The Japanese government watches over the companies and fines and (more importantly) shames them if their worker welfare slips so far as to be headline news but the government also seems to depend upon companies as a kind of social safety net, regulating company behavior to an extent that would have Australian companies up in arms. Companies here pay our equivalent of the medicare levy, for example, and recently it has been proposed (I’m not sure if it has passed yet) that companies be made responsible for the increasing obesity of their workers - for each worker over 45 who is over a certain waist measurement after a certain date, the company will have to pay more of that levy to handle the assumed extra cost in medical care that person may cost the state (though since arriving here I’ve been told that there is no public health system except for keeping prices at the many private hospitals/clinics down by decree - not subsidization, so I’m not sure where said money is actually going… so I am obviously missing a piece of the puzzle here.)  This example may not be as severe as it may seem to many Australians since obesity in Japan is very much a ’salary man’s’ disease caused by too much time in the desk chair and too little time to eat healthily. Grabbing some curry and rice from the station curry stand when heading home on the very last train (if you haven’t missed it) is the best many can do. And this is the thing - the Japanese spend so much of their lives working and so much is expected of them by their companies that it does actually make sense that companies should be held at least partly responsible for their employees welfare beyond what is strictly the work environment. Of course that could equally apply to many Australian companies - particularly when it comes to excessive drinking of their employees at official and unofficial after work gatherings - but then we all know I’m a raging socialist so we can ignore that

But what about the welfare of temp agency staff?

Temp agencies apparently took a while to catch on in Japan because employers weren’t sure they wanted someone who was not indoctrinated in the company ‘way’ to invade the compound, as it were. It has taken off now, though, and people are not happy with the way the temporary workers are being treated - the companies they temp for do not consider them their own but the temp agencies do not offer the kind of protection that permanent staff get at a regular company. Rather than asking the temp agencies to, say, only take on the number of employees they can regularly offer work and so can afford to take care of as other companies take care of their workers (something which was the norm in Australia within my own memory but is now long gone) some have wanted to ban temp agencies altogether and the following appeared in Japan Today, today.

Ruling bloc eyes banning daily-basis dispatch of temp workers

Thursday 03rd July, 04:52 AM JST

TOKYO —

A task force of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner New Komeito Party agreed Wednesday to seek basically banning temp staff agencies from dispatching temp workers on a daily basis, a practice criticized for spawning young working poor and widening Japan’s social disparities, lawmakers said.

As the task force put out its basic stance Wednesday in seeking amendments to the worker dispatch law, the two parties plan to formulate their recommendations on the matter, and based on them the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry is expected to submit a bill to revise the law to the Diet in an extra session convening around late August

Interesting solution. On the surface it looks like those who wanted to ban the agencies altogether have come to a compromise, maybe that’s the case or maybe they are cleverer than their opponents think. It is inevitable that workers will need individual days off at least for the odd flu or funeral. If companies cannot hire temps for the day, what will they do? Two solutions come immediately to mind - the second of which might just see less demand for temp agencies altogether and more permanent (even if part-time) work for people. 

The first solution is the one which, frankly, many companies (at least in the West to my knowledge) already resort to instead of hiring temps: foist the work onto some other poor soul or souls who already have enough to do and then blame the poor sick or bereaved worker for not being there . The second solution is for the company to ‘take the high road", if you will, and actually take responsibility for managing this inevitable, unavoidable situation by actually preparing for it. Afterall that’s what today’s leadership is supposed to be all about isn’t it? Human Resource Management? The skeletal staffing arrangements of western companies where they might hire one person to be admin assistant for 5 or 6 mid level executives seems to me a false economy especially when you take into account that over-work and over-stress actually causes the kind of illness which will have people needing days off or working at half-strength if they come in. If you do not order enough copy paper in advance for your requirements then you have managed your needs badly - similarly if you find yourself without enough staff then you have also managed your needs badly, no matter what the reason, because people are wet machines that need rest and become ill if they don’t get enough.

