Hello Lily

Chinese New Year - Monday

We had originally intended to go away for one night over Chinese New Year, which would allow us to do some jungle trekking near the Cameron Highlands in central Malaysia. However, apparently not as many people stay in their homes over Chinese New Year as we were led to believe, and all the guides in the national parks were already booked. We decided instead to do a roadtrip to the mainland and visit Burkit Lepah, Malaysia's highest hill station (around 1200m above sea level)....and for good reason - it was wonderfully cool up there.

Although in theory the guides were booked, they did manage to slip us on a range rover going up the mountain but there was no guarantee about coming back down again. So walk it we did. 10km. As 'steep' as Penang Hill but infinitely more enjoyable with company...even if it did rain 1km from the bottom...a Chinese man passed 3 of us trying to fit under the umbrella shown below and he beckoned me over and we all walked the rest of the way together, dry on at least one side of us.

I've been in thunderstorms in the tropics before but this was something else. There was so much water around but it was still wonderfully warm, if a little squelchy.

Rich and Natasja (fellow trampers):

Kek Lok Si Temple photos

By day....

By night...

Chinese New Year - Sunday

For the Chinese, Chinese New Year is very much like our Christmas: it's a family event where most people travel back to their home town for a week. As in Japan, it's also an opportunity to visit a temple and pray for good luck for the coming year.

Kek Lok Si is the dominant Buddhist temple on Penang. By day, it's a staid, solid affair. By night, however, it looks like something on the Las Vegas strip.

Chinese New Year - Sunday

My first day of rain on Penang coincided with my first car....
I spent the weekend dog-sitting for a colleague who had taken advantage of the 4-day weekend to visit Langkawi, a tropical island just north of Penang, and gained a car as well as two manic (but thankfully small, dogs). O joy of joys. Having a car makes such a difference on Penang.

Chinese New Year - Saturday - the Botanic gardens

On a stroll around the Botanic Gardens, I came across this sign.

Scenes from Chinese New Year

Introducing Laila

Chinese New Year - Saturday in Georgetown

Laila and I spent Saturday morning wandering around Georgetown old town. It was the British who first controlled this area and in amongst the wharves and quays are colonial mansions, english gardens and the odd red 'bug' or two.

Fish pond at work...

Chinese New Year starts tonight so will swop my firecrackers for trekking on the mainland. Back Wednesday...

My work

It's sometimes hard for me to explain to others exactly what my work involves. Saying I work in fisheries tends to lead to wrong conclusions, so I think most people know I get up to some fishy business and leave it at that. Well, if you want to know more, here is a short (750 words) article I recently wrote for a UK consumer magazine. It hopefully provides an indication of the focus of WFC's fisheries and development work.

Thinking big: the contribution of small-scale fisheries to sustainable resource management

The Benguela current provides Namibia with nutrient-rich fishing grounds, leaving Namibia with a heavily exploited fishery when it gained independence from South Africa in 1990. The Namibian government embarked on a two-pronged policy approach; to ensure the sustainable management of fisheries and to maximize those benefits for Namibians. Today, fish stocks have stabilized, the fishing sector has increased its economic contribution to 26% of merchandise exports and fisheries employment more than doubled between 1991 and 1998.

Fisheries reform in Namibia has recaptured a substantial proportion of the economic loss previously associated with industrial fishing and highlights the crucial role of good governance in sustainable development. When well managed, the fisheries sector in developing countries can make an important contribution to poverty reduction, food security and wealth creation. If not, stocks can be depleted and the incomes of those who use the resource are reduced.

Increasing resource-user involvement in the management of aquatic resources has proven a critical element of fisheries reform. Stakeholder involvement in planning can improve compliance with international regulations and empower small-scale fishing communities who are often socially and politically marginalized. An FAO study in Senegal found that only when stakeholders feel they are partly responsible for fisheries management and feel they can influence it, will they be inclined to initiate or conform to fisheries management mechanisms.

However, this assumes that firstly, fisherfolk perceive the future status of the resource as among the most significant threats to their livelihood security, and second, that they have the organizational capacity and political power to adequately defend their rights. Where fisherfolk are poor, vulnerable and marginalized, these may not prove true.

