Nagoya (名古屋) Japan

• Homepage
• Japan 2006-2008
• Photo Galleries
• Family Tree/Genealogy
• About/Contact us

Blog.Pages

2008
Latest News
Apr-Jun 2008 News
Jan-Mar 2008 News
2007
Oct-Dec 2007 News
Jul-Sep 2007 News
Apr-Jun 2007 News
Jan-Mar 2007 News
2006
Jul-Dec 2006 News

Our Email
michael@michaelpam.com

2006 Aug-Dec .news^1.0

The latest news from the Riley household

Flu Flu Flu - 28 Dec 2006

Well what a month everyone has been sick, Pam, Parker and myself. I know id did not stop me going on the beer factory tour, but not much was going to stop that happening.

Asahi - Nagoya Brewery Tour - December 23 2006

We organised a tour of the Nagoya brewery. The tour itself was ok, but we had a lot of fun in the tasting room. Not the drinking, but more the whole japanese experience. BTW, you taste three beers and you have 20 minutes. The beers on trial were a Belgium cherry beer, a black beer and the asahi super dry beer.

Because it was the week before Christmas, back in the tasting room our guide dressed in a Santa outfit and ran a lucky dip for either some chocolates for a metallic stubbie holder with a handle. Jan and Peter won! to the cheers of Atari (当たり) from or guide.

We also had a complimentary tasting of some smoked duck and browsed the wide collection of beer mugs, snacks and tshirts in the gift shop.


A selection of Asahi beers. (I have seen vending machines with cans up to one liter, on the top shelf, but the 2-4 liter packaging I have only seen at the bottle shop. )


Brewery snacks and prizes

Miyajima/Hiroshima - 8/9 Dec 2006

Harumi, our friend and Japanese teacher in Australia invited us to visit her in Hiroshima. Over two days she took us to Miyajima Island and on a tour of Hiroshima. We had a lot of fun and it was great to catch up with Harumi again.

Miyajima Island was spectacular, beautiful and cold while Hiroshima was lively fresh and friendly, but with an awful story to tell.

Christmas lights - Nagoya - 9 December 2006

Christmas lights in Nagoya at JR central Towers.

(click on the small photo for the more photos)

Toyota .Ekiden - 3 December 2006

An Ekiden is a long distance relay race. They are popular in Japan, and Toyota runs a very competitive employee ekiden each year. Teams come from plants all over Japan and also from Toyota locations all over the world. Toyota Australia (TMCA) sends a team each year.

(click on the small photo for more photos)

Higashiyama Skytower - December 2 2006

Higashiyama Sky tower in Higashiyama Koen (Park). The tower dominates the skyline around my part of Nagoya. The park contains the tower, the zoo and the botanical gardens. Considering it was freezing and I still had a cold, we just went to the tower.

The tower was under repair and really looked as though it was past it's best. It had a good view of Nagoya though.


View of Nagoya from Skytower

Website Redesign - December 1 2006

I have spent the last weekend rearranging my website. I had too many oddities, so they have now been broken up. I have also added some more kit kats

Watashi no Tokyo Website.- Interesting Website - 1 December 2006

Watashi no Tokyo is a blog that I just stumbled across. There is a great link in the november 2006 page to a dutch designers 'Hideaway'. Worth a trip to the site, even just to check that link.

'Satin Doll' Jazz Night - 29 Nov 2006

We went to a Jazz club called Satin Doll to watch a friend (Sonehara san who we climbed Mt Fuji with) sing for the first time. It was the first time that we had gone to a Jazz club in Japan. It was a pokey little place on the second floor that you could hardly find from the road, but once inside had a good atmosphere.



Yuri (Sonehara san) singing

Some of the signatures on the wall.

Nagoya/Boston Museum- of fine art - 25 Nov 2006

The Nagoya/Boston Museum of fine art is a small art gallery in Nagoya linked to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and although it has no permanent collection, contains an ongoing sequence of exhibitions of pieces from the Boston gallery.


When we went to the gallery, it contained an exhibition on the history of Portraiture. Pieces by Velázquez, Titian, Rembrandt, Gainsborough, Degas, Rodin, and Picasso all featured and for a small gallery it was a lot of fun.


