Conscious that we have about 10 days to go before we go to sunny Scotland for a fortnight, I’ve been engaging in some rapid-fire allotmenteering, dashing down for the hour or so between children-in-bed and too-dark-to-dig. I got my maincrop potatoes in on Saturday – that’s fine, the pack said to plant between March and May so 8.30 pm on the 31st May is well within that window. Percy Thrower would have something to say about my planting method (dig trench in the middle of the weeds, pulling out the worst of the roots. Scatter spud fertilizer; use bulb planter to put potatoes in. Earth up with weed roots) and they are definitely closer together than they should be, as I didn’t have the strength to dig a second trench, but at least they are in and no longer regarding me reproachfully from the windowsill. Last night I flung in some borlotti beans: dug a big hole, filled it with lawn cuttings, back-filled with soil and weeds, put up a wigwam and put the bean plants in. You could almost hear them breathe a sigh of relief as they moved from 1-inch-diameter pots into the ground. They are thigh-high already, poor things. Next year I will sow them later.

Interestingly (to me, anyway) the purple french beans are happy wee things, growing up their poles and the new seeds I sowed have all germinated into nice little plants. The yellow ones, which are supposed to be going up alternate poles to make a lovely stripy wigwam, are pathetic. One has disappeared altogether (I’d blame slugs but my chief suspect is Mike-next-door’s overenthusiastic weedkilling on the path between us). The seeds have either not germinated at all or have come up to be eaten.

My raised bed, however, is a joy and a triumph. I must photograph it before I eat too much of its contents. (The photograph up there, by the way, is not a bouquet but some purple flowering bok choi, which was lovely in last night’s thai-curry-cum-stirfry. Unlike the aspragus which was just wrong.)

This is from my diary from when we first relocated to Japan – pre-blog. Other entries can be found here.

We’re in! We have (most of) the furniture and – most importantly – we have clean clothes! Once a man has come this afternoon to fix the oven door, I am off to Tokyu Hands for essentials – bins, shower curtains, fax paper etc etc. I had a bit of a trauma earlier today when, after buying a huge amount of stuff from the western supermarket (nissin) I found that they only deliver to ohyamacho on weekends. So I had to get a taxi – much migi*, migi, find the koen**. erm what if we start at the eki*** I know where it is from there… – but I managed! And I was running a bit late for yoga this morning so I just jumped on the first train that came, only it was an express and didn’t stop until it came to shinjuku and then when I tried to transfer to the yamanote line it wouldn’t take my ticket and the chap sent me back to the fare adjustment machine only that didn’t take my money so I went back to the barrier and tried my JR pass only that didn’t work either! So I was just beginning to think I would never get out when a nice man in a smart cap explained that I had to put both my JR pass and the subway pass through together. I could have been there weeks before I worked that out. So I eventually arrived, yoga was extremely hard, went for coffee with Gail and her friend who I think was called Carolyn and another friend called Tina who lives quite near here and has cats so I will have to make friends with her. Then a quick rotating lunch and off to the supermarket which I think is where I started.

Cameron was off yesterday – we were collected at the hotel to come to the house then our air freight arrived almost immediately, closely followed by the furniture. It seems that the new stuff I have chosen won’t be ready for a few weeks, which isn’t a problem but I wish they had explained it when I was choosing. Maromi took us down to the local shops and explained what was what in the supermarket, then left and that was it! On our own. So we bought some essentials, cam back for lunch, and spent the afternoon unpacking – in the evening we wandered down towards the station and found a little bar where we had delicious salads and grilled meat. The korean-style lamb (cut so thin it resembles bacon) was fantastic.

On Sunday we went to Yokohama with Eiji and Yuko, which was very nice. It was a lovely sunny day and Chinatown is amazing – hundreds and hundreds of little restaurants packed full of people, and lovely smells everywhere. Had a gorgeous lunch, apart from the raw jellyfish, which I was not very keen on, and took a boat back to the station, then home in time for a final sauna and swim in the hotel.

And on Saturday, we went to Asakusa to look at the temple (we realised once we had arrived that we’d been there last time**** – no problem, it was a nice day and good to see) and kitchenware alley, followed by a trip up the tokyo tower.

