日本文が後ろに続きます。
I revisited the UK in September as my first visit there in February was very nice. This time I went to Folkestone, Kent, where it was taken place by the musical Half A Sixpence I watched at Kokugakuin Tochigi High School, via Brighton, Tunbridge Wells, Hastings, Rye, and New Romney.
２月に初めてイギリスに行ってみたのがすごくよかったので、９月にもう一度イギリスに行ってきました。今回は國學院栃木高校の文化祭で観たミュージカル「Half A Sixpence」の舞台になったケント州のフォークストンへ、ブライトン、タンブリッジウェルズ、ヘイスティングス、ライ、ニューロムニー経由で行ってきました。
日本語のほうはフォートラベルに旅行記を転載しました。以下は英語だけです。
(more…)(Continued from A stroll in Haworth)
On the third day, I checked out of the Heathfield B&B on the rainy morning. Since it was a weekday, Keighley Worth & Valley Railway was out of service. The mistress took me to the nearest bus stop on Rawdon Road and told me to wait there for the bus for Keighley.
While waiting for the bus, an old lady talked to me. She asked me where I was going. I answered that I was going to London. Another lady joined us, and they and I talked a bit until the bus was coming.
On the bus, I sit on the upper front seat, and the ladies stayed downstairs. Arriving at Keighley bus terminus, I got out of the bus. The train station was a bit distant from the terminus, so I didn’t know how to get there.
Then the lady who had talked to me first at the Rawdon Road bus stop found me standing there, and told me to follow her to the train station as she was just going for shopping near there. How kind of her! I was able to get to the Keighley train station with her help.
(Continued from A trip to real England)
Breakfast served at Heathfield Bed & Breakfast was really British-style, with a fried egg, fried potatoes, and mushrooms, a fried tomato cut in half, two slices of bacon and two sausages as well as cereals, slices of bread, a glass of orange juice and a cup of tea. I have a good appetite for breakfast in England because when it’s breakfast time in England, it’s time to have dinner in Japan where it’s nine hours ahead.
(more…)
Although it was a bit while ago, I made a private trip to the United Kingdom. It was not the British Hills, not an English village, not a British-style cottage in Tochigi Prefecture, not any other “fake Britain” in Japan. It was the real England, where I had wanted to visit before I died. I visited London and Haworth, West Yorkshire. Both of those places were introduced in Japanese manga, Emma, by Kaoru Mori, which was one of my favourite comics I’d ever read.
日本文が後ろに続きます。
Visiting England is one of the things I want to do in the future. I planned a trip there in the middle of September. I purchased air tickets to and from London and booked hotels there. To my sorrow, however, I was forced to cancel all of the reservations because of the hectic work I had for almost two years. The British Hills is one of its alternatives, but I get tired of it as I visited there many times. One day I heard that there was such a place in South Korea mocking English streets. That’s why I visited South Korea this month, though I didn’t understand Korean at all.
(English text follows after several Japanese paragraphs)
イギリスに行きたいとずっと思っていて、９月にイギリスに行こうと思い立って航空券まで買ってホテルまで予約してたのですが、ここ２年近く続く激務のせいで時間がとれず結局キャンセルを余儀なくされる始末。ブリティッシュヒルズで我慢しようにも、何度も行ってると飽きが来てしまう。ある日、韓国に似たようなイギリスを模した通りがあると聞き、今月、韓国語が全くわからないのに韓国まで行ってきました。
旅行記をフォートラベルに転載しました。以降は英語だけです。
https://4travel.jp/travelogue/11320822
(more…)
I visited British Hills first in this year because the snow melted and it became accessible by car.
雪が解けて車で行けるようになったので、今年初のブリティッシュヒルズ訪問です。
日本文が後ろに続きます。
Last weekend was happy days for me because I deeply experienced a British taste last Saturday and Sunday. From the beginning, I preferred the USA to the UK or other English-speaking countries. Still, my affection has been shifting to England for years since I happened to read Kaoru Mori’s Emma, a romance manga about a maid in England in the Victorian Era who falls in love with a member of the gentry.