The Velázquez piece pictured is of the daughter of the spanish king, the Infanta María Teresa, it is actually a reproduction done by Velázquez's studio to be sent out to the courts of Europe to help find the infanta a husband.

Monkey.Park - 19 November 2006

Monkey Park is a zoo which sits beside a large amusement park in Inuyama. Close to Meiji Mura and Littleworld. The park is for the most part an old style zoo with lots of small cages and powerful monkey smells.

overnight to.tokyo - 10-11 November 2006

I took the shinkansen to Tokyo to meet Pam, who was working there, for a quick visit and for a taste of the town. The city was huge and although the weather was terrible we really enjoyed visiting the town.

Little.World - 4 Nov 2006

Little world, we found out, is not a miniature village, like a legoland, or like "Cockington Green" in Canberra, but rather a huge park. that took hours to walk around.

More Updates

I have updated a few more pages. I have updated my oddities page with Umbrellas, Vending Machines and Bar Codes and have also updated the 'Hard to Find' page with more information.

Toyota Municipal.Museum of Art - 5 November 2006

We visited the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art in Toyota city.

The Gallery focuses on modern art. There was a small collection of works by Gustav Klimt, Jose Miro, a woodcut by Edvard Munch and various objects by Art Nouveau artists as well as temporary exhibits and a number of installation pieces. There is no traditional Japanese paintings/pieces.

The building and grounds themselves are stunning and were designed by Yoshiro Taniguchi. (Who also happens to be one of key people who started Meiji Mura as a project to protect Japan's architectural past).

The gallery highlight for me was the installation pieces and the "gardens" temporary exhibition, (which are a set of modern installation pieces).

Those who know me, know that I am not keen on installation art so it is unusual that the installation pieces were my highlight. Took us under an hour to wander through.

Meiji Mura.(Historical park ) - 29 October 2006

Meiji Mura is a huge open air museum containing 60+ buildings shipped from all over Japan specifically from the Meiji period (1867-1912). It is about a half hour drive rom Meito-ku, Nagoya.

The place is huge. The buildings are schools, factories,theatres, churches, post offices, each large and each surrounded by trees and independently displayed.

Toki Premium Outlets.(Colorado ski town theme) - 28 October 2006

Another outlet mall near Nagoya. Probably a bit more down to earth that Jazz dream but with some good shopping in a spectacular location.

We tried our first MOS burgers and were actually pretty impressed.

Chez Kobe.Birthdays - 28 October 2006

Chez kobe is a french restaurant in Yagoto (Nagoya). We had two birthdays to celebrate so dressed up and went out. It was a fun evening with lots of laughs.

Have a look at the mystery gift that Peter received.

Nagashima.Jazz Dream Outlet Mall - 21 October 2006

Our first trip to a japanese outlet mall. It was actually pretty good, the mall had Timberland, Nike, Canterbury (NZ) and others which had some larger size clothes and shoes. It is also themed as a "Jazz Dream", which is a bit odd

The outlet mall also had a Roller coaster park beside it, If you are into that sort of thing, it looked pretty good.

More Updates

I have updated a few things around the website. I added a few new links and some information on Nagoya's population density to the Expat area as well as have added more KitKat photos to the KitKat page.

Toyota.Motor Museum - October 2006

The museum was established in 1989 and houses a collection of 100+ classic and rare cars from the 1890s to the 1960s. It has two levels and an annex. One level is for European/American cars and the other for Japanese designed models.

Soft.Drinks

Japan has a wide variety of soft drinks available for sale. Just like anywhere, some are great and some are not. There is a huge range of iced teas, which I have tried very hard to like, but just cannot do it, they are just too strong and not sweetened in any way. I prefer the wide variety of iced coffees and I don't mind Pocari Sweat either.

More Oddities

I have a few more miscellaneous photos to the Oddities page. Photos of Saint Nicoraus and of some meals from the Autumn season.

Konnyaku

I have been eating this weird jelly like food with black speckles in it and have finally found out what it is called, Konnyaku! It is pretty tasteless and appears to be eaten more for the spongy texture rather than the taste.



