Settled & Meguro Bimble
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Settled In and Meguro
Bimble
   Bear awoke this morning on day one of
our at-venture in Tokyo. I really have got the hang of
the toilet, in fact I’m flushed with success, oh, please........
So much so I’ve looked up the unit you can add to a
standard toilet for about a thousand pounds, air con, heated seat, bidet and
water nozzle that can find your bottom at the press of a button.
Thank you for that and NO, please be useful and make us a cup of tea.
There’s no tea but I’ll have a go at a cup of
coffee. The kettle is a Thermos with
comprehensive instructions. The coffee is a bit of a
nonsense but I think I’ve got the idea. To be honest, I was thrilled
with Bear’s application involving a balancing act with a
bag..... but, if I shut my eyes I honestly couldn’t tell you what I was
drinking........... Ah, well, let’s bring some tea bags
back from breakfast. Here’s hoping.
   Breakfast in the
lobby is until ten at the weekend and nine thirty during the week, we
joined others at the long tables. I found Bear’s breakfast
was a little too yellow for my liking and he refused to try picking his
scrambled egg up with chopsticks (locals were), instead he found himself a knife
and fork about the size the Seven Dwarves would use. I had yoghurt that was
drizzled with Libby’s fruit salad and I added cocoa flakes to the top, tiny
croissants and dreamy little apple turnovers, food here is suddenly looking up
and my flip flops can stay on my feet (for now). By the time we had gone back to
our room and gathered our bits and bobs for the day ahead, reception was as we had found it the night before.
  Back in our room
I asked Bear to check a blog, his eyes shut for a while.........outside
was particularly grey and drizzly, so as we were in
no rush............my eyes closed too - and we went out at eleven. Tomorrow Bear
has selected what we get up to, today is mine to choose two places. Now if you
are given the choice to do anything at all in Tokyo, what would you pick – me,
it has to be the Parasite Museum (the only one in the world) followed by Tokyo
Station (the third busiest in Japan which serves all the bullet trains). Different I’ll give you that...... As not to have our nest ruffled I searched for the ‘Do Not
Disturb’ sign on the back of the door, no, not a dangly piece of card with a
door hook, here it is a very neat magnetic sign.......
 私はニンニクを食べることができない or
Watashi wa nin'niku o taberu koto ga
dekinai. All too necessary for me to know how
to say (write down) I cannot eat garlic – good ol’ Google translate. So
clutching my piece of paper that I printed last week
– I’m not getting fooled into eating shiro or nankotsu for anyone, even if it’s
for charity, wrote watashi wa nin'niku o taberu
koto ga dekinai on the back along with Hello – Kon’nichiwa,
Goodbye – Sayonara, Thank
You – Arigato and Please – Onegaishimasu. Fluent in a
week – huh, fifty years of weeks and I feel I would be no further
forward. We headed for Tamachi Train
Station.
  Our five minute walk to the station
was a wonderful people watch or more exactly – fashion watch. People wear all
kinds of things here, some wear far too many colours and some clearly have no
mirrors or friends. Most city businessmen wear immaculate shoes. This will keep
us endlessly entertained. Standing on the platform we marvelled at how we couldn’t find a single slither of rubbish, the floor
tiles were pristine as was the guard in his very smart
uniform and spotless white gloves.
 This now fully confident, happy boy has sussed out the Tokyo trains and grinned from
ear to ear. On we got.
  We hopped off our first train as tourists in Japan (under Bear’s expert
guidance....) and walked out into the bustling street. Bear
tried to see where we were on Google but his phone didn’t want to play so
we asked a Policeman for directions and walked the ten minutes to the Parasite
Museum (small and perfectly awesome), that done we bimbled.
 Downtown
Meguro.
Meguro
or in Japanese 目黒区,
is a special
ward in Tokyo, Japan. The English
translation of its Japanese self-designation is Meguro City. The ward was founded on
the 15th of March 1947.
Meguro is predominantly residential in character, but is also home to light industry, corporate head offices, the Komaba campus of University of Tokyo as well as fifteen foreign embassies and consulates. Residential neighborhoods include, Jiyugaoka, Kakinokizaka, and Nakameguro. As of May 1, 2015, the ward has an estimated population of 277,171 and a population density of 18,890 persons per square kilometre. The total area is 14.67 square kilometres. History: The Higashiyama shell mound in the north of the ward contains remains from the paleolithic, Jōmon, Yayoi, and Kofun periods. The area now known as Meguro was formerly two towns, Meguro proper and Hibusuma, all parts of the former Ebara District of Musashi Province. The two were merged into a Meguro ward for Tokyo City in 1932 and since then the ward has remained with no alterations to its territory. The name "Meguro," meaning "black eyes", derives from the Meguro Fudō (Black-eyed Fudō-myōō) of Ryūsenji. The Meguro Fudō was one of five Fudō-myōō statues placed at strategic points on the outskirts of Edo in the early seventeenth century by the abbot Tenkai, an advisor to Tokugawa Ieyasu, to provide protection for the new capital of the Tokugawa shogunate. Each statue had eyes of a different color. (Another Tokyo ward, Mejiro is named for the white-eyed Fudō-myōō).
Our first convenience store – oh it was busy. I had an excuse to ask for a little plain paper notebook to collect my stamps (visitors to places collect ink stamps provided), the young chap serving not only spoke perfect English, he knew where everything was in the shop. Sadly, he only had lined exercise books that wouldn’t fit in my strap purse – haven’t worn one since I was at school but it is necessary to carry your Passports in Japan as all kinds of uniformed people can ask you to produce them.
Some very dodgy looking ‘things’ in packets in the cold display, and not a hint of English to help in any way. Chewing my flip flop may well be on the menu (so soon into our trip) but thank heavens I like sake and we seem to be finding folk who can help us out.
Just prior to leaving Beez we had watched Joanna Lumley’s tour of Japan and knew we had to look out for restaurants who display plastic ‘lookalikes’ in their window, an aid to us lot who have to point-and-smile.
As Joanna had said, extraordinarily lifelike. I was particularly taken with the burger and gravy and had to have a closer look.
Amazing, we stood for ages gawping at all the food choices but we decided to head to Tokyo Station (my second stop of the day).
We got chatting to a lad studying at University here in the city. He pays US $500 a month for a 17 square metre room. He explained that it is not a simple matter of choosing a place, you have to know how long the building has “left to stand”. Residential houses in most parts of the city have a maximum of forty years, due to the frequent earthquakes they are then ripped down and new buildings go up. His room had a one month deposit and a two month “thank you to the owner”, so some places have a massive down payment “and you might have to say another couple of month ‘thank you’ at the end of your term of residency”. We stopped at an advertising board to see if we could understand what he had told us, randomly choosing three places. The first is four hundred and fifty eight pounds a month for 20.24 square metres. The rest of the information is all a bit iffy. The second place is five hundred and thirty two pounds a month for 24 square metres and the third is nine hundred and thirty pounds a month for 43.13 square metres.
Time to end our bimble in Meguro and head to Tokyo Station, that done we took the train to our base of Tamachi where we could see road works from our down moving escalator.
We don’t feel ready to take on the buses as the signs in the window are all in ‘spaghetti’, the English bit is in tiny letters on the front below bigger local writing.
We stopped at the supermarket just before our hotel and found it very odd to see Halloween stuff for sale just inside the door.
This large, underground store, brightly lit and selling just about everything you can think that Tesco would stock, but oh, the fruit and veg selection is truly outstanding. And huge to say the very least,
ALL IN ALL OUR FIRST JAPANESE BIMBLE FASCINATING BUSY-NESS |