先週は、イギリスにどっぷり浸かってきました。
もともとはアメリカ一辺倒だったんですが、森薫の「エマ」と出会って以来ここ数年はむしろイギリスのほうに興味がシフトしていってまして、まずは初日は毎年恒例の國學院栃木高校の文化祭「國學院祭」のミュージカル部公演「Ｏｌｉｖｅｒ！」を見に行きました。
On the first day, the first thing I did is to see Oliver! by the Musical Club of Kokugakuin Tochigi High School playing for the school’s cultural festival held this weekend. Oliver! is, as you may already know, an English musical based on Charles Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist. It’s the story that Oliver Twist, who has missing parents and is in a workhouse, is forced to get out of the workhouse and gets involved in a group of pickpockets. He tries to pick a pocket of a well-off lady, who finally takes him in and brings him up, and then he gets happy.
「Ｏｌｉｖｅｒ！」は、以前にも書いたとおり、イギリスのチャールズ・ディケンズの小説「オリバー・ツイスト」をもとにしたミュージカルで、孤児となって救貧院に入れられていたオリバー・ツイストがスリの一味に引き入れられながらも、財布をすろうとした相手の金持ちに拾われて幸せになるというお話です。
今年も講師の三枝幹音センセイはお元気でいらっしゃいました。
ということでまずイギリス気分に浸ったあとは、クルマを走らせて福島県のブリティッシュ・ヒルズに向かいました。
ブリティッシュ・ヒルズの旅行記はフォートラベルに書いてあります。以降は英語だけです。
https://4travel.jp/travelogue/11722398
I parked my car in the car park and took my iPhone to tweet in Gowalla, but the iPhone couldn’t connect to the 3G network because Softbank wasn’t in service in this area, whilst my Blackberry, where NTT DoCoMo’s SIM card was installed, was okay.
I got out of my car with all of my luggage and walked to the reception desk, following the signs put on the roadside.
The reception desk was in the Manor House. A Caucasian receptionist accepted my check-in. She gave me a room key and a brochure where my name and dates of stay were printed and gave a detailed explanation of the building where I was supposed to stay, as well as each of the premises in British Hills. Unlike the people you may see in the countries other than Japan, she behaved in a manner as polite and gentle as Japanese clerks would do. She also advised me that a handbell was available at the reception desk and anybody who was walking in the nature trail of British Hills should carry it in hand so that its sound might scare bears which might appear in front of the walker.
This is the guestroom I stayed in. It was a gorgeously furnished suite room.
It wasn’t air-conditioned so as to meet the taste of a Medieval British house, but I could cool off by an electric fan put in the room.
This is the bathtub made of the fabric imported from the UK. The amenities (shampoo, conditioners, soap, and body moisturiser) are imported from the UK as well.
After putting my holdall in the guestroom, I went out to walk around the grounds around the buildings. Unlike US military bases, you could go and walk wherever you wanted, although some “No Entry” zones for staff only were only exceptions.
Every building was built in an ancient British manner, from Yeoman to Stuart, Georgian, and Tudor styles.
Each guest house was named after a historical person popular in the UK.
This building is named “Wren,” who was an astronomer in Oxford making a great contribution to the reconstruction of London burnt down by fire in the 17th century.
This is the Turner, where I stayed. Turner was a landscape painter in the 18th century.
This is the Drake, derived from Francis Drake, the first British sea captain who sailed around the world in the Elizabethan era.
This is the Henry II, the first King of England.
I dropped in on the Ascot tea house to have a tea set. An Englishmen and some Japanese girls served me there.
This is what was served at Ascot: tea with a scone, a quiche, fresh cream (not clotted cream), and strawberry jam. They had got an afternoon tea set or a high tea set with more scones and sandwiches, but I didn’t order them because the dinner time was coming soon and I didn’t want to be stuffed there.
This is the Ye Shoppe, a souvenir shop selling tea leaves, mugs, shortbread, sweets, letter sets, bookmarks, keyrings, pens, toiletries, and other items imported from the UK. I found a gorgeous feather pen used in ancient times, so I bought it with a bar of English soap, bottles of bath foam, and a key ring celebrating the marriage of Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
Then I dropped in on the reception to borrow a handbell and walked the nature trail. It was a 2-mile long unpaved footpath around the building area, with many ups and downs. It was a good exercise for me.
I had got a viewpoint and special places to see on my way of the trail. Fortunately, I saw no bears or any other scary wildlife, but I had got a heavy thunderstorm while walking, so I gave up walking all of the trails and went back to the guest house halfway through the walk.
Dinner time began at 6:30 pm at the Refectory dining room. It was the main dining room modelling a refectory of British traditional public schools. It had dress codes and no admission for casually dressed personnel. I changed clothes into a suit with a tie before going there.
