One of the reasons for the absence of posting over Xmas was my fantastic wife and I were planning a surprise trip to the Isle of Man for the holidays – and we were doing our best to make sure that members of the family had no idea we would be there.

Two weeks on the Isle of Man, two days in London. I don’t really have the capacity to say how I feel about what I saw and how I felt on the island, so perhaps a gander at the photo album with pictures will help a bit. I love the sea. I love hillwalking. I am lucky to have the people I do in my life.

What you do get to see here, though, is the collection of photos of various family members jumping about.

Why?

Because we can.

Life back in Nagoya. We have plans, we have motivation, and apparently lots of sunshine.

I had no idea that Eastern Japan is known for the fact that in Winter, while it might get cold, it’s almost sunny and clear EVERY DAY. Every now and then clouds pop up to make things interesting, but it’s usually at sunset. Two days of rain in the past 2 months. I saw flurries three nights ago. Little diamonds floating through the light.

A week plus of jet-lag, a week to settle back into the language and the way of life, and I say welcome back readers. Glad to see you again.

Sometimes you just have to sit down, grab some fresh fried chicken, and watch people be accosted by pigeons outside a Buddhist temple.

Weather is turning colder, not a threat of snow at all. Every day for the past two weeks has been sunny, with only a day or two of clouds.

Xmas is an interesting holiday here. Completely secular and a day to be spent with your loved one – it’s a “lover’s holiday” as was explained to me. Makes sense since most of the country follows Buddhism & Shintoism. Decorations everywhere, especially in the retail areas. Seems a whole lot more inclusive to be honest.

I did hear somewhere that many kids here think its Santa’s Birthday. Hehe.

So fried chicken. Pigeons. Xmas gifts. Buddhist charms and some fun plans coming up. The holiday season is sure interesting!

The posts are a little less frequent but that does not mean the thrill or excitement has diminished at all from living here.

If you spend any time on my Flickr or Twitter I tend to do most of my posting of things happening RIGHT now in 140 characters or less. That works most of the time, but let’s try something different right now.

Phone blogging – admittedly this is a little longer than most of these will be, but a little premise is nice to put things into perspective and answer “why?”. Besides, now I have an excuse if I have more spelling mistakes. Luckily I have a wonderful editor who is quick to point out any mistakes for me.

So here I am, resting on a park bench outside of the Nagoya Harbor. It’s cold, 20mph winds, clouds here an there and I can still see mountains in the distance.

Hello micro blogging. Nice to meet you too!

Let’s start with a something short and sweet I learned the other night about pouring Sake. (酒)

It is impolite to not fill the glass all the way to the top. In fact, if you were at an establishment that serves Sake and the glass did not look like like the photo to the left, it would be expected for you to be upset at the situation presented to you and your drink and ask the pourer to top you up!

To help facilitate this wonderful display of surface tension, the glass is set into a small box. Upon pouring the glass, you fill it to the top and continue to pour.  Without the catch-box, this could get really messy – and wasteful! – as the Sake would then be spilled all over the table.  (I am unsure of the phrase for Party Foul in Japanese, but I am sure it exists.)  The extra Sake then washes over your glass into the box (I won’t say excess here, because I’m pretty sure there isn’t a phrase for “Too much Sake” either.)  This works out all too well.  Not only do you have a glass over-filled past the brim, and no mess to clean up, you ALSO have the chance to refill your glass with all the Sake that fell into the box!  What an amazing idea!  I’m sold. They need this with every drink.

Now I believe this to be wholly accurate as it did come from Japanese friends of ours, but we were all enjoying a night out to welcome another member to the Theoretical Astrophysics group so take everything said with a glass of Sake.  Or Two.

かんぱい！

I’ll leave most of the the sentimental thoughts in my own mind for now, and just leave a picture. There’s a castle in it as well, so that’s even better. I love my wife, and I am truly the happiest guy in the world when I’m with her. Each day brings something new, and I know that as long as I have her with me, things will always be … well …

I’ll keep the mushy stuff down in the future, promise. Maybe.

