Ruby /// Love, like or hate

Today was the first day of Home-maker filming, exhausted is not the word for what I'm feeling. Working and speaking Japanese is really tiring as you feel like your brain is being stretched in 2 different ways, so from now on I will be working in English!

Emi is 80 and lives in Shiroganedai, near to my home-stay. She owned a book shop in the area which closed down 5 years ago.

The first immediate difference is the amount of room / flat that people have to live in. Everything is compacted together, is miniturised and there is less total room than the ground floor of my house. I was struck yesterday again with my height, I take up a lot of room in Japan! Emi is about 4 foot 10 or so, in fact no one is over about 5 ft 3, I'm 5 ft 7 and feel like a giant.

(emi-san)

What I had forgotten from the original home-maker is just how long the process takes. In derbyshire I visited and got to know florrie and all the others over a number of weeks and then started to video and got the relaxed photos I was looking for. We spent 6 hours at Emi's house, drank a lot of ocha, (japanese tea), and had lots of wee snacks, like most old ladies in Britain there was a never ending supply of biscuits. I brought a chisai presento (small gift) for Emi-san from Nottingham, a Nottingham lace lavender bag and postcards of Market square and an old picture of the Trip to Jerusalem. She asked if the council house was based on the White house.

Nao-chan and sayaka-chan from muse, as well as Yuko-san came with me so it was pretty cramped but made for a nice but not completely practical atmosphere. Nao chan kept getting walking in to shot so tomorrow I think there will only be 3 of us - yuko and the translator.

(room detail)

Emi was keen to show us her photo albums, which had amazing photos from the last 100 years. Here father was into new gadgets so owned one of the first cameras. I think they will make it into the films as they look fantastic. While I was there Emi's friend (75) came round as he wanted to see what was going on and speak some english, he was almost fluent.

After dinner at Quiche and tart (rice, aubergine, olive and tomato quiches at a japanese french restaurant) we all visited his house, which was really interesting. He (I can't remember his name) built his house in a cooperative 10 years ago and has the biggest house I've been to yet. Loads of space crammed with his kawai collections, toy cars, mugs with dogs on, beanie babies, french paintings, newspaper articles stuck on the wall and photos. I asked him if he would like to take part in Home-maker, so will be photographing him next week. Although it means one more person than I planned for, he was so interesting and Yuko told me, an unusual Japanese man - he never married, lives alone, has his own house, has travelled a lot - that it seemed too good an opportunity to miss. I think he is kind of an equivilant to Roy in the original home-maker.

So video and nterviewing Emi-san with a translator tomorrow. Should be interesting. Just like in England the hardest thing will be to get a concise interview, old ladies love to talk.

I've just seen the maddest looking news item - loads of tanned japanese and american sumo wrestelers in blue costumes, with Kimono clad ladies on a stage throwing what I think was sakura (cherry blossom) into a screaming crowd. Sakura watching is a big deal here so maybe this was the first of the season. fantastic.

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