In the ‘olden days’ before employees became "human resources" and, admittedly, before word processors and photocopiers there were ’secretarial pools’ from which people, ok lets face it women, could be transferred for the day or the week that someone was away. If there was notice, as in the case of planned leave, then there could even be a hand-over. Of course it meant that people in the typing pool had to handle the extra work and I wasn’t around then so I’m not sure how that was handled but I’m sure it was handled well in at least some companies.  Obviously there isn’t the amount of work that justifies a typing pool as such these days, but, it seems to me, with the huge cost of temp staff it wouldn’t hurt a company to have one or a few (depending on the size of company) extra ‘floating’ admin staff who are on permanent salary (even if it’s part time) to help out and be available to fill in where necessary. In fact I remember seeing adverts when I was first starting work for ‘admin floaters’ (and giggling stupidly because I was 14.)  Of course, this solution would lead to less demand for temp workers altogether and a decrease in temp agency revenue but it would mean more real jobs and maybe that’s what the anti-temp employment politicians have in mind - but it’s probably just a political compromise. It will be interesting to see what happens.

So, here is prettiness purchase number one - simple ceramic bowls and plates from a variety store called Daiso which sells everything from candy to laundry bags to simple shelving racks. These were 200yen each - about $2.00AUD

Hmm that white kitchen bench washes out the lovely cream colour - I’ll have to get myself a background cloth to make these shots better in future.

/happy sigh

We also now have our computers and on the 11th of July we will have desks to put them on - yay! I can’t wait to have sofas and a TV stand for this ridiculously huge (and yet the third biggest we could have chosen) flatscreen TV they’ve given us. I’ve been watching as many melodramas as I can find that aren’t actually Korean or Chinese because they speak slowly and repeat everything over and over to each other hehe. However I have to admit our favourite TV experience still looks more like this:

Damn Colbert and Stewart are on their two weeks off which they seem to take every three weeks at the moment though lol

So, as promised though a little late, here is a virtual tour of the inside of our new digs - not hugely interesting for many but just the sort of thing I was hoping to find when I was hunting for info on moving here the last few months so here goes.

Welcome! This is our little genkan (entrance way) where everyone will leave their shoes so as not to track dirt inside or damage the floors. This is probably the most "Japanese" part of the whole house - at least traditionally, the place is filled with very modern Japanese house-gadgets but I’ll get to them later.

To the left of the entrance is this lovely shoe closet, again very normal in Japan but different for us. What I can’t show you is that the shoe cupboard smells wonderful! It seems to be impregnated with some kind of wood oil - makes total sense of course, shoes being shoes, but was a nice surprise.

This is the kitchen window (to the left of where I was standing to take the above picture and looking out onto the entrance porch) it is a sliding door and so it can be left open if you are expecting visitors or just to let air through - at around 4 each afternoon I turn off the air-con and open up and get a wonderful breeze through the whole house.

And this is the cute galley kitchen (looking a lot neater than it is today with all my cooking utensils all over the bench.) The little window below the stove is a fish grill - ovens are fairly unusual in Japan unless it’s a really swish place or one of the houses important holus-bolus from the States. We have a dual microwave-convection oven which will likely get some use in winter as a conventional oven if we start to crave a roast chicken or lamb tandoori or some such.

But this shot is tastefully hiding something…

THE RUBBISH!! Anyone who has looked into living in Japan will have come across someone lamenting the complexity of recycling here - and it’s true! First you must use the bags from your local supermarket as the marking on the bags include which council you are in so you’d best not shop near work if you work far away. Then you have to separate the burnables and organics (red printed bag) from non-burnables (like old cameras or leather gloves - green printed bag) and then the recyclables must be separated into different blueprinted bags - PET bottles together in one, paper and cardboard into another, tins and cans in another and then plastics that aren’t PET (called pura) into another - oh and all glass jars and bottles or steel cans into baskets out front without bags. Almost everything has little symbols on to help you out and some packaging is quite complex as, for example, a PET bottle may have a pura label which must be cut off and of course the lid is also pura. I actually had to go out and buy a pair of scissors so I could do the rubbish! At the moment we are getting mounds of pura since we are eating from the wonderful fresh bento you can get from the supermarkets until we have the facilities to cook.

