On time and energy

After a busy day at school, I've just wrapped up my homework. It's 11.30pm. I should really be in bed about an hour ago, since light goes from about 6am-6pm in Japan, but it seems increasingly rare that I'm able to do that.

Having started trying to catch up on my vocabulary backlog, I'm finding myself very short on time. Normally, this would be because I'm squandering it frivolously, but I can't particularly find that I'm doing that at the moment. There's certainly a bit of time spent reading the news, writing emails and the odd blogpost, but not much else. Occasional running. I haven't touched a game in the last week. To my irritation, I've barely touched a book this week either, aside from my textbook. Podcasts, certainly, but those are a "while" activity - while commuting, while walking to school, while washing up. I went for a meal with some classmates once.

From what I can work out, I'm just spending a large proportion of my time and energy on, well, studying. There's four hours of lessons, which works out at somewhere around five hours most of the time due to lunch breaks (enough time get and eat food, but not much else). Sometimes I have additional activities, like bilingual conversation or cultural outings. Vocabulary practice and homework takes a little over an hour, according to what Anki (my vocabulary-training software) records, but that's misleading. Lots of mini-breaks are necessary when you're working through a couple of hundred items of vocabulary, so I generally read an article or something, but it's not really usable time. New vocabulary cards need making, which is surprisingly time-consuming, but worthwhile. I'd say I spend maybe two hours a day on the whole vocabulary-learning process.

Today, for example, I spent a fair chunk of the morning studying in a cafe, then came back home to cook before afternoon school. I finished school at 6pm, was back around 7.15, put the tea on, washed up and studied vocabulary. I ate around 8.30. Then I studied a bit more, went for a walk, came back, read an article and wrote a comment on it, finished my homework, and it's 11.30. This happens a lot. Whenever I have a 6pm finish followed by a 9am start, it seems more or less impossible to wrap up my work much before midnight. This probably says something about my efficiency.

All this learning is a full-time job, and I'd forgotten just how tiring for the brain it can be. Also, I suspect the classroom kind of learning is particularly hard work; even with regular five-minute breaks, we're still basically sat down for an hour at a time paying attention to a teacher and trying to parse meaning from a textbook. This is very different from, say, sitting in your own house with a pot of tea and a popular science book.

I have quite a few little projects that I'd like to work on, as well as reading and so on, but my brain's usually too tired to do anything that serious by the time I've finished my work for the day. Here's hoping things will ease up soon...

On vocabulary learning

So today we began a new chapter, and I received another sheet of vocabulary, with the request to review it by tomorrow. And this was quite a depressing prospect, because I realised that I still haven't got round to even looking at the last two sheets of vocabulary I got (last week, and the week before). This isn't because I'm a lazy swine; it's because I was too busy learning vocabulary.

These particular sets of vocabulary come from the new textbook I began on moving to the pre-Intermediate stream. On a quick skim-through, each sheet seems to contain around 50-80 terms. Thankfully, I already understand some of these (maybe a third) and have a broad idea of some more (another third) either from recognising a Chinese character, or because it's a compound. The latter case is much less useful, of course, because generally I can guess the approximate pronunciation or the approximate meaning, but not both, and am sometimes wrong anyway. So I need to study roughly 30-50 terms per sheet.

On top of these 40ish items of vocabulary, there are others that come up in class. I get around 10 new vocabulary items a day, unless I had a particular complicated conversation, which may be 30 or more. Outside class, I may also encounter new important vocabulary relating to business, food, a conversation with a friend, or something I'm reading. Conservatively, let's assume 140 words per week, or 20 per day.

This would entirely viable to keep up with, in theory. But it's not that simple.

One thing is that I front-loaded myself. When you start learning a language seriously, there's an awful lot of vocabulary you need to learn to be able to usefully do very much - like live in that country for six months. So I'm not starting with a blank slate, but with a large reserve of vocabulary that I was already working through slowly. Too slowly, perhaps, but I was working full-time and trying to sort out rather a lot of things at that time.

Also, learning vocabulary in isolation is both difficult and mostly worthless. This is especially true in a language very different from your own. While you might be able to do some basic reading just by knowing the terms, you can't use them productively or understand normal speech unless you know how they're used in context. This means studying not individual words, but sentences. These are longer, so things like writing practice takes more time, but they help drill the term and its use into your head far more effectively than an isolated gaggle of new syllables. The problem is, of course, that often finding a useful sentence (never writing one! bad idea!) takes time, and even a good one may well involve one or two other items of vocabulary you don't actually know yet. This will increase the time taken to study the vocabulary.

