My Newly Buried Car sends a Christmas message...

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

It's snowing hard again - my once Unburied Car has become Buried again overnight. This time though I've left it at school, so it's the caretaker's job to dig it out, not mine -  mwah ha ha, that'll teach him for not lending me his snow mower.

 

But what am I saying? Let's banish such un-Christmassy thoughts! 'Tis the time for giving and making merry! I'm feeling full of festive cheer at the moment - I can't wait to get home and see my family and friends again. I hope they like the random stuff I've bought for them.

 

That's if I can get home of course - the heavy snow has been causing several train delays and cancellations, so it's a little bit touch and go at the moment. Fingers crossed the weather holds off...

 

Anyway, I'm not back in Japan until January 7th, so this will be the last post for a while. In the meantime...

 

HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Nyu High School: Cold.

It's Nearly Christmas...

I can't quite believe it's Christmas in four days... and in two days' time I'll be getting on a plane to fly me back home! What utter madness!!! What on earth was I thinking when I booked a flight back to cold, damp England when I could be in Thailand instead, lounging around on a beach sipping cocktails!? What a fool I've been!

 

But seriously though, it really is cold and damp in England, although technically slightly less cold and damp than my house in Asahi, since we have a thing in England called "central heating". This marvellous new invention means that houses can remain at a liveable temperature throughout the winter, which also means you can avoid the situation where it's actually warmer inside your fridge than in your kitchen. Yes, that's right, I'm now huddling up to the fridge for warmth. No need to worry though, I'll be in Thailand soon. No, wait, I won't will I? I'll be in England.

 

Damn.

 

But seriously though, my kitchen really is that cold. When I got home from work the other day I decided to have a round of toast with Nutella to warm myself up, but I discovered that the entire jar of chocolate spread had frozen solid. I put it in the fridge to warm it up a bit.

 

But don't worry Mum, my legs haven't fallen off from frostbite yet, and I really am looking forward to coming home and seeing you and the family this Christmas. Just make sure the thermostat's turned up nice and high when I get back - I want to get a sun tan from the radiators.

 

And speaking of Christmas, here's a few pics from the Fukui JET "non-denominational festive gathering", also known as Festivus (although the event was sadly lacking an aluminium pole).

NEWSFLASH: I've just found a website where you can buy genuine Festivus poles. 'Tis a Festivus Miracle I tell ya!

Sam did a fine job of cooking the peas I brought for Festivus. Look at the pride etched onto his face.

Around 100 ravenous guests shovel down the turkey as Festivus gets into full swing. If you look very carefully on the right of the photograph you can see a classic piece of internationalisation, as a Japanese woman and a Western woman demonstrate their respective gestures for "myself". See, the JET Programme is worth the money.

The spread of food was amazing - everyone outdid themselves this year. And, of course, the peas were top notch.

Here's another one of Chihiro's origami letter creations (see the November archives). I just love what's written on the front, it really put a smile on my face!

My Buried Car - are there blue skies ahead?

Escape to Victory!

Welcome to the next thrilling instalment of "My Buried Car". Regular readers will remember that on Thursday night I was forced to give up after three hours of digging because my car became beached like some sort of crazy snow whale. I'd managed to deal with the defeat by drowning my sorrows in mint choc chip ice cream, but I came back on Friday afternoon with eyes blazing, my battered soul hungry for fiery vengeance. There was no way this pathetic white fluff would beat me - with the mighty mama-san dump at my side, I knew I was invincible.

 

All hail Lewis! The Fearless Snow Avenger! Shoveller of Driveways! Clearer of Access Roads! Wielder of the Dump!

 

Now read on adventurers, as we go back to the frozen Ice Kingdom of Fukui...

Here's my car at 2.00pm on Friday. On Thursday I'd managed to move it just over halfway along the road after 3 hours of digging - all I needed was one last push and I'd be free... Unfortunately, this time I had to do it without the miracle of David Bowie, since the rain made it too wet to use my CD player. So I just thought about Bowie instead, and that helped.

