in japan

Sorry my site has been down for a while - it was actually not down, it was just that I inadvertently replaced the index file and didn't realize.  Well it's back up now, with a splendid new title page. 
So here's a brief update on what's been happening since I got back from Scotland.
The weather here has been hot and wet.  As you can see, it's been up in the thirties, but before you get jealous remember that this is accompanied by uncomfortable sauna-like humidity; you could let go of your bladder and not notice the difference, waddling as you are in genital soup most of the time.  Either that or it's hammering down with rain, and humid.  Right now I'm sitting with the window open and it's pissing down and the sky is heaving with thunder and lightening.  I don't mind this kind of weather at all.

Ai and I went to Disneyland and Disney sea again.  I'll spare you the photos

and the details, as you've been through all that in one of the previous posts.  We went to a nice onsen with Ai's mum in Kamogawa, which had an aquarium next door. See the pictures here.

As for job hunt progress - I'm primarily getting responses from companies who set me up with private students, which is fine, but it's not where the money is and the problem is that once I get a good paying company/school job I will have to shuffle my privates around, so to speak.  I'm currently looking at Berlitz as they are a reputable, global company with a history and good anecdotal reports on the internet.   Failing that there are jobs coming up in August with a government organisation - EIS.  It would mean travelling around Tokyo a bit and going to different offices but I wouldn't mind that if they pay my travel. 
I'm also looking for a new flat.  As soon as I get a new job I'll move into a flat by myself.  My apartment is getting a little bit smellier and dirtier every day.  The other day I came home to be greeted at the front door by the thick stench of dead flesh.  I holed up in my room to deal with it in the morning.  The source was half a kilo of raw mince that somebody had just lobbed into the bin with no covering.  It was black and festering.  The cockroach population is rising too.  One cockroach means a hundred, at least that's what they say here.
So I'm looking for a job and changing apartments.  That's two out of the top three most stressful things a human being can do.

After claiming to have lost my bag for good, I got a call from the cretins at JAL (who were saddled with BA's mistake, see previous post) to say that my bag has been found.  It returned in good shape with some strange tags attached to it, and nothing inside appears to be broken or damaged.  After six days, I could finally change my underpants.
I heard about the firebombing of Glasgow airport and I'm sure I reflect the sentiments of Scottish people everywhere by saying "Glasgow !?".   It appears that The Terrorists have got more in store that they bargained for if John Smeaton, the Glasgow airport baggage handling hero, has anything to do with it.   I'm sure it's been all over British T.V., and I was told about it when a Scot answered the phone of a school I was arranging an interview with.  If you haven't seen his infamous "We'll set about ye!" interview with the BBC then take a butchers. 
The job hunt is going pretty well - it's easier than I thought to find teaching jobs here.  I've applied for GABA and have an interview on Wednesday, I have a possible Saturday gig at a private language school, and I'm set up with an organization that arranges private students.  It's been a long holiday, with Suzie coming over, Malaysia, Scotland, Amterdam, France and Disneyland.  Oh yeah, we went to Disneyland again for our one year anniversary (the actual day of the anniversary was spent in the confines of the Heathrow-Tokyo flight).  But now it's back to work, and the hope that I haven't completely forgotten how to teach. 

Just got back yesterday - check all the photos here
It’s good to get back to the west and check up on the place, see if anything has gotten out of shape since I’ve been away.  Nothing much has changed; public service staff are still rude, everything that involves eating or entertainment outside your house is still almost prohibitively expensive.  The wind is still colder than you can possibly imagine, as are shadows. 

Some things are changing though:  the food seems to be getting better everywhere.  Last time I was here I didn’t do a lot of eating out and I’ve discovered that even pubs serve pretty good meals.  The price of those meals is extortionate, and the compulsory tip is always a source of resentment. In some places restaurants are asking for up to 15% now.  That's fine if you give me the option of going to the kitchen myself and pouring my own drinks.