Development programmes such as the Sustainable Fisheries Livelihoods Programme – a partnership between FAO, DfID and 25 countries in West Africa - have placed greater emphasis on addressing all forms of poverty found in the sector, believing that in order to make devolved fisheries management work, there is a need to address the factors that most immediately and directly threaten the sustainability of fisherfolk’s livelihoods. Often these factors are not related to their fishing activities and the status of the resource. For example, securing access to fish is important but it doesn’t protect fishers and their families from malaria, HIV/AIDS, waterborne diseases, accidents such as drowning, theft or lack of access to alternative livelihoods. Alongside Lake Kompienga in Burkina Faso, which was ranked 172nd out of 174 countries in the United Nation Program for Development’s Standard of Living Index in 2001, there are few health clinics and infrastructure is virtually non-existent. The small-scale fisheries sector in places such as Burkina Faso is also vulnerable to factors external and beyond their control such as tourism, pollution and industrial development. Overall, this leaves them vulnerable and exposed to risks such as natural disasters, economic, policy or governance failures. Providing development support to fishing communities in the form of better access to social services can help achieve poverty reduction and facilitate the adoption of responsible fisheries practices.

Many fishing communities also lack the power, education and social institutions to self-organise and articulate demands, or may have weak political representation leading to their marginalization in traditional development processes. They therefore need social development assistance in order to participate as partners with government in fisheries management. The SFLP has helped fisheries communities strengthen the capacity of co-management and fishing organizations, define property rights regimes, provide training and support for the diversification of livelihoods, empower women, and strengthen human rights. These rights include legally-mandated rights to decent working conditions, gender equality, children’s rights and the rights of migrants and other potentially vulnerable groups.

Namibia now boasts a strong domestic fishing industry that contributes a resource rent to the government. Development that addresses the needs of the small-scale fisheries sector as they perceive them provides an incentive and capacity for true reform, bringing both sustainability and profitability.

My work environment

Walking between my office and the canteen.

The open air (just a roof) corridor at work, leading to the canteen.

The sign along the open air corridor.

On this day in history...

He read.........pause............his speech from an autocue, right?

Penang slang

The English language in Penang is quite funny. I think it's because the English spoken here is a bit pigeon-English and has been spoken for so long that it's now just simply English.

These are very common signs:

Teksi
Sen (for cent. They call the Ringett dollars and cents here)
Sentral Station
Restoran

And another thing I've noticed is that locals love to perform, particularly singing. You can generally pass any market and there will be someone doing what is effectively karaoke. The other day in our closest shopping mall, anyone could take the mike while about 200 people sat on provided chairs. Young people, old people...everyone seems to be up to clambering on stage and singing high-pitched nasal tunes into bad mics. You can imagine...

First weekend Part II

In the UK, you get to 'phone a friend'. In Penang, I had to find one. All my friends who live in and around my appartment block were unexpectedly away for the weekend in Langkawi, Singapore and on a course in Georgetown. So there was nothing for it but to make a new one. It hadn't been my intention but in the pool yesterday, the other two whities and I got talking. Both head up foreign owned manufacturing plants on the island, which seems to be the main reason for non-WFC expats to be here. One of them - Rich - had a car and nothing to do. I, of course, have no car and plenty to do, so we all teamed up on Sunday to visit the Butterfly Farm. Perhaps you think a butterfly farm wouldn't be on everyone's top 10 list of things to do, but I'd done the only other thing there is to do here the day before (although I am a Penang-novice still so could be wrong).

I don't have a vast repetoire of butterfly farms to compare with, but this one was excellent. It was stinky hot but beautifully done and the butterflies were amazing. So was the shop, but mainly because it had aircon.

To get there we drove past a local market where we stopped for lunch (hot and spicy), past Batu Ferringhi (the only usable beaches on the island), a spice farm and tropical fruit farm (both we left for another day). To get away, we drove down the west of the island and crossed across the middle. Life in the west is totally different to the concrete east. It's much less developed but much more natural and beautiful. There's a small national park there that I hope to visit at some point.

Got home in time to contemplate a swim before it got dark, but that's as far as I got. And that's because I did actually phone a friend.