Useless fact - Konnyaku powder was added to the first national currency of Japan in the late 1800s, to prevent counterfeiting, but it was stopped after rats began to eat the bills. - Wikipedia

Kit.Kats

I am becoming more obsessed with the many different KitKats that can be found in Japan. Kit kats seem to be everywhere with many different varieties. Why are kitkats so popular? well according to the BBC...

The name of the chocolate bar resembles a Japanese expression - "kitto katsu" - used by students to wish each other luck before exams. The phrase has been translated roughly as: "I hope you will win." - BBC News .

Notes from Toyota land.Book Review

I have finally finished reading "Notes from Toyota-land" and I am not sure whether I recommend it.

It is negative, and as another reviewer called it '"naive", but reading about someone else going through a similar experience was interesting. If you want a book to tell you about life in Japan, look elsewhere but if you are looking for that "other opinion" it is worth a look.

It is written by an American engineer who worked for a "Toyota family" company, not Toyota itself, in the late 1990's. He writes from a fairly skeptical point of view, picking many of the negative aspects of life in Japan without grabbing many of the positives. He, appeared to see many of the differences as bad rather than as just differences or see differences to his previous job as a Japanese cultural issue, where the same things would happen in Australia/America..

His stories relate mainly to his workplace where he saw institutionalized bullying, sexism, burdensome rules, racism, departmental politics, deference to authority and experience, enforced overtime and a number of unwritten social rules that had to be learnt.

AFL Grand Final.September 30 2006

Being in Japan did not stop us celebrating the AFL Grand Final. We went with Peter and Vic to an Aussie owned Pub called the Redrock (in Nagoya) and watched the match.

It was a great game to watch.

New Stuff.28 September 2006

I went back to Australia for two weeks in September and have used the opportunity to update my page about Melbourne, which is a contrast for Nagoya, as the cities look very different. I have also updated some of my other pages including Family and Friends.

Expensive.melons

In Japan, people give fruit as gifts. The ultimate gift appears to be the melon. Not just any melon, but a specially grown, cultivated then x-rayed and tested Melon.

A gift box with two melons in it can cost over 20,000円 (appox $230 AUD). The box of two melons in the picture is actually 21,000円.

New Stuff.10 September 2006

We went into town on the weekend and I have been able to secure some of the photos that I have been looking for.The kind shopkeeper in the Matsuzakaya food hall let me stand in his shop and take photos of his melons.I have updated the oddities section with a number of new photos.

Tanuki.The drunken badgers

Jan took this photo when we went on our trip to Takayama/Tsumago. It is of a statue outside the little noodle place that we stopped at for lunch. We have seen a few of these now and a bit of research has identified it

It is a Tanuki. Tanuki are representations of a Japanese animal called a "racoon dog". but is often misquoted into english as a badger. Jan's photo is of a modern more discreet Tanuki statue. Tanuki are actually also famous for their large "Golden balls" that bring luck. It is not subtle but the nonist has a good collection of photos. The tanuki's bits have also featured in Japanese TV advertising. Check out the red riding hood advert.

"The mythical tanuki is reputed to be mischievous and jolly, a master of disguise and shapeshifting, but somewhat gullible and absent-minded." - Wikipedia

New Oddities.September 6 2006

I have added some photos in the oddities section.

Also, for interest's sake, I have attached is a picture of a 500yen ($6AUD) lunch from the supermarket. There are sardines, salmon and rice, glazed potato and carrot , and some other things that I am not sure what they are. The lunch is quite tasty (this is actually what I had today!

Map of Shelters and " Safe" Areas

This is a section of the Nagoya city map showing save areas in case of a disaster. The brown hashes covering our house indicates "Landslide Danger Area"!

A New Look.Website

I have been teaching myself Dreamweaver and so I have used it to redesign the website. I have based the new design on a template called "curiously.green1.0 designed by NodeThirtyThree.

New Oddities.3 September 2006

Outfits for dogs, signs in English, what more can you want.

Also with the sign redesign I have made changes to pretty much every page on the website.

Obon week.13 - 18 August 2006

This week has been Obon week where Japanese families visit the graves of their ancestors, and Pam had the week off and we had our first real opportunity to do some exploring and the photos are attached. Added pages for our trips to Mt Fuji, Takayama/Tomago, and the Villaggio Italia.