After over an hour of digging I'd only managed to move the car about 20 metres, and it had gotten stuck 3 times. Twice I'd managed to dig it out, but the third time was more difficult, since the car had skidded sideways into some deep snow. Things were looking bad.

I was getting nowhere fast, so I did what anyone in the same predicament would do - I had a tiramisu. Mmmm... you just can't beat a good tiramisu. Then I had a brainwave...

I suddenly remembered somehing I saw on "Ray Mears' Extreme Survival". When he was stuck in the desert he put some planks of wood underneath the tyres to give them some traction, so I decided to replicate the situation using the only thing I had at hand - a bread board. And do you know what? It worked! I knew watching that programme would come in handy one day.

Finally, after another hour of digging, I'd managed to carve a rudimentary path to the end of the road and used good old "mama-san" to smash my way through the piles of ice and snow dumped there by the snow plough. This is it - will my car be able to make it through the snow?

SUCCESS!!!!! My car has been freed from its icy prison! Fan-bloody-tastic! I quickly nabbed a passing student to document the moment of triumph forever... Snowboarding here we come!

My Buried Car on Wednesday afternoon.

The Continuing Saga of My Buried Car

On Thursday afternoon, for the first time in days, it stopped snowing. With the re-emergence of long-forgotten blue skies I decided it was the perfect weather for digging out my poor little snow-entombed car.

 

My car was rendered immobile by snow on Tuesday, and I've been living like a hermit ever since, only venturing out of the house to go to school or buy snacky treats from the Circle K. It's been hard, but on the plus side it's given me a bit of time to get re-aquainted with my seldom-used-in-recent-months Playstation 2. Oh, how I've missed thee.

 

However, a crisis is looming - the weekend is coming closer and there's a serious chance that I might not be able to go snowboarding if I can't dig my car out in time, and will instead have to spend the weekend eating sandwiches from the Circle K and hoping the kerosene for my heater doesn't run out. To make matters worse, I've finished all my Playstation games. The race is on....

 

To aid me in my Herculean task, I thought I'd ask the school caretaker to let me borrow his brilliant "snow mower", but unsurprisingly he was reluctant to let go of his favourite toy. Instead, he gave me what's known in Japanese as a "mama-san dump" - a great big sledge thing with a handle, so-called because it makes it easier for old ladies to move around snow. Not exactly the manliest tool, but it moves snow a lot faster than my old shovel, so I'm not complaining.

 

And so, it begins.

I cleared the snow off my car on Wednesday night, but by Thursday afternoon it was covered again. Beside it you can see my trusty shovel and the embarrassingly-named yet dead useful "mama-san dump". To aid me through my labours I decided to stick the Best of Bowie on my cd player - good old Bowie, perfect for every situation. The time now is 3.45pm.

By the time I'd reached track 6, "Starman", I'd made some significant progress. I felt the tuneful wailings of classic seventies Bowie had certainly helped in this achievement.

As I neared the end of CD 1 it began to get dark, but I'd reached the first of the trapped bamboo stems. Bowie espoused the foibles of "Young Americans".

Little by little, I managed to edge the car forward. This photo was taken shortly after I'd moved on to CD 2 of the Best of Bowie, as the sweet guitar riff of "Sound and Vision" buoyed my spirits.

Bowie was well into his eighties phase by the time I reached the halfway mark. Come on David, "Scary Monsters"? What's that all about?

Then disaster! As David decided to experiment with jungle music, I decided to drive my car forward a little more. All was going well until I beached the car, leaving the wheels spinning in the air. Despite some frantic shovelling, the car was going nowhere. At 6.45pm, three hours after starting and completely exhausted, I gave up for the night and headed to The Circle K to buy an ice cream to cheer myself up. And so the saga continues...

A view of Asahi this morning on my way to school. You can just about make out the high street.

Let it snow, Let it snow, Let it snow

The snow has been absolutely crazy here recently - I've never seen anything like it. It didn't start snowing till Christmas Eve last year, but at the moment we're getting more snow than we usually have in January! It started just over a week ago, and it's been coming down, on and off, ever since. You can see the awful road conditions in Asahi here, but even that's nothing compared to the roads up in Izumi to the east.