First weekend Part I

I made it my aim on Saturday to try to figure out exactly HOW bad the public transport here is. So, my first aim was to get to Island hospital for a physio appointment (all these flip-flops are doing nothing for my hip). It turns out that bus stops hold no information whatsoever. Nothing. So you hang around and wait for a bus that may or may not come and then you ask the driver if he's going to where you want to go. And then you hop on or wait some more. It took me a loooong time to get to the hospital, changing twice and walking some, but only cost 20p. But everyone was very helpful with people coming up to me to give me information they had clearly spent some years acquiring about their local buses. However, it was all worth it, as for only a tenner equivalent I got 1 hour of physio, including something called infrared treatment where they fry you using infrared electrode thingies that feel like ants crawling on your skin (meant to relax your muscles), followed by icepacks to presumably freeze your muscles. With the aircon and icepacks, I was blue within about 5 minutes. But it helped a lot.

From there, I was reliably informed it was a 10 minute walk to another bus stop in the opposite direction thanks to Georgetown's stupid 1-way system in order to travel 1km to the centre (could take around 30 mins) in order to find another bus going back out the 8km (length of time to get there: anyone's guess) to the funiular railway, where I wanted to be. So I took a taxi and my 3 quid was definitely worth it.

By the time I reached the top of Penang Hill, 800m above sea-level, it was midday and very, very hot. My main aim for going up there was for the view (check) and the walk back down (check). I had expected the walk to be through forests and over streams, listening to the birdies and crickets and walking in the shade. W-rong. It was down the tarmac road. When asking my colleagues about Penang Hill, they all replied 'steep', but it's hard to know what steep really means. Well, it means steep. Very steep. It's 8km down that ruddy mountain and by halfway I could go neither up nor down. So I had a break and then proceeded to go backwards down the road, which stretched out my calves and gave my knees and thighs a break. A chinese man overtook me at one point, also going backwards and I met about 20 people going the wrong way. Up the mountain. At lunchtime! For fun!! I felt such a fraud, but by the bottom, I could hardly walk and I didn't care anymore. I waited for a bus.

I got home about an hour later with the aid of a taxi, realising that you are nuts to try and do anything by bus here and that I'm really glad I had a pool waiting for me.

Yet another....

..haircut. I don't know why I bother getting my hair cut anywhere except Stirling (and who thought there would host such tremendous slicing skills). But it's hot here and my hair was getting to that shaggy-dog growing out stage, so off I went.

I should have just ripped off the protective sheet and left when my hairdresser arrived, looking 16 years old, chewing gum and texting on her phone while with her other hand she patted my shoulder and without looking up said 'you wanna me cut yor hair?'. But without a chance for me to reply, she snapped shut the phone, grabbed my head and started flicking my fringe and yanking the hair down. So I tried to explain that I am g-r-o-w-i-n-g it and she said 'you wanna bob?' and I said no, not quite, more long bits with some layers at the bottom and my fringe chopped. She looked at me quizically and went off, appearing moment later with a hefty hair magazine. She started looking through the pages and pouncing on various options to show me. Nothing was quite right so I tried to explain to her again. She nodded as if she'd understaood. Mistake.

Along came my shampooer who squirted shampoo in her hand, plopped it on top of my head and squirted water from a bottle on to it, using her hands to cup the water and preventing it from running down my neck. She then massaged the shampoo and water into my hair and it began to foam, all while I am sitting upright. She continued until she had my whole head in a lather and then gave me a head massage, which sounds great, but as I've discovered in more than one country in Asia, it involved slapping my head a bit, pulling my hair out and generally bringing tears to my eyes. And after all that, she washes my hair under the sinks that we have in hairdressers in Europe. I asked her about it and she said that if she washed customers' hair straight under the sinks, Asians would call her lazy. All in all, it was quite a clever little process.

It's really hard to know how much to trust a hairdresser and let them get on with it; relying on their experience and training. Well now I know. Trust no-one. When she started chopping the top bits with Calvin spikyness I gave in and send something about how I wanted it long. She went off and got another hair picture book and the closest we got was her saying 'ah yes, yor hair look like that in 5 month. No problem'. Well, pity it does not look like that now. Having mentioned that I'd wanted it long, she did manage to leave some bits long. Yes, the bottom bits near my neck. She then proceeded to use the hair straighteners to flick them out in what could have been verging towards a girly cute look. But it didn't. Hello mullet.

