Tag: england

Oxford Travel Diary 09.08.2026

At 8 am, we left home for the trip. The ride there was accompanied by the songs of the Beegees and Burt Bacharach.

We arrived at the Park and Ride just out of the city in good spirits and caught the 400 bus down after almost going down to Redbridge instead. We had been asking a lady that had suggested it and also letting her know that we lived in Redbridge in London. The bus driver had redirected us. The journey into town was lively as there were a number of young students on the bus as well.

The first thing we did when we got into town was to dive into the Paul’s bakery where I treated myself to a blueberry brioche that was on for two pounds. It was delicious and I washed it down with a glass of water. My friend had an Americano and I was telling him that I was not a big fan of the flavour.

We got out of the bakery and walked past the town hall which was closed on a Sunday. Initially, we thought that we would just look around without any guidance or Google but then I saw what looked like a local and asked him for directions. He gave them to us patiently and when my friend enquired what it was like to live in Oxford, he told us it used to be much better.

The first stop was the Ashmolean museum. The staff on the entrance joked with us about cake and how we were too individualistic because we hadn’t shared any with them. Inside, we started off with the statues and then walked into the Ancient Egypt tour by Mary which had just started. The tour was very interesting and included the history of the Ashmolean, Great Britain’s first museum. When the tour was finished, we bumped into Mary again by a tablet in Ancient Greek and she started talking to us about all sorts of things like teaching Ancient Greek, classics and learning hieroglyphs. She answered all my friend’s questions about Ancient Egypt too. Then, she invited us to some drinks and we sat in the cafe with her talking about Oxford and things like whether museums should charge. I had a Coke while we were talking.

We meandered over to the Natural History museum next which was fun with all of the fossils. We took in the exhibition with the key materials of the future and spent a lot of time admiring the birds and insects that had been done in taxidermy. We started our adventure there with the cafe and had foccacio, mine with cheese, rocket and tomatoes. Highlights of the trip included seeing the Venus of Willendorf and seeing the skeleton of a chimpanzee as well as the skull of a hippopotamus. The Natural History museum lead into the Pitt Rivers museum which was a fantastic collection of stuff like Japanese masks, snuff boxes from different cultures and things like carved boats.

Next stop, the Oxfam bookshop. Slightly disappointing as I thought it would have a better selection. We do much better in London. I picked up a book on Imperialism though. We then made our way into the University Parks where we found a big tree to lie under and have a nap.

Feeling refreshed, we made our way into the city centre to have a look about. We did all the big tourist things. The Bridge of Sighs which I thought had been slightly over hyped. Investigating the area around the Bodleian library and seeing the Radcliffe Camera too, an area in which I had a chocolate chip ice cream and where we were surrounded with what looked like Chinese tourists.

We wandered into the Thames path next and had a refreshing walk in the greenery. We were behind a massive group of young students. My friend had a swim in the Thames. We came out and saw the music artist Devon Mayson performing the Cher song ‘Do you believe in love after love’ in the balcony of ‘The Head of the River’ and then walked into the Christchurch gardens which were wonderfully beautiful.

We closed the day at Oxford with a meal at Popeyes where we had a Cajun spiced chicken burger, mine with spicy wings and fries. Finally, it was the 400 bus back to the park and ride and then a journey home where I had to rest my eyes a little bit. I got back home at about a quarter past eleven and finally in bed at about a quarter to midnight after sharing the photos and videos of the day with my friend.

Review of Tsunagu/Connect: Uncovering the Lives of Japanese Women in the UK. (Barbican Centre)

18.02.2024

My mother is a migrant from India. Many of my relatives and friends are migrant women. I volunteered for years teaching migrant and refugee women English. Although I have heard my mother talk about why she came to the UK, I haven’t heard in much detail about what these women think of their arrival here, their journey in becoming British – even when I have asked them about it. You get snips and pieces: women that feel the hostility of this environment and the judgement of the people here over them. You get a sense of the insecurity and loneliness, the lack of belonging, when you watch them orchestrate their lives around phone calls and video calls back home, when you see that their closest friends are other migrant women from their home country. You sense their confusion about life here in London and the people here from the comments that they make. Tsunagu/Connect was a chance to hear what they wanted to be heard said about all of these topics.

