Here. Photos.  Boston Red Sox, my BRUISE, Eff and I on her hen do, and a random bit of video of Pete Doherty.  I am a bad filming person.

xxx

I dealt with a nine year old throwing a tantrum on Friday night.  Which was, to be honest, about as good as some of the ones I threw aged seven.  I am not sure whether the amaaaazing bruise on my upper arm is a direct result of said tantrum or not.  It's huge, painful and being treated with Arnica under direction from the Marine. There was a lovely moment when 3 of the other Brownies, and I tried to get the tantree off the floor.  It did not work.  At all.  Shoes were thrown many times, she rolled around the floor, she tried to lock herself in the loo (foot-in-door merely meant I got the light switch flicked into my face), she tried to run down the fire escape, her Dad nearly left her at Brownies (the Guides got a bit worried by this.  I said to ignore, he knew what he was doing - scaring her into submission).  She has a new baby sister, they are moving house, and Granny died recently: however, it's jolly exhausting and I think she really needs some quiet, one-to-one attention.  She's not getting that at home: last week I got told "there's no-one to look after me!".  ARGH!

• Launder sheets
• Knit Eff a garter (being difficult, I will be doing this on 2mm needles and with some rather ancient crochet cotton than with the pattern that uses 3.75mm needles).
• Write
• Supper out Saturday
• Drinks Sunday Well, it was a nice evening other than an incredibly off-colour joke about Auschwitz.
• Mum Monday
• Make up bed again
• Fold t-shirts the Guides decorated for Race for Life (these t-shirts are FAB!) store into bag ready for Div Meeting
• Enter the team for Race for Life
  http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/girlguidingstpancras
• Desultory tidying up
• Empty dishwasher
• Take recycling downstairs
• Some sort of food shop

I have just performed a stash dive - choice for garter was sealed when I found the 40 crochet cotton, instead of having to substitute something lace weight but not silky for silky laceweight.  The crochet cotton is geriatric, and I think was my Grandmother's.  I've used it for miniature knitting and crochet before now...

xxx

Fourteen of us, and we had a lovely day in Brighton.  It was glorious fun to meet up with various friends with University - and it was really nice to be on a hen party where I knew good number of the people (it was a mostly university hen party!).  We had hot chocolate at ChoccyWoccyDooDah, and a picnic on the beach, and a paddle, and champagne, and then played crazy golf, and dinner at Food For Friends (very good, but full of fibre!), and then cocktails at Gin Gin.  Action packed, but lovely and reasonable (and, really, when two rounds of drinks come in at less than £100, what more could you want?  So nice to be away from London prices!).

I'm very tired - the drive out was emotional, as I overshot a zebra crossing.  This is very bad, and against the rules of the road.  No-one got hurt - but a lady who was just on the crossing felt the need to run a good 200 yards down the road, open the car door when we were at a traffic light and scream at me about it.  She didn't give me a chance to apologise - as I knew I was in the wrong anyhow the screaming was a tad superfluous, and slammed the door again.  Aye well.  She must hav been having a bad day.  I am now very careful about crossings.  I loathe driving in London anyhow.  In future, I shall lock the doors.  It will help.  As will paying attention to the zebra crossings.

The drive home involved some of the worst rain I have ever seen, appallingly poor visbility (pour visibility, perchance?) and an inability to establish whether the lights were on without pulling over to check.  Elephant and Castle roundabout is also very trying.

xxx

• Brownies Accounts
• Japan Pictures into report
• Finish wedding bags One is done, the second will be done before bedtime (it's 11pm).
• Tidy flat  I appear to be at that point where it's worse
• Launder towels (the rest can wait until it's a full enough load)
• Buy salad
• Collect bedspread So, if I provide my phone number they can't find it.  Locate the receipt, and, lo and behold, they can find it.  What is the point of taking my phone number in case of receipt loss then?  Numpties.
• Pay Barclaycard bill
• Go to Eff for supper
• Finish hat (the pattern as written is, I swear, wrong)   FROGGED IT!
• Find out if I can drop round to Em Didn't manage it: she went out!
• Try to find mobile hairdresser (found two!)
• Acquire plant pots for tomato seedlings and sweet peas
• Sow sweet peas The tomatoes are still a bit small for planting out.
• Write Chapters 1 & 2 off to editor again.  They bear no relationship to their original versions.  This is so cool.
• Lily of the Valley bouquet. Need to actually phone Florists Bouquet sans LoV (not for another fortnight apparently, so hope he holds on) sent yesterday.