*right
**park
***station
****We had a holiday in Japan a year or so before moving out there to live

This is from my diary from when we first relocated to Japan – pre-blog. Other entries can be found here.

Cameron had Thursday off so we could go and register as aliens – I have to find my way back in 2 weeks to collect the card, which will be interesting I expect. Then we opened a bank account while I quietly fumed about being a second-class citizen; bad enough that they asked Cameron whether I wanted a cash card, worse when they handed it to him saying it was for me! Then went and finished the furniture thing (they asked C if it was ok that I had chosen it) – we’ve ended up with a white suite with non-washable covers, which is perhaps not our most sensible decision but they were cheaper and we had little option.
We then wandered around Shibuya a bit – explored Tower Records, bought some CDs; went to Tokyu Hands and bought a kettle as we can’t move in without one!
Yesterday was busy for me – I sat in the lobby for the best part of an hour while they cleaned the room, did a small amount of work then headed to Hiroo to meet Gail and visit the western supermarket. Also visited a fantastic shop full of lovely things from all over SE Asia. Will be going back! Took an hour to get home on the bus and found an email from C asking me along on an evening out so I had to find my way to Odaiba. Big panic at Shimbashi when I couldn’t find the monorail. I asked a guard “Eigo-wa hanashimasu ka” and he looked completely blank, I could have been speaking Mongolian, until I gave up and said “do you speak English” to which he answered “no”! Anyway, he pointed me in the right direction and I got there OK to join the sararymen in their pub in Shimbashi, the same one we went to with Sara last year. Cameron is turtle-theory and I am clever-flower!*
*Translating our names into Japanese, sort of. Ka-me, turtle; ron, theory; Li, clever; sa, flower.

Found at the kitchenwitch‘s site and a welcome diversion from the glorious combination of solo-mumming and work

(ok I changed it a little to suit)

(I seem to have rather a lot of these sitting in my unread pile upstairs)

I’ve read it
I read it for school
I started but didn’t finish it
I’ll never read it
Maybe one day
(Never heard of it)

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (will finish one day when I have time)
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: A Novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
(Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies)
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs Dalloway
Great Expectations
(American Gods)
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Memoirs of a Geisha
(Middlesex)
(Quicksilver)
(Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West)
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
(Anansi Boys)
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
(The Inferno)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse (shudder)
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
(The Corrections)
(The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States: 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
(Neverwhere)
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
(Oryx and Crake)
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
(The Confusion)
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
Watership Down
(Gravity’s Rainbow)
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

This is from my diary from when we first relocated to Japan – pre-blog. Other entries can be found here.

We have a house! Hoorah. Went for a second look with Maromi* on Monday morning and we’re moving in next Monday – I think we’ve set a record. Didn’t do much else on Monday – had a walk down to Shinjuku and a look in the big bookshop, bought some lunch in the Takashimaya food court then did some work and had a swim.
Yesterday was busy – braved Shinjuku station at 8 am – not nice – to meet Gail for yoga. Yoga far more strenuous than anything I’ve been used to recently! Then we went for coffee, went to the tourist information centre, had a revolving sushi lunch (yum) and I came back to meet the furniture lady. Spent the afternoon picking furniture – actually quite difficult! She was determined I should have a navy blue suite, which is ok and I expect we will end up with it, but not that comfy. We’ll have to buy cushions! There were some things I liked as well that haven’t appeared on the quote – perhaps because I have already exceeded the budget. Think I’ll have to go back and iterate.

*Maromi was our girl from the relocation agency

This is from my diary from when we first relocated to Japan – pre-blog. Other entries can be found here.