I paid 34 RM for the cut, which is 6 GBP or so. You get what you pay for, I'm afraid. So I bought a very posh hair product for almost twice that (I'm sure they only give you bad cuts so you buy their products). And just like with my last cut, I ended the evening by taking the kitchen scissors to the bottom flicky bits myself. From now on, I'm leaving my poor tresses to grow.

One week done...

I arrived a week ago today and so far so good.

I've been given a whopping great big amount of work to do, by Wednesday, which will keep even my weekend busy and have already been 'voluntarily' signed up to present in February at a weekly information session (they want something similar to what I said in Vietnam on food markets and supply chain access for developing country producers) called 'Food for Thought'. While I could get away in Vietnam by sounding smart as it is still an emerging area, I will be speaking to the experts in this field so better re-think my little speech (or bring out the blinding orange skirt again as a distraction).

I've settled into my new home too, having found the gym, tennis courts and the pool (it's not called 'Gold Coast Resort' for nothing) and am slowly learning that there are more things out there than immediately obvious, including a local food market, food courts, the cinema (Australia is top of the list but only because it's the only non-Kung Fu film), karaoke (this is on hold, hopefully for ever), salsa..and cheap flights if I really do need the bright lights of a big city (KL 50 mins, Singapore 1 hour).

My co-workers are quickly becoming my friends and fellow explorees of Penang. I get lifts with them, eat with them, get info on physios from them, try out yoga en masse, discuss work/exes/and Friday night options (yes, Karaoke again) and generally being friends.

After 1 week, the main disadvantage remains the lack of independence brought out by relying on lifts/taxis/cars to get anywhere on the island. This weekend, I hope to move under my own steam a bit more and wander around Georgetown. To many people here, one of the things that makes Penang too developed is the urbanisation of the eastern side of the island. Many want to get back to no electricity or running water a.k.a. 'real' development. So my first week has been eye opening in many ways.

Meanwhile, those I used to live with are getting some shut-eye.

Greetings Earthlings!

Greetings Earthlings!

Joke, but life is so different here that sometimes I feel very far away. The tennis courts at work and my own WFC mug when I arrived are helping me settle in though. They’ve even got a yoga/tai-chi/pilates fusion-class thingy after work.

While here, I’ll be working mainly on a project called the Coral Triangle Initiative, and my role will be to look at current and future fish supply and demand in the Coral Triangle area, with scenarios taking into account impacts of trade, price elasticities and substitutability of fish in diets in Indonesia and the Solomon Islands. Yes, I don't know what that means either. Unfortunately, I have to deliver. But judging by our meeting this morning, my colleagues dont' seem entirely sure about what they are doing either. I've got 2 weeks until the next meeting to make something up. Alongside that, I’ll be working a bit on the SEAT (Sustaining Ethical Aquaculture Trade) project, to which my PhD is attached. And initially, I'll be writing an article on industrial fisheries. It was a bit of a whoopsie as two people at work each thought the other had said no to writing it and now that it's a confirmed yes, someone has to do it. Hello me. But I'm quite pleased really because I REALLY don't know what I'm doing on the other thing.

No Friday afternoon drinkies at work as per the OECD, but I’m sure we can change that in time..and judging by the number of Scots here. No 2-hour lunch breaks either as in France, but there’s a lotta lotta curry about. So, so far so good, despite the heat. It’s around 29-30 degrees during the day (but feels much hotter in the direct sun) and very humid. Despite the sea breezes, at night I still have the will-I/won't-I use the air-con debate. But the buildings both at work and at home have outside corridors so that helps. And there's a massive fish pond at work (no puny fish tank for us here o-no-no-no), which is at the very least entertaining.

The only real drawback is that the east side of the island is a bit concreted (little development planning here) so there’s an enormous reliance on motorized transport (no vespas unfortunately). It's hot to walk or bike, there are no pavements and the roads are expressways. Without a car I feel I have lost some independence (but with a car I would be stuck in traffic jams), so it's just a very different way of living. I'm about a third of the way up the eastern side of the island, work is at the south-eastern tip and Georgetown - where everything happens - is at the north-east. So I'm well situated for everything - or you could say that if I want to go anywhere, I need to rely on someone else's wheels. In fact, we go about 0830 to work because travelling any earlier down our stretch of road would take too long as it's rush-hour. And then we have to be out the office at 1730 sharp as any later and it will take 45 minutes instead of 10 to get home. I believe 0830-1730 are the hours the nearby Bosch factory keeps. But hopefully I’ll get to explore the jungle on the west side while I’m here. I’ve already found the shops.