I love aquariums. Absolutely love them. I used to be an avid fishkeeper myself (looking at setting one up here before the New Year as funds allow, just something small either with a single Betta splendens or some shrimp, live plants, Amano-style all that.) Keeping it under 5 gallons for sure. (Easy to move then!) I’ve been lucky to visit a few back home: Shed Aquarium (of course!), Baltimore Aquarium, Georgia Aquarium(Wow. Just wow.), and the Tampa Aquarium. I won’t go into critique mode, but this is an impressive place – doesn’t have much in the way of Freshwater specices and focuses mainly on Tropical/Subtropical & Japanese ecosystems (which makes sense) but there is, in particular one feature that actually left me nearly speechless.

Jen said the katakana put it with the name of “sardine tornado.”

What we saw was just a massive tank with tuna, a few hammerhead shark species, and … more sardines than I could count. Thousands. Perhaps tens of thousands. It was like watching a scene from Planet Earth – you just see a massive school of fish and are left in wonderment that such a thing could exist. Even with them all chilling in the corner of the tank, I was amazed.

The school would part as sharks swam through, or blazingly-fast tuna slid through the water, but stayed there and hung out. We watched in awe at it, and after a while moved onto the next room, satisfying our combined curiousity for the wonderful world of aquatic nature.

Among the regular sounds of the Aquarium you would expect to hear, some inspiring new-age music streamed in from around tube we had just crossed through (the barrier wall for the two rooms had a 6 foot long aquarium that you walked through to get between the two sections. Small nurse-sharks were the big feature.) My well-known habit of bounding off in any random direction when I see or hear something that might be of interest had placed me back into the tornado room, and after a call back to Jen who was wondering where I was, and probably wondering if I needed a leash, and we both stood in awe at the sight before us.

A crowd had formed in front of the giant tank. To the music, a rope containing a measurement of fish feed for the sardines would drop into the water, resulting with the ENTIRE school following the bag through the water in a rather tornado-like fashion. It was unlike anything I had ever seen in person. I half expected to hear David Attenburough narrating the scene next to me, translating what my eyes were seeing to properly allow for the full intake to my cereberium. The video really cannot do it justice. I stood there, amazed for longer than I can remember. I had to blink back tears – tears of sheer joy and amazement of what lies out there in nature. The music was pretty emotional too, so that had a bit to do with it as well. Not to go all soft or anything – you all know me, and I would imagine expect nothing less.

The rest of the aquarium brought a few more surprises with a very well-done Deep-sea section, Mangrove area, indoor sea turtle exhibit and beach, and Dolphin/Beluga tanks. Nothing, though, could top the tornado. Some photos below, the rest can be found here!

Not surprising, there wasn’t a shortage of Whale skeletons in the aquarium. Facinating, but it did remind me of the current situation with Whaling in Japan. I’m not a fan, and I’ll leave my thoughts with that particular practice at that.

All in all, we shall be back. I need to find out about an annual membership. It’s 5000Y – a bargain especially with our close proximity to it! No sense getting one now if it’s just calendar year though.

The port really is quite beautiful. There remain two separate museums we need to explore – one of the Antarctic variety, and the other a Maritime museum. In the habor actually sits an antarctic exploration ship – WITH an on-board Helicoptor. I cannot wait to check that out.

Sending our love back to our homes – thanks for reading!

National Cultural Day was on the 3rd of November, and Jen was given the day off. That’s a full on excuse to go see cool stuff, so after a quick scan of the handy English-version of the Sights of Nagoya City Map we had our route, and were off.

We did stop the Toganji Temple & the Atsuta Shrine on our way to the Shirotori Gardens (白鳥庭園 – Swan Gardens) However, I’ll refrain from commenting too much on the Shrines, Temples and Buddhist / Shinto religions here till I know more about them.  Besides, keeping things short and sweet sound like a good idea, and I’d rather not go too into depth about everything and it gives me an excuse to write later on too. ;D

The Gardens are in a traditional Japanese Style, lots of water, lots of carefully pruned plants, very serene feel to it all. From the official English map that we were handed, here’s what was written in it:

“The Shirotori Garden is a Japanese-style garden with a path running along the banks of streams and ponds.  The area of the garden is approximately 3.7 hectares.

The mound at the southwestern corner of the garden represents Mt. Ontake and the stream originating from the mound, the Kiso River.

In the center of the garden lies the Seiu-tei, a couple of tea ceremony rooms.