It was a full course dinner starting from pumpkin & yoghurt veloute, followed by salmon terrine, consommé soup, sorbet, and the main dish in the above picture. This is some slices of the roast beef marinated with gravy and horseradish sauce. When serving it to me, the chef of the Refractory himself came to me and carved from a chunk of beef. Of course, it tasted excellent! It was a bit too luxurious for me, as I always eat simple foods daily.
After dinner, I went to the pub next to the Refectory and got a glass of 1-pint beer. A Canadian girl sat next to me, so I talked a bit with her. She said she was a staff member of the Refectory and she was coming to drink there because that day was her day off. After a while, a group of the staff finishing the work at the Refectory and changing their clothes more casually came to her and invited her to the inner seats to talk together. She went and joined them. Then I made a little conversation with a Japanese bartender, drank some dry martini, and played darts with him a bit. He told me that many more foreign staff members usually worked there and made merry in the pub every night, but in those days there were less because many of them were returning to their home countries to renew the working visas expiring in that season.
The next morning it was very foggy, and it was hard to see even ten yards ahead.
It’s breakfast at the Refectory. It was a buffet style. I thought it would’ve been perfect if there had been baked beans.
While eating breakfast, a supervisor came to me and asked me to have a guided tour in the Manor House if I had time. When checking out the hotel, I told her I was ready for the tour. Then she took two young girls to me and told them to guide me as attendants. They were just college students studying the hotel industry and were coming there for one of the education programmes of the college.
They took me inside the Manor House and explained the history of the Manor House, how and why those kinds of houses had been built in the Medieval times, with what fabrics the rooms were furnished, in what manner the walls and the ceilings were decorated, and more. They explained a bit falteringly, but with all their might.
One of the most instructive pieces of knowledge from their explanations was why the level where there was the main entrance was called “the ground floor” and the upper level called “the first floor” in the UK or the British Commonwealth. According to their explanations, the downstairs wasn’t considered as a residential area because it was used just for a butler who greeted incoming guests, judging whether the guests were going down well with the master or not. Only the guests judged as welcome persons could be shown upstairs by the butler and arranged to meet the master at the upper hall like the picture above. That’s why the place was on “the first floor,” whilst the downstairs hall was on “the ground floor.”
In this picture above, you can see in the middle the gorgeous stained glass weighing 1 tonne specially crafted at Scotland, Queen’s and King’s rooms on the right side, and the left, a library of more than 1,000 volumes of old books stored in the bookshelves. Of course, Oliver Twist was one of the collections.
On both sides of the aisle were the portrait pictures of the people who had made a great contribution to the UK and Japan, including former Emperor Hirohito and his Empress, as well as Emperor Meiji, the first east Asian person on whom the Order of the Garter was conferred.
It’s the Queen’s room named “Her Majesty,” modelling the private room of the mistress.
The King’s room called “His Majesty,” the master’s private room. The furniture had a fierce-animal-shaped decoration in many parts to show off his power and strength. Prince Hitachinomiya actually stayed in this room when he visited British Hills. The attendants said even an ordinary person could stay here for 250,000 yen per night.
The last place they guided me was the snooker room, where snooker was available as well as drinking brandy at the bar counter. Snooker looked like billiard, but they said snooker used a wider table and smaller balls than billiard, and it was much more difficult to play.
I enjoyed the stay until noon on that Sunday. The staff members were very polite, well trained, and had much elegance and hospitality. I thought it would’ve been better if the uniforms of the staff had been like those of British maids and footmen :-p as everything in British Hills was modelling the ancient British cultures. Apart from that, that “theme park” is my No.1 recommendation that is good for taking a rest if you get tired of your routine days. I think that the company I’m working for, trying to get involved in global business, should arrange a few days of English lessons in British Hills as an education programme for encouraging the employees to be more skilful in English.
日本文が後ろに続きます。
Many people around me are suffered from cold in this season. As many people know well, cold is caused by being infected by viruses. In the crowded area like Tokyo, you can easily catch viruses on the crowded commuter trains. It is inevitable to take virus if you go out on a normal basis. For this, to avoid catching cold you must be immune to viruses, because (unlike germs that can be killed by antibiotics) no medicine but your white blood cells can kill viruses.
There are several options to keep your body’s immunity. Taking nutritious foods will help to keep you immune. Sleeping well will also be nice. Avoiding much stress, much alcohol or anything impairing your immunity is also important for keep you healthy. Besides, aromatherapic means can work well.