 

When I checked this morning the snow here was around 45cm deep, but it's been snowing furiously all day so it's probably much deeper by now. Don't get me wrong, I love snow, but it's making it really tricky to get around... To give you an example, I went to take out my rubbish this morning, and a five minute walk around the corner turned into a half hour battle against the elements as I fought my way through the uncleared paths, desperately trying to stop the snow coming in the top of my boots. On the way back I even saw a tree collapse under the weight of the snow, and when I got to school this morning I found the school secretary throwing a broom at one of the school's prized ornamental pine trees, desperately trying to knock the snow off so the poor pine wouldn't suffer the same fate. Although, arguably, throwing a broom at it probably isn't going to do it much good either.

 

However, by far the most distressing aspect of the weather is that my poor little tiny car has now become imprisoned in a tomb of ice and snow. Regular readers may remember a similar thing happening last February, but this time around the snow's even deeper... The trouble is that no-one ploughs my road because I'm the only one that really uses it, so even after digging out my car I have to run the gauntlet of driving / attempting to drive through 100 or so metres of knee-deep snow. I'm running low on food though, and I can't keep subsisting on egg sandwiches from the local Circle K, so I'm going to have to break free sooner or later...

 

On the plus side though, Asahi looks amazing in the snow.

 

AND, this weekend I get to go snowboarding!!! If I can dig my car out that is.

Somewhere under there is my car. It's going to take a lot of digging / reckless driving to get that out.

The second obstacle - the weight of snow has caused these bamboo branches to lean across the road. I tried shaking the snow off one and almost got a face full of twig as it sprang back upwards. I had fleeting images of being catapulted across Asahi in a Wile E. Coyote stylee.

To make matters worse, the snowplough which cleared the road up to Nyu High School decided to dump all the excess snow across the entrance of my road, which means that even if I can dig my car out and fight through the bamboo, I still have to dig through all this... Looks like I'm not going anywhere for a while.

Aaaaaah... so THAT'S where Fukui is...

Fukui's not exactly the most famous of prefectures in Japan - most Japanese people aren't even sure where it is. When faced with explaining exactly where I live I constantly run into difficulties... "Well, it's sort of north of Kyoto and on the coast... erm... it's famous for eyeglass frame manufacturing... and crabs... and nuclear power... and, errr, are you sure you haven't heard of it?"

Well, no more. It's time to put Fukui on the map. Literally. If you have a look at the bottom of the sidebar you can see a fancy new map thing I've created using the wonderful Frappr website. Go on, have a look. Cool isn't it? You can zoom in and out and everything.

Anyway, you can see the full size map by clicking here, and if you feel so inclined you can even add yourself to the map and leave a little message. It's still the beta version so a lot of the Japanese towns haven't been added in yet, but you can always send a request for them to be included, or do what I did and type in a town near to you that it recognises (eg. Sabae), then create your own Frappr page and move your "home" pin manually. Your position should then be updated on the group map.

Have a go playing around with the satellite imagery too (click on the middle white button written in katakana at the top of the map), it really shows you how the separate "cities" of Fukui, Sabae and Takefu are really just one big swathe of housing and factories cutting through the middle of the mountains.

Finally, I've created another map showing the locations of a few of the local sights, so if you've ever wondered exactly where the famous toast restaurant in Takefu actually is, now's your time to find out. You lucky beggars.

Mr. Yamada takes aim.

Glorious Defeat Part 2

Yesterday was the annual Nyu High School bowling tournament - straight after the end of school all the teachers trooped off down the local bowling alley and competed in that most gentlemanly, yet criminally under-recognised sport. And I was rubbish. Again.

