city is not my cup of tea. The conurbation of Greater Tokyo is the biggest of them all, 37.8 million people in 13,500 km².

I have a day adrift here. The options …

Sit in room, suck thumb. Ultra safe.
Go for a walk unravelling a ball of twine behind me (or taking good notes). Adventurous.
Take rush hour public transport across Tokyo and hope to get back. Verging on insanity.

Really, where can a boy go bird watching in Tokyo. Mayumi, a friend, had suggested the Meiji Shrine.

Haneda Airport has an information desk. The staff speak good English and are keen to help. To get to the Meiji shrine take the train. There is a stop at the airport (Keikyu line). Why didn’t Melbourne think of that? Change to the JR Yamanote line at Shinagawa get off at Harajuku. You’re at the gate. Entry is free. Reverse the process to get home. They were kind enough to write it all down for me.

You can buy a single trip ticket at the station (why didn’t Melbourne think of that?) from a machine that can be switched to English. It didn’t, however, list stations individually, the missing part of the jigsaw was knowing which cost zone Harajuku would be in. Puzzled foreigner stares stupidly at machine. When dealing with foreign machines stare slowly and clearly.

A smartly dressed mid-career type man coming from the platform volunteers to help. He enquires at the information office and comes back with the missing piece, supervises the administration of the money and points me in the right direction. I thank him. He bows.

The Meiji Shrine commemorates the divine souls of Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken, central figures in the Meiji Restoration of the 1860’s. This period saw the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate and an opening up of Japan to western influences.

The Emperor died in 1912 and the Empress two years later. Their tombs are in Kyoto. An area was set aside in Tokyo and trees planted in their honour. Established in 1920, it is now a mature forest that includes a couple of lakes providing excellent habitat for birds such as Oriental Turtle Dove, Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker, Mandarin Duck, thrushes, redstarts, waxwings … and the shrine.

And surprisingly, it’s the shrine that gets all the attention. It happens to be the number one (of 228 attractions) on TripAdvisor.

Below is one of the splendid torii gates that mark the various approaches to the shrine …

Sake brewers donate barrels of sake wrapped in straw and paper to the shrine.

A small payment is required to enter the beautiful inner garden (¥500). This garden existed prior to the Meiji Shrine and the Emperor hand a hand in its design. Here you can find this tea house. It is probably the most photographed garden shed in all of Japan.

There is also a small pond in the inner garden, crafted to raise the spirits of Empress Shoken, there where I came across a very attractive Kingfisher and various small birds were coming for a handout.

It was a great place to spend the day. Now to get back to the Haneda Excel Tokyu Hotel.

Stupid foreigner stares slowly and clearly at ticket machine trying to remember how much money to contribute. Slender, young, attractive Japanese woman volunteers to help. She makes a quick trip to the enquiry desk, supervises the donation and points me in the right direction. Her English is impeccable. I thank her. She bows. Helplessness has its rewards.

You can download a map of the Tokyo Metro <HERE>.

Meeting Mr Toto …

The hotel room had a western style bed, a carpeted floor, a couple of chairs, a desk and a TV.

On the bed was a cotton night shirt that buttoned down the front, a minor difference in an environment that otherwise could have been in almost any city in the world.

The room was too warm. I turned off the heating. Finding a way to deal with the welcoming warmth would be necessary at every accommodation for the coming weeks.

And then I went to the toilet …

“Shit”, I thought, which was at least contextually appropriate. The user’s manual is under the lid, once enthroned it can’t be read, but then, you only need to read it once. The controls will be at your right hand. What could possibly go wrong?

The seat is heated, you may wash your bottom … with warm water. Air dry, why not? As you sit a flow of water beneath you will reassure you that the porcelain will not be soiled or is it just to make a noise to cover the sounds that you are so keen to keep to yourself?

Do play with the buttons. The only one you need to know about is marked with a circle with a central dot. That stops whatever you manage to start.

Every hotel I stayed at had this style of toilet, the better ones had the control panel on the wall. Public toilets came in two flavours, a few had squat toilets, most were like this one. None was merely ordinary, it seems the Japanese completely leapfrogged the Australian dunny.

Japan is different. It has a that quality that the French think they have. I hope I can convey that quality in my writing. It exercises a strange influence on visitors, some are never quite the same …

But in his home and office bathrooms, Mr. Friedman had installed a Toto washlet. To sit upon a standard commode, he said, would be like “going back to the Stone Age.

