Melancholic pages of my life in Japan – departure of Remus-san

It was raining today in Tokyo. The rain added more cold to the already cold climate. The rain, which is used as a symbol in literature and movies, it seemed to me, was not merely coincide. Film directors have used rain, to express the pain of separation, death, miseries and depressed thoughts. While coming back from Narita airport today after sending off Remus-san, I was thinking of some of movie scenes where the rain symbolized the pain of separation.

Every departure is painful, but departure of some people, who are close to our heart, makes us depressed. The life amalgamated with pleasures and sorrows will not wait even a single moment for anybody’s consolation. I do not intend to search for the roots of sorrow or pleasure here. Today is one of the saddest days I have ever experienced after mother’s departure from Japan.

Today may not be a suitable day to write all the thoughts into this blog about the departure of Remus-san. As planned, Remus-san left Tokyo today. For sure, it is not just a departure for me. Remus said goodbye to Japan and I am just back home from the airport. Though I feel that today, it may not be a good day to write about his departure, I am unable to resist from sharing those painful moments of departure.

Either the otherwise crowded subway station was empty or I might not have noticed it. The mind was so preoccupied with thoughts of a good friendship which was started almost two years before. I have written about Remus before also in this blog when we friends gathered for a party at his apartment. Japanese language friends reunion

The friendship started from Sakura, when I was on a short transfer from the head office. We used to dine out some days at the Indian restaurant near the JR Sakura station. When Remus was moved to the head office, I was happy to get a companion.

Remus helped me a lot to set up my family, before they come to Japan. He was the one guided me and even purchased for me most of the house-hold items. Since I am not good at selecting the things, I followed his selection. He booked the flight tickets and helped me recharge the PASMO card and the list of things goes on……. I know well that friendship can not be listed out on a piece of paper or blog. What is coming out here is just the plain thoughts from my mind, when I am trying to console myself.

Remus was my lunch partner too at McDonalds and KFC. We shared our thoughts, fears, ambitions, plans and future. We shared the knowledge and discussed things of common interest. For my kids, he was Remus uncle. They loved to play with him during his visits to our home.

A true friendship, which can not be expressed by words, is something we cherish, is something we keep close to our hearts always. The life with many physical departures of beloved friends keeps on going with out waiting for us to recover from the twinge. The time will heal………this is what Remus told at the airport and I agreed.

The life in Japan, away from the home country, with good friends like Remus, was smooth and prolific. The voids created by the physical separation may not be filled up easily. I considered myself rather strong willed and unshaken. At the final moments in front of the departure gate, I noticed my words tremble and vision smudge as the eyes started filling……..

The end of this post is without any conclusion as this is one of the melancholic pages of my life in Japan.

Thy spirit walks abroad and turns our swords in our own proper entrails

Suicide is a cry for help. When one feels that the door of the last hope is also closed, and there is nothing left with for them to live in this earth, they, being carried away with uncontrolled emotions may decide to say goodbye to this world. This is how almost all of the suicides happen in Japan too as in any other parts of the world. Academically, this explanation may be enough to start the answer to the related question. In the real world, individual life situations and complex mental processes changes from country to country.

When I read the report on CNN.com on March 2009, "Desperate Japanese head to 'suicide forest'", I related the phenomenon as part of the existing Japanese psyche. In fact, I was reading the book, Bushido at that time and was on an impression that the news appeared in CNN.com/asia is not a new social issue to be discussed with much importance this year only.

For sure, the ever increasing rate of suicide is a social issue in Japan, which needs to be thoroughly analyzed and prevented. Some people in every country may commit suicide and the social and personal reasons behind those acts of self killings changes according to the country. The last two years, we have enough reasons while reading the increased number of suicides.

I read somewhere in the middle of December 2009, that the suicide deaths in Japan has reached around 30198 by the end of November 2009 itself. That is pretty much a huge figure and a figure of concern for the social scientists. Since, 1997, the suicide deaths have crossed the border of 22,000 suicide deaths per year. Since then it has been continuing with a figure some thing around 30,000. It was horrible to hear that the death rate has crossed the 30,000 limit also.

I would like to recollect, some of my life experiences connected with the suicide in Japan. When I was waiting for the train in the morning to head towards the work place, I heard some strange announcements in Japanese language and on those days, the train comes too late, sometimes more than half an hour. Without knowing the actual reasons for the delay of trains, in order to reach the office I would choose to walk from the nearest exit of the station. As I could not understand the full meaning of the announcement in Japanese, some of my friends advised me to look into the display board where the message for the reason of delay will be displayed. If the kanji for personal accident is displayed, it might be a suicide case, and the train will be delayed more. Last year, I have walked at least 4 times as I have seen that message in the display board.