I read books saying that lavender essential oil was good for strengthen your body’s immunity against harmful viruses or germs and English people used it on a daily basis to prevent cold. I imported Tisserand’s 20ml lavender oil from England for about £10, because the books said that Tisserand provided good essential oils.
この季節になると周りに風邪っぴきが増えてくるんですが、そもそも風邪というものはウイルスが感染して起こるのであって、東京のような混雑した場所では満員の通勤電車などに乗ってればウイルスがそこらじゅうに蔓延しているわけなので、普通に出歩いて生活している限りウイルスに感染するのは避けられないわけです。細菌は抗生物質で殺すことができますが、風邪の原因になるのはウイルスであって、ウイルスはどんな薬でも殺すことはできません。殺せるのは体内の白血球（免疫系）だけです。ということは、風邪をひかない（ウイルスに感染しても発病しない）ようにするためには、その免疫系を強くしておけばよいわけです。
免疫力を強くする方法にはいくつかあって、滋養のある食べ物をよく食べる、よく寝る、免疫力を弱めるアルコールやストレスを避けるなどいろいろありますが、アロマセラピーによっても免疫力を維持することができます。
井形慶子の本に、ラベンダーオイルを使って免疫力を高める方法が紹介されていました。この人の本はイギリスびいきに過ぎるところがあるので批判する人も多いですが、この人の紹介するイギリス人の生活の知恵は参考になるところがいっぱいあります。イギリス人は常備薬的にラベンダーオイルを使うとのことで、風邪予防にラベンダーオイルを垂らした風呂に浸かったり、ヤケドにラベンダーオイルを塗ったりするとのことです。
さっそく真似をしてみることにし、イギリスで有名といわれるTisserand社のラベンダーオイルをネットで取り寄せてきました。20ml入りで、送料込みで約10ポンド（約1500円）。D○Cのラベンダーオイルが5ml入りで1575円なのに比べれば、はるかにお買い得です。
風呂に浸かるときに湯船に10滴ほど垂らし、立ち上ってくる蒸気を吸ってみたり、ハンカチに1滴垂らして鼻と口を覆って吸ってみたりしてます。夜寝る前にやるとすぐに睡魔が襲ってきてぐっすり眠れます。おかげさまでこの冬は今のところ風邪をひいておりません。さらに、最近ニキビがよくできて困っていたんですが、ニキビにラベンダーオイルの原液をつけると、翌日にはニキビが目立たなくなっています。ラベンダー恐るべし、です。
Tisserandのラベンダーオイルはwww.tisserand.co.ukで販売してるんですが、どういうわけか日本には発送してくれないので、OneNilTrade Limited（www.blushingbuyer.co.uk）というところから取り寄せました。
風邪をひいたら井形女史の紹介する「カラシ風呂」をためしてみようと思いますが、まだ風邪をひいてないのでやってません。。。
【2009/2/3追記】
なんてえらそうなコト書いてましたが、先週の終わりぐらいにとうとう風邪でダウンしちゃいました。。。からし風呂もラベンダーオイルも全く役に立たず。。。5日間寝込んでしまってました。。。強烈過ぎる風邪でした。
These days I’m stuck with reading Emma, which isn’t Jane Austin’s novel but a comic by Japanese manga artist, Kaoru Mori. It’s a love story of a gentleman of the gentry class and a maid servant of a lower birth in England in the Victorian era.
Emma, born in a poor seaside Yorkshire village and working at a house of a retired governess in London as a maid, is a girl who is a little bit shy and reserved but clever and hard-working. One day she met William Jones, the eldest son of the “House of Jones”, a very wealthy merchant middle class family that is attempting to rise into the gentry, and then they fall in love with each other. The two meet many obstacles in their love because the marriage of persons of different classes was not allowed in England of that era, but they try to overcome it.
This manga is not just a story for “maid-moé” readers in Akihabara. It’s a love story of the people of the Victorian age, under detailed historical investigation by Kaoru Mori and Rico Murakami, who is a historical consultant of 19th century’s England. Emma’s calm and peaceful personality attracts many Japan and other countries’ men and women, not only manga-otakus. Since this comic was first released in Japan in 2002, it has been translated into English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, German and many more languages. It was adapted into a TV anime series as well, and aired worldwide.
Though I’m United States fetish, after reading this comic I changed my mind to adore UK and British culture as well. I want to go to London and Yorkshire some day but I unlikely can do it because I have no money to fly there :-<