zebra

Tokyo Bears

Today Allan went for his meeting, it lasted for 90 minutes, what a long way to come for that. Afterwards we rushed to the station and caught the Shinkansen to Tokyo. There are about 28 million people living here, that means there must be about 7 million children and about 7 million toy bears ; and they are massive. Look at me by his foot.



We went for a train journey to some islands in the bay and I did some sunbathing.

Then we hopped half way around the world to New York City.

We also saw this saw, I'm sure you could do some damage with this Jasper & Nadia.

We will be getting up very early in the morning to catch the plane home.

Barnaby's neice goes to Japan

Hi I'm Bernadette, Barnaby's Niece, and I've come to Japan with Allan. We set of from Birmingham and stopped in Frankfurt in Germany on the way. We then flew to Nagoya in Japan. The airport is very new and is built on a man made island. We caught a train into the city where Allan photographed this building called the spiral.

Last time Allan was here in 2007 they were still building it.

Here is a view from our Hotel in Hamamatsu. Tomorrow there is a meeting with Suzuki and then we are heading for Tokyo.

Day 9 Going home

Last night we had another walk around the hotel grounds after dark. Allan found a good place to photograph the bats and got this picture.


We also saw this creature, some sort of rodent.

For the first time we put the television on. We had decided earlier that the Euro 2008 games would be on too late for us. Last night we found we hadn't been missing much even though there were 100 channels. The best program we found was about a company making gigantic diggers for quarries. Sadly the commentary was in English and German at the same time and was hard to understand.

We are leaving the factory in two hours for the airport and will be home on Thursday. This will probably be the last blog so it's bye bye from us.

Love Barnaby & Allan.

Day 8 The journey to the factory

Today the factory manager had to go to a meeting in the city so a taxi had been ordered to take us to work.

Here I am waiting for the taxi at 8 o'clock.






Here we are at half past eight still waiting for the taxi.

Eventually it came as we set off on the journey.







The traffic on the roads here is quite frightening. The buses go really fast and are always overtaking on the wrong side of the road. Can you see the little three wheeled car, it's called an auto-rickshaw or a 'pup - pup' because of the noise it makes.







This is the local school that we pass each day.








I'm glad we travel around by car. Look at the people standing in the back of the lorry, that doesn't look like a comfortable way to get to work.


Love Barnaby.

Day 7 More about the hotel.

Yesterday morning Allan sent some of his clothes to be washed. By the evening they had been done and were delivered back to the room. Look how smartly they have been folded and packed, it looks like they have just been bought from a shop.







Every morning there is a copy of "The Time of India" hanging on our door. If we have time we read it after breakfast before the car comes to get us.












Today's top story is about the Wimbledon Tennis Championships because some people think the results of some matches have been fixed.

There's also a story about two tiger cubs who will be tracked by satellite when they are released into the wild.


Love Barnaby.

Day 6 A day of rest.

It's Sunday and we don't have to go to the factory today so we had a bit of a lie in. After breakfast we walked down to the local village because Allan wanted to go to the Barbers. We had to wait for about 20 minutes because it was busy. While we were waiting one of the barbers was chopping up some cucumbers and carrots. I thought he was making his dinner but he wasn't. He used it to completely cover one of the men customers face with it ! it must be some sort of beauty treatment.



Allan was pleased with his haircut, it cost 30 Rupees which is about 40pence.






In the afternoon we hired a taxi and went to a place called Devanahali, it is not far from the new airport. First we went to an old Fort. Inside the fort there were lots of houses and a few temples.





As we were walking through we saw a monkey up on a wall.

Next we went to another temple where you were not allowed to take photos. There was a big wall all the way around with lots of little shrines to the Hindu Gods, they were all numbered, 110 in total. In the middle there was a big hall with an inlaid marble floor.



Finally we went to a hill nearby with more temples. There was a coach load of families having a fun day out. The small children were playing musical statues on a stage, the mums were all huddled together on chairs under the shade of a tree and the rest of the men were playing cricket.

Love Barnaby.



PS. on the way back to our room we saw this colourful lizard.