Plus, in quite a few cases vocabulary can be used in multiple ways. Sometimes these are very important to learn, and so that single piece of vocabulary might lead to three or four different phrases to learn. Maybe a common idiom or two, also.

Personally, I use Anki to study vocabulary, so I don't need stacks of paper, flashcards or to remember when to study what. One of the things Anki does is let you form different cards from the same information. In the case of Japanese, and Chinese, I need four:

• Understand the meaning of this sentence (reading comprehension)
• Remember the pronunciation of this sentence (pronunciation)
• Translate this sentence into Japanese (vocabulary recall)
• Write down this pronunciation in correct Japanese (writing)

Most languages call for only two, but there we go. Both languages kindly make this task even more difficult by having multiple pronunciations for the exact same character, and multiple characters with the exact same pronunciation, but then English has its own problems in that regard.

What this means is that I may technically need to learn 20 new vocabulary items per day; this may translate into 30 new phrases, several of them including multiple new words or expressions. Each phrase generally translates into four cards. This means that keeping on top of 20 new bits of vocab means studying around 120 cards, many of them multiple times. This is very difficult to keep up with. It certainly makes it very difficult to make any kind of dent in my backlog, which stands at a couple of thousand words.

What usually happens is that I learn a bit of the newest vocabulary, and some of the oldest material also makes an appearance (Anki presents the oldest cards I created first), and everything else vanishes into the bowels of Anki to resurface sometime in the distant future. I don't have time to learn all the most recent vocabulary before the next lot arrives. I'm not really sure I can do much about it, to be honest. Most sources suggest you can realistically learn 20 words per day, and much more is hard to sustain in the long run. Since I'm also studying at least 4 hours a day in class, I don't really have the energy to spend more than an hour or two poring over vocabulary - and of course, making up my review materials also takes time.

Right, best get back to my vocabulary...

簡単なパン

イギリスパン

お要望より　／　By request

• 小麦粉２２５グラム　（なるべく全粒粉）
• 塩小さじ1/4
• マーガリン（それともバター）３０ｇ
• イースト１５ｇ（それともドライイースト７ｇ）
• 砂糖小さじ１
• 暖かい水１４０ミリリットル

金トレーをバターで油を引いておきなさい。

小麦粉、塩、マーガリン、イーストや砂糖は混ぜれなさい。

水は少しずつ入れながら混ぜれなさい。十分になると、練り粉になって組み合す。

＊比例は完璧だったら、自分で皿をきれいにします！でも、あまりできません、普通は少しべたべたです。それも大丈夫。

練り粉を５分以上練りなさい。４個ロールパンにします。

練り粉はトレイの上に置きなさい。布巾でも練り粉を緩く包んで３０分ぐらい暖かい所に練り粉を膨らませなさい。

＊コツ：暖かい所がなかったら、大きい皿にお湯を注いで、トレイは皿の上に置きなさい。お湯の暑さは鉄製トレイを暖かくします。布巾を決して忘れないでください。

＊＊大事！オーベンを使わないでください。そいうことだったら、練り粉が乾燥させるので膨らめない。

予熱されたオーベンで１９０℃で１５－２０分焼きなさい。そして、テーブルの上に置いて自然に涼しくならせなさい。

＊コツ：も一度布巾を使ったほうがいいです。今度は、少しだけ湿っている布巾で緩く包んで、パンは乾燥させないですずしくなる。

---

English edition

• ½ lb flour (preferably wholemeal)
• ¼ tsp salt
• 1oz mrg
• ½ oz yeast, or 1/4oz dried yeast
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1/4pt warm water

Mix dry ingredients, then add water little by little. It will form a dough that easily balls together. A perfect mix will clean the sides of the bowl, but is hard to achieve. Knead for a few minutes (more is usually better).

Grease a baking tray, and place the rolls on top. Cover loosely with a tea-towel to keep the heat in.

Leave the dough to rise in warm place covered with cloth for 30-60m. If none is available, fill a bowl with boiling water, then place the baking tray on top. The metal tray will conduct heat well and warm the rolls, while the towel will keep the heat in.

Cook in a preheated oven on Gas Mark 5 (190C) for 15-20 minutes.