Every time I walk I used to remember the book ‘Bushido’ written by Inazo Nitobe-san. Suicide is institutionalized in Japan! Those institutionalized suicides known as Seppuku or Kappuku commonly called Hara-kiri were different from the ones happening now a days. Still the suicide rate in Japan is one of the highest in the world. For Japan, a country having almost everything to identify with a self pride, a country with the second strongest economy in the world, a country, which is a model to other nations on how to protect citizens rights, a country having a fairly good distribution of wealth system, suicide remains a scar, we need to agree.

I am not competitive at this stage to write analytical reasons behind this tendency of self killing. But one thing is sure that suicide is neither a matter of pride nor a way to escape from the personal defeats as observed in the Samurai period. In all countries, suicides happen, but when it happens more in a country like Japan, there may be reasons apart from merely economical as that mentioned in CNN.com/asia and it becomes a matter of concern.

It may not be the spirits walking around and turns the swords to their own proper entrails. There may be reasons that spread to the victim’s helplessness to deal with minute fluctuations in the external world that affect the internal world too. Education that focus on self manifestation, apart from simple school syllabus will help to a good extent to reinforce the positive life motivating elements in new generation. That will help to realize when the spirits start walking abroad and turns the sword to one’s own bowels.

Mount Naeba exploration on new year day

The snow, like white cotton balls continued falling down and piling up making our way difficult to go through. Though the car was provided with snow tyres, we were a bit skeptic to reach our destination by seeing the heavy snow fall all along the road to Mount Naeba.

The New year’s first day was memorable, not only in the mere meaning of just seeing a different place, but also by pushing a car to escape from the ice-trap where we spent around forty minutes and finally got help from the rescue team.

It was just the start of our exploration of Mount Naeba and we were on our way to the parking space in front of Prince Hotel Naeba. The journey was started at 7:00 AM from Higashi Ojima and we were happy with the hope that we can reach by 10:30AM at the destination and can enjoy the trip to Mount Kagura from Mount Naeba ski resorts.

All of us, lived most of our lives in tropical climate were thrilled to play with snow. We have seen snow fall in Tokyo, but not enough snow that we have seen in the websites of ski-resorts. The prime motivation to select a place like Mount Naeba was to make a different experience on the New Year’s Day itself. Change is the slogan in air now a days as we hear it from every corner. Let it be politics or personal life, change is a must to make the things lively.

Mount Naeba ski-resort is around 220km away from Tokyo. The day was clear when we started from Tokyo and on the way we could see Mount Fuji clearly. Mount Fuji is visible on a clear day from Tokyo also. As we were approaching to the mountain ranges near to Mount Naeba we could see the snow fall and on the middle of the way we stopped for a while to take snaps of the snow filled paddy fields and river.

Contrary to our expectations, on 1st January 2010, there was heavy snow fall and wind at the resorts. With our broken Japanese, when we approached the information counter, we were informed that the world’s longest dragondola, which is 5.5 kms from Naeba valleys to Tashiro area of Kagura ski resorts is closed due to heavy snow wind. It is dangerous to ride on the dragondola when there is a heavy wind. He informed that the ropeway operation is under red alert.

However, we could ride on the dragondola 2 which is around 1.7 kms from the slope of Mount Naeba to its peak. Fully clad with winter protection cloths, we could reach to the destination point of dragondola 2. That was an amazing and unforgettable experience to play with snow. The snow was piling up on branches of trees. They have already shed their leaves before the winter season. Now they got snow flowers!. The scene down to the valleys while we ride on the ropeway was impressive with bunches of snow sticking to the tree branches looked like trees with white flowers.

There were skiers coming down to the slope of the mountain playing with their children. At the top, we played with snow literally dipping ourselves inside the snow piles.

The resort and the surrounding areas of Prince Hotel Resorts are fully provided with all kinds of facilities to make the trip comfortable and strain-free, except the natural obstructions happen unpredictably.

It was around 5:30 PM when we decided to return back from the snow mountains. Restarting the car itself took another half an hour as the whole parking area was filled with snow and most of the cars were covered with ice. Everything looked white at the parking area. Struggling to restart the car, finally we could make our way to Tokyo with memories of an extraordinary experience.

Planning of the trip to Mount Naeba was much easier with the help of the website maintained by Prince Hotels & Resorts. We could make our plan well with the guidelines given in this website. Thanks to the website owner too for making this New Year celebration a memorable and impressive one. The link to the website is here; http://www.princehotels.co.jp/ski/naeba-e/index.html

What happens if somebody visits Hiroshima?

