Tianzifang

Tianzifang is a city block in the middle of Puxi in Shanghai that is full of tiny lanes with interesting shops.  We've only been once before, and had a craving to go back this weekend.  I was surprised how much like Tokyo it was - from the pikachu shaped buns to blood bags full of fizzy drinks, to walls of hello kitty cuddlies, and several cat cafes too.  It was fun having a wander around for an hour, before heading to Tacolicious for lunch, via a lovely walk through the french concession.

It's been quite a long week for us, what with the whole school being inspected by CIS.  I am the only one in my department who got observed while I was teaching.  Actually, the lady was lovely and was only in for 10 minutes, and all of my kids were unusually well behaved during that time, so it was all good.  We had a meeting after school on Friday about it and it seemed to go very well, which is good.  Other than that, school was fine. I feel like everyone is starting to get very tired again, now that we've been back for 3 weeks since the holidays.  It really is too soon to be getting tired, but still, our school works us hard, so that's how it goes.

My year 4s had a fabulous time digging on Wednesday.  That's the digs done for 2019 - next week we'll wash and draw the finds.  Luckily no knives were found this week!

On Saturday evening we went to a pub called 'The Shed' to watch England Vs New Zealand in the Rugby World Cup semi final, and amazingly England won 19-7.  We were watching with way more NZ fans than English ones, but we made sure to make enough noise when we won!

Today, Matt is out playing football with his England group and i'm having a pottering day - tidying up, doing some washing, brushing the cats, that sort of thing.  

Archaeology Club

An interesting week in Archaeology club!  It was year 3s turn to excavate our little hole in the gardens of the school.  They had a brilliant time, as they always do.  In the closing minutes of the dig, a boy ran up to me shouting 'Look what I found!' You guessed it, it was the blade you can see in the photo above!  At first, I though a child had made it, but it's far more likely that a gardener or maintenance worker made it.  It had clearly been in the ground for a long time as it was very rusty and not at all sharp anymore.  I took a photo of it and put it in the hazardous materials bin in the science lab.  We will definitely study the photo during our 'cleaning our finds' week, but there is no way I was having a homemade knife in my drawer for two weeks until then!  A photo will have to do!  So, that was pretty exciting.

Otherwise, it was a fairly quiet week again.  Matt and I went out for dinner on Thursday to The Blue Frog, just over the road from our building.  On the way home we discovered that there is a Coco Ichibanyi branch in the life hub.  This was the amazing Japanese curry, chain restaurant we discovered in Hiroshima. So excited to go eat there.  We definitely won't be wasting our time at The Blue Frog anymore!!!

Matt had a football tournament all day on Saturday.  They made it to the semi finals before they lost, which was a shame.  He went out to watch England's rugby match afterwards.  He also played a football match on Sunday for the England veterans in the morning, so he was absolutely exhausted this weekend.  We managed to go to Lean for a bagel on Sunday afternoon, but that was about it - Matt was just too tired!

I had a much quieter weekend, full of editing photos, going to the gym, cat cuddles and crocheting together my persian tiles quilt.  Nice and relaxing.  The family loved their photos, and i'll be putting some on the website soon, so make sure you have a look in a few days time at www.fayesphotos.com

In the meantime, here are Snowball and Sooty enjoying some box time...

A Quiet Weekend

How have we finished the first week back after the holidays already.  Last week just flew by!  It was fairly quiet, since 3 members of the office were out on the year 5 residential.  It didn't affect my lessons, so I had a fairly quiet week.  

Matt was a busy as he usually is at work, but did find time to go for a curry with 'his lads' as he calls them, on Thursday evening.  We have kept in contact all week with Margaret and Tony, seeing what they are up to in Japan.  It's been nice being in the same time zone as them and being able to text back and forth instantly.  They made it home safe and sound today and managed to avoid the typhoon that hit Japan this week.

