Hey guys, prepare for the most boring blog post to date! (I know, how can I top some of those classics…)

I’ve pretty much sorted this blog out for my return to Tokyo now. You can now subscribe via RSS and by email through the ‘Subscribe‘ link in the top right of the blog. Don’t worry if you can’t be bothered to go all the way over there and click, though! Here’s a handy shortcut!

I’m really hoping to get a post every few days whilst I’m there, internet access allowing. Of course, I’m not willing to sit down every night and write huge articles with image editing and what have you in them, but I do want to keep this thing going, partly for you guys but mostly so I can remember what I was up to! The camera is coming with me again, so there will be plenty of photos to gawk at!

I’ve got a project or two lined up whilst I’m there - little things like going back to Yokohama to take more photos of graffiti, and also a video project in the works, but that’s very hush hush right now - mostly because I have no idea what exactly it will entail yet.

If anyone who reads the blog or is involved with JapanSoc or whatever is around in Tokyo, get in contact with me and we will get some Karaoke going or something.

That’s about it. If anyone has any questions do let me know. Now, to save this from being an entirely useless post, I went back through my archive of photos and dug out a few favourites I’ve never posted before and used the magic of iPhoto to make them pretty. Enjoy! (In case you’re wondering - this will probably be the last time I recycle old photos for a while. Probably)

Taken from the bank of the river that runs through Oji. I saw this little guy walking around quite a few times but he never made it into the blog until now. This surely is the start of his career in showbiz.

[From: Two Parks In One Day] Taken in Ueno Park. The trees give the most awesome shadows. I actually posted this picture in the original update, but having played with it I think it looks way better now.

[From: Atami Part 2: Teaching & Eating] Quite similar to another posted photo. I like this one because it’s the only one where all the kids are paying attention. Nearly - notice the kid in the brown shirt at the front. If I see him again I’ll force him to read my entire blog. That’ll show him.

[From: Gentlemen, Start Your, Uh, Engines?] No idea who these guys were, but they won! So good for them!

10 days to go!

General, Japan Trip '08, Travel

So here we are, then. I’m writing this from the only cafe I can find Wi-Fi in, trying to get it all written and uploaded before my laptop battery remembers that it harbours a deep hatred for me and gives up. I did manage to get a couple of nice photographs too, but I haven’t really had time to head out on a photography trip yet. I am trying to upload as many as I ca but the internet connection is stupidly slow, so for now I’ll just stick them on Flickr. Sorry!

Not much news, really. Snowboarding is as fun as ever, and with my new board and bindings it’s even better than I remember it to be. Sadly some moron decided it would be awesome to gouge a chunk out of the back of my board in a lift queue, so I’m hoping that will get sorted in the tuneup, otherwise I’ll have to hunt him down and take a chunk out of his face. The weather has been pretty bad - until about 10.30am it’s fine, then every day a horrible cloud floats over the valley, making it impossible to see more than a foot infront of you, which leads to some interesting descents.

I’m back on the 29th, my birthday, at which point I’ll do a huge bumper update which will include the rest of the photos I take here and news about the summer and so forth. Until then, stay cool everyone!

Travel Europe

Update: I am not sure if I will be able to get an internet connection in France. Thus this may be the last post for a few days. Apologies!

I know this isn’t technically anything to do with Japan, but as it’s been a really long time since I went snowboarding, I knew once my family announced they were planning to head off to one of Europe’s premier ski resorts that I should sneak into the back of the car and get myself some quality snow.

I’m leaving tomorrow and will return on March 29th, which is my birthday! There’s nothing I love more than sitting in a car for 11 hours to celebrate my 20th, but that can’t be avoided. The six days immidiatly preceding that will totally make up for it anyway.

I am planning to take my camera and laptop with me, and I will try to make some interesting posts about French culture and so on. Failing that, I’ll just take pretty pictures and waffle on about them. I had an email asking why I never upload pictures to Flickr - I will, I’ve just been stuck at home revising, so there’s nothing to post yet. Yuck.

In other news, as I just said, I’ve been revising as I have yet another exam once I head back to university in two weeks or so - Semester 2 midterms. Although we’ve only done about 5-6 weeks of content it’s still promising to be a difficult exam, andsome of the grammar points we’ve covered like ために, the volitional form & ところ give me a horrible headaches when I think about them, so I think some more hard work is needed there, as usual. Kanji is still a big horrible problem and I hate it and plan to push it out of a window in the future, but at least I can take my textbook with me to France to ruin yet another holiday with stroke orders, Chinese readings and faded lines.