Leave to cool naturally, placing a slightly damp cloth on top to prevent the crust from drying out excessively.

Okonomiyaki Farewell

So on Friday, we said goodbye to a couple of classmates. This happens fairly regularly as most people aren't in a position to stay six months. We'd got on very well, and hung out during lunchtimes and so on, so there was a plan to get together for a goodbye meal. As it turned out, only three of us could make it, but we did our best. My friends will henceforth be known as AH and MA.

We started out with a trip to an okonomiyaki place that AH recommended. These are a kind of pancake, omelette sort of thing made with batter and a variety of fillings, chiefly cabbage and meat, and slathered in sauce. Now I'd had okonomiyaki once before, from the convenience shop where I normally buy my lunch and wanted a change - it was, I am fairly happy to say, revolting. Nevertheless, the enthusiasm of my friends was enough to convince me to give the restaurant a go. Prepackaged convenience store meals are really not a good indicator of what food is supposed to be like.

On AH's advice, we ordered one dish of yakisoba (stir-fried noodles and vegetables) and two different okonomiyaki. We'd managed to get seats at the grill, and this really improved the experience. The way to make both dishes is, you have a metal table that you raise to enormous temperatures, and then you use it like a huge wok. The chefs masterfully tossed and spun the dishes in front of us, grilling them beautifully without burning, then scraping any remnants off the searing surface before starting the next batch. Hygiene isn't a big concern during the shift because the whole thing is so hot - although it would undoubtedly be an issue for allergy sufferers.

Truly terrifying amounts of food gradually become merely quite terrifying.

These photos were taken with the special sports mode for capturing rapid movements. This should tell you a lot about what is happening here.

We began with our yakisoba, a first for me, and dished it out between us. It was crunchy, flavoursome and a nice opener for the heavier food to follow - we only had a few mouthfuls each, I hasten to add.

The okonomiyaki was next, intimidatingly large and glistening. The chef did a sudden woodpecker impression, carving it into neat squares with a series of rapid-fire blows from the sharp end of his spatulas.

I was a bit nervous of this because of my prior experience, but it smelled all right and came highly recommended by both friends, as well as a previous boss (hi, Gilly!). So I dug in, and sure enough it was delicious. It's lighter than the average omelette, with an interesting texture and the rich kick of the sauce.

After a few bites, I discovered that one of our okonomiyaki came with prawns. Now, I've never eaten a prawn. Our family has allergy issues with seafood, and although we have plenty of evidence that I'm not affected, I'd been brought up without touching the stuff. If you have never eaten fish by the age of 15, let alone seafood, let me tell you that eating prawns seems incredibly weird. It's an insect. Okay, the biologist in me objects to that classification - but on a fundamental, common-sense level, a prawn is basically an insect. In the UK, insects are very much a Thing You Do Not Eat.

That being said, I've slowly been working my way through the many things I grew up not eating, and have for some time (especially since I came to seafood-loving Japan) been seriously considering prawns. So I thought, what the hey?

The prawn was... okay? It wasn't nearly as crunchy as I'd expected. Sort of vaguely meaty and vaguely indescribable. I ended up eating another couple in the course of our meal, although the sheer size of the food defeated us in the end, to AH's dismay. We paid up and left - the whole thing was about £5 apiece, which seemed certainly fair enough to me.

Full to the brim, this seemed like a good time for a wander. Fukuoka is a very calm, safe place to be out even on a Friday night, so we wandered to one of the rivers (such as they are) and enjoyed the peace and fresh air. There was a cool breeze and really not many people around, considering how full of eateries and bars the area was. Perhaps still too early for Japan, where it seems people routinely finish work around 8pm.

There was a man with a banjo busking away. I'd have liked to stay and listen for a bit, but the others weren't that interested so we moved on. I feel bad for taking his photo without giving him a donation.

AH then remembered that he'd been told of an interesting specialist beer place in the area, which he'd not managed to find on his last foray. Having nothing else in mind, we kept an eye out for it, and MA spotted it way across the river. Surprisingly, when we circled back on the far bank, we still managed to find it! This district was increasingly full of 'love hotels', which caused us both amusement and mild scepticism over what the bar would be like, but it was perfectly respectable. In truth, I'm not entirely sure of the place of love hotels in Japanese culture - I suspect they're more respectable than they seem to British eyes, in a country where it's so hard for many people to find privacy or time together. The names and attempts at subtlety provided us much amusement.