It's a different world...

I've never been in a place like this before. I have actually been to Penang before (10.5 years ago as a backpacker), but what I mean is that I'm in a whole new world.

First of all, it's all about fish. Coming from a work environment of 4 fisheries economists who are trying to convince everyone else that it's all about fish, I am now surrounded by highly intelligent, enthusiastic, experienced people who KNOW it's all about fish. It's like night and day. EVERYONE'S working on fish here. And they are making a difference....

And that's the second thing. The focus here is development. I, and many other developed-country educated natural resource analysts have focused on and been trained in fisheries in developed countries. It was the remit of the OECD although we did branch out to do some useful work on policy coherence for development in fisheries in West Africa, but that was about it. But here, it's all about the developing side of things and that changes everything. I have little experience in this area but I can see the need for getting it and this seems to be the place to do that, although I am hugely out of my depth...

And that is the third thing. I chose the words 'intelligent, enthusiastic, experienced' deliberately. These people are some of the brightest, critical minds that I have ever come across, and it's only my first day in the office. They are SMART. And their vocabularies are enormous. And none of them have come directly from their country of origin. But they don't then pass through the US or Australia or something. They work in East Timor, Bangladesh, the Congo etc. I mean, they've got EXPERIENCE. They've done no running water and full-time rubber soled shoes so you don't get electricuted in rural Tanzania. They've done 2 years of field work in Peru, or maybe make that Sri Lanka, or maybe Pakistan or Afghanistan. They all have PhDs and the frightening thing is that I am meeting a LOT of 28 year olds. HOW did they pack all that in? One girl is French Canadian with a father from Gabon and she did her Masters in Nicaragua, her PhD in Germany, her fieldwork in Lima, her write-up in Bremen, and is now a post-doc in England but running a project from here. Yes, she's only 28 too. It's a world I've never been in before. And it clearly has an impact personally as well as professionally for my fellow colleagues. Boyfriends and partners are scattered across the world. Loads of them negotiate time zones of 8 hours to speak to their other half. Many see each other every 4 months or so. French Guiyana to Penang? You won't see each other often. But it seems almost the norm here. Lots of people do also have their families here but it's always short-term: 1, 2 or 3 years before they go on to Darfur or Angola. It's not the easy stuff for them. There's clearly a cost, but what I can also see is that they make it work: Change becomes their norm. Flexibility and open-mindedness just becomes how they live and many take it in turns to follow one partner and then the other. In development, there's normally always something to do for the skills of the 'follower', if that's what they want.

So it feels quite overwhelming. Good, but overwhelming. I thought my CV was developing well until I met these guys. But I think the major difference is that while I was conducting my 'tour of European Capital Cities' (London, Brussels, Paris etc), they got the miles under their belts. That gives us different skills but also a kind of richness. If I stay along this kind of work, who knows what my 30s will bring!

GMT + 8 hours

So, this is what my appartment block looks
like.









And this is the view:










And this is the crazy elevator. In Chinese the number 4 is bad luck or something to do with the dead, so number 4 and 14 are both missing. Then the number 13 is also for bad luck in Western society so to balance things out they also remove that. So what you end up with is an elevator that says 1, 2, 3, 3a, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 12a, 12b, 15 etc..

Goodbye Tokyo

Our Japan trip has been fantatsic. I have loved this place and loved the holiday and it's been a great transition between 2008 and 2009. The people we've met have been so polite and so kind. Many times people have gone out of their way to help us and we greatly appreciate it - we would have been lost and hungry without them. Thank you especially to my travel companions and to our Japanese hosts, who couldn't have made life easier for us.

Unfortunately, I slightly exploited the kind Japanese nature at the airport. I knew secretly that I was only allowed one piece of luggage on Malaysia Airlines at 20kg. And I knew blatantly that I had waaay more than that. When I checked in both pieces she showed me on my reservation form that I was only allowed 20kg. Oh no, said I, with shock and horror on my face. Whatever shall I do? She said don't worry and told me I could take 25kg on. Thank you thank you I said. But, she said, you have 28kg. Ok I said, I will repack. So I took out all my books and somehow, I have no idea how, the thing still read 27.6 kg. I said oh no. She said no worry, it's ok. Really? I said. Bowing and smiling, bowing and smiling. Yes she said, bowing and smiling, bowing and smiling. Oh happy day. That meant plenty more space to buy in duty free...tee hee.