Great Uncle Dick is in palliative care now (has been for over a week): and we've left it too late to go and visit one last time.  He simply isn't up to it.  Have asked Cousin John what his favourite flowers are, and if he can buy a bunch on  my behalf if he's allowed flowers.  I guess that, if you can't really see or do anything, well, you can still smell them and that might make you remember something nice?

Who can say.  Personally, I like daffodils, freesias, bluebells: all those spring flowers.  I don't know what Uncle Dick (aged about 93 now) likes.  Much of the same, I'd hope.

I really ought to hang out the washing.

xxx

The Japan trip - well, it's up now!  Hurrah!  Finally!  Much guilt, particularly when I see that the other girl from my region has her report on the website.  Oh well.  Stuff has been going on in my life.  The version that's gone to region is looking prettier with pictures, but I'm a bit pressed for time, and, really, I'd rather you saw it sans pictures than Not At All.

Also, I have three tiny tomato plants, one tiny pepper plant, the rocket seeds all appear to have sprouted, the chives are sprouting and the basil is going nicely.  I shall be well fed, I hope.  I've also found the big pot for the sweet peas, so I can sow them tomorrow morning.

xxx

I am beginning to wonder if my phone is entirely dysfunctional... or whether people are just ignoring me.

xxx

Phone was being dysfunctional.  Am not ignored.  Yay!

xxx

Despite managing to misplace our leader, Alana, in the fog at Belfast airport, we made it safely to Japan, and we were very pleased to be greeted by the Japanese Girl Scouts at Osaka Airport – they had even put up a message on the big screen for us.

 We were whisked away to a glorious welcome tea, where many speeches were made in a room overlooking Osaka castle.  The trip to the hotel taught us how industrial Osaka is – there were lots of factories on the outskirts, with what looked like slag heaps and logging, evidenced by quantities of logs floating on the water.   

This was the first time, of many, that we remade our promises together with the Japanese Girl Scouts, and an indication of how much more ceremonial Japanese meetings are from ours.  Alana eventually made it several hours behind us, and we all felt much better for seeing her.

 Our first day in Osaka was spent meeting various dignatries, the Governor and the Mayor of Osaka (I knitted while waiting to see the Govenor of Osaka).   There were lots of speeches, and we felt grateful that there was always a very good translator – sometimes one of the Japanese Girl Scouts, and sometimes one of the local representatives. We learnt about “Honmaya!” – the local bottled water, which is the same as the tap water.  “Honmaya!” means “it’s true” in Japanese.  So, instead of saying “Cheese!” in our photos, we said “Honmaya!”  We continued the water theme with a trip on a river boat. 

Later on, we visited Osaka Castle (there, I was absolutely thrilled with my first encounter with a drinks machine that sold hot canned drinks), and a trip to the 100 yen shop.

Our second day in Osaka, Saturday, saw us visiting both the Water Museum, where we took part in a Japanese Tea Ceremony (the tea was bitter, green and frothy, but not half as bitter as Argentinian Maté),

and the Aquarium. We were allowed a bit of freedom in the shopping centre near the Aquarium, and could go to choose our own lunch: the Japanese leaders were very keen to not lose anyone!

In the evening, we spent some ‘sharing time’ with the Japanese Girl Scouts – we learnt what they knew about England, and they learnt what we knew about Japan.  Then we talked about how water is used, and how water can be conserved in the two countries.  We have very different ways of using water in cooking, for cleaning, and for other purposes.