So there you go - if anyone in Australia doesn’t recycle because it’s too much trouble then there’s a different perspective for you. What happens if you get it wrong? Well, there are no fines but your rubbish won’t be collected if the men see the wrong thing through the clear plastic bag and it may just end up on your doorstep with a stern admonition from the neighbourhood "Queen Bee" - we haven’t met our yet but I’m happy to believe there is one and do everything to avoid her lol!

So, back to the tour.

This is what is known as our LD (Living/Dining) (this view is from beside the fridge.) It’s a great space and should have plenty of room for the two two seater sofas we have coming and a dining setting we will buy later so we can have people to dinner. You can see the monster air-con unit which cools the whole downstairs beautifully and also the doors that I open up for the wonderful tropical breeze - no issue with privacy as the wall of the terrace is one story tall.

A note about renting in Japan: most places will require you to provide not only your own air conditioner (which will be vital) also window coverings and even light fittings - so be prepared. We are paying a little more for our place than we intended but, unusually, it included all of those things AND basic fibre optic internet AND parking in the rent with no monthly maintenance fee (also usually required) so the extra monthly rent was totally worth it. Definitely something to look out for :) 

If you look carefully on the shadowy orange wall on the left of frame in the picture above, you can see two white panels, one is the light dimmer and the other is one of the house gadgets - it’s basically just the hot water control BUT it has a button on it which will automatically fill the bath upstairs for you! Lovely idea though you still have to go upstairs to put the plug in so… hmmm

Looking back from the glass doors you can see down the hallway to the front door and the stairs. Under the stairs there is a small powder room with an ingenious toilet with a hand basin fitted above the cistern and makes use of the clean water that comes in to fill the cistern by routing it through the tap wash your hands with before it goes down into the cistern. There is also a little laundry with a washing machine which sings to me as it starts and finishes a load and is also a dryer (though it crushes everything almost beyond ironing!)

But there’s something missing in this picture…

Ah, that’s better. Brigid has decided that her Japanese persona will be "the cat upon the stair". I’m not sure what she likes about it, maybe it’s because neither of us can sneak upstairs or down without her knowing where we are or perhaps it’s the point the air-con hits with it’s monster fans but she seems to love it.

At the top of the stairs and straight ahead is our study (or will be when the furniture arrives.) You can see how lovely and light it is and how green the view. This was the room that sold me on the place (and allowed me to put the big orange "feature" wall behind me hehe.) The top three windows open wide and you can get a good breeze through the top floor, too. 

This is a close up of the view, you can see that across our little step-street is a traditional house - I will put my desk at the window so that it can inspire me! No excuse not to sit at the desk and write everyday with a view like that!  I am fairly sure that the trees on the right of the photo are prunus trees so I can’t wait till next Spring to find out!!

Boring orientation shot - this is from the study door looking past the bathroom door on the right to the bedroom.

This is our oddly large bathroom, well half of it, and here the gadgets really begin - yes as you can see below we have an automatic flushing toilet with a bidet - no heated seat, though, at least not that we’ve worked out lol!

This is the other half of the bathroom: the shower which is actually more a a big wet-room with a bath in it. The Japanese have a stool beside the bath and a large bowl which they fill and then wash from before getting into the wonderfully deep bath for a good, mind & muscle relax. We mostly just stand and shower - switching on the water and letting it run on the floor takes some getting used to! I’ve never been into baths but I’m getting into them here - after all it’s the most comfortable place in the house at the moment! I must get myself some good onsen salts soon.

