aozora blogspot

middle-hashimoto has sadly left toronto and my jam-packed trip to london is now over. after living in sub-zero temperatures, arriving in london seemed like being time-warped to springtime. despite being told that we were experiencing abnormally mild temperatures, london in janaury is beautiful with cherry blossoms blooming and potted plants with colourful flowers! i can only imagine how beautiful it is in spring with magnolia trees all pink and white and young lime-green leaves popping on all the trees.

so here is my entry on my wonderful london trip (which is starting to become harder than i thought .. b/c it's hard to summarize all the sights/lights/smells/accents into my blog).

london is such a great city - i'm really happy for b that she has made it her new home town. hannah and i deduced that due to the sheer number of people living in the city and the number of businesses that serve them, every company has to market themselves to the nines to try to fight for every pence of business; 95% of all advertising, signage, print collateral and products are all designed, photographed and packaged sooooo nicely (us north americans are so crude in this sense). even the grocery stores have great signage, photography and design for their in-house, lower priced brand products. amazing!

the one week middle-hashimoto and i spent in london seemed long yet very short at the same time. there were so many things that we saw and experienced, yet there are still many more things we wanted to do but ran out of time.

a long time ago someone once told me that there are many parallels between england and japan - both countries being imperial, island nations that had powerful monarchies ruling through repressive feudal systems. ideological similarities aside there are more practical and material similarities that hannah and i noticed:

• bad/crooked teeth
• people don't use dryers, clothes are hung out to dry
• cars drive on the left-hand side of the street/driver's side of car being the same
• many taps have a individual hot and cold faucets so you can never adjust the water temps to have warm h2o coming out of one faucet - only hot or cold
• a limited number of TV channels
• limited amount of landspace makes for a very small radius of personal space in public areas
• late night drunk people on the tube (pervie business men in japan/football hooligans in the uk)
• no central heating systems in homes
• small econo cars (nissan micra etc)
• cheaper mobile rates if calling other mobile users subscribing to the same company you use
• produce is packaged up
• some tube stations have kiosks right on the tube platforms

i think there were some others, but i've forgotten them.

my short trip really rejuvenated me and despite these dreading feelings of having to go to work again tomorrow, i have new projects and ideas that i want to tackle and experiments that need to be conducted. london is so inspiring! also, seeing the lack of recycling being done in london and all the waste that is produced makes me want to be a better environmental citizen. say no to unnecessary plastic bags at stores when shopping!

thank you b for allowing us to stay with you and showing us around the things that make up your new life.

so ... can you see b and hannah-banana in the st. paul's photo above? (the photos btw were developed as a souvenir to myself at the posh metro imaging. it is a high-end custom photo lab that b discovered in london. the colours come back so saturated and luscious. of course your negs are put into a metro-lab designed bag enclosed with the developed photos that are in a separate plastic metro-imaging bag; both items are placed into a hard plastic, semi-transparent folder with the metro logo printed all over it. of course all this luxurious packaging comes with a price. it costs £13 to develop 1 roll of film. so crazy, so london.)

i can't wait to go back ♥