Seiu-tei was designed after the image of a swan, or “shirotori”, flying down to rest its wings.

Seiu-tei was designed after the depiction of the flow of the tides, one of the traditional aspects of Japanese gardens.  The ebb and flow effect is achieved by the use of modern technology.”

Fantastic … so what does it all mean?

Oh. That’s pretty darn cool.

The garden starts at the top of Mt. Ontake and a waterfall, and then flows down in a very beautiful fashion towards the ponds. Flowing water, sounds, plants everywhere, if we had more than just an hour I could’ve just sat and listened – the gardens close at 4:30pm and we didn’t arrive till 3:30!

As the water flows down stream it bends, twists, turns. Losing altitude, but never flowing so fast to cause too much of a ruckus. If you were to accidentally fall in, perhaps become a little unbalanced while stepping over the gapped-stones as you cross the river a couple times, you would have no danger in being whisked down stream. Which is a good thing, especially when you consider the guardians of the water here.

Jen looks at ease here, but that’s because she knows she is safe from the dangers that lay ahead.

As you continue down stream, you get to the ponds and the tea rooms. The photos do not really do it justice, but hopefully these can convey some of the scale, and beauty of the gardens.

As we crossed one of the bridges, it appeared that the waters were inhabited. Very few ducks were present, which considering how pristine the water is, seemed rather odd. A long ibis waded in the shallows, as if it knew something, knew not to get too close to the deeper water. As we approached the waters’ edge, it was then that the guardians of the ponds, the fabled Koi of Shirotori first appeared.

They look harmless, don’t they? No teeth in their mouths, just a few of them gently swimming around. They do this on purpose. As if they know our own tendencies, and how we let down our guard when it comes to small numbers of normally-docile animals. They had us both fooled. Jen wasn’t yet aware of the danger she was in.

Not heeding that foreboding ambiance in the air (if life had a soundtrack, it would have been very fast, very soft playing violins followed by periods of silence.  You know how it sounds.) we left the bank where we saw the “friendly” koi, and continued on across a bridge.  We looked across the water, and saw that for 50¥ you could buy a cup of food just like the locals were doing. Not a bad idea, it looked like they were having fun!

Jen went first, they started swimming up to her as we kneeled and sat along the steps. Laughter filled the air as the koi began to swim towards their new source of food. Just a few at first, trickling in, a steady stream if you pardon the pun.

It was at that moment, when your guard was down, when you were least expecting it that something happened. You could see it in their eyes. I pulled Jen back as they massed to critical levels, we heard a child scream. The following picture might or might not churn your stomach – a child might, or might not have JUST been devoured by Koi right before this photo was taken.

I couldn’t believe it, neither could Jen. Such harmless creatures – they don’t even have teeth! The water ran clear where the child might-or-might-not-have fallen in, obviously a testament to their bloodthirsty nature. Not a drop was spared.

I decided to take it upon myself to subdue these creatures. No more children would be swallowed up, not on my watch.

Oh … the humanity of it all.

Just look at their voraciousness! Their clear determination to consume everything around them! Like vegetarian pirhana – not a single food pellet survived!!!  The sheer chaos of ferocity was enough to make any Bond villain clench his hands and mutter, “Good … good.”

They amassed in such numbers, nary a care for their fellow fish, swimming on top of each other, just waiting for a finger to come too close. That’s when they would get you. I can’t read the signs, but I’m sure each one around the area warned of the imminent danger I was in. I would defy them, I would show them that I am not afraid of these whiskered ichthyoids!  (It wasn’t until after I saw the above picture that I realized how close I was to losing my toes.  I must be more careful!)

Having admitted defeat, having met their match and been rendered as the lesser of beasts, and myself having been rendered free of any remaining fish food, the Koi retreated back into the murky depths of the 2 foot deep clear water. Jen continued to throw out food to the odd one here or there, even attempting to lure ducks into a watery grave, but the Koi almost seemed distracted – wondering perhaps, what menace of a man did they just themselves survive.

It’s a good thing I didn’t have a net.

The garden tour continued, and even with the fear of a hydrologically induced death nearby, spirits were high at the sheer wonder of this garden.

The time we had there expired, and it was off to some night-time walking of the city. We will be back,. though The koi must be tamed. That, and we really really liked it here.

Sending love from Japan -