The panel on the wall near the bath is a wonderful house gadget - it is connected to the one downstairs and also has an auto fill button. Up here you can set the water level you want and the temperature you want and it MAINTAINS THAT TEMPERATURE FOR AS LONG AS YOU ARE IN THE BATH. The fiddling with taps to try to keep a bath warm is the main reason I’ve never been a bath person and this feature is what has won me over.  There is a "warm up" button, too, so you can start the bath cooler then reset the temperature to warmer if you like.

And the last house gadget I’ll rave about is also in the shower room. See the rods over the bath in the picture above with towels hanging from them? Well, with the use of special monster-sized versions of the clever little things you can hang on a line or clothes rack with multiple pegs on them from which you can hang socks and smalls, you can hang at least a couple of loads of washing in there and dry them beautifully!

Here is a shot of the water-proof shower door when it’s closed and you can see the panel just to the right of it above the light switch.

Here’s a close up - the wonderful relocation consultants have put little white labels with English translations on all the appliances for us.

This snazzy little machine keeps the shower room ventilated at all times but also allows you to push a button to warm the room in winter, dry the room and bath (and your towels at the same time) after bathing or you can push another button for "clothes drying" whatever is hanging on the rails - either cool air or warm air as you wish - set the timer for anything from half to 12 hours and Bob’s-your-uncle!

If you’re looking for a place in Japan I highly recommend getting one of these. In the Summer you will be showering almost every time you return to the house - that’s lots of laundry and lots of towels if they haven’t dried since your morning shower!

And finally the bedroom, view not as good but there is a little green and it is wonderfully light, though you want to keep your blinds closed to the heat till the afternoon.

And, to come full circle, here is the view of our little terrace from the bedroom window.

We are very happy here - it should be the perfect place to spend a couple of years, in fact, I reckon it will be hard to leave - but then, I’m currently in the Euphoria stage of the culture shock cycle so bring on the roller coaster LOL!!

SO, where are we exactly? Nagoya is on the main island of Japan, south west of Tokyo. In the map below the sprawling brown, tree-less area on the right edge is Tokyo (or part thereof) and the compact brown, tree-less area to the South East, surrounding a bay is Nagoya.

Here it is from just 40 miles.

And we live east of central Nagoya in an area called Kakuozan which you can see in the green area on this map - it’s not outer east but not inner east either, it takes 12 minutes by train to Nagoya Central station. 

Nagoya is one of those cities which has semi-highrises and huge multi-lane roads and motorways all over it so it can be hard to tell where the ‘city’ as such ends and the suburbs begin - but we are definitely in the suburbs.

Nagoya is a city of contrasts… sigh, did I actually write that? Well, it fits. In Nagoya the old and new stand side by side - though not necessarily happily as much of the old is below code and is gradually being either lovingly brought up to standard (which means won’t collapse in an earthquake of 5.5 Richter) or, unfortunately, knocked down and replaced. This photo below was taken the car park of our local supermarket.

And this is around the corner from the supermarket on my way home, it really is a beautiful thing to see - I hope it doesn’t disappear…

Even the new has its cutenesses though, this is our local florist As well as the obviously cute name, if you look carefully on the left of the door (your left, not the door’s) you will see white pointy things hanging down - these are small paper cones about the size and shape of a large waffle cone from a generous ice-cream parlour and they have small posies in them! There is something so delightfully child-like about them they always make me smile when I pass.

Bringing you closer to our new home now, this is our street - it is off a major road (6 lanes, I think) called Higashiyama-dori (dori being Japanese for road) - our railway line is Higashiyama and apparently it runs under the road for most of the way - I assume the railway line came after the road, though.

So, as I was saying, this is our street which is very green for Nagoya. I have no idea what the street is called - it does have a name but it’s in kanji which I can’t read and the addressing system is not related to your road so I have not yet had a chance or need to find out.

