CHRIS’S WORLD TRAVELS

I have two massive passions in life , both of which consume me . Gardening has been both my saviour and the opener of doors I never would have anticipated as a young kid or teenager . The other passion and one that is just as fierce is getting to look at as much of this planet as I can manage. For me travel is the food of life and it has provided me with literally mind blowing experiences both exhilarating , often surreal and sometimes possibly highly dangerous. I’ve been to a lot of countries and set foot in all the continents apart from the one covered in ice and it feels like a lot of travelling , interestingly though , I have a globe of our planet on my desk and when I spin it soon becomes apparent I’ve hardly been anywhere , so many places so little time.

By far the biggest experiences of foreign lands I have under my belt are my times living in Japan and Africa , which is where this current crop of photos comes from. Incidentally , these writing will go on over time , as I tap into this web page file , they are also a great excuse to finally rummage through that big box of photos under the bed. 

I’ll start with Japan , I arrived in Japan in the spring of 1994 , straight after living and working in Cameroon , West Africa. Its funny how you can land a job , I’d flown back to Edinburgh at the end of my contract and was enjoying a glass of the wet stuff when a small advert in the Scotsman was brought to my attention ‘Gardener wanted in Japan’ , well I answered , I got a job and 6 weeks later I was off to Japan , knowing most of all one thing , that the thing I knew about Japan was - absolutely nothing’.

Now landing in Japan is a bit like landing on the moon , socially and culturally there really is nothing to get hold of , this was further exaggerated by the fact that I worked as an on site horticulturist / consultant in a Mitsukoshi department store in central Tokyo where , in a staff of 500 , I was the only Gijin (foreigner) to add to this Tokyo is a city of 25 million , hardly anyone speaks English , hardly anything was written in English and more than anything everybody seems to be in a rush. It took while , in fact I remember the precise day , which I will describe to you but Tokyo , once you get used to it , is an incredible city both exciting and always on the move.

Now , getting used to Tokyo pretty much took four months ,I was definitely in culture shock initially , I don’t think it helped that I had just come from Cameroon (which is a third world country and one I’ll describe in detail later) , to what is for all intents and purposes the most modern city on earth , its like something out of ‘Blade runner’ , except a lot less yanks , you have to bare in mind that the Japanese are about 20 years ahead of the U.K. when it comes to technology , it pops the mind. Anyway I began to suffer home sickness pretty well straight away , this over the first few months got slowly worse , it became what I think must have been depression ( although this is a guess because I had not experienced depression before) if it was I don’t wish it on anyone . However I am a stubborn bastard , and I stuck at it , burying myself in work. Its worth me mentioning that three of us (gardeners) went to Tokyo together and the other two lasted all of 10 weeks , we were among the first British gardeners to acquire visas to work in Japan , so I considered this a big deal. 

Anyway after four months and when my home sickness was at its worse I came home from work and discovered I run out of toothpaste and consequently walked up top the 24 hour shop to purchase a new tube , this is a good incite into how a simple everyday task in Japan is never straight forward. First of all it takes me 5 minutes to find the toothpaste , and there is a tube of ‘MacLean’s’ , (oh familiarity!) , but then on inspection I notice that after a quick calculation , that it costs about £8 , well I’m not having that , so looking again and on the next shelve down is a another packet , pretty similar looking , but with Japanese writing , so I bought it thinking it was toothpaste , took it home , put it on my toothbrush , and stuck it in my mouth. It was , as I discovered the next day , foot cream for bunions . I its not natural to foam at the moth like that . Have you ever laughed and cried so hard at the same time that following through became a real possibility .

 It was weird , but the next day my home sickness was gone , totally disappeared , I remember this like it was yesterday . I was walking through Harajiku , a trendy part of central Tokyo , it was raining and I was without an umbrella , which draws a lot of stares as the entire city puts up an umbrella when the slightest spot of rain descends from the heavens , I had a can of itchi-ban-shibori , Japan’s finest lager I my hand (A wet Englishman , walking in the rain . with no umbrella and a can of larger , with no other foreigner in site stands out , just slightly) and I suddenly thought ‘ blimey’ (it was probably a bit stronger than that , but I’ll keep it clean) ‘Blimey , I’m I Japan , I’m actually living in Japan!’ , from that day until four and a half years later I had the time of my life. What you may be asking , has this got to do with gardening , which is what I was there to do. Well I’ll pick that up next time I open this file.