I’ve never been a tourist in Scotland before but with Ai I could do all those things that I haven’t done since I was too

small remember them.  Like going to Loch Ness and straddling the big plastic Nessy they have at the tourist centre with a head and neck like an elongated turd.  Eating fish and chips and going on a whiskey tour, or going to the Edinburgh dungeon - surely, I was asking myself as I wandered from exhibit to exhibit, there are cheaper ways to see the dregs of Edinburgh’s amateur student acting society than the Dungeon (12 Pounds if you can believe that).  And there are better ways to find out about the interesting characters (Burke and Hare the body snatchers, Sawney Bean and his cannibal family) than trying to pick out the meagre factual details from the heavily improvised and embarrassing monologues.  I prefer exhibits, which is a sign of getting old, like exhaling loudly when taking a seat.  We wasted about two hours on that cringe-making spectacle in Edinburgh, but made up for it by going to the Camera Obscura (wiki)– an exhibition of weird photographic stuff with a pinhole camera set in the roof of a building at the top of the royal mile that shines an image of the city onto a white table in a viewing room.  Edinburgh castle itself was being bedecked with stadium seating for the tattoo coming up.

So our tour of Scotland consisted of Glencoe, Loch Ness and Edinburgh, and a load of other places where we could take pictures of sheep and cows and stuff.  Lots of Scottish things to show people back in Japan.
We went to the west end festival and saw a Rolling Stones cover band amongst a crowed of neds and drunken Glaswegians.  Take a look at the video (and look out for the guy with the strange Mr. Bean face.

Amsterdam.

After that we went to Europe.  Two days in Amsterdam and two days in Paris.  
On our first day in Amsterdam we had to wait for an hour while they cleaned our room at the Swissotel hotel.  The staff dress in long black coats with hotel insignia on their collars.  It was a bit militant.  
On our first walk around the city we accidentally got in the way of an angry Canadian/American (I’m not sure if we even did get in his way) who shouted “pricks!” back to us as he waited to cross the road.  It took me a while to understand that he was insulting us and so I did the manly thing:  waited until he was almost out of earshot and insulted him back half-heartedly.  He swung around on his bicycle and we continued to swap insults for about five minutes, neither of us actually prepared to take out the can opener.  
A stoned bouncer from a nearby pub came over and got rid of the guy and said “don't worry, if he was a real tough guy he would have done something”.  That’s reassuring.  I have no idea why the American/Canadian was so unbelievably angry, but I do hope it drives him to a heart attack.
Amsterdam was beautiful.  I mean the place was beautiful and the people who live there were lovely.  The main problem with Amsterdam is the British people.  In fact not just the British – all the foreigners are a pain.  No matter where you are you can hear some loud-mouth whooping or heaving out some brainless team-sport chant.

My favourite Amsterdam pastime is watching middle-aged couples walk down the street and suddenly realize the windows are filled with prostitutes.  I saw one guy stepping out of a doorway stuffing his wallet into his back pocket while his fair lady waved him farewell.  As normal a transaction as having your car washed or your hair cut.  
Good things about Amsterdam– clean streets, nice architecture, canals, pleasant locals if you can find them, excellent transport, sensible airport, polite staff, liberal laws, Van Gogh museum, cycle taxis, cheaper than Britain.
Bad stuff about Amsterdam – British stag parties and hen parties, cyclists and cycle lanes being more abundant than walk ways, silent trams than creep up on you, the queues outside Anne Frank’s house, and the staff in our hotel.  Ageing American hippies with leather waistcoats who go into bars and bore the owners senseless with mindless chat for the entire afternoon because they knew the guy who owned the bar in 1971.

After Amsterdam we took the train back to Schiphol and caught the plane to France.  I tried to book a train from Amsterdam to Paris on the internet but the website was in Dutch, so then I found the English one and when I got to the confirmation page it was in Dutch.  The French website wouldn’t let me print my ticket.  In short, I would have to actually travel to France to pick up my ticket, or have it mailed to my address, which would take SIX days. The telephone numbers on the sites wouldn’t work either.   I surely would have had less trouble taking a train from Amsterdam to France if I had lived in 1910.