On Friday after school, Matt went to the local doctors to have some of his head 'bobbles' removed.  They are just fatty build-ups that grow on his head - no issues with them other than that they are annoying.  The doctor chose one to remove - a smaller one to start with - well it turned out to be quite large under the skin, and Matt ended up having an hour long surgery under local anesthetic, and having more than 20 stitches in his head!  They had to shave a bit of his head too, so our Saturday Disney plans went out the window.  Never mind - we may go in February instead when everyone else in China is back at work and we get two weeks off.

So on Saturday instead we had a much needed lie-in and then headed to the L.C.M Mall a few metro stops away to Mr Pancake, a delicious brunch-syle diner.  The grape paintings in the photo above were on the floor of the mall.  We actually didn't do much for the rest of Saturday, as we were so tired from Japan still - it was probably good that we didn't go to Disney in the end.

On Sunday, Matt was out early at Andy and Becky's to watch a baseball match on TV.  He cooked quesadillas with chili in them for us all - yum!  I had a family photo shoot on Sunday afternoon - i'll post some photos of it next weekend once I've had a chance to edit them.  They were a very cute family of 4, with lovely, bubbly fun children.  I work with the Mum at school, so it was a nice chilled afternoon in the park for us.

Sunday evening we just sat in front of the TV, enjoying cat cuddles and watching Japan beat Scotland in what was quite a spectacular rugby match.  Definitely a well needed restful weekend.

Oh, and Andy and Becky bought us some halloween candy back from America, where they went for 3 days on a course last week.  You can only buy this in America, and I haven't had it since I went trick or treating in New York when I was 11!  Turns out I still love candy corn.  Matt had never tried them before, but liked them too (unfortunately for me).  They are just pure sugar though, so one or two is enough in one sitting!

Day 8 - Tokyo. England vs Argentina

Day 8 - Saturday 5th October 2019

Saturday was a fun day. Everyone wanted to do different things, so Matt and I headed to the imperial palace, while Margaret and Tony headed to Tokyo tower for a view of mt Fuji. The palace was very pretty. We could only see the most and one building because it's still lived in by the imperial family today. There was some sort of run going on around the streets too, which was interesting to watch.

We then walked to the nearby fish market. Matt had been desperate for sushi since we arrived. We had sashimi in Hiroshima, but sushi is the same raw fish just with rice. First, we had a blow torched tuba skewer, then went into a sushi restaurant for sea urchin, salmon roe, shrimp, tuna, great amberjack, sea bream, scallop and sweet omelette. Delicious.

We had our England rugby tops on already, so we headed to the Tokyo stadium, along with lits and lots of England and Argentina fans, to the fanzone where they were showing the match before ours. The stadium was just a sea of England shirts. There were so many England fans there!

We met up with our friend Bernie for a couple of beers. He moved to Myanmar last year and was here on a school trip, but managed to sneak off to watch the rugby. It was lovely catching up with him.

Our seats were great! We were in the 9th row from the front, behind and just to the left of the goal that England were aiming for during the first half. It meant I got some great photos of the England tries. We had some very drunk English lads on tour in the row behind us who spent the entire match trying to start fights with Argentina fans. I spent the whole match convinced I was going to get either beer or vomit down my back. Luckily I didn't get either! The 5 of them spent the entire match arguing with each other, as some were very drunk and some just merry and getting annoyed by their mates drunk behaviour. We chatted to them quite a bit. They were very friendly drunks... To England fans anyway!

The match was enjoyable. The Argentina team had a man sent off very quickly for a very dirty and dangerous tackle, so it was fairly easy from there. The referee was Nigel Owens who is probably the most famous ref in the world for rugby, so it was cool to see him too.

We had beers in the seats and did lots of cheering. It was great fun. After, we met up with Matt's office buddy, Will and his mates again to let the crowds clear at the station, then headed back to the hotel after a cheeky McDonald's. While we were drinking with Will we worked out that it was 36 hours until they would see each other in their office on Monday, which was a bit depressing!