FYI the addressing system is rather confusing, everyone lives in a ‘cho’ which is an area and you live in a block within that cho - we are in the first block of Otana-cho - needless to say the GPS system in which you can enter phone numbers to find places has taken off here as even the Japanese find it difficult.

Kakuozan is very, very hilly and off our street are roads which are either like this not-so-steep one (seriously there is one near the supermarket which is more than 45degrees - no exaggeration!)

Or pedestrian-only streets like this one.

If you look carefully on the left edge of this shot, you will see Superman standing at the (out-of-shot) gate to our apartments!

And these are they - DEFINITELY a member of the ‘new’ architecture faction! I didn’t take this shot very well it looks like the building could go up and up forever but actually the window on the left (which is our study) has no building above it. The block is really more of a set of two story villa units built up the hill. You can’t see the first floor of our apartment at all because of the wall around the entrance porch but our front door is below the study window, as is the kitchen.

Not hugely interesting pictures I know, there has been little time for sightseeing as yet - there is a temple near by which I will visit soon and a local fire festival soon, too but for now the above is pretty much all of Kakuozan I have seen outside of ward offices and supermarkets/shops that sell things like bathmats and laundry supplies! Touristy pictures will flood in once I am a) driving and b) living in an apartment with furniture… but you’ll see how it is next post in a fascinating tour inside…

I’ll make this a quick post and get working on a couple of longer ones I’ve been planning. Standby - pictures incoming…

I say "packing" but we are, of course, not actually packing but rather preparing for the packers of OSS (Overseas Shipping Services I believe) to arrive at 7:30 tomorrow morning. As lovely as it sounds to have someone else pack for you I would actually venture that it is far more stressful because of the sheer level of organization required. When you pack for yourself you can organize as you pack: "Hmm, forgot we had that, guess I’ll put this in this box here" "Ah we’ll need that before the Sea shipment comes guess I’ll put that in this box here." Instead,one must provide a detailed inventory to the company some weeks in advance for both insurance purposes and as a guide for the packers THEN, as the day approaches, you have to find ways to ensure that it is communicated to the guys on the day. Having experienced this process to a smaller degree when we were transferred to Sydney, I can attest that packers (as in the guys who come and pack your stuff, not a certain wealthy Australian family with a penchant for gambling from both sides of the table) give a good impression of locusts. They arrive, they buzz about determinedly for what is probably a few hours but feels like a few minutes and when they are gone everything, and I mean everything is gone. I was recently told about a diplomat whose shipment arrived after two months on the sea and eagerly opened it up to find her partially full rubbish bin in a box. Seriously. Think about it. Two months in the sun on a container ship…

So, we are grouping everything in stacks or on shelves with big yellow, blue or pink stickers with Air, Sea or Store on them and hoping we’ve got it all right! Our consultants in the office have asked us to be around to direct everything which is a good sign since the lat guys asked us not to be present - so we should be okay. When it all comes down to it though, by midday Friday everything will be packed and "uplifted" and there will be nothing we can do anymore - which is exactly why I always preferred exams over assignments lol.

Sydney has been … well it’s been. We really, really, should not have lived in The Shire. We chose it because it was 3 minutes from Superman’s work and, frankly, we just didn’t know.  We had some glimpses when we told people where he was working and they said "You’re white, you could live down there." We wondered at the seeming racism but ignored it. No one suggested we NOT live here though. No-one told us that we would never hear a language other than English spoken nor see a complexion darker than ours that wasn’t due to an insane amount of time spent on a tanning bed. No-one told us that in the very few, just-barely-above-supermarket-quality greengrocers here garlic would be found "down there with the other exotic things" or that "brown" is still a descriptive used to describe bread - though "whitebread" is a perfect descriptive for the whole area so that’s probably ok. Having our cars vandalized when they couldn’t break into them three times hasn’t really helped our impressions either…