Regular readers may remember my dismal failure in last year's tournament (see The Staff Bowling Competition in the December 2004 archives) where I came second from bottom. Well, this year I completely outdid myself in the terrible bowling stakes ladies and gentlemen - yes that's right, this year I leapt down one place to claim the bottom spot for my very own. I am officially THE WORST BOWLER IN NYU HIGH SCHOOL. And to prove it I was given a special booby prize consisting, bizarrely, of a 100 yen baby mask with stubble, a paper lantern and a free ticket to go bowling. The baby mask I can sort of understand, the lantern is a bit random, but the free ticket to go bowling is just taking the piss surely. Maybe it's a hint that I should practice more...

 

Anyway, despite my miserable performance I actually had a lot of fun - the teachers are a great laugh, and you should have heard the cheer that went up when I got a spare (one of only two spares I achieved in two games. I didn't get any strikes. Yes, I know, I'm rubbish - even the office lady who was rolling the ball with two hands did better than me).

 

Final score; 164 (1st game = 74 points, 2nd game = 90 points) The winner got 308. Whoops.

The teachers of Nyu High School proudly show off their bowling prizes.

SNOW!!! My (inadequately insulated) house this morning.

Glorious Defeat

Well would you believe it - after my last post begging for snow my prayers have been answered. This morning I woke up to find Fukui smothered in an unseasonably early covering of white - snowboarding season here we come! Roll on the weekend! If you want to see the snow for yourself then head to http://info.pref.fukui.jp/hozen/yuki/index.html - if you click on a coloured part of the map, then click on a traffic camera you can see an (almost) live picture of the snow conditions in that area. I live in Asahi (now Echizen-cho, the pink area on the left), but check out the crazy amounts of snowfall in the mountains around Ono (the pink area on the right).

 

So anyway, winter has definitely arrived. It was two degrees centigrade in my bedroom this morning, and when I went into the kitchen I discovered that my olive oil had frozen. Yes, that's right, my olive oil had frozen . It's all very well having a big old wooden house all to yourself, but the big disadvantage of having a house against having a tiny flat is that you don't get to bathe in any of that lovely heat coming from your neighbours' apartments. It doesn't help that my walls are paper thin either. Or that my windows have big gaps between the frames and the window panes. Having said that though, the walls must be doing something, since when I looked at the thermometer by the side of the road it said one degree, which means the temperature in my house was double what it was outside. Hurrah!!!

 

In other news, I went to Nagoya yesterday to fail the Level 3 Japanese Proficiency Test. I didn't have a hope in hell of passing, since I've been far too busy with work to study, but it was nice to get away from Fukui for a bit. Plus I encountered lots of weird and wonderful new Japanese words and phrases I'd never seen before whilst taking the test, so I have an exciting amount of textbook-combing and dictionary-checking to look forward to as I endeavour to undrerstand what the hell the whole thing was about. Maybe next year I'll be able to approach the exam with a much more advanced strategy of actually knowing what the questions mean and being able to fill in the correct answers, as opposed to my current strategy of making pretty patterns out of the boxes on the multiple choice answer sheet and hoping for the best.

 

Following the glorious defeat we stepped out into the Nagoyan rain and headed for a bite to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe - my first time inside the mighty chain's hallowed doors. You get the feeling that the restaurant's glory days may have already passed it by - the novelty of hanging random things nailed up all over the walls surely must have worn off at least a decade ago. Indeed, I was transfixed by the decor as I strolled in, in much the same way as an Egyptologist might be when walking into a mummy's tomb: "Aaah, this is what restaurants used to look like... Fascinating."

 

Still, you can't fault the food - the veggie burger I had was absolutely amazing. You just can't get veggie burgers anywhere in Japan, so taking my first bite of delicious mush in a bun was utterly divine. I imagine heroin addicts have the same kind of feeling after going back on the needle after rehab (only veggie burgers are a little bit healthier than heroin, or so I believe). Yum.

Frozen olive oil in my kitchen this morning.

Nagoya station by night. Probably one of the ugliest buildings in Japan during daylight hours, it's transformed by neon as the evening draws in.

Rocking in the Hard Rock Cafe.

Dana and Brandon enjoy a generous portion of chocolate brownie.