And that's the last I expect to write on the subject - already more than I'd have ever guessed.

We headed for the balcony, and spent a soothing hour or so sipping our half-pints of interesting beer and watching the world go by, or at least the small and select part of it that travels by boat on a Friday night.

Afterwards, we wandered back into town, where we said our melancholy goodbyes and went our separate ways. It was a really nice evening, despite having been pretty tired when I started out. Lovely food and lovely company, and a fun little look around a corner of the city I normally ignore. Thanks all!

Culture Class: Kushida shrine

So a little while ago, our GenkiJACS culture class took a trip to Kushida shrine in Hakata.

I'd actually paid a flying visit earlier, when we went to the Owl Cafe, but didn't really know much about it. Luckily, this time Kayoko-san was on hand to tell us what was going on. Any errors of fact here are my fault for not paying enough attention.

The temple houses one of the floats used in last year's Yamakasa festival. It will be destroyed when the next festival comes around. This is, I dunno, about thirty feet tall?

These stones were brought here by various sumo wrestlers, which is a bit of a tradition. Each one is a couple of feet long and immensely heavy. There's an example stone nearby so anyone feeling macho can test their strength - the most our party managed was to turn one over.

These are empty sake jars donated by various well-wishers for use in rituals.

The cranes are associated with longevity. This spring was traditionally drunk from in the hopes of health and long life, but ironically is now too polluted to use. A stern notice warns against drinking from it, so the cups are just for show.

There's undoubtedly some significance to this lantern, but I just thought it was striking.

Fortunes tied up in the shrine to let bad luck blow away in the wind.

These wooden plaques are used for important prayers - at least in theory. You buy them from the shrine stalls, which sell all kinds of charms, prayer plaques and fortunes. Things like this also have a bit of tourist cachet, so some people just want to buy them and write something, not necessarily personally important prayers. I saw a fair number in English, Korean and other foreign languages as I passed, and some of those were clearly just casual remarks - although I didn't like to read any in detail as it felt intrusive. Traditionally they should be prayed for by the priests and then burned.

This rope is a Shimenawa. It's made from rice stalks, and is used for ritual purification and as a boundary against spirits. Beneath it are pulls for three bells than can be run to attract the attention of the shrine's deities before praying. Some of our group did so, and quite a few Japanese visitors while we were there - they only seem to creak a bit, rather than ring, but from what I can work out that's a maintenance problem rather than deliberate.

As well as the main shrine, there are mini-shrines like this dedicated to other deities. There are around a dozen here, as well as some mid-sized shrines with their own small buildings and gates within the compound.

This wall is built from rubble left over from the destruction of much of the city. It reminded me strangely of the Erosion on the Formby coast, a poignant reminder of tragic histories. I've now seem similar walls in a couple of other historic sites.

Overview

This is a pretty convenient place to visit - as I said, I've been here myself in passing. However, unless you already know a fair bit about shrines, it's pretty difficult to get much out of it other than some photos of nice things you don't really understand. As such, it was really helpful to have Kayoko-san there to field our questions, show us the most interesting points and even ask a couple of questions of the shrine staff. As someone who's seen a lot of churches and knows a reasonable amount about that kind of architecture, it was an interesting comparison and I'd be quite interested in a more in-depth look of the kind not really possible in a sizeable group.

If you're well up on shrines, you can probably appreciate Kushida by yourself, and I don't know that it's particularly different from other shrines of similar size. However, if you're like me and basically completely ignorant, this was an enjoyable and worthwhile excursion that I can recommend.

Hobbled

The cramped inconvenience of my kitchen space reached a sort of natural zenith today when it led more-or-less directly to disabling my hob and rendering me unable to cook or make hot drinks.

I wanted a nice suppertime herbal tea, so I picked my kettle from the floor of the genkan (porch) where it had been sat, there being nowhere else in the building where I could put it down, and filled it up. Placing it on the hob and switching on the gas, I was briefly startled by a smell, but since this regularly happens due to the combination of stray hair (I shed a lot) and fire, I paid no heed for a few seconds. By that time, something odd was clearly happening and I turned it off to discover some waxy substance running over the hob.

