Totoro

  • |

    Wonderful Weekend Of Superb Cycling

    Blessed with outstanding weather and lucky schedule breaks, I’ve just finished an amazing three-day weekend of cycling. I got to get on the bike as part of a cycling club’s call for riders to share their cycling experiences. My duties to the local estate threatened to put paid to my riding over the weekend, but things worked out and I could ride on all three days of the event. Today was the highlight, and I was supposed to lead a ride from Tokyo Station to Inokashira Park in Kichijoji. We were to follow the delightful Kanda River cycling course, which weaves through the central city, through the leafy suburbs and…

  • Big Red Bike Tour Stage 2: Freaky Friday

    Pushed for time, yet pressed to get riding the Big Red Bike Tour, I turned to an old favorite for Stage 2 and headed out and about near home to see the local monsters. We’re short on time because we’re due to go drinking with a neighbor’s family tonight before they return to England. The neighbor’s daughter is married to a man who shares the same surname as the Kangaeroos, which I still find an amazing coincidence. Our not so common but hardly rare clan name managed to find two inhabitants in a foreign country of over 120 million people. So I am keen on going and learning more. They’re…

  • A Monster Mashup In Western Tokyo

    Given the gift of an afternoon off, I got on my bike and rode somewhat familiar paths to get reacquainted with old monster “mates” I’d encountered in days gone by. First, I met green Godzilla, a topiary treat from Toho, before heading toward Chofu to see a collection of the yokai spirits created by Shigeru Mizuki. A little bit of a roundabout journey followed, dropping by the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka and then onto the Kokubunji Totoro before racing back to pick up a new phone bought because the battery in my old one conks out within a couple of hours of using it. Unfortunately, performance on the new phone…

  • Totoro In My Neighborhood

    I had no idea until yesterday, but for years I have been living quite close to Totoro, a Shinto kami made globally famous through Hayao Miyazaki‘s utterly delightful 1988 animated movie, My Neighbor Totoro. OK, so it’s not the real forest-protecting spirit as depicted by STUDIO GHIBLI, but the topiary sculpture is wonderful. It’s a work that I’m pretty sure is unauthorized by Suzaki, a gardening company in the Tokyo suburb of Kokubunji. A cycling buddy posted photos of Totoro on social media yesterday, and with only a couple of pre-dawn hours available for anything today due to home requirements, I looked up the location and decided to make a…