Robins Japan

These days in Tokyo its much about meeting my wife's friends and my father in law and sister in law. It's fun but also a hard schedule. Yesterday we were still in Tokyo but also far away from the inner city Tokyo life. First in a more suburban area around Akishima city where I learned a traditional game called Kendama. It's a dexterity game where you try to catch a ball on a string at the plates or the stick of the "ken" with which you hold the Kendama. It's hard to explain but if you're interested you can ask my friend Google. He also told me that in the edo area some geishas used that kind of game as a secret weapon if it was necessary. We basically just had a big laugh in trying it out :D Later that day we were still in Tokyo prefecture but the looking was more like the area of my father in law in tokushima. Much forests and mountains. The village is called hinoharamura. We were there to met friends and there was also a local festival with a lighti...

Today I was at Saitama with my wife to pick up a time capsule letter from an old friend who runs a nice small coffee shop in a side street. (if you are a coffee enthusiast check Limenas Coffee they have coffee from all over the world) Saitama is direct to Tokyo. If you ask Saitama and especially Tokyo people they would say Saitama is countryside. The truth is 1.2 million people living in Saitama. That is bigger than Cologne or Duesseldorf and just slightly smaller than Munich which are some of the biggest city's in Germany. But what is big? Once a friend of mine who lives more countryside in Germany told about the big city she is now working. I asked how much people living there and it was 30.000. By myself I'm living in a city with 350.000 people and though that 30.000 is no big at all! But probably it's just a matter of perspective. If you compare Tokyo with more than 12 million people with Saitama 1.2 million people. Then yes Saitama is really small and countryside....

The last days in Tokyo I was happy to see a friend from last year studying at genkijacs. It's really nice that we could see again in japan :-) He is again studying there so I quickly jumped in and said hello to some of the teachers. I really can recommend them if you have the time, the money and the motivation to learn Japanese some weeks there. After that we visited the the father of my girlfriend for some days. He lives in a small village in tokushima. There are many mountains! One day we did a nice adventure trip through the mountains and visited a valley and walked over an old style bridge which was originally build by samurais many years ago who lived in that area. The countryside of japan is of course quite different from tokyo. Less people, less action, less stress. So basically we slept and ate much :D Like in German countryside you really need a car in that area. But the cars here are much smaller. Not couse of the people, it's couse of the small roads in the villa...