As far as I can reconstruct events, my best guess is that at some point in the kettle-arranging process it touched a plastic lid left on the tiny, crowded sinkside, and this somehow stuck to the base of the kettle where I didn't see it. Certainly, it wasn't on the hob to begin with. This then must have melted horribly all over the place. Having no better ideas and being averse to toxic fumes in a small, ill-ventilated room, I immediately turned off the flame and tipped water over it. Once all was over I pried off the plastic as best I could.

Despite my efforts, the hob now refuses to ignite, and I'm strangely reluctant to tinker with unfamiliar appliances that use poisonous gas and electricity to produce fire, in the room where I sleep, last thing at night when I have basically zero idea what I'm doing. It seems safe enough; the gas turns off alright, it just won't light. I have a gas alarm and the vent fans on, so it should be fine.

Technically this isn't the room's fault, just a weird and unfortunate accident caused by bad luck and clutter. Trouble is, the room doesn't offer any alternative to clutter, bar adopting the hermit life and owning nothing. There's just not enough places to put things down, and a lot of things are hot, dirty or wet and need to go somewhere 'safe' - which means the sinkside.

Tomorrow being a Sunday, I can't do much. I imagine utilities and landlords alike are not available, and in any case I don't think my Japanese will stretch to explaining this, so I'll need to rope in the school. Oh joy.

This all seems like great fun and I am thoroughly looking forward to paying for a new hob to be installed in this wretched hole of a kitchen.

Culture Class: folk museums and Yusentei

Our most recent trips with Culture Class were to the Hakata Folk Museum and Yusentei Gardens. I’ll actually deal with these together, because there’s not a huge amount to say about either one.

The plan for the museum trip was to attend two museums: Hakata Traditional Craft Center and the Hakata Folk Museum. We had a bit of a surprise when we turned up to the first to find that it was shut! Apparently there’d been some late changes to the schedules for class trips, and people had lost track of the fact that this place always shuts on Wednesdays. So we couldn’t go inside, but this did at least mean we had more time for the Folk Museum.

Hakata Machiya Folk Museum

This is a local history and culture museum dedicated to the Hakata district, the core of Fukuoka.

This is an entire old merchant’s house, relocated here and turned into a museum. It’s much larger than what we tend to think of as a house, so presumably a pretty well-to-do merchant! There’s room for essentially a full multi-person workshop.

The museum is fairly specific to Hakata as a district. There’s a chunk of displays about the Yamakasa festival in summer, when various teams – traditionally merchants – build and then race around with large wooden floats, commemorating a time when the city survived a plague sweeping Kyushu. Their escape was attributed to a famous monk being carried around on a palanquin sprinkling holy water, and this gradually morphed into the festival as it stands. We watched a video about the festival and its preparations, which was nicely informative and had English subtitles. There were also little models showing what the festival looks like, although I’ve seen some of the real thing – in fact floats are on display at Kushida Shrine, where I've also been with this class. I thought I'd written that up, but apparently not yet! Apologies for the lack of chronological coherence.

Other sections showed old and recent photographs of the city, to illustrate its development, and some artefacts thought to be particularly typical of Hakata culture. There were a couple of short peek-show films using cutouts that showed something about the history and culture, although I couldn’t follow much. An interesting one was a set of three old telephone sets, where you could listen to lessons in Hakata dialect at beginner, intermediate and advanced level - although as they’re in Japanese already, I didn’t have the time I’d need to puzzle it out!

Upstairs were some rooms laid out in traditional artisan style, much like the old houses I’ve now visited. Sometimes there are visiting artisans demonstrating traditional crafts, but not today. Unfortunate!

Another part of the museum holds a workshop section, where looms for making obi (the belts used for kimono) were set up. As a part-Lancastrian of weaving roots (we still have shuttles in our house) I have a lingering interest in this kind of thing, but sadly we were very short on time by this point. Apparently it’s normally possible to have a go on the loom, so I expressed an interest, but just at this point a group of Japanese visitors turned up and started chatting to the staff, so by the time our teacher attracted attention there was only time for a quick photo.

Yusentei Gardens

Yusentei used to be a personal resort for the Kuroda Clan, the old lords of Fukuoka and builders of the castle. It's now been restored and opened to the public as a garden. Its name derives from a poem by 久世通夏 (who the English brochure insists on calling "Minamoto Michinatsu", but named elsewhere as "Kuze Michinatsu") describing how friends enjoy each others' company around cooling fountains in the heat of summer.