Hey look! It's not raining!

For the first time in three days the rain has held off and we've had
some glorious winter sunshine. It's still bloody cold (6 degrees in my
bedroom this morning - yikes!) but at least there's blue skies, plus
the promise of snow on the way. I bought a new snowboard last weekend
in anticipation of the coming season, and I just can't wait to get
that puppy on the slopes. Ooooh, she's a beauty! She's got fancy
see-through bits and everything!

Anyway, in celebration of the nice weather I decided to head up to the
top floor of the school and take some picks of the far-off
snow-covered mountains... Come on, snow more dammit!!!

This is the view to the south-east - the big sprawl in the distance is Sabae.

And this is looking east - you can quite clearly see the snow-covered mountains in the distance. Some students reckon you can see the outlines of Ski Jam in Katsuyama on a clear day.

Lewis Money: The key to motivating senior high school students. Apparently.

The Creeping Cold

It's been another one of those crazy busy months - I spent most of last week running around like a blue-arsed fly trying to get my presentation together for the JET Mid-Year Conference in Fukui, and the entire week before that was taken up with editing JETfuel. JETfuel was a pretty mammoth job this time around, but I reckon it's our best issue yet (you can see a photo of the latest print issue below and the online edition can be found here, although only a few articles have been added so far).

 

The Mid-Year Conference went pretty well too - I foolishly agreed to make a one hour presentation about motivating students, and I've spent the past month cobbling together lessons and trying to figure out how exactly to stop my students falling off their chairs with boredom. I photocopied a few successful lesson plans and handed them out, then showed some videos of my students doing some drama, which went down well, so I think the whole thing went OK. It's all I've been able to think about for ages, so I'm just glad it's all done.

 

Later on I was one of the comperes at the post-conference Pub Quiz, which was great fun, but unfortunately I indulged a bit too much in the free beer and didn't quite make it to the club night afterwards. Yes, that's right, you guessed it: I fell asleep on the bus, then paid a taxi driver 3000 yen to drive me round and round until I could remember where I lived. Classy.

 

Other than that, I saw the new Harry Potter film at the weekend, but failed to spot my sister (she's one of the extras - according to my mum you can see her in the scene where they draw the names out of the Goblet of Fire). I did manage to spot my sister's friend Megan though, which was quite exciting - she plays one of Cho Chang's best friends.

 

I also got a couple more fancy origami letters from Chihiro, which always cheers me up. All the first years at my school have to write at least 5 letters to me every term, but inevitably they leave writing them until the very last possible moment, right before the exams, which means I now have a pile of approximately 400 letters on my desk waiting to be marked. They're usually pretty much identical too - the standard "My family has a dog. It name is Taro. I like Taro etc etc", so it's always a nice surprise to get intricately folded letters from Chiharo. Last time it was a hedgehog, this time it's a pencil and a heart - what will it be next time? I'm actually really excited to find out, but I'm not sure if that makes me dedicated to my job, or just sad.

 

Finally, it's bloody cold. But the school rules state that heaters are not to be turned on before the 1st December. NO MATTER WHAT. Which is why I'm wearing gloves as I type this on the school computer, whilst I listen to disgruntled mumblings among the English department about "inflexibility". Bets are being circulated about how many staff members will come down with frostbite before the Great Turning On this Thursday. Roll on heated classrooms.

JETfuel December 2005 "Winter Bumper Edition": Done (And Surprisingly Big And Bulgy Considering The Numerous Desperate Pleas for Articles).

Heater Next To My Desk: Still Not Turned On.

Here's a photo of class 1-3 we used in our mid-year conference presentation "Motivating Senior High School Students". Obviously this has been completely staged, since in this classroom almost all the students are awake. In fact, what appear to be eager students are actually carefully placed cardboard cut-outs of what I believe eager students would look like if they existed.

Chihiro continues to delight me with her origami letters - here are two of her latest creations, a pencil and a heart.