Gay Paris, or as the Parisians call it, Paris De L'Homosexual.
Charles De Gaulle airport is a toilet, as is the Gard du Nord trainstation.  Limited use of signage and minimalist personnel employment strategies seem to be top of the French Ministry of Transport’s agenda, as well as severely limiting taxi licences.  For one of the dominant European countries I was shocked that my first impression was that it looked, well, poor.  In our train carriage Mediterranean street urchins played accordion to jaded travelers who refused to give them money.
At the other end we found ourselves facing signs for the exit pointing in every conceivable direction, including up and down.  We picked one and followed it and ended up outside a small back entrance called Chappelle or something like that.  We waited for a taxi and because it was raining we waited one hour.  I asked three taxis to take us to Rue de la Banque, and all of them shook their heads and said no.  In the end we got one, and I would have paid him a thousand pounds.

“Euros” really doesn’t sound like any kind of real currency.  It sounds like “credits”.  And as with all money that you’re not used to, all the coins look the same and the sizes are wrong.  I even find that with Sterling these days.  Pound coins are massive, and the behemoth two pound coin is a bruiser.  Fifty-pence pieces belong either side of a legionaire’s chariot and how could I ever have considered the size discrepancy between frizbee-like twos and invisible fives to be anything other than a joke by the Royal mint on the British public.  I forgot what it’s like to pick a five pence coin off a tiled floor under duress in a busy supermarket.

Paris was beautiful.  The Louvre, and Seine, l’arc de Triumph, the Eiffel tower, in that order, then a bit of shopping but they closed at five, then some champagne outside on the Rue de Louvre, and back to the Louvre for night time views.  The beauty of the place and the grandeur of the architecture was spoiled only by the city’s obnoxious inhabitants.  It’s Europe’s reluctant tourism capital, and you can see in the eyes of every Parisian who serves you anything or has anything to do with you that they don’t give a toss about you.  Saying that – our hotel staff was quite nice.
Rudeness aside, it's a nice place.  But Paris doesn’t do manners, and it doesn’t do transport.

The flight back to Britain was great fun.  We went through Heathrow because we couldn’t get direct flights from Paris to Edinburgh.  I don't exactly know when the excitement peaked – It was probably in the line to get the bus for the queue for the security-check queue, or it could have been in the line to rebook our tickets when we missed our flight to Edinburgh because of the security check (which robbed Ai of her shampoo but neglected to find her straight razor).  Or it might have been when we ran for ten minutes with heavy bags to the rebooked flight to find that we needn’t have, as it had been delayed 55 minutes.  Or possibly it was when, despite a severe lack of staff, a BA official still managed to materialize out of nowhere to tell me to delete the video I had just taken of the enormous queues.

No, it was definitely taking off in the pouring rain, and being told that we should be happy as Heathrow had just been closed behind us due to weather.  All those hundreds or maybe thousands of people behind us who would have to spend the night in each others’ company.  The stupid woman in the queue who said it was ridiculous being held up and delayed, but said that she always wanted to fly with an airline with the tightest security.  “After nine eleven you just have to take care these days”.  More Americans die from inadequate health insurance or badly engineered levees than terrorists attacks, and she was certainly more likely to be murdered by me than Al Queda.  
Heathrow is crippled because of the security checks and I reckon half the people going through must miss their flights.

Back to Scotland, and a day with the family in mum’s house.  It was great to see almost everyone together outside

in the garden, until it started to rain torrentially. The next day we went down to Glasgow to meet up with Rav flying up from London.  Nick drove me and Ai to Glasgow airport, where I realised that the only information I possessed about Rav’s flight was that it came in at seven o’clock.  Despite that we did find him, after both parties waiting in different parts of the airport for fifty minutes.

