Scenes from Japan

From this sedentiary position, the only way is up for this junior fashion outlet employee currently gaining valuable retail experience as a sign-holder on Tokyo's prestigious Omotesando.

One of these structures is an actual tree. Can you tell which one? 

Especially for Lina, who posted a penguiny post especially for my humble penguiny person, here some random pictures of the Kenrokuen (兼六園) garden in Kanazawa from 2006.

When I first lived in Japan ten years or so ago, I don't recall seeing much in the way of graffiti - neither the "artistic" sort, nor the scrawled tags which are presumably the tagger-equivalent of what dogs do to lampposts. It's particularly prevalent around Harajuku, and not even the post boxes are safe - although Japan Post doesn't take graffiti lightly and is applying the ultimate sanction, censorship.

Should you ever be kidnapped by aliens and returned to Earth at a random location, one way of finding out whether you're in Japan or not is by looking out for disconnected queues of people with no obvious destination. Such as this one here in Harajuku, which at first sight appeared to be a line of people standing under the pedestrian bridge by the station for no apparent reason, but it turned out the queue was merely interrupted to avoid blocking the steps, and continued with renewed vigour on the other side.

Just by following the queue to its head, you'd be none wiser as to where it was headed, as there was no visible attraction that looked like it would be worth waiting in line for. As it happened I was going down the alley towards which the head of the queue was facing - it's a great shortcut from the Omotesando side of the station diagonally towards Takeshita-dori and Tôgô Jinja (but on your first time try it in clear weather conditions with a long piece of string attached to the main road - it gets very wiggly and windy in places and there are some steps which come up on you rather unexpectedly) - but 20 metres or so further in, the appeal became obvious: the Harajuku branch of Johnny's (ジャニーズ), one of Japan's best-known "talent agencies" with a large stable of stars, and this branch with its souvenir shop is a popular destination for the starstruck. A member of staff was standing outside in the alley waving queue members in as space became available.

As I so sagely predicted yesterday, today is "National Foundation Day" (建国記念の日, Kenkoku Kinen no Hi), which marks the mythical founding of the Japanese nation and its imperial lineage in 660BC. By my calculations that's 2668 candles to go on the massive, whale-flavoured cake which in no way contains any Chinese gyoza. It's also a good excuse for the guys with the black vans to drive up and down Omotesando trying to prove to each other who has the loudest loudspeakers (always a sign of a small tadger if you ask me). In between their exhortations in praise of all Emporer Jimmu (the mythical guy who started the whole Japan thing) I heard the distant sounds of drums being hit with large sticks, and in the spirit of investigation bravely carved a passage through the crowds towards the entrance to the Meiji Shrine, where some people had come all the way from Ibaraki Prefecture to the north of Tokyo to demonstrate their drum-hitting skills, which were very good, in my humble non-expert opinion. I wish I'd brought a video camera with me, but these photos will have to make do.

Last Friday I had a bit of a panic, because the local public transport system here in Berlin was out of action for nearly two days because of an unexpected strike. Personally it didn't affect me too much (my current commute is to the room next door) but I was more than a little worried that further strikes might follow, particularly on Friday, when I'm due at the airport - which is accessible only by bus or car. Not having a car, the obvious alternative would be to get a taxi - which is what everyone else does, meaning taxis are hard to come by and even if I could have got hold of one, or got someone with a car to give me a lift, it might have got stuck in a traffic jam. As things turned out, the airport ran an "emergency" bus service, and the union has just announced the next strike won't be before Monday, so it looks like I won't have to rely on my emergency last-ditch backup plan which would involve walking from the nearest national rail station (not affected by the strike) to the airport, a distance of about 3km as the penguin swims, but probably half-as-long again taking into account the most practical walking route.

Had I had to do that, I would have been more than a little miffed, and while Berliners took the first strike more-or-less good-naturedly, public transport users have limits too, and though I'm sympathetic to the strikers' cause, I'd just like to point out to the union that if you push the fare-paying passengers too far, you might just end up with scenes like this:

dating from 1973 (about 5 minutes; no translation, but the images speak their own language), when Japanese rail passengers, faced with escalating strikes, took matters (and heavy blunt objects by the look of it) into their own hands, rising up in protest at the complete lack of transport (and in urban Japan, if the trains stop running, there is no viable alternative transport).

Contrary to popular belief, Japan is more than ancient temples contrasted with glittering skyscrapers. All those cars, LCD screens and Hello Kitty products have to be made somewhere, such as at this industrial plant visible from Fuji Station (not far from the mountain of the same name) on the Tokaido Line southwest of Tokyo.