Addressing the neglect of the topic, this exhibition is about the personal experiences and memories of migrant Japanese women that have come to the UK since the end of the Second World War. Over 30 Japanese women were interviewed to provide the oral histories for the exhibition on a one to one basis.

One of the stated aims of the exhibition is to overturn the ‘myths about Japanese women as passive and obedient housewives and provide an insight into the complexity, diversity, and agency of Japanese women in the UK’.

I picked out a few of the exhibits that caught my interest. I didn’t have time to listen to the audio descriptions. Masayo Aizawa chose to talk about her father through a strange object which she remembered him through, a calculator. She spoke about his harshness and the fact that he was traditional, that she could never express her gratitude to her father and that she only understood him late in life. This exhibit was interesting to me because it is often arbitrary objects that we associate with people. Because this was an example of a migrant woman reflecting on the people that she left behind, that she couldn’t get to know as well as she wanted to, that she had to separate herself from. And at the end of the exhibit, she says that she is like her father – it is just the illusion of separation. Perhaps this is what these migrant women feel – that their connection with the people around them in their countries of birth is unbreakable, one of the greatest influences on their lives. Perhaps this is what gives them stability and belonging, their identities.

Elizabeth Fusae Thurley spoke about what has been the astounding fact that I have witnessed throughout my life – that someone can come into a new country without knowing anything about it and at the greatest risk of precarity. Sometimes, they don’t even know the language. Elizabeth had come with a man with no job, no house and whose parents were against the marriage. She astonished herself with her bravery. You have to have courage to leave everything behind for a hope. She reminded me of my grandfather who came to this country from India and left everything behind him for the hope – the future for the children. Elizabeth came here in the hope of love: she got it.

Atsuko kamura spoke about how strange the people seemed here when she came: ‘The people sitting on the tube looked like as soon as they got off the train they would go and kill themselves’. That quote conveys the radical sense of defamiliarisation that these women experienced when they came to this country. But it carries a sadder tone for me – she came here for her happiness. But what she found when she first came here was sadness. What you think will make you happy in life often makes you sad. It is the way of the world.

This is conveyed most vividly in the story of Haruka Kuroda: ‘soon after I arrived in the UK, I was extremely homesick. I didn’t speak a word of English and for about 3 months, I called home every day using collect calls – remember those?! – costing my parents over £1000 on the phone bill each month!’

The dual kinship of the women here to their home countries and to the UK was apparent in the desire of Miyuki Tanaka to have her ashes floating in the air around Japan and the UK. After all, when they are here, the UK becomes their home. But it doesn’t always supersede their original home for all these women. Home is home is home. You can have more than one home – and what could be better than to have many places to call a home?

I reflected on the exhibition for a good while. Was it a success? Was it a failure? Some of the stories were about the bravery of these women, their pioneering entry into art school. Some of them were about their bravery in love, like I have mentioned above. Some of them were about the sadness, the struggle. The narrative of the exhibition is to present these women as heroes in the traditional mould – someone brave that faces adversity, that overcomes, that achieves, that finds a place in the world. The exhibition wants us to think of these women as strong. As strength. But I have a question. When the whole world is dominated by the West, when this country has a superiority complex, when the whole world is being Westernised, when people in this country think that every other country is misogynistic and a restriction on women’s freedom, how innocent is this narrative? Isn’t it just part of the problem? Is the only way a woman can be seen as a hero is to embrace the West? The Indian watches. The Indian judges. The Indian finds the exhibition wanting. What strikes the Indian is the sadness of coming to this land. To endure here. The disappointment. The defeat of the dream. That is what I found in this exhibition.