Recently, the newspapers, websites and news blogs were full of analyses of Obama’s proposed visit to Hiroshima. When some of my friends told about the plan of the president to visit there, I was skeptic and told them that it will not happen. The proposed visit had some thing to do with our high school physics book.

Neither politics is a subject to ignite ideas for blog posts here nor do I intend to criticize the diplomacy of politicians. Criticism, especially negative will not yield any positive result.

The equation we learned in our physics class was e = mc2. Our physics teacher, Girijan Master explained the meaning of each component in the equation. Girijan Master was not simply a teacher for me. We at high schools used to listen to him as if we hear an interesting story when he teaches complex theories of physics. It was thus we heard more about the city of Hiroshima, far away from our home town and country, in Japan.

By the time we reached High school, we had enough general knowledge about Japan and its importance in the technology products supplying to other nations. Moreover, we heard from our history teacher regarding the heroic acts of Japanese military that triumphed over European and American power axis during World War II. The history teachers were not so serious to tell us what went wrong with the war at last.

What happened before sixty or seventy years before may not be interesting to the younger generations, but when it still can influence the lives, we have to listen to the history. Looking back more seriously to what Girijan master told us when he explained the miseries of human beings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I can now realize that the energy equals mass multiplied by square of speed of light has many things to do with politics, human sufferings, power shift, alignment of nations, trade and business.

History is not written with golden letters always. Many times it is written with a knife that has the stain of blood of many innocents. Revisiting the history needs much more political will and compassion to those innocents. It may not always come with the determination of a political group that depends on the support of  majority. It is here Bertrand Russel proves himself true in saying that truth is not always absolutely true, but is what the authority or majority says. Then the chances for truth are fifty percent in the present day society. It may not be always the truth we hear as the truth is decided by the majority.

War is a crime, whoever is responsible for it. It is also true that no present-day generation can be blamed for what had happened in the past. What we can do is to learn from the past and take caution not to repeat the same mistakes that happened once in our history.

Girijan master taught us the famous energy equation on an August. That may be purely coincidence. The test ground of energy equation waited for the president which never happened. What happened in the past must not be willingly important to the present generations especially when it involves many complicated self-disgusting historical facts. We may not be able to wipe out the energy equation getting realized in many countries, but at least a caution is required to save our future generations.

This post does not attempt to find fault with anybody, but just wanted to reiterate what Girijan master taught us in our High school class. The ‘e’ that stands for energy can stand for emotion also. Then the mc (mass x velocity of light) can stand for man’s common-sense (mc). Emotions of hundreds of thousands of innocents are in the hands of common-sense of our political leaders.

A free visit to Ueno zoological park, Tokyo

The weather was suitable for an outing today with moderate cold and sun. It helped us not to change our previous plan to visit Ueno zoological park. The drive to visit the zoo was our daughter’s demand to see the animal characters which she had imagined while hearing bed-time stories.

For us, telling Panchatantra stories to children is a way of imparting moral values too. Children imbibe social values and importance of team work, social life etc through stories of animals. Originally written by Vishnusharma centuries ago, Panchatantra stories are very popular in India even today. Bed time stories help children to grow their visualization and imagination process, thereby help to ignite their hidden passions for creativity.

To our surprise, when we reached at the gate by exiting through JR-line, it was written in big red words that the “ADMISSION IS FREE”. Good! In English too. Once more I confirmed by asking the staff at the gate of Ueno zoo that admission is free today. In fact we were unaware of this fact. I have read in some of the Japan tour website that admission to the zoo on the foundation day of the zoo, probably on March of every year, on Greenery day and on October 1st etc are free, but never expected to be free today. The ticket fare for an adult is 600 Japanese yen on normal days.

There really are a lot to see in Ueno zoological park. It is one of the favored tourist spots in Tokyo and foreigners also prefer to visit on their short visit to Tokyo. If we search for some of the must see places in Tokyo, name of Ueno zoo also will appear in the search results. I got the same when I did a google search last year to make a list of places to see in Tokyo.

Ueno zoological park is wide and the exact geographical details may be available at the zoo official website. We entered the Ueno zoo through the Main gate which comes from the JR Ueno station. Right at the entrance, we can see Pandas. On the right side of the entrance we can see a variety of pheasants and pigeons including Japanese pigeon. The red panda is one of the famous attractions of Ueno zoo. Unfortunately the Panda region of the park is missing the giant panda. There we could see a notice that the giant panda was died on April 2008.