Uses For 1 Yen Coins - Volume 1, Dealing With Scotsmen

This is an article I wrote which appears in the new issue of JETfuel, the Fukui JET magazine. Big thanks to Colin, our local Scotsman, for being such a good sport and letting me take the photos. Apologies in advance to any Scotsmen/women reading this...


Somewhere in your apartment I'm sure you have, as I do, an enormous jar stuffed full with 1 yen coins. There's very little you can do with these all but useless pieces of monetary fluff. You sure as hell can't spend them, unless you're willing to go down the conbini with a sack full of change every time you want to buy a loaf of bread. Keeping them is impractical: it has been estimated that after three years of living in Japan the storage space required for 1 yen coins is likely to equal approximately one fifth of the size of the average ALT apartment.

You can't even throw them away, since the bin day for one yen coins occurs only once every ten years on the second Monday of the fifth month between the hours of 5am and 6am, and even if you're lucky enough to be present on said bin day, the hallowed bin is guarded by a vicious obaa-chan, who will rifle through your bags of coins and put them back on your doorstep if she finds even one five yen piece in with the ones.

But don't worry, help is at hand. An Englishman in Nyu-gun is proud to present the first in a series of articles giving advice on what to do with those pesky little shards of metal. First up: dealing with Scotsmen.

The problem is a familiar one: one day you come home to discover empty cans of McEwans lager strewn across your living room floor, ginger whiskers in your sink and the powerful odour of haggis wafting through the drawing room. That's right, your house has become infested with Scotsmen. “But I kept it so clean!” you cry. “I always clear up the leftover food in the kitchen and put the bins out on time. I might have expected to have a Scotsman when I was living in my student house, what with all the mess and all, but how could I have one now?”

Nevertheless, despite your best efforts, a Scotsman has moved in, and he ain't budging. You called the council, but they can't send an exterminator round until next March, and the humane traps you bought from the local DIY store were useless. You even bought a cat, but somehow the canny Jock is still scuttling along behind the skirting boards, keeping you up all night. You've tried everything.

Or have you...? What about that jar full of one yen coins by the door...



Fig. 1 - Here we see a Scotsman who has set up nest in this wall cabinet. Startled by the light, he quickly retreated to safety behind some old porn magazines hidden at the back of the cupboard shortly after this picture was taken. Note the mug of rancid, watery tea: Scotsmen have been known to reuse the same tea bag for up to a year or more.



Fig. 2 -There's simply no way you'll be able to get close to the Scotsman whilst he's holed up in his cupboard – you need to lure him out into the open. As everyone knows the Scotch are famed for their miserliness, so the Scotsman will have an instinctive urge to hoard any money he can get his hands on. This is where the one yen coin comes in – simply place a one yen coin on a table near the cupboard, then secrete yourself behind the curtains. Now wait. Once the Scotsman catches the scent of money he will be irresistibly drawn towards it...



Fig. 3 - Now's your chance. The Scotsman will be momentarily stunned by the shininess of the tiny piece of metal, and will stand transfixed for a few moments admiring “his precious”. Whilst he contemplates the shiny surface of the coin, quickly leap from your hiding place and batter his brains out with a frying pan.

Problem solved.

They've opened up a new toast restaurant in my home town. Does it get any better than this?

Going Home

Last week I paid an unscheduled visit back to England for the funeral
of my Grandad (by the way, thanks for all the messages of support I've
received from you lot over the past couple of weeks - it really means
a lot to me). The first few days after I heard the news sort of passed
in a blur. I organised time off school and booked the first flight I
could back to England, but it only really dawned on me that I was
going home when I saw the lights of London emerge below me, and
suddenly I was picking out Canary Wharf and Big Ben and the London Eye
and jumping up and down in my seat with excitement, much to the
annoyance of the stern-faced Swedish guy trying to watch the film next
to me. This was it. I was back in the land of crumpets and tea.