Today is Sunday, and we all have travel days. Luke left early for his flight home. Margaret and Tony head to Kyoto on the train and Matt and I have a 2 hour train to Nagoya, to get our flight back to Shanghai. It's been such a great holiday. I seriously love Japan and would love to come back to see more. But for now I'm looking forward to an evening at home watching Bake Off and enjoying kitty cuddles.

Day 6 and 7 - Tokyo

Day 6 - Thursday 3rd October 2019

Day 7 - Friday 4th October 2019

On Thursday we got a bit of a lie in because our train wasn't until 9.30. We had a pie for breakfast, then got our nice comfy seats for our 2 and a half hour journey to Tokyo. We saw the enormous foothills of mount Fuji on the journey, but the top was covered in cloud. It's very big! We arrived in Tokyo at midday, but unfortunately that was when my body decided that 5 days of heavy sightseeing was too much and I had a focal seizure. It's not a full on seizure, just a zoned out weird feeling that sets me really off balance and is only fixed by a long sleep. Luckily it didn't take too long to get to the hotel, and I slept for several hours on a very uncomfortable bed that sloped towards the middle. We went to a nice restaurant later for a mixture of local food including, mackerel, pork okonomiyaki, pickled cucumber, sushimi, squid and Matt had a glass of saki. It was very tasty, but I was a bit out of it, so I went to bed straight after, while the others found a pub to watch the rugby in.

Today, I was feeling much better and was up for exploring, despite a very uncomfortable nights sleep on that awful bed, and a sore back. We found a bakery for breakfast and then planned our route. We stayed in our district, but there was still a 30 minute walk between every place. Tokyo is enormous. Shanghai is the biggest city in the world in terms of people, but Tokyo is the biggest in terms of area. And it's a crazy, wonderful city. I love it. It has so much personality and isn't afraid to be itself. Anything goes here.

Our first stop was the metropolitan government building, which has two towers you can go up for free. We went up the south tower and again, we couldn't see my Fuji due to clouds, but otherwise it was a great view of the sprawling city, with its mountains in the distance. The building had a little area displaying the Olympic flag and mascots too, as the summer Olympics 2020 will be here in Tokyo.

Next, we went to the Meiji Jingu shrine, which is in the middle of a lovely leafy park. There was a traditional wedding procession going on, which was interesting. There were huge barrels of saki and wine being brewed too. The saki was in elegantly decorated straw barrels.

We then headed to the Shibuya crossing, which is supposedly the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world. At the busiest times, 1000+ people cross at once, in every direction. Its amazing  no one bumps into anyone. They have the diagonal crossings as well as the straight ones here, so it really is in every direction.

Next, we went to an awesome area full of what I call 'Instagram food', basically food that looks stunning so you just want to take photos of it. This is really what I was expecting of Tokyo and I wasn't disappointed. First, we had a grilled cheese sandwich at Le Shiner, a rainbow food truck that had 6 different colours of rainbow cheese in the middle! Then we had a hot chocolate with a 3D foam Pikachu (Pokémon character from our childhood). Margaret got a 'hello kitty' hot chocolate. They were tiny works of art!

We wandered along to the 2020 Olympic park, which is still under construction. The main stadium is enormous and covered in trees, which is nice. They had on display the 3 couldrons for the Olympic flame from the various summer and winter Olympics in Japan. Very cool. We hopped on a train back to our hotel and walked via the Kabukicho area, which is essentially the red light district. Its very neon and gaudy and will be spectacular at night when we go back...

It certainly was spectacular. Like Soho on steroids. An assault on the senses. Neon, flashing lights, adverts blaring, hosts trying to becon you in to restaurants, cafes, bars, the smell of food cooking.

We had a drink in a pub then began what turned into an hour long faff finding a restaurant. We ended up in a delicious Korean BBQ, where you grill your own food. Wagu beef is Japanese beef and it's so tasty. We ate quite a lot of it!