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Today was the first of all our days here that it was actually cool enough for me to want to leave the house when I didn’t actually have to.Patrick took me to see Baohe Park and Zheng Bao pavilion. Although I had lived in Hefei for a year previously, I had never spent any time in the park or climbed the pavilion, so I am glad I managed to finally get around to it.

There are a lot of terribly misspelt and completely incomprehensible signs around Hefei, I have stolen menus in the past just because I found them so highly amusing. I don’t usually bother to take photos because there are just so many odd signs to be seen, but I took one today of a sign in Baohe park, as I just couldn’t understand how they had managed to complicate the message so much, and it made me smile.

How can you put your step on the green grass

Are they angry? As in “how could you??!!” I am not sure…

We were also given a final date for our apartment completion today. After weeks of being messed around by the builders, Patrick went to see them with the government official in charge of Hefei’s building and development or something-or-other, and we’ve now been assured it will be ready in 10 days.

I so hope it’s ready by then, I want to go and buy house stuff!!

Our car isn’t going to be ready for another two weeks either. I still haven’t worked out exactly what everyone is up to during all this waiting time, I bet there is a lot of nothing going on.

I highly recommend anyone who suffers from a lack of patience to come and live in China a while, if you don’t die of frustration, you’ll be cured forever.

I have been planning to take Patrick to Shimokitazawa for cake and coffee one afternoon, as he hasn’t seen it yet, and I think it’s worth a visit.I checked Google quickly to see if we could take an express or not, and somehow accidentally came across a website about Gotokuji Temple.

I wasn’t aware earlier, but apparently the lovely little beconing cat that can be seen in Asian restaurants and businesses all over the world, originated in Setagaya ward in Tokyo, just a few stops down the line from our apartment.

The story goes that a feudal lord had been sheltering from rain under a large pine tree outside a small monastery. As he was waiting for the rain to subside, a cat beckoned to him from the doorway of the monastery with his paw.

Just after the lord entered the building, a bolt of lightning struck the tree he had been sheltering under; his life had been saved by the cat.

The lord then decided to make the monastery the family temple of the Ii family, and built a large new temple building. The story spread among the local towns and soon the cat became a well known lucky charm, attracting many visitors to the temple.

I had always known the cat to be beckoning wealth and money, so I am not sure how and at what point it morphed into a cash-cat from a luck-cat…

Temples and cats are two of my favourite things, so it was nice to see them all in the one place. The weather was dreary and drizzly, but it made the temple all the more enjoyable as it seemed to make everything greener.After wandering about for quite a while trying to find the place, and then taking the tram (Tram in Tokyo!) the wrong way for a stop, we ran out of time for coffee in cake in Shimokitazawa… there is always next time.

The sunny warm weather held up for another day today, so we went to Ueno for the afternoon.I found a tourist brochure we were given when we went to Nikko that outlines all the most popular attractions in Tokyo, so we are trying to get through a page or two a week.

I had been expecting a prettier park, so Ueno was a little disappointing. The sun was so warm I quickly got a little disoriented and grumpy, and after we visited Toshogu Shrine, did a quick walk around the park and the lake full of lily pads, we went to find some lunch.

I must remember to take my umbrella out to protect myself from the sun and the grumpiness that comes from being in it…

We will go back again on a greyer day to visit some of the many museums scattered about the park, then I should be left with a happier impression of the place.

We have had quite an eventful day today. I dragged Patrick and Michael off to Kameido this afternoon as I wanted to see Kameido Tenjin Shrine and its famed Japanese Wisteria. Unfortunately the signage around the area is about as good as the signage anywhere else is Tokyo, so we spent quite a time wandering about looking for it.

I thought the walk was interesting at any rate, and we came across another lovely shrine along the way that we wouldn’t have found if I hadn’t got us a little lost.

We eventually found Kameido Tenjin, but it seems that we were a little late for the Wisteria. It probably all fell off as we were walking about the place trying to find it. I was horribly diasppointed, as I had been looking forward to seeing it all week.

At least we did discover that the ponds at the shrine were full of huge Koi and lovely tortoises that all swam about looking up at us or sunbathed on the little stone islands in the ponds.

We went to watch a baseball game after the shrine-viewing, which was a first for all of us.

Its turns out that the game itself is very long and uneventful, but the crowds are fun as usual. At the first home run, every single member of the crowd produced a little green umbrella from out of nowhere and danced about with it. It was completely unexpected, and very amusing.

At one point in the game, a special golden umbrella was awarded to the man who had danced the most enthusiastically.

We were also impressed to see that the fans used dozens of real trumpets to play out the team tunes instead of the awful colourful plasic ones we are used to back home.

Finally, and most exciting of all, Patrick caught one of the balls that was thrown into the crowd. Now we are the proud owners of a real Tokyo Baseball!

We ended up escaping before the game finished as it was so long and really quite boring to watch.

We went to Pronto for dinner and had the nicest pizza I have had for a long time, as well as some fantastic tomato and mozarella salad. The food there is really nice, but it becomes horribly smoky in the evenings, and I can smell the smoke on my clothes even as I type.

Michael has collected his key to his apartment, so, seeing as we were in the area, we went and had a peek after dinner. It has a much better view than ours, and a bigger living area. We are a little bit jealous.

We walked all over Tokyo today.

We started in Yoyogi Park and enjoyed the picnic atmosphere as families lunched under the cherry blossoms. We decided to just keep walking towards the Imperial Palace until we came across a bank so we could pay our rent.

Unfortunately our bank doesn’t appear to be particularly popular, as there wasn’t a single branch to be found.
We did come across all sorts of interesting things on our travels though, mostly unexpected cherry blossoms and shrines hidden between the shining skyscrapers.

We found one particularly interesting shrine entirely devoted to dogs. The shrines are all well hidden among the usual city buildings and are all such calm and peaceful places to stop during the day.

I hope the nice weather continues for long enough that we can picnic under the blossoms at the Imperial Palace tomorrow.