We all spend the next day in Glasgow eating and drinking and making pigs of ourselves and in the evening risking a bit of clubbing.  I always find Glasgow clubs a bit forbidding, even when I remember my stab-vest and hammers, but the club Tracey and Nick took us to was pretty nice.   The clientele was a little classier than some of your more common meat markets on Sauchiehall street.  There were a couple of neds though – including one Rangers supported who seemed to be aggravated because (and see if you can follow the logic here) my girlfriend is Japanese and a Japanese player plays for Celtic meaning that of course I must support Celtic. And people wonder why I hate football.  Take a look at this nedumentary on youtube.

Anyway, that was fun.  After the ned disappeared we had a good night and were treated to Nick’s unique form of Bodily Dance Expressions.  

The next day we drove Rav to the airport and headed back towards Crieff and straight into a delay on the dual carriageway that kept us busy for the best part of forty-five minutes.  Then the torrential rain made an appearance on the way into Muthill.

The very next day we embarked on the journey back to Tokyo.  For those of you who are hungry for another taste of European airport delay literature let me just recap our day so far.  If you’ve had enough, go and make a cup of tea.
Paul, Fiona, Isla and Ben drove us down to the airport (obviously only Paul was driving his big white whale of a van heaving and swaying through the rain and doing a pretty good job at simulating terrifying speeds).  Paul got us there nice and early for our 11:45 flight – 9:30.  
Entering the departure terminal we saw our flight had been delayed until 13:15.  Nice.
A fry-up and a magazine later we were eventually sitting on the aircraft.

The pilot said (and I quote, with minimal paraphrasing):

 “I’m not going to insult you by saying welcome to the flight as I’m sure you’re none too impressed by today’s delays.  Let me just explain why we had that delay.  Last night my co-pilot and I were delayed getting into Edinburgh due to weather.  Now current regulations require all pilots to have at least thirteen and a half hours rest between shifts, and another effect of the weather was that all our backup crew were unavailable, and so only myself and my co-pilot were available to operate this aircraft.  The earliest we could legally fly today was 1:15.  
In addition to this delay, we have two passengers who have – because of the delay – booked onto different flights but have forgotten to tell BA and so their bags are still on the aircraft.”

So we waited while the two dickheads’ bags were removed from the plane and discarded on the tarmac with the contempt they deserved, and we finally took off.

Into Heathrow, and we thought we’d miss our flight but were told we’d make it no problem.  We rushed all the way to the gate with 20 minutes to spare only to run into an enemy road block, or security check.  30 minutes later we put our shoes back on and rushed to the gate just as the door to the plane closed in front of us.  
And they never open the doors back up, probably because of pressurization.  Literally twenty seconds made the difference between us being on a plane and us sitting in Heathrow for another three hours, our home from home, the masterpiece of human misery and bested only by Guantanamo Bay in the field of detaining people for no reason other than paranoia and incompetence.  
We had to go through security again just for the crack, go to the rebooking desk (the very same one I went to between France and Edinburgh) for thirty minutes, wait for a bus to terminal 3, queue for thirty, book onto a Japan Airlines flight.
So here we are sitting on our flight, and the moral of the story is – never, ever, ever, fly with British Airways unless you can afford Business Class or First Class in which case all the delays only mean more free alcohol in the executive lounge, with a cursory fondling of your genitals at your specially reserved security check.
But whatever class you belong to don’t fly through Heathrow, on pain of death.  Take a canoe or a microlight instead.

I’ll wrap this mess up now, with six hours left on my flight in amputee class and my legs feeling like waxy tree trunks.  Kayakists and formula one drivers have more leg space than I do.  But I could moan about stuff that pisses me off until I land, but now I have to fitfully doze with my jumper wrapped around my head so people can’t see my mouth hanging open.

P.S.  Just got back to Tokyo.  In case you thought that all those flight troubles could have been worse, consider now the fact that British Airways have truly excelled this time by actually losing both of our suitcases.  It's enough to drive a man to some kind of violent religion...