We were told that, because of the traffic (made worse, especially for new people by the higgledy piggledy civic "planning"), you’d have to "live" where you live  and that was, essentially, true - going into the city from here is a nightmare by car or public transport. Nevertheless I found solace slowly driving the 25 minutes to Hurstville to do my grocery shopping. The Westfield mall there is quite small and has become like a small town market. Every time I went around 11 in the morning I would see a group of ten or so 65+ yr old husbands of various European origin who seem to have made a club house of some sofas near the exit to the car park and chat for seemingly hours while they waited for their wives to finish shopping. I could shop for terribly exotic things like mirin or Chinese cooking wine or - shock horror - homemade kibbe and hummous.  Best of all, I could stand in the medicare line and eavesdrop on little old french ladies lamenting their daughters’ not yet being married or listen in blissful ignorance to the gentle rhythms of Mandarin or the bright clang of Cantonese. When we return we will live in Hurstville I think

Anyway enough procrastinating, my feet are almost not sore!! Must get back to it. No doubt my next post will be from our new home in Nagoya!!

BEST. DOCTOR. EVER.

(And I grew up with Tom Baker )

Billy Piper as his companion Rose is definitely my favourite companion as well (though I never really liked any of them - probably just jealous.) Clearly it’s some of the best writing and direction it’s ever had, too it just works so well… just the right amount of hokey special effects, doesn’t take itself too seriously and yet the stories are great! If you haven’t seen it for a while give yourself a treat and say hello again - though I recommend you start with his first episodes with Rose, they introduce his particular character beautifully and frankly just shouldn’t be missed!

She’s also quite a lot of fun. 

In this important article, Annabel asks:
"Why do our police have to sound like they learnt English from a mobile phone instruction pamphlet?"

If you’re cerebrally inclined (and you’re unlikely to be a friend of mine if you’re not - lets face it I’m either excruciatingly boring or completely baffling to anyone who isn’t) click the link and enjoy!

Guilty of grievous oratory harm - Annabel Crabb - Opinion - smh.com.au

Step one:

Find a car showroom (any will do but of course we recommend Toyota)

Step Two:

Take inordinate interest in a car with latest technology.

Step Three:

Boot up the touch screen GPS!!

Et voila! You have a map which tells you where you are and which with the use of nothing more than your finger on the touch screen you can find anywhere you need - even a specific address in Nagoya as you can enter phone numbers if need be - so no language issue either!

Happy travelling!!

So for anyone interested here’s the link!

New International and Japanese Road Signs

Small quibble - on the first page two of the signs look remarkably similar and yet have, admittedly slightly, different translations… I think if I see this one I’ll just stop anyway hehe

The original castle was a small castle built in 1525 but was only occupied briefly. In 1610 Tokogawa Ieyasu (the first Shogun of the Tokogawa shogunate) had a larger castle built on the site. Tragically, the old castle was destroyed by American bombs and the resulting fire on May 14, 1945 (it was targeted as a district army headquarters and POW camp.) The building we see now is a replica of the donjon (the keep) only which was built in the 1950s - the palace itself has not been rebuilt though there are plans for it.

The Entrance proper, to the right of the ticket booth (above)

As you enter, the castle peeks at you over the trees, ah wonderful, blessed, green trees …

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the castle is surrounded by an impressive moat which is actually what cuts through the city looking like a river from Google Maps …

But right up at the base of the castle the moat is currently dry and a haven for other inhabitants…

The path around the castle takes you around the moat and gives some magnificent views…

(BTW above on the right is Superman and in the middle is his colleague, Duc, who is also transferring with the project. )

At last we come to a small entrance across the moat of this fort…

The forecourt is now rather like a school quadrangle with a few ranger cars and some benches and tables in front of a cafe - I’d love to know what this area would have been filled with when this castle was the hub of life in the early Edo period. This is the ramp up into the castle.

