This evening I went to dinner with my old friend Hirai Hirohide-san (Jack) and his wife Chizue-san. They live in the Eastern part of Tokyo, though not too far out. It’s easy to remember where to go on the train because the nearest station is Hirai on the Sobu (local) line past where I go to work via Ochanomizu station.

Hirohide-san and Chizue-san live in a new government-developed area of Hirai about fifteen minutes walk from the station. The local government bought up a bunch of land and put up high rise “mansions”. Despite the English (or should that be Engrish) name “mansions” are poured-concrete apartment blocks. The block Hirohide-san and Chizue-san live in is fourteen storeys high and they live on the top floor. It’s more expensive to live up there, but they don’t have to listen to people clomping about upstairs. As with all fans, their apartment is full of stuff. Lots of books and lots of stuffed toys. Chizue-san is a soft toy nut, and was very intrigued by my description of a beeblebear. I remembered I had a photo of BWNN on my laptop so booted up to have him pronounced Kawaii (cute). They’ve bookmarked the ZZ9 website and Chizue-san definitely wants one from Hirohide-san for her upcoming birthday.

It was raining when it came time for me to depart so they gave me a lift back to the station. They mostly only use their car on holidays (quite a few people who live in Tokyo own very nice cars but use them very little) so they don’t mind that they’ve got the lowest bunk on a three-car high storage lift in the car park outside the apartment block. Each space in the car park has a car lift which drops into the ground so that the uppermost one can drive off. If you want to get the lower two out the car lift rises up to bring it to ground level. If there’s a power cut or a flood, the lower ones might be in trouble (actually, if there was an expected flood, say due to a typhoon, they’d probably raise the lifts in preparation of the problem. Wouldn’t help the guys on the more expensive top layer, though.