 On the Sunday, we got the Shinkansen, the Bullet Train, to Hiroshima.  We visited Miyajima, the Itukushima shrine, which is a World Heritage Site. It’s very peaceful, on the sea shore, and it was relaxing to explore the temple, and to watch the tide come in as we visited.  It is populated with some extremely friendly deer, who wanted to eat everything we had brought with us – at lunchtime, a significant portion of our time was spent fending off these friendly creatures.  They didn’t understand English, and they chose not to understand being pushed away or rapped on the nose.  In the afternoon, we visited a traditional industry hall, and made local cakes and decorated rice spoons.  That evening we had a very traditional meal, and that defeated some of the  most adventurous eaters – I discovered that the fish that was most troublesome was raw bream (we had some for breakfast, cooked, the next day, and that was much more palatable!).  We spent our time before bed learning origami from the Japanese Girl Scouts, and folding paper cranes to take to Hiroshima on the morrow.

I’ve visited quite a few sites of atrocities now: the battle fields of the Second World War, Coventry (that night of bombing), Auschwitz.  And so to Hiroshima: like all the other places I’ve visited, it was sunny, and this tends to lull one into a false sense of security (that the dome looked a little like the Camden Palace, or Southend’s Kursaal added somewhat to this sense). 

One of the Japanese Leaders, Jo, told us how she was born close to Hiroshima, in the same year as the bomb was dropped, and how many of her school friends had died from cancers, when they were young, still in their teens and their twenties.  We were all affected by this: very rarely do you meet someone who was directly affected by something so big, and so awful.  We visited the children’s peace statute, and we left our cranes there, and filled in a form so that the government of Hiroshima could know that we had visited, and that we had left 50 or so cranes.  Then we visited the museum, which was very well laid out, and very sobering: we could touch some glass that had been melted by the heat from the blast, and see a shadow on stone that had once been somebody.  We saw lost lunch tins, and clothes torn to shreds: and we came away with a very clear sense of Hiroshima’s mission.  Not only to remember, but also to proactively work towards making sure that this does not happen again.  The city has made peace its raison  d’etre: Japan has no nuclear bombs, despite being the only country in the world to have been on the receiving end of one.  The work done by Hiroshima goes a long way to shape our prejudices regarding Japan.  Where once we saw a people who were warriors: the Ninja, the Samurai, the 5^th Division, the Kamikaze, we now think of the Japanese as being a peace loving people.  It has taken only one generation to change our perceptions so drastically and so positively.

The next few days we spent living with a Japanese family, the Hiranos, in a town outside Osaka.  I learnt a lot about the way Japanese people live: and, at the same time, I felt as though I was on the continent.  The experience was very reminiscent of French Exchanges when I was a teenager, and quite as exhausting, as our Japanese really wasn’t up to much! We were very lucky that our ‘Mum’, Tomako, spoke very good English, and she was lovely.  She fed us really glorious food, and made sure we were warm in bed (Japanese houses do not have central heating – the fabled famed heated loo seats of Japan are very welcome in the middle of the night when the room is so cold that you can see your own breath!), and washed some of our clothes for us, and made sure we had our own heater.  We were surprised to find that the whole family shared a room downstairs while we were there, but we had not, apparently, taken over Yuka’s bedroom.  It was grand to immerse more fully in Japanese life, and to find that some things are the same the world over (Dads like to have a peaceful drink in the evening), but some things are very different (breakfast, for one – I’ve not had chicken soup for breakfast before, but it was very, very good!).  We dressed up in kimono, and learnt origami, and tried our hand at Japanese cooking, climbed a small mountain, and were very lucky to be taken to a spa.