We walked to show elephants and monkeys. On the way, we could see the Thai pavilion, which was donated by Royal Thai government. Elephant forest section is one of the popular sections of the zoo. For us, we have seen many elephants in the past and elephants are part of the social life for people hail from Kerala. The elephants at Ueno zoo could not bring any nostalgia to me!

There are Japanese cranes and birds on the left side of the entrance. After taking our lunch we proceeded towards the mono-rail that goes to the West Garden. The monorail starts from East garden. Ueno zoo has two areas. One is West garden and the second one is East Garden. This separation is easier to make plan for visitors according to their preference to see animals.

The main attractions on the West garden are Kangaroos, Vivarium, Giraffe, Okapis, Alligators, Snakes, Frogs, Turtles, Penguins, Rhinoceroses, Zebra (which is one of the favorite characters in my daughter’s bed-time stories), Hippopotamuses and Flamingos etc. It was an eye-catching scene flamingos stand on single foot.

The attractions in the East garden are Lion, Tiger, Gorilla, Lama, Polar bear, varieties of birds apart from the elephants, pandas and monkeys.

The zoo is well maintained by the staff and rest rooms are located at the right places for the convenience of visitors. Food items are also available at major junctions and enough numbers of benches and tables are also properly set. Ueno zoo, with cafeteria, free rest rooms, rental strollers, baby stations, nursery room, first aid station etc., is an ideal place for outing with kids.

I strongly recommend visit Ueno zoo if you are making a trip to Tokyo with or without your family. It is a place to see in Tokyo.

Emotion recollected in tranquility!

There might be a Wordsworth walking in the tile paved streets. He might have written thousands of praising words and poems on his solitude about the colorful leaves that falls on the street. On his way back to home through this street, he might have spent more of his unconstrained time on one of the wooden benches on the garden imbibing the beauty of the nature.

It is thus the poetry takes birth. The beauty of nature here in autumn season will inspire even a monster! Emotions could be recollected in this tranquility, thanks to Wordsworth for putting all those words to make a meaningful definition for poetry.

Life in Japan is more beautiful than before with the start of autumn season. Life becomes colorful when the nature around us makes up herself in colorful wardrobe. During autumn season, leaves change their color, thus making the whole panorama more scenic.

This photo is taken from the balcony of our apartment. The street down was not visible with the densely packed green leaves till some days back, now turned to be visible from top. The green leaves also turned into different colors.

This street that goes to the Higashi Ojima station looks enticing with yellow, orange, green, orange, dark brown and red leaves intermingles each other. Ideal place to spend time during day time if we are free!

The trees near the river bank also turned their leaves colorful, making the river more attractive than ever before.

Respecting the nature is a traditional way of Japanese culture!

Enjoy the nature and tradition just 50 minutes from Shinjuku station!

This is the advertisement caption on which I get something to stare while riding on Toei Shinjuku trains to and from Higashi Ojima on weekdays. Most often this advertisement shown on the Toei Shinjuku line trains or Keio line trains that goes to Keio-tama center is the one that has caption in English. Indeed, advertized to attract foreigners, Mount Takao is a place to visit especially during the season of color change of leaves on November second week.

By repeatedly seeing the advertisement inside the trains, we decided to make a trip to Mount Takao today. We are just back from Mount Takao, which is just one and half an hour away from our house at Higashi Ojima.

The ideal visiting season is November when the trees change the colors. Mount Takao looks gorgeous with trees bearing colored leaves in a varying mix of red, yellow, green, pink, orange, dark brown and grey. The winter is near and the trees will prepare themselves to shed the leaves. During autumn season, maple leaves change color which is known as momiji in Japanese. もみじ momiji is romantic season in Japan and we could see many young couples making their trip to the top of mount Takao.

Mount Takao is 599 meters tall in the city of HachiOji. HachiOji is in Tokyo prefecture and for me HachiOji is particularly important as one of the initial visitors to this blog Mr. Hashimoto was from this place. Mount Takao is a popular hiking spot for Tokyo people.

To reach Takao-san, take a keio line train that goes to Kitano and then change to Keio Takao line to reach Takaosanguchi. Alternatively, from Shinjuku, we will get express train to Takaosanguchi. Pasmo or suica card holders do not need to buy separate tickets to reach Takaosanguchi.