Cameron has left for his first proper day of work – don’t expect him back for 12 hours! It’s a grey and misty morning – but it started grey and misty yesterday, too, and turned out lovely. We went and looked at a house first thing, then back to look at the one we’d liked best on Saturday, which we have decided to try for. Then we got a very busy train to Kamakura, which is on the coast south of Yokohama. Buying the tickets was slightly traumatic as Kamakura didn’t seem to be on any signs, but we asked a man and it was ok.
At Kamakura we walked about for ages trying to find the Daibutsu – big Buddha. We eventually did – it is big – and you can go inside it! Saw a man feeding some very tame squirrels and got shouted at by a small man who thought C had gone inside the Buddha without paying.
After a chinese lunch (sweet and sour chicken) we went to another temple, hasedera or something like that. Very beautiful grounds – arum lily ponds and koi, and a sea view. Saw some big birds of prey (must buy a book of Japanese birds) and thousands of statues of jizu, for dead children. Saw a young couple having a statue blessed by a monk (much chanting and banging of gongs), which was sad. Also a cave with statues carved in the roof and a little grotto with tiny statues in all the crevices.
We then wandered back up the tree-lined path in the middle of the main street to the main shrine, the name of which I forget but it has a famous tree – saw a wedding and a very large turtle. Poor bride looked most uncomfortable! Then back to the station and home, sharing a carriage with a band of kimono ladies, one of whom had blue hair to match her outfit.

Some loafy disasters this week.

I decided to see last night’s “unmissable” match as an opportunity to zip to the allotment – I occasionally do, once the children are in bed, but rarely without feeling some twangs of conscience at leaving the allotment-widower at home (even though I think he quite likes it). Yesterday, as official football-widow myself, no conscience. (And I’d be there again tonight trying at long last to get those very late potatoes in, were it not raining. Gah. Instead I find myself at home, another “unmissable” match on – this one causing much tension and stress – with a pile of ironing and a casserole to make. The joys.)

Left reasonably simple instructions regarding my lovely homemade bread: take it out when the oven beeps.

(You can see where this is going, can’t you.)

(You are right.)

It cooked for 2 hours and I came home to a blackened charcoaly lump smoking gently in the oven.

Today’s loaf stuck fast to its tin. (I prised it off with a pie-slice; only lost a small layer from the bottom crust.) They come in threes, right – so one more mistake then I can get back into making nice bread again.

On a nice note, I spent yesterday afternoon at the Bluebell cottage garden. Sadly camera-less – I have my hands quite full enough thank you with two small children and they have ponds – we had a lovely time admiring the garden then buying plants while the girls ran amok, then to the wildflower meadow where they really could run free. Mostly buttercups at the moment and absolutely glorious: up to M’s waist (T’s head) and what children are supposed to do!

This is from my diary from when we first relocated to Japan – pre-blog. Other entries can be found here.

Thought I’d drop you a quick line to let you know what we’ve been up to as we’ve nearly survived for a week now! Helped I’m sure by the very nice hotel (www.centuryhyatt.co.jp). We are on the 21st floor and can see mountains (but not Fuji, we’re looking the wrong way) and lots of other high-rise buildings as we are in Shinjuku, which is the business district – the building next door is the metropolitan government and I don’t know how tall it is but there is an observatory on floor 45! Every morning hundreds of ant-like people stream out of the subway and into it, then they all go back the other way at night.
I’ve been taking advantage of the facilities with a swim and a sauna nearly every day – I could get used to this! Also have been doing some work (I’ll start properly tomorrow, I’ve just been doing little bits here and there) and exploring around. Only on foot during the week as the subway/train system was a bit daunting on my own, but we’ve been out and about this weekend so I’m quite confident I can go further next week. I’m starting yoga on Tuesday with a girl whose husband also works for shell – she is friends with Sara.
We’ve found a house we like. No problems with people coming to stay as every house we have seen as been at least as big as our house in Warrington. You can all come together! Fingers crossed we can have it and can move in quickly as I think we will feel more settled then. It even has a small garden (about 2 sq metres) with a stone lantern and an acer tree. Our air freight is in the country already but I have no idea where the ship is.
We’ve had a nice weekend (weather fantastic, warm and sunny) – yesterday we went to Ueno, which is a different area of Tokyo. We walked around the park (us and every child in Tokyo! There is a zoo in the park that is obviously The place to go on a Saturday) then went exploring the streets, which are narrow and very crowded with market stalls. Lots of bargains to be had although we didn’t buy anything. In the evening we went to Roppongi which is a strange place full of expats, but we were looking for the sports cafe so Cameron could watch Celtic win the league – we found the bar but had to watch Manchester United instead! Horribly expensive, even for Tokyo, so we didn’t stay very long. Then today (after viewing another house) we took the train south, theough Yokohama to Kamakura, which is a seaside town that is stuffed full of temples and shrines. Saw lots of ladies in kimonos and a wedding (you should see what the brides here have to wear!), and a famous tree. Feeling tired and a bit sunburnt now – might have to go for another sauna!