Ms. Poh said. “It’s about the heated seats. Your life is really good when you have a heated toilet seat.”

Three days later, Mr. Aboulache went online and bought a Toto washlet, which he installed in the shared upstairs bathroom of his home in Los Angeles as a surprise for his wife and son.

“We’ve been delighted,” he said. “It’s our favorite toilet.”

Mr. Friedman, too, is an enthusiastic proselytizer for washlets …

Whenever he talks about their virtues, he said, “I feel like one of the Apostles passing the word of God.”

Airport to Airport to …

Tokyo has two airports. Qantas flies into Narita, my first task was to get to Haneda.

Narita is 77 km east of central Tokyo. Haneda is 29 km south. From one to the other around the shores of Tokyo Bay is 80 km. I must confess to a little anxiety. Here I am dealing with an unfamiliar system in a language that I could not speak in my new role as an illiterate. Routine public transport is available but handling luggage for a three week trip on the train would be challenging. The easy way is the Limousine Bus.

When you are disgorged from the immigration and customs area the Limousine Bus counter is ahead, close and visible. The staff spoke good English and were very clear in their instruction to where you caught the bus. At the stop I was politely marshalled, put on the right bus, my luggage was loaded and off we went. Announcements are in Japanese and English, they are recorded and therefore intelligible. Anxiety dispelled.

The first two nights were at the Haneda Excel Tokyu Hotel in Terminal 2. As international drab as big hotels are, the national flavour will find a way to shine through. The Excel is the archetype airport hotel but …

The door was opened, two men bowed then indicated the direction to the reception desk, I was relieved of my luggage and checked in. It was a luxurious welcome. The bags were delivered to my room promptly and in Japan no tip is expected.

A Little Geography …

Our Google globe has been placed north up with Australia at the bottom, Japan at the top.

Globe 1

Japan is part of a great archipelago that hangs off the Kamchatka peninsula and curves away to the east of the main landmass of Asia, swings away around the north of Australia and then down to New Zealand.

If we superimpose the relevant part of the Great Ring of Fire on the map we can then deduce a great deal about the underlying geology.

The Japanese part of that great archilelago consists of almost 8,000 islands between latitudes 24°N and 46°N, and longitudes 122°E and 146°E. That’s 2600 km from Okinawa to the tip of Hokkaido. The four largest islands are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku and together they make up about 97% of the land area.

Japan is mountainous, only 27% of the country is suitable for agriculture and urban settlement. It is prone to volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tsunamis. There are more than a hundred active volcanoes. More than 140,000 people died in the Tokyo earthquake of 1923. The 2011 magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the Pacific coast of Tōhoku killed about 18,000 people and triggered several nuclear accidents.

From a natural disaster point of view Japan is the most dangerous place in the developed world.

Looking from China, Japan lies in the direction of the rising sun, hence the way Japan is rendered in Kanji is 日本. The Chinese character 日 means sun or day; 本 means base or origin, combined they convey the meaning sunrise.

The population is about 126 million people and slowly declining. The population density is high in the areas suitable for settlement.

Japan has the third largest economy in the world, but things aren’t quite as great as they used to be.

Life expectancy ranks second in the world. The infant mortality rate of 2 per thousand live births is as low as any where in the world. Educational standards are high.

Virtually no one shoots anyone else in Japan but they make up for that to some extent by killing themselves. Suicide is the leading cause of death in people under thirty.

The whole place is in one time zone (GMT +9hrs) and they don’t mess with the clocks for summertime.

The electricity supply is 100 volts (not 120 like the US or 240 like Australia and the UK) the plugs and sockets are 2 pin connections compatible with their American counterparts.

The climate is officially described as temperate. What this means is that it’s mild in the south. Tokyo is hot and humid in summer and cold in the winter, not a threat to your ears and nose but remember the hat and gloves. Hokkaido is mild in the summer and definitely a threat to the extremities in winter, don’t leave home without your parka.

Wildlife has done well in Japan, bears, deer, voles, shrews, deer, mustelids and monkeys can all be found and the bird life is exceptional. The mountains have helped preserve habitat and modern Japan seems conservation minded. There are well managed wildlife reserves. And surprisingly it is a good place to go whale watching!

The birding is heavily influenced by the strong seasonality and the proximity to land north and south and there is always the chance of vagrants coming from the Asian mainland.