From the basement of Mount Takao known as Takaosanguchi, where the Keio trains stops, we need to walk around 5 minutes to reach the cable car station. We had two option to reach at the top of Mount Takao. One is by using Cable car and another one is by lift chair. Lift chair will be an open air atmosphere and as we were with small kids and strollers did not opt to use. Cable car was pulled by giant high strength ropes that was operated from the station at the top of the mount Takao. The cable car have two cars and the travelers are well controlled by the staff at the entrance. The round trip by cable car costs 900 Japanese yen for adults and for children below 6 years old it is free.

It took around 3 and half minutes to reach the station at the top of Mount Takao. We could see the Tokyo city far away with skyscrapers looking like match boxes piled one over one. The observatory hall built on the mountain has telescopes that operate by inserting 100 Yen to view the far away places.

Walking further through the forest, enjoying the nature and tradition as the advertisement says, we could see many sculptures on the way to Yakuoin Buddhist temple. The temple built with the traditional Buddhist style have influence of Chinese architecture.

Though not so far away from busy Tokyo city, Mount Takao is rich in wildlife with more than 1200 species of plants, bushes and diverse species of insects, birds and animals.

The temples in Japan as per my experience goes is a mix of Buddhist and Shinto cultures and almost all of them I have visited have Buddha and other Shinto Gods. The Gods co-exist in good harmony in all the temples. We could see many Gods in the temple and too many sculptures of Buddha everywhere on the way to the temple. We learned that visitors to Yakuoin temple pray to mountain Gods (tengu) for their better future and good fortune.

One of the photo shown in the advertisement inside the trains is of such a God having long nose with an angry face. We could see many statues of Gods with long nose and another with a crow beak in the Yakuoin temple premise.

It was 5 in the evening, but was dark when we got inside the cable car to come down to Takaosanguchi. The journey was too memorable and all of us enjoyed, with plans of revisiting as we could not cover all of the attractions on the top of Mount Takao. Probably we need one more day to plan the journey properly.

Mount Takao, Takaosan as Japanese people say with respect, is one of the best examples of traditional Japanese culture of respecting nature and living things equally. Behind all those sculptures, the shapes we saw on the way to Yakuoin temple, the customs being followed in the temple, we could realize that it is a tradition in Japan to respect the nature!

Indian International School in Japan - IISJ Morishita, Tokyo

For almost eight months from now, I have been thinking of writing about the Indian International School Japan, having their campuses at Morishita and Yokohama. On March 2009 I went to Indian school to inquire on the admission procedures for my elder daughter. After talking to the staff at the school office, I got the opportunity to talk to Mrs. Nirmal Jain, The Director of the Indian international school Japan.

Indian international school Japan is popularly known as IISJ in Japan. It is located in Morishita, in Koto-ku ward of Tokyo prefecture. There are two Indian international schools in Japan. The second one is Global Indian School, the campus of which is at Mizue.

It is a great service being done by Indian international school Japan authorities, especially by Mrs. Jain at Japan for the Indian community. Some years before, for Indian people living in Japan with family and kids, education was a major problem. I came to know from friends that their kids go to other international schools in Tokyo. For Indians, curriculum based on Indian syllabus is important as most of the Indians are here for a short stay.

When I met Mrs. Jain I conveyed my admiration towards the service they do to the Indian community in Japan. Far away from India, giving children an atmosphere of International curriculum yet based on Indian values and syllabus is not a simple thing. That is one of the objectives of Indian international school in Japan. To make the coming generations of Indians living in Tokyo global citizens, it is a must to impart values and habits suitable to live in an international community, also by keeping traditional Indian values and customs.

The positive attitude and values Mrs. Jain keeps to impart knowledge to the new generations is impressive. Indian International school in Japan is a co-educational institution that is affiliated to the CBSE (Central board of secondary education, New Delhi, India. Interestingly, there are students belonging to other countries also studying in IISJ, Morishita. Recently, some of the Japanese parents have been attracted to the Indian curriculum.

The development of mathematics in India is amazing. Though India still bear the images of a poor country with almost half of the population under darkness of illiteracy and lower living standards, the mathematics has got a place in Indian society. Indian vedic mathematics is an amazing product of India with which complex arithmetic calculation becomes too simple, that does not need a calculator.

I have learned some basic vedic mathematics from a teacher when I was in India and when I showed the easy way of calculating complex numbers to some of my Japanese colleagues, they were astonished virtually. On my last trip to India, some of my colleagues requested to bring vedic mathematics books.

Due to the popularity of Indian mathematics and the English language medium of education, Indian schools have students from other countries including Japan. My daughter is studying in the upper kindergarten. Indian International School in Japan has got trained and qualified teachers.

For more information, please visit the official site of Indian International School in Japan – IISJ Morishita