This is from my diary from when we first relocated to Japan – pre-blog. Other entries can be found here.

Well! We’ve been busy. Cameron went to work all day Thursday, while I had a nice day – did a little work, walked to Yoyogi park, around the shrine (saw a wedding) and back, and then spent a good 2 hours swimming and sauna-ing. Knackered in the evening so had pasta in the hotel.
Yesterday was spent house-hunting with two different agents. We saw one apartment we liked especially (though they have all been good). Then a swim and sushi for tea and another early night. House-hunted again this morning and saw one flat that was wonderful except had no outside bit, and a house that we really like and might go for. Found out that stick men arecalled Kevin*!
This afternoon we went to Ueno. We walked round the park – lots of children going to the zoo and people getting drunk under the cherry blossom. Only the blossom has mostly gone now; this doesn’t seem to worry them. Had fried squid for lunch, followed by chocolate-covered bananas, and saw some turtles sunbathing (“cameron” means “turtle”) then went and wandered round the shopping streets, which are pretty amazing. Very crowded. Decided we would find the pub “warrior celt” before we left, but failed – still, we had a good explore while looking for it.

*I can see some of my asides need explanation. All construction works, holes in the ground, etc are guarded by men with sticks. Sometimes mechanical men with sticks. They point their sticks to help you avoid the hazard as you pass. They are called “Keh-bin” or something along those lines

I was quite worried yesterday – M went to preschool for the whole day (9-5) and it was just looming over me. I no longer know what to do with just one toddler! What did I used to do when M was 18 months? She had been asking and asking to go, though, curious to know what happens in the afternoons (it turns out that they have sandwiches and play musical statues and it is just great), and I will have to get used to it in September, or 9-3 anyway, so off she went.

T and I actually had a very nice day. We took the bus to town in the morning for a quick coffee/babyccino (I know I was slightly disparaging about Starbucks’ babyccinos last time, but they are free which has to be a good thing) then to the library for “storytime”. Which, oddly, involved musical instruments and songs but only one story. The librarian recognised me and asked if Maggie was in school now, which is always gratifying and makes you feel like you belong (fancy remembering her name!), and we picked up a new book for M – see below. Came home on the bus, quick bite of lunch, then T went off for a nap in the car at the allotment.

I got loads done: dug a nice round pit, filled it with a layer of grass clippings, having watched Joe Swift do exactly that on GW on Friday and persuaded C to cut the grass on Sunday. Put the soil back on top, constructed a fairly shoddy wigwam (having left my string at home) and got the french beans in – alternate yellow and purple all the way round should look really good! Put seeds of both in between the poles, too, to hopefully keep them coming a bit longer. The PSB has flowered, apart from one plant, so I picked the last little shoots from that one and dug two plants up to compost. They are great big tree-like plants which entirely filled my compost bin so the other two will have to wait in the ground until it has rotted down a bit. Picked our first salad for tea – all the seedlings that were in the wrong place – side-effect of having a 4-year-old sow your seeds – plus a couple of pigeon-pecked little gems. Along with the last bits of broccoli made a very nice salad (there’s nothing like fresh leaves).

Came home to make some chicken-liver sauce for pasta then it was time to collect M and not a scrap of housework done!

Now, books. We’ve read the Faraway Tree series to M and she’s really enjoyed it; enjoyed the chapter-by-chapter installments (rather than a book you read all in one go) and the level is just right. I am struggling to find anything similar so any suggestions would be gratefully received. The librarian was most helpful and provided pamphlets and ideas; I came home with an “animal ark” book, which is really too grown up* and an Olga da Polga, which I think might be OK.

*I’ve read the first two chapters and we’ve encountered a son upset because his dad is remarrying: she is only just 4 and really more suited to pop biscuits and fairy spells.