[check all the Malaysia photos here]
We got back from Malaysia yesterday at 9 in the morning so we had to go and sleep off our journey.  Only one hour time difference but economy class has a way of stretching time.

I hope Suzie has got back into the swing of things in the busy megalopolis of Crieff.  She was talking about getting a computer, since she is one of the last human beings in the first world without email.  I'll persuade her when I come home.  Suzie:  I will bring your t-shirt and photo dvds when I come across.
So Malaysia.  It was so hot and sweaty that I had to imbibe water like an intrevenous drip just to keep from getting a migraine.  The humidity put Tokyo to shame which is something special.
We flew into Kuala Lumpur (which I didn't even know was in Malaysia) and then took a flight to Penang.  We were with a tour group of about fifteen people.  Seven couples and one lonely retired man whom we nicknamed Mr. Happy.  He constantly wore a frown and refused to speak to anyone except on the last day, when he revealed that he spoke pretty good English.  Maybe he wanted to hear what I would say about him.  You wouldn't believe the amount of double takes I got as the only pasty westerner in a Japanese tour group. 
In Pinang we stayed in a nice hotel, and we had to eat dinner all together - this became the standard dinner format: us all sitting around a table with a rotating center on which the staff put (or threw) our food for us to pick at.  The manners involved in dinning at a rotating table are difficult to master - you see something you like at the other side but you have to wait until there are no hands reaching into the centre before you spin the plate towards you.  And usually it is intercepted and emptied before it reaches you.
We went to the usual tourist places.  Our guide took us to a jewellery shop where they locked a big metal grille behind us and wouldn't let us out for about forty five minutes.  Then we went to a leather shop and the same thing happened there.  Maybe our guide knew the owners.
Then we went to Penang Botanic Gardens.  It was extrememly sweaty, and I drank a fresh fruit juice that a guy in a stall made with dirty gloves and a food mixer.  I worried about that for a while, but nothing intoward came out of my backside during the entire holiday.  That has to be a first for me.
After that, Fort Cornwallis, the first landing site of the British or something like that.  There is a big stone fort with old cannons and speakers playing rousing classical music like Ride of the Valkyries.
Then came the orangutans, which is what Ai really came for.  We got a boat across to a small island and on another boat across from us was a film crew who were making a promotional video for the orangutan park.  The shadowed us all the way, even hiding in the trees.  The park itself was basically just a walkway surrounded by fences and on the other side of the fences were a few orangutans eating a fighting and sleeping.  It was pretty dull until we came to a couple of orangutan 'children' (what can I call them) laying on a table in a fenced off area.  I asked if we could touch them and the young attendant said no.  Ai was bitterly dissapointed.
When the other tourists left and only Ai and I were left the guard said "Ok, I'll let you go in now, but don't tell the others".  So we went in and the little orangutans were startled at first, but they stretched out their hands to us.  They have really strong hands, and I can imagine the adults would be able to break bones with their grip.  Actually the guide said in Japanese that the big moon-faced orangutan leader broke an attendants skull and killed him after a particularly careless feeding session.  I took some photos of Ai with her Orangutans and she pressed 10 ringit (300 yen, 1 pound fifty) into the guide's hand and we caught up with the group.  She continues to feel ashamed that she didn't give him more, but we hadn't really got a handle on the currency.
That afternoon we sat on the bus for three hours while we drove to the hotel in Cameron Highlands.  If you have seen The Shining you can imagine this hotel.  Situated on the top of a 5000ft mountain this hotel optimistically boasts hundreds of rooms and a cavernous lobby with five pool tables.  Our group barely made a dent on the place, and we seemed to be the only guests. The rooms were bare but livable and had no air conditioning; at this altitude the temperature never rises above 25 degrees and the humidity is low.  This insane hotel with thirteen floors of empty rooms and dozens of desolate outbuildings seems to support the local economy.  There are little attractions dotted all over the hillside, like the butterfly park - a net-covered area on the side of a hill filled with various kinds of fauna all teeming with huge butterflies.  I think that butterflies are just colourful moths so this was kind of a nightmare for me.  Luckily they don't fly early in the morning when their wings are wet.  If it wasn't for that hotel it's difficult to imagine people spending three hours in a bus to see some butterflies and a good view.
Later that day we went to an outside foot spa place.  It was an area with various little pools of naturally heated water.  You could choose any temperature from 30 degrees up to 60 degrees. I dipped my finger in the 50-60 pool.  It was like dipping a finger in your tea.  
There was even a pool at 90 degrees.  They had sieves that you could use to hold eggs in the water and boil them.  Ai made me boil my sandals, and I have to say they didn't smell after that.  I might start boiling all my shoes.  
We went down to Kuala Lumpur and checked into The Grand Seasons Hotel, which was inhabited almost entirely by Indian families.  The tallest hotel in Malaysia apparently.  We were on the 23rd floor and got a decent view of the Petronas towers.
The next day was our last and so we spent our time wandering around the city and taking cabs to various places.  It's a world apart from the countryside where some people had literally nothing but a wooden shack.
Despite the multitude of shifty glances and dishonest taxi drivers the city felt really safe.  If you stick to the tourist beat I think nothing would happen.  We took the monorail to KL Sentral (they spell everything phonetically) and ended up off the beaten track, but nothing happened to us.  
I would like to go back to Malaysia and maybe spend some time on the coast, where I think it would be really cheap.   The best thing by far is that because of their colonial past a truck (as they say in japan) is called a 'lori', elevators are lifts, and every building has a Ground floor.  After two years of Americanisms it's nice to see that.  [check all the Malaysia photos here] 