That’s about it for exciting news, then. Blogwise, I’m tuning up the archives to make them easier to use, as a big list of months is pretty useless, and I’ll probably fiddle with the look a bit. That’s about it, though. No more exciting news. Oh, apart from that there’s only 88 more days until I head to Japan! Yahoo!

Travel Europe

So this update is a bit late. You want a fight about it?

It was one day after the end of Junten’s sports day. I was tired, sunburned and incredibly confused about what I had just seen. Whatever we did today should not involve riding a train for more than an hour whilst trying to stop people from squashing a small chocolate cake. However, this is exactly what I did as I feel if I ever decide to become a ninja, they would really be impressed in the interviews when I told them I was excellent at defending desserts on public transportation. Or something.

Barney, an American teacher we work with at Junten, invited us to his house to meet his family and explore the local countryside, near the sea in Oiso. That’s right! Countryside! Beaches! I think this about the third time this year I’ve seen some real nature. When I get back to England the first thing I will do is scale a tree and eat leaves for a few days.

As you can see, the sun was one again beating down, although it wasn’t quite as bad as Saturday, I had a full day of jumping between patches of shadows ahead of me. It actually turned a little bit cooler in the afternoon which was perfect as it allowed me to slowly but surely edge out into the sun, like a tiny squirrel exploring a forest grove for the first time. Except I don’t have an irrational fear of Badgers.

I’m sorry to say it, but this update has a picture of flowers in it. The place was just stuffed full of them and it was so nice to see some colour other than grey. I took quite a lot of pictures of flowers, but in the end I decided just to stick with this one. Again, I’m sorry. Prepare to hold your breath…

There, that wasn’t so bad, was it? Plus, look at all the pretty colours!

Anyway, after a short stop and tour of Barney’s half-Western, half-Asian house, we headed out to climb one of the nearby mountains, which is where the title of this article comes in. Along the way we were assaulted by various forms of wildlife, mostly the very small, creepy variety. If you’re squeamish please look away now, as the next photo has 8 legs and would like nothing more than to eat your toes.

The point of wading our way through all this horrible nature was to get a good view out of the tower which adorned the top of the mountain, offering a few as far as Tokyo, and in the opposite direction all the way to Atami. It was truly a stunning view, and even though the sun had gone in a little you could still see a great deal of distance.

I haven’t been up the Tokyo tower yet, but it’s something I really want to do during the day so I can get a photo like this of the city I live, although to see a picture which would sum that up pretty well, click here.

After we made our way back down to the ground, it was time for dinner, which included mashed potato! After that superb twist of culinary fate it was time to go home, as we had an hour and twenty minute train ride ahead of us, and work in the morning. The last thing we did was take a nighttime stroll along the beach close to Barney’s house, filling our hearts with joy and our shoes with sand, before walking to the station.

Thus ends another page in my book of Japan. We made it home by about half past midnight, collapsed into bed, and although I don’t remember going to work at all on Monday morning, I apparently did as I’ve still got my job.

Travel

My good friend Leon was lucky enough to net himself two access all area passes to watch some races at the Fuji Speedway, at the foot of Mount. Fuji in Shizuoka Prefecture. Before you ask, I didn’t manage to get any pictures of Fuji itself, the clouds were out in force in that direction.

I feel I should explain now that I know very little to nothing about racing, and thus I will just post a few pictures here and pretend I know what I’m talking about. What I will add is that the journey there and back taught me one valuable lesson - driving around Tokyo is only a good idea in theory, rarely in practice.

As we could not take our go-kart car on the track itself, this is the best racing shot I got. When you enter the arena you get to drive under the infamous Bridgestone arch. I say it’s infamous - even I recognised it and I thought Formula One was the answer to question 6 in my last Chemistry exam.

Whilst I know very little about how to tell who’s winning in a race, I do know that I like the look of this little monster. It ripped around the track at a shocking speed, and it was yellow. I like yellow cars so I enjoyed watching this car thoroughly. I want to say it’s a Lamboughini but I’m not confident enough to do so.

Even if nobody else was having fun, I think the Michelin man was enjoying himself. Possibly a little bit too much as he wouldn’t leave the poor girls alone. Although neither would the photographers…

Those vultures!

Once the race had started, we headed down to one of the more dangerous corners on the track, hoping to see some wicked awesome crashes. Instead we saw lots of cars turning around a corner at amazing speeds, which was pretty cool, although you can do the same in England for free by standing at a roundabout five minutes before a world cup match starts.

So there we are. I had a fantastic time and enjoyed myself very much, despite not really knowing what was happening. I thought I’d finish today with a picture I am very happy with. I met a celebrity at the race. Quite a significant one. Don’t all gasp at once…

Travel