No photography is allowed inside but there wasn’t much I’d have taken anyway. There is no sense of what it would have been like to live in the castle, the first 6 floors have simply been made into museum rooms - the displays are lovely but, again because of destruction, many of the displays are "examples" either from other areas or complete reconstructions from modern times.

The 7th story of the castle has been turned into a viewing room with windows all round (and a shop full of touristy bits and pieces including Disney in Nagoya things - very odd.) From this vantage point you can see how vast and sprawling is the city we will soon be calling home and why the lush and beautiful gardens are a haven from the concrete city surrounding it.

All over the gardens and castle there were signs first in Japanese then with white English translations beneath - except for this ancient little hut opposite the castle, just over the internal moat. The sign you see is Japanese only and I so wish I could find out what this little thing is but I could find noone to ask. If anyone knows an answer to my little mystery, please email me and I will post when I find out.

Dotted all over Nagoya are what look like slot machine parlors and are filled to the brim with suit-and-tie salarymen at all hours of the day…

in fact they are called ’slots’ on many of the windows…

But gambling is illegal in Japan, right? Well, yes. But these "pachinko" machines are, essentially, vertical pinball machines and it’s NOT illegal to play them and win extra metal balls for high scores, NEITHER is it illegal to trade said balls in for prizes NOR is it illegal to take said prizes to various, totally independent, stores around Nagoya which buy them from you - for cash. Apparently it is also not illegal to perpetuate ear-destroying noise in these places - seriously don’t go in if you value your hearing!

We spent a good part of our time in electronics stores checking out solutions for bringing our computers and peripherals to the different voltage of Japan. These cord ties for keeping your under-desk spaghetti neat demonstrate the attention to detail as well as the love affair with customization in Japan. Gone will be our rubbish bin ties for colour coordinated, padded ties…

And if that’s too boring for us well, there’s always these cuties…

And speaking of attention to detail and cute, I bought some aspirin for the trip home and got a fix for my tins and boxes addiction…

No longer will I endure the indignity of having a loose slide of aspirin floating around in my bag hehe. I think I’m going to fit in juuust fine! 

I particularly loved this one outside an entrance to Toyota Midland Square building (Superman will occasionally have meetings here but will be working further down the street) Inside there are uber expensive designer boutiques and some wonderful restaurants (the Shanghai restaurant was Chinese food like we’ve never had before but look forward to trying again - particularly the Vanilla Ice cream with Chinese Vinegar - trust me it’s incredible!!)

The newest building on the skyline is gorgeous and perfectly suitable for the art and design school it apparently houses… (that’s Superman at the bottom left of the shot btw )

So, Nagoya is like many cities around the world, could almost be anywhere but every now and then, right next to the skyscrapers…

And even…

I promised pictures of our new digs when we returned but I haven’t yet worked out how to download and edit video from our camera (and I have a feeling my film was frankly dreadful beyond editing) so there will be some more wait on that note. I have, however, managed to download the stills we took so here begins the slide show. I should note though, we were so focused on getting our arrangements made that there wasn’t much tourist time, we have more pictures of furniture we might want to lease than great tourist shots, so call these a down payment on more interesting stuff when we have more time there. 

Nagoya Midland Circle - This is the view from our hotel right on top of Nagoya Station. Had to take this shot as I’d been looking at the similar one that Mike McKinlay took for ages as the first real view of Nagoya that I found.

View of Nagoya from our hotel room - there is a definite haze over the city which is called fog or mist but looks pollution-esque to us. Nevertheless the air is clean and fresh though quite damp at this time of year so perhaps it is moisture.

Zooming in on the same view - Nagoya Castle is beautiful in the afternoon light.

And further in the golden dolphin on the peaks of the roof just visible. Believe it or not, the city you see stretching beyond the castle with it’s multi storey buildings for miles are considered Nagoya’s suburbia - we found it kind of hard to tell when the city ended and suburbia began.