After that busy day shopping we got up and decided to do something relaxing.  I had the aquarium in mind, but on the way to the coffee shop we saw something that we've always been meaning to try - Dr. Fish. 
Dr. Fish is a service whereby a tank of about fifty tiny fish suckle and chew the bits of hard skin from the soles of your feet.  When you first put your weary feet into the tank it feels utterly unbearable and the temptation to make high-pitched noises is not something that a normal person can overcome.  It feels like thousands of tiny vacuum cleaners hoovering at your feet.  After a couple of minutes if feels amazing.  Being pampered by tiny creatures is not something that you usually get to do, and it there is something very Roman-emperorish about it.  Couple that with a massage chair/foot onsen and you come out feeling like a new person.  And that's only for ten quid. 
Tomorrow is Suzie's last day so we are going to head back to the park to check out more strange freaks and maybe have a drop of champagne.
Here is a video of the stuff we've been up to for the last couple of days - the clips are in no particular order or anything so it might not be that interesting.  Wait for the bit at the end with the fish, and the bit where Suzie tries to eat sushi.

Yesterday, on Thurdsay morning, we woke up at five AM to get ready to go to Tsukiji fish market, the largest fish market in the world.  We got dressed especially in old clothes in case we got covered in fish juice and brought our cameras to take pictures of the packed aisles between the stalls.  We got on the train at 5:45 am and I told cautionary tales of people being run down by fish carts while we ate our convenience store sandwiches that would stave off our hunger for the long trek through the aisles.  Later we would get sushi.
We got off at Tsukiji station and took the short walk the the market entrance.  The truck docks were eerily quiet and not a soul could be seen.  The real business happens inside the main building, I assured them. The wholesale people had already cleared off with their loads and now it would be local hoteliers and sushi shop owners striding the aisles with trolleys stacked with polystyrene crates. 
We entered the main building and it too was a little quiet.  In fact, it was a ghost town, with wooden trolleys abandoned  in the little gangways and fishhooks swaying from the low rafters.
We had to eventually admit the possibility that after getting up at five in the morning to come here, it was closed.  Our fears were confirmed when we asked the only person we could find (the guy from I Know What You Did Last Summer).  He looked at us, with our cameras and sturdy shoes, and smirked.  I became one of the few people to have pictures of Tsukiji fish market absolutely deserted.  Other less fortunate people are not stupid enough to get up in the morning without checking it's open.
Then we went to try to find a sushi shop, but they were all closed too.  We eventually found a 24 hour sushi shop with about twenty staff.  Suzie had a great time trying to use two sticks to put slimy fish in her mouth (see the video I put up here soon), with all the staff watching her.  As for me I've had sushi a hundred times, and it stills feels like eating a meal of phlegm and condoms.
After that we went back to bed for a bit, then we went to Shibuya and did a bit of shopping.  We went to 109, where J-girls shop for clothes.  It was way to busy for all of us and so we went to Shinjuku to see Spiderman 3.  If you go to see it watch out for the ridiculous jazz part with Mascara Man. 
In Shinjuku we saw this con man.  Today, we're off to a hot spa - one with no water, strangely, but i'll explain that tomorrow.