世に堪へぬ
暑さも知らず
沸き出づる
泉を友とむすぶ庵は

It's a pleasant, fairly quiet place with water and trees and lots of moss, which is a big feature in most Japanese gardens.

For some reason, these stones are turned into dioramas with tiny people.

Perhaps the most interesting unusual feature of the park is this traditional stone lantern, which you'll see in just about every older building in town. It was impossible to get a decent photo because of the angles and intervening trees, as it's set some distance from the path behind a fence. However, right at the bottom is a tiny icon dedicated to the Virgin Mary - there were some Catholics in the family at that time. As Christianity was illegal at the time, this allowed them to mark their religion, but it was very simple to cover up the dedication if any problem visitor turned up.

There were loads of koi to feed, and they turned the place into a frothing mob. If you have never seen a rabidly thrashing koi school - and perhaps more importantly, heard the creepy noises they make - it's quite something. I also discovered that their lips are weirdly rubbery, and their bodies slimy.

Mostly, we just chatted a bit and enjoyed the calm. It was the first time really talking to most of these people for me, as we're in different classes. Most were German-speakers, so I mostly spoke German. At the end of the day, two of us discovered that we'd both been assuming the other one was German, and in fact he was a Pole living in Ireland!

The park also contains a teahouse, where we stopped for my first ever proper Japanese macha. This is the strong, powdered tea used in tea ceremonies. Unfortunately, we were told to hurry back, so we didn't really have time to appreciate sitting in this nice formal tearoom and trying out the tea - we were sat there for maybe two minutes tops.

While we were there, some ladies in kimono showed up, and a couple of daring souls asked for their photos.

There isn't really anything to see here, it's a garden with a tearoom, if quite a pleasant one.

General verdict

There was a slightly unfortunate logistical issue with both these trips, in that one member of the class had been scheduled with a lesson at 4pm. This meant that we had to head off around 3.30, and as we only left school around 2.15 and had to take a bus, our time was pretty limited. I can’t imagine how we’d have fitted in two museums in the time, so really I can only be grateful that one was closed. It was a bit unsatisfactory, like.

I would say that these two trips were the least worthwhile of the cultural classes for me. This was actually hinted at by the staff, but I thought I’d give it a go anyway and find out. Basically, they are the sort of places that you can fairly straightforwardly go to yourself.

If you aren’t here for very long, have limited Japanese or aren’t confident, then going with the class makes plenty of sense. The school plans a cultural schedule, so you don’t have to research for yourself where might be interesting, accessible, affordable and comprehensible. The guide arranges transport, buys tickets, does any necessary talking to staff and can help explain things as you go around. These are all very helpful if you’re in town for two weeks and want to do some local Japanese things while you study, plus you go with a group of other people for some nice company.

If you’re more confident and have time to do things yourself, then actually going in a group can be a drawback. As I mentioned, we had to leave early on both these occasions because of one classmate’s schedule, which meant cutting short what we were doing at points I was quite enjoying. Like any group visit, you're likely not to have enough time to (say) try and read through the signs yourself, which means you're losing out on one of the benefits of visiting Japanese attractions - actually using your Japanese.

I’d also say that having a guide is less useful in these cases than with some others we’ve tried – for example, translating during cooking lessons or explaining the layout of the shrine. Museums are generally very text-heavy and full of information that’s hard to absorb unless you have the context. You can go round together and ask the guide to explain everything, in classic tour guide mode, but that tends not to be hugely effective as everyone is interested in different things. There's simply not enough time to individually explain things or answer questions for everyone in the group. Kayoko-san did what she could, this is just a fundamental issue with this sort of thing. Of course, if there had been visiting artisans present, we would have benefited more from having her there to translate.

The garden was at another extreme, because for the most part it’s just a garden with very little that needs explaining, and those details are covered in the various-language leaflets. If you’re part of a group, you tend to end up moving at a speed that doesn’t suit you – if you want to take lots of photos you’ll be dragged along (especially if you’re at the tail end and everyone else has already taken photos!) while others will be held back by people wanting a leisurely stroll. So I would tend to say that in both cases, going with a couple of Japanese friends with similar interests would be a great idea, but that otherwise someone with passable Japanese may be better going on their own, and having time for a leisurely exploration.

Miscellaneous nice photos

These two lovely, artistic signs tell you "No Entry", but at least they're pretty about it.

Album covers of the world, unite!

The rare photo actually featuring me.