Skip to main content

Week 21 - Tuesday in Tokyo we look ahead to 2021 and the rescheduled Olympic Games

Edited BY


G P Kennedy

                        Ian and Minako


 This is our 4th summer living together in Japan and we have learned to get used to the fact the August is really a do-nothing month for us, even more so this year with the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. As we have mentioned several times, temperatures are rising each year; it's too muggy and dangerously hot to spend much time outdoors. Activities are limited to some small festivals (cancelled this year) and traveling is expensive and (normally) crowded at this time. This scenario is not unique to Tokyo of course; the whole planet is suffering from humanity’s destructive miss-management.


 So we stay in our air-conditioned apartment and only venture out in the cooler early mornings or evenings and the occasional train ride to temperature-controlled shopping or cultural areas. Once you know your way around Tokyo you can go long distances through it’s subterranean networks and indoor connecting walkways, you can spend all day in it’s huge railway station complexes which include shops, restaurants, hotels etc. You hardly need ever emerge onto the street. 


The rescheduled Olympic Games


 So what about next August? It would be lovely to spend some of the month in a cooler climate. Liverpool, UK is the obvious candidate, we last visited this time 2 years ago and had a brilliant couple of weeks catching up with family and friends and events. We are certainly overdue another visit but there needs to be a vast improvement in conditions before we would feel safe traveling that far and being in a country where, sadly, far too many people and organizations are not treating the situation seriously and taking proper precautions. It would be more stressful than enjoyable. We are always optimistic though - we have to be!

 

Hoping to return to San Fransisco in 2021

 

San Francisco is another place we really need to return to soon to visit Ian’s daughter and her husband but, again, August is not the best time because although San Fran itself is quite cool this month, as you will have seen in the news, it is surrounded by wildfires and this is now an annual event. They should be safe from fire in the cities but it’s raining smoke, they’re indoors anyway due to the lockdowns but now they have to keep the windows closed, run air-purifiers and wear their masks, not the best holiday destination for someone with lung issues.

 

Bon Odori at a local primary school

 

All being well, this time next year, the Tokyo Olympics will have just finished after being postponed for a year. If it happens at all it will probably be a much-reduced version but hope that the games and the Cultural Olympiad will be a post-COVID celebration.  Also we hope that the annual summer festivals will be back in every town for people to gather and we’ll be dancing in the streets for the Bon Odori and we’ll be following more of Tokyo’s hidden underground passages to interesting places.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 16 - Daily Diaries - Saturday in London is a 20-hour Momma marathon for Sally

Edited BY G P Kennedy   Sally...,and the baby - London, UK  02:05am  Good morning…. the baby, as usual, has woken up for a bottle of milk.  She is still in our room, before Covid 19 hit we found black mold in the nursery and the landlord wouldn’t sort it out. Then we went into full lockdown and for a few months people could not come into your house to do work, so to cut a long story short the baby is still in with us at 15 months old!  She is not the best sleeper and wakes 2-3 times a night, so we haven’t had a full night’s sleep in forever. She wouldn’t settle after the bottle and nappy change so came into bed with us.   06:25am  The baby is awake again which means we all are.  After 6 o’clock is good as she is usually ready to get up for the day between 5am and 5.30am.  We have a small Android tablet, which we will put CBeebies on just so we can get 30 minutes more sleep usually. The baby's room 07:00am  The baby and I are up for break...
Post a Comment
Read more

An expertly crafted roast dinner to round of Food Week

Edited BY G P Kennedy     Chicken Roast Dinner by Simon   Hey all looks like its food week, which is my favorite subject at the best of times!   Last Sunday in Oz was Fathers Day so we went out for lunch, which meant that I didn’t get to cook. To compensate for this I am cooking Roast Chicken last night, which is one of my favorite meals and one that I have cooked so many times, I do it on autopilot while listening to music and having a few beers. No flash recipe here but here is what we had and I’ll explain how I did it-   Roast Chicken. Pigs in blankets. Roast potatoes and carrots. Cauliflower, parsnip and roast garlic puree. Brussels sprouts, broccoli and green beans. Home made gravy.   First thing is to work out the finish time and count back.   2.2 kg whole chicken so say 2 hours cook time. This was roasted with garlic, rosemary and lemon placed inside. Lay this on a bed of garlic and rosemary and drizzle with lemon juice and olive oil and then se...
Post a Comment
Read more

Racial Justice and Equality - Part 6 - An Awakening

Edited BY G P Kennedy Sally - London, UK #blacklivesmatter  The death of George Floyd has been a catalyst for the Black Lives Matter movement to be brought for the forefront of the news.  The color of someone’s skin should not matter in 2020 but for many ignorant, racist, prejudiced, ill-informed people, it still does?  Seeing and reading some of the stuff on the news and on social media, it is unbelievable to see that we are still living in a hugely racist world.     I admit that I thought it was getting better as I tend to surround myself with people that are similar to me, people that do not judge others by their color, their appearance, their sexual preference but by what kind of human being you are, but I have realized this is not a realistic view of the world.    I am from a predominantly white family but I have close relatives that are black so I know about racism through them and am disgusted at how cruel some people can be.    S...
Post a Comment
Read more