On Monday Suzie, Ai and I went to Asakusa to check out the temples, and buy some souvenirs.  Suzie got a small yukata, like a kimono, for Rosy.  We paid five quid to get into an amusement park and then discovered that we were all too chicken to do anything:  I didn't want to go on the machine that drops you down a tower and they didn't want to go in the ghost house (which apparently really is haunted).  And the little girly rides that we could have gone on were completely mobbed.  Who wants to wait fifty minutes to ride a teacup?
On Tuesday - yesterday - Ai went to dance lessons and me and Suzie went to Ginza.  It's the expensive shopping district of Tokyo and we ended up

buying several pairs of cheap jeans in Uniqlo.  Uniqlo is a shop which has cornered the market for safe, cheap clothes, and they provide the remarkable service of taking your trousers up for you.  They measure you and you come back in half an hour to pick them up. Suzie took advantage of that one (me too) and we came away with a hefty supply of cheap clothing.
Today we went to Kamakura, which is a place near the seaside with a giant buddha and some nice temples.  We went to a Japanese restaurant where we had to fry our own food on gas powered tables (rubber gas tubes snaking all over the floor).  Eating next to an open window we had the living daylights scared out of us when a pigeon flew straight into Nick's head and then flapped around the restaurant before leaving through the window. 
After that we went to see the buddha, even climbed up inside it, then took some sacreligeous photos, and went to the beach for a nap and a game of hackysack.
Tomorrow, we are off to Sukiji - a fish market that has to be viewed at six o'clock in the morning.  It's 10:38 now, so we'd better be off to bed.
I will try to upload another video tomorrow, if I'm not to knackered from waking up at the crack of dawn.

Suzie arrived in Japan yesterday, and since then we have basically just been eating.  I know people are going to hate me for this, but the first pub I took her to last night was a British pub, called the Hub.  Maybe I was just trying to ease her into it. 
She's been finding the sheer mass of people a bit overwhelming for her country bumpkin constitution, which is a bit unfortunate as it is Golden Week. 
We went to karaoke on her first night - check the first video below, but turn the volume down. 

Second day we went to Yoyogi park and Meiji shrine.  We saw all the freaks and exhibitionist that hang out there on Sundays.  Take a look at video 2.
Then we went to Meiji shrine and saw a Japanese wedding with a western groom - very unusual (check photos here).  Some tourists were shouting "congratulations" to the guy and ruining the poor couples composure. 
Tomorrow we are off to Asakusa to wallow in the crowds and buy some overpriced Japanese tat.  It's one o'clock in the morning, and I've got to get some sleep, so I'm off to bed

It wasn't quite like that, I handed in my notice.  So now I finally quit and to tell you the truth I'm not sure if it has sunk in yet.  Walking past the voice room on my last day and knowing that I will never be subjected to that brutal purgatory is like a kind of rebirth.  I can now concentrate on loafing for a few days until my sister gets here.
I had a good night out at a pizza restaurant on Sunday for my leaving do.  Most people got fairly wasted, but I was one-hundred-percent sober as always.

Take a look at this spoof TV pilot - "Heatvision and Jack".  Awesome stuff.