From our families, we spent a day in Kyoto, visiting another temple, and making Japanese cookies (I’m told that these were very good, and they smelt excellent).  We visited downtown, and were slightly appalled by the puppies on sale in a pet shop – this is not something that you see in England at all, and we felt that they would have been happier with big runs to play in.  They were all particularly sweet, and we wanted to take them home with us.   We visited Kiyomizu Temple, and cleansed ourselves with the water (they had dippers that were sterilised using utra-violet light).  At the youth hostel, lots of the other Guiders gathered round to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ down the phone to my Mum, who was absolutely thrilled, and who then passed on a message from someone’s Dad…  We were woken terrifically early by an absolutely impenetrable message in Japanese (it was very loud, and reminiscent of Ruth Madoc in ‘Hi-di-hi’, but without the dulcet welsh tones), and it did mean that we were all on time for breakfast.

 Lake Biwa is a huge lake, and provides most of the water for the local area.  It has an extremely detailed museum, which told us about the history of the area, and how the scientists have worked on the lake, and it also had an aquarium of its own – not quite so impressive as the huge aquarium in Osaka, but very interesting all the same.  The best part was the really brilliant reconstructed fisherman’s house from about 1950: it showed how traditional life gradually morphed into modern life.  We had a trip across the lake to the museum, and learnt about the fish that inhabit the lake – minnows, which made me wonder how my fish at home were getting on, and catfish, and big mouthed carp.  There were also turtles, and a crawfish that tried to make a bit for freedom out of his plastic tub.  That evening, we returned to our host families, and visited the local Girl Scout units – all the ages, from Brownies to Rangers meet at the same time, and we tried origami, and played Japanese card games, and dressed up in kimono.  It was reassuring to find out that that I’m not the only Guider in the world who overruns at meetings because everyone’s having so much fun!  We had a scramble to tidy up and everyone pitched in, so we were able to leave the Community Centre on time.  The Community Centre was great – we did our cooking there as well!

Our last Sunday in Japan was UK Day– this passed in a bit of a blur.  I spent a lot of time teaching the Japanese Girl Scouts how to do English Folk Dancing – I chose a simple dance called Circassian Circle, and took along some music recorded by friends of mine.  I must have taught the dance to about 100 people, in a queer polyglot mixture of Japanese and English.  They looked like they had fun, but it was very, very tiring and extremely warm.

We had an evaluation session, and a sharing session, and then a party, where we felt very sad, because we knew that we might not see a lot of our friends again.

Our final days were spent in Tokyo.  We visited the Headquarters of the Girl Scouts of Japan, and there I made a contact which led to a visit from a Japanese Girl Scout in London to my unit close to Thinking Day – this was fantastic, as we were able to have a Japanese evening with sushi (I was helped by a friend who lived in Japan), and origami, and the girls could try on Kimonos and were helped by someone who knew how to tie the thick Obi belts.  However, I am getting a bit ahead of myself.   

We paid a visit to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (my favourite part was seeing all the different school desks in the exhibition, each contained a sample of what Japanese Schoolchildren might keep in their desks across the years), and were lucky enough to meet the Minister himself.  It was a short ceremony – we were led in, and stood on his extremely soft carpet, and he made a speech, and we made a speech, and exchanged gifts, and then we had our photograph taken.  An extremely raucous evening in a Karaoke bar followed, and it was quite a late night.

On our final day, we were able to spend some time exploring Tokyo – we visited the Arts Museum, and saw some extremely beautiful kimonos and glass, as well as the Sony Centre, where we took part in a James Bond competition and taking a trip up the Tocho.

I am extremely glad to have had this opportunity to visit Japan, and I would like to go back one day.  The best part of the experience has been having the confidence to lead a Japanese evening with my Guides when I got home – I think it has been one of their best evenings of the term, and I’m looking forward to doing something similar with my Brownies next term.  I learnt a lot while I was away, both about myself and about Japan.  The last time I went travelling with a group of girls was on a school trip, over 12 years ago, and, since I left university, I’ve worked in an extremely male dominated environment (most days of the week, I am the only girl in the office).  To spend time in an all female environment, and to find that we all got on so well, was brilliant. 

Last night's Star Trek trailer quite literally made me shiver all over in excitement.

Next weekend, I am going to the cinema.  Does anyone want to come with me?  I have no problem with going on my own, and there is a cinema about five minutes walk from my front door, but I like having people with me.

xxx