Obviously it was a bit of a strange week - my excitement about being
home was dulled by the sombre events I was there to attend. The
funeral was obviously very emotional but I was so glad I could be
there: I think you really need to be with family at times like that.
There was a fantastic turnout too, and I got to meet tons of relatives
I never even knew I had. The reception afterwards at the Kings Langley
Social Club was packed out, and the tuna sandwiches and vol-au-vonts
fairly flew off the plates, whilst the subsidised bar kept the ale
coming all afternoon.

I don't think you could ever describe a funeral reception as "fun",
but it was a pleasant feeling to be surrounded by so many people I
know and love after so long spent in Japan. It was nice not having to
speak in Japanese too, not that I ever really do in Japan aside from
the odd staccato conversation about the weather, or a quick "ohayo
gozaimasu" to the neighbour. Lamentable I know, but I'm working on it.

Anyway, like I say, an odd week. Aside from the funeral it was great
seeing my friends and family again, and it was great to indulge in all
the things I've missed, ie. really decent sandwiches (God bless you
Marks & Spencer!), mince pies, BBC TV (actually better than I
remembered it being - maybe I'm used to awful Japanese dramas now),
comfy chairs, wonderful wonderful tea, really smelly cheese,
doughnuts, fresh pasta and being able to buy magazines and actually
read them.

As comforting as all this normality was though, I began wondering what
things would be like when I return home for good. I must say that the
thought of going home next summer appeals to me, but at the same time
I realise that leaving Japan for good is going to be a massive
comedown. After all, nothing's really changed in England, but I'm
experiencing brand new things almost every day in Japan, even after
living here for 18 months. Like the toilet with the self-raising loo
seat I discovered in a restaurant in Fukui the other day, or the
poster for a local production of "Driving Miss Daisy" featuring a
blacked-up Japanese guy in the lead which I saw this afternoon. Life's
going to be a lot more boring outside the Land of the Rising Sun.

Now playing at the Fukui Culture Centre, "Driving Miss Daisy", or as the Japanese reads, "Doraibingu Misu Deizii". Good old katakana.

Here's just some of the family, from left to right: (top row) Uncle Roy, James (Lizzie's boyfriend), Uncle Adrian (middle row) Cousin Adam, Uncle Pete, Auntie Lynn, Sister Kerri (bottom row) Counsin Jake, Cousin Lizzie, Auntie Andrea, Mum and Nan. And they all live in the same village, along with a few more of the clan. Note Jake's Darth Vader helmet on the table - something that will definitely be on my Christmas list this year.

I got a bit over-excited when I was going round the supermarket, and I started taking photos of all the food I missed, much to the bafflement of my fellow shoppers. Check out this killer sandwich - "Brie in a Pear Tree", a combination of brie, pear, pear & apple chutney, mixed leaf and creme fraiche on cranberry and onion bread. Possibly the best sandwich in the world ever. Can anyone name a better one?

Now this is what I call a sandwich - Wensleydale Cheese and Caramelised Carrot Chutney. Get in. And look! They haven't even cut the crusts off! (It's a little known fact outside of Japan, but all sandwiches sold through convenience stores here have the crusts cut off - and no-one knows why. Possibly they're aiming them at vicars who need to throw a tea party in a hurry.)

Just look at that - real cheese (drool appears at corner of mouth, eyes glaze over). I love cheese. I love Cheddar, Wensleydale, Stilton, Red Leicester, Brie, Camembert, the lot. Unfortunately they only seem to have one type of cheese in my beloved Japan - a yellow, bendy substance they simply call "cheezu".

Organic wholemeal bread - oh how I've missed thee!!! For too long have I supped on tasteless, semi-stale slabs of bleached white so-called "bread" here in Japan. A bakery! A bakery! My gaijin card for a bakery!

Sad News

I had some sad news last week. On October 31st my Grandad was rushed for an emergency operation following problems with his heart. The surgeons did all they could, but unfortunately he didn't pull through.

I rushed to book a flight as soon as I heard the news, and I'm currently writing this in my parent's house in England. Obviously the whole family is devastated. The funeral is tomorrow.

I just wish I could have seen him one last time.


Goodbye Grandad. I'm going to miss you.