Food

I have tried tuna, urchin, scallop, flatfish, shellfish, sushi, sashimi, and numerous unidentified fish with heads on in batter (see photo). Food has not always been my strong point in Japan, mainly because everything comes with fish. Even plain old pasta comes with seaweed on top.

But in Kobe, we had an altogether different food experience. In Kobe, we had Kobe steak. Kobe cows are wined and dined. They click their fingers and it's a 3 course meal for dinner, with beer, followed by an onsen and massage and yearly holidays to disneyland. These cows are spoiled. These cows are good. This steak was g o o d.

This steak was so tender that we could have cut it with chop sticks. I know this because I did. This steak was so tender that we couldn't eat more than they gave us - it was so rich and so intense and so filling. And so expensive. It was our most expensive meal on the whole trip but it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Unless I make loadsa money. Maybe.

Kobe

Kobe is another place that has suffered a great deal in the earthquake of 1995, and recovered too. This was a part of downtown that has been preserved with earthquake damage, while rebuilding has taken place around it.

Mt Fuji

So while Paris woke up to this:

We woke up to this:

The Onsen Experience

'Onsen' are Japanese baths. They are very hot and they are not baths to clean yourself but baths to bathe. For our very first one, we copied the locals, but generally found that when we arrived, they left and so most we had to ourselves. It is first necessary to remove all clothing in a cold room and leave it in open baskets. Next: very important step: enter the onsen and clean yourself. It's basically a really big shower room where you clean yourself completely with a flannel. You may then enter the baths themselves. The bath inside must have been over 40 degrees. It felt like it anyway. But there's also an outside bath and during our first onsen experience, the snow was falling and we were lovely and toasty warm. Actually, often too warm, and we had to regularly jump into the ice tub strategically placed in the snow. Although our first Onsen was an hour away from Kyoto, we also had one Ryokan with an onsen downstairs and our final onsen was also in our hotel with a view of Mt Fuji.

I obviously couldn't take a picture of an onsen but here is a calming, relaxing one instead on one of the 2 days when we had snow.

Scenes from Japan

Hiroshima

Hiroshima. On the 6th of August, 1945 at 0815, 50Kg of Uranium (of which only 1kg was involved in the reaction) was exploded 600 metres over Hiroshima with a ball of fine 280m in diamter, producing an explosion equivalent to 16 000 tons of conventional bombs (a small one compared to what we have been able to produce since). Within 2km of the centre, almost everything perished, mostly from the blast, immediate ration and heat. 140 000 of Hiroshima's 350 000 residents were dead by Christmas 1945. The long-term effects of radiation are still being dealt with, and discovered.

We learnt all this at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, an excellent museum detailing the facts of what happened as well as the consequences then and since. Walking around Hiroshima later, it was hard to imagine what it had endured as today it is a vibrant, fun, funky city. It is still almost impossible to believe that such a thing was ever allowed to happen. It cost the US 2 billion dollars to make 'Little Boy' and took 6 years and the US was looking to justify such expenditure. Today, an eternal flame in the centre of the Peace Park will remain alight until the last nuclear weapon is exterminated. Every time a nuclear weapon is tested, the Mayor of Hiroshima writes to the country responsible, begging for an end to the testing and use of nuclear weapons. Mother Theresa has visited the Peace Memorial Museum, Betrand Delanoe, the Dalai Lama, Yeltsin, Simon Peres, Mary Robinson, Nobel Laureates, Vaclav...the list goes on. You cannot help but be affected by what you see, read and hear. In stark contrast, the Peace Park itself is extremely peaceful and the memorials themselves somehow bring a sense of peace out of the horror. The above picture is of a large number of paper cranes - a symbol of peace in Japan. Hiroshima today is a symbol of persistence, of a literal rising from the ashes. Below is a preserved building from the blast. It was almost directly under the bomb and so was spared some of the blast that completely destroyed other buildings. It remains a reminder of the potential horror of nuclear power and of man's ability to rebuild.