The only English language field guide worth having (for the moment) is … A Field Guide to the Birds of East Asia (2009), by Mark Brazil.

Got all that? Cool. It’s time to go.

En route …

Not merely a way of building suspense …

… more a way of buying time to process one hell of a lot of photos.

A Day Around Brisbane …

I had some time spare in Brisbane, rented a car and headed out with the binoculars.

Birds Queensland and the Brisbane City Council have produced a very useful little brochure of good birding spots which can be down loaded <HERE>.

I headed north and spent most of my time in the vicinity of Nudgee Beach and Boondall Wetlands then headed west to the Gap and Enoggera Reservoir.

A productive day and I even found out which way to head for my next stop …

On the Wallaby …

If you are going to write about travel then from time to time you have to travel.

And since I’m not a great multitasker I shall travel first and write after.

See you when I get back from Japan.

Not a lot of wallabies in Japan, you say … it’s Aussie slang,the first use in this context (that I can find) dates to 1849. It means to journey from place to place. In 1891 Henry Lawson gave us this …

Australia’s a big country

An’ Freedom’s humping bluey,

An’ Freedom’s on the wallaby

Oh! don’t you hear ‘er cooey?

The New Camera …

I’ve had it for two days now and I seem to be getting the hang of it …

I am in Melbourne for a few days so the first morning I headed to Ricketts Point on Port Phillip Bay, one of my favorite spots. A lot of birds roost on the rocks but you do need to get there early because a crowd will build up. I was there early … and the first thing to try was birds in flight in low light. Why start with a bowl of fruit?

It passed that test reasonably well.

As the light improved some colour crept into the show.

By which time it was time for a coffee from the tea house.

The next morning I was at Braeside Park, another favorite place. That’s where I found the cisticola at the top. I also found this Grey Butcherbird

and a Grey Teal looking into the morning sun.

As the sun climbed higher I moved into the shade and found this little jewel, a Spotted Pardalote.

So the camera? A Lumix GH4. Early impressions are extremely favorable. It will get quite a work out in the next few weeks after that I will write a review.

Mining the Archives …

For a long time I have been promising myself that I would get my photos into some sort of order.

So far I have found photos on four different computers, three generations of Mac and a PC. None of the external hard drives lying around would actually do business with all of them. I ended up clearing the oldest Mac with a USB stick, not the nice new one with heaps of storage but an old one that would cope with just 200 files at a time. I still have to find some more photos. One other Mac was stolen some years ago, that’s a collection of photos that I won’t be seeing again and but there is hope that some others are filed away on cd somewhere. Must sort them out while I still have a means of reading cd’s. Anyway most of the digital era is now assembled in one place … must back it up!

Because of some problems with my Olympus camera I’ve also had reason to sort through and put back into use some old camera gear. Reviewing my old photos and being forced to think about my photography has been a most instructive revision course. I got the brand new camera yesterday but before I start showing off what it can do lets see what went before.

Wildlife and landscapes it’s what I do …

Mark my words …

For just about everything that Mark Twain is said to have said there is a Twain scholar to say he didn’t say it. For instance that thing about golf being the opiate of the masses, he never said that.

Not far from me is the Maryborough railway station which Twain thought so grand that he said “Maryborough, a station with a town attached”. It’s pretty certain that’s another of the things he didn’t say but he did say this …

Don’t you overlook that Maryborough station, if you take an interest in governmental curiosities. Why, you can put the whole population of Maryborough into it, and give them a sofa apiece, and have room for more.

He visited the town in 1895 during a year long world tour at a time when he was deeply in debt in the US. It invites comparisons with our own Clive Palmer, up to his eyes in debt and living it up. However Twain’s was a lecture tour intended to raise the funds to repay his debts. Which to his enormous credit he did, despite the fact that he was protected by the bankruptcy laws and could have walked away from them. So no comparison after all.

The station is a bit of a curiosity. It’s part of popular local mythology that it was actually meant to be built elsewhere. There is a Maryborough in Queensland which still causes confusion. I’ve also been told with all apparent seriousness that Madras has a little station and Maryborough a huge one because the plans were accidentally switched. In reality it was erected just as intended, just where intended at a very important intersection of various country rail lines.

It was begun in 1890, completed in 1891. Passenger services stopped in 1993 but resumed in 2010. I took my camera along recently when an old diesel locomotive brought a train full of enthusiasts to town …