A week with Mumsie Pt 3

As I said there's plenty of material still to come, and I'm using this one to cover some little odd ends - though no less important for it!

In the middle weekend Mum and I took the train to Ebina, in Kanagawa Prefecture next to Tokyo. The last time I was in Japan on an exchange this is where I lived with my host family, Midori and Akira. We'd been in touch over the years since 2012, and so I was very excited to see them again, and to introduce two of my mothers to each other! Entering the house, I said "I'm home!', and it felt exactly as it did the last time I was there in February 2012. After showing Mum around the house, including my old room, we had a lovely lunch followed by green matcha tea. We spent the afternoon there, and then Mum and I made our way to my old school, Tsurumine High School. By this time the sun had well set, but even from the gate I could see that nothing had changed! It was a lovely day with them, and I will be sure to keep in touch!

That night Mum and I explored the centre of Ebina city, going through a department store food court, tasting all sorts of samples and pretty well having dinner - just like I used to do for weekends when I lived there!

Introducing my two mothers

At the gates of Tsurumine High School

Ebina City Centre Plaza

Another day we headed to Tokyo Station, with the intention of seeing the Imperial Palace Gardens. This was a reasonably slow morning, so by the time we arrived at the impressive Tokyo Station building and had lunch, we had actually missed the final entrance time for the gardens! However we were still able to look around the Palace walls, which form a large, traditional green space in the very centre of Tokyo city.

It was incredibly that cold day!

Old and new - a guardhouse with the start of the metropolis across the moat

We spent the rest of the day looking at Christmas decorations and illumination displays, but those will come next in a Christmas themed blog, so watch out for that!

One of the last things Mum and I did was visit some markets - one being a twice yearly flea market called Boroichi, and the other being the Hibiya Park German Christmas Market.

The first we learnt about from my friend Claire, who met us there and played guide. It's essentially a huge flea market, with all manner of arts and crafts, bric-a-brac, and food stalls. I had to go to university to make a presentation halfway through the day, so I departed a bit earlier than I would have liked, but there was an amazing array of things on display.

This doesn't begin to describe how busy it was - something like 200,000 people visit 

A fearsome array of knives on sale

An exquisite smoking pipe

Feel you could play Eye Spy here!

Very cute glass art

I was very surprised to see some Nazi memorabilia on sale here!

Claire and I with some amazuke, a type of warm rice based liquor

All in all it was a very cool market with some very interesting things on sale, mum having a great time looking through all the fabrics! I look forward to the next one, where I shall have to give it a full day's worth of attention.

The next day included the Hibiya Park German Christmas Market, but was preceded by a last trip to Harajuku so as to see whether we could spy any Harajuku girls - people who dress up in what we would say are bizarre costumes, often in gothic or lolita style. Being a weekend, we were not disappointed!

Harajuku is also famous for its enormous candy floss/cotton candy

The Hibiya Park German Christmas Market was a very curious thing,being made up of a small 'village' of European style huts, each with French, German, or Russian names, and selling goods from Europe, including steins, pastries, Russian dolls, and such like. All the stalls were staffed by Europeans, either exclusively or at least half, and everything was very European in style - with a giant Christmas carousel operating with a wind spinner on top. Mum was looking for a Tokyo themed Christmas decoration, but this market seemed to embody the difficulty of finding such in Japan - all the decorations seemed to be European in style! Nevertheless, we had a good time meandering about, having some French coffee and hot chocolate, as well as some cannelles (something we enjoyed a lot in Bordeaux in 2008), as well as some cream cheese cakes.

The market also seemed to attract some people with their pets, including one who had a dog in a pram, with a little peep hole for the head, allowing the dog to view the world as it was rolled around! The other was a man who had his cat sitting quite comfortably on his shoulder, as a pirate would have with a parrot!

All in all it was a curious experience, and I said to Mum that I doubt she anticipated she would be eating a French dessert in a German market in Tokyo - globalisation was made manifest there indeed!

After the market we headed back to the apartment, for final packing and a bit of a relax before we made our way to Haneda airport for dinner and Mum's departure.

All in all having Mum deciding to come to Tokyo for a couple of weeks, with only a week's notice, was awesome good fun - that I am currently not doing a whole lot for university means I have a reasonable amount of time on my hands, and so to be able to explore around Tokyo with her, while playing tour guide to some extent, was really great. I am preparing for my friend Hamish to arrive next month for a while, where I will be doing somewhat the same with him!

I'm in the process of collating the photos I have of Christmas in Tokyo, so you can expect a photo blog to be coming very shortly!

Sayonara for now!

Troy/Toroi