Japan: it does what it says on the tin

This post is really about technology in Japan. And in Japan, it does what it says on the tin. If it says 'hot water', then the water is hot. And if it says the waer is cold, then you know it's really, really cold. Japan is a very visual society, so every instruction is accompanied by an image. And that means that even the signs in Japanese on the sides of the toilet leave little to the imagination. Toilets in Japan are amazing. They open the lid when you enter the toilet, they almost all have heated seats (lovely; this should be compulsory), they can provide front and back sprays, fake flushing sounds so that no-one can hear what you are really up to, and there's no need to touch anything, ever. It's all automatic, including the soap dispenser, water and hand dryer, sometimes all in the same unit. However, Japan has somehow still managed to remain a 'mobile-ring-free' society. They are prohibited to ring in most trains including the metro and we rarely, rarely heard a mobile ring, despite everyone playing on them. One of our most technological experiences was travelling on the famous ' Shinkansen' - the super duper ultra super speedy express trains. It was actually on a much lesser train however, that we saw some cool technology at work. We took a monorail in Kobe and as we exited from the shadows of buildings, the windows would steam up instantly and automatically, providing us with sun protection and it meant we didn't have to screw up our eyes from the otherwise streaming sun. Brilliant.

New Year in Kyoto

Happy New Year everyone!

We arrived in Kyoto yesterday - a beautiful city with many old traditional buildings, although unfortunately many people have come to Kyoto for New Year and we were only able to find accommodation outside of town. Kyoto is very spread out and this means we have to travel quite far in and out everyday to see anything. Also, it's very cold...

...but, we still managed to have a fantastic New Year. New Year in Japan is unlike anything I have experienced anywhere else. You'd think that the clock striking 12 would be a big deal, but not so here. Here, the hour of midnight is barely noticed as most people head towards the nearest temple to pray, regardless of religious beliefs. Actually, we'd managed one temple before midnight that had left us enthralled. A 7 ton bell was struck 108 times before midnight by a group of Buddhist monks as a means of expelling 108 sins for those worshipping there. The spectators were encouraged to move around this bell but really there was no choice: the number of people there meant you moved with the crowd whether you wanted to or not. The time between strikes was used to move and at the time of the actual strike, we all stopped moving. This is because the monks ring the bell by swinging a huge log backwards and forwards using ropes attached to the side of the log whilst chanting one of the 108 prayers. At the penultimate swing, one of the monks steps up, grabs a rope at the head of the log and on the final swing, pulls the log towards him so that it swings over his head as he lies horizontally on his back and the force of the movement means that the log comes into contact with the bell in a huge, deep DONG! It was amazing, but we almost never got to see it. We'd returned to our ryokan - a traditional Japanese Inn and had lain down for a quick nap (we were all suffering from terrible jetlag and me a terrible cold too) when I failed to set the alarm properly. We woke up in a panic just in time to run to meet our friends for dinner. Later, after wandering around the main temple shrine and area after being steered away from the bell, I found that I really needed the loo and so into the closest I ducked...at which time the clock struck 12 and I emerged to the hilarious shrieks of my nearest and dearest who informed me I was officially weeing at the appointed hour. As I said, a New Year like never before.

In Tokyo, we met up with a friend from the OECD for dinner and she told me that in Japan, you go to Shinto Shrine to be christened, the Church to be wed and a Buddhist temple for the funeral and in no other country are the religions amalgamated in quite the same way. We went to a major shrine in the early hours of the new year with thousands of others who were praying for luck for the coming year and so despite what any of these religions might say, it still seems that it's still all about a lotta luck. In the courtyards, it's possible to have your fortune read from slips of paper that you pay to receive, you toss some money into a collection box and clap your hands twice and then get lucky apparently and it's also possible to hang up prayer 'wishes' on strips of wood. It was really interesting to see these mixes of beliefs and especially faith in good luck. I couldn't quite work out what that meant if bad luck came your way, but perhaps one example of how this all works is when Satoru tossed in a coin and prayed at a shrine later on and then came back to tell me that he'd prayed for luck for us for today and tomorrow and I said 'ah, but what about the rest of the week?' and he said 'well, I only put in 5 yen' (much much less than 1p), so apparently luck does have a price.