I'm still alive!

Hello,

Just a quick one, as I'm in a net cafe. I'm now up north in Iwate, where it's cold. Very very cold. Holy crap, it's cold. Like, er, -12 degrees cold.

I'm now in holiday mode, so I've been visiting temples, and all that jazz, and I had a very relaxing stay in an onsen hotel. Can't wait for Christmas!

See you all soon,

C.

Even the Japanese don't understand the yen

Check out this little gem of Jap-news:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4512962.stm

From the article:
"the error has so far caused it a loss of 27bn yen. It almost matches the group's net profit of 28.1bn yen for the financial year"

So let's all spare a thought for the poor incompetent stock trader who cost Mizuho bank £128 million with one mouse click.

----

多いお金
を無くしました。
馬鹿ですね！

Japanese speakers: is this a haiku? I don't understand how to count the syllables.

Weekend round-up

Friday night was good fun, if a little silly. I went to the same cheap izakaya that I always go to with the Franco-Swedes. But this time we ended up being a 10-strong Anglo-Franco-Swedo-Columbio-Americo-Japanese super-squad. About 11pm, we yearned for a change of location and somebody suggested karaoke. So we headed to the main drag, where we began the usual pre-karaoke bartering. Every karaoke place (and by God, there are a lot of them!) employs a guy to stand in the street and entice punters with cheap drink deals. The trick is to play these dudes off each other until one of them is offering to give you his first-born son if you'll just come and sing for a bit. I almost feel guilty about how good the deals get. It's a bit like going for a curry in Brick Lane, for those of who've ever done that. In the end, we convinced them to give us karaoke and nomihoudai (all-u-can-drink) until 6am (yes that's right, 7 hours!) for only £15 each.

Japes, frolics and antics ensued (in that order).

Unfortunately I didn't quite make it to my origami class at 9am the next day.

Now, given a day whose most strenuous activities include lying in bed, drinking my own body weight in tea and eating fried food, I have been known to relish a good hangover. Unfortunately, Saturday was far more taxing. I had to: have a shower; cook and eat bad miso ramen (I don't know why I thought that was a good idea); take not one but three trains; buy a long-distance bus ticket; explain in Japanese that I didn't care that the ticket was 50 pence more than had previously been advertised; get to Shinjuku station by 5; explain in Japanese to some Christians that I would rather not visit their church, even if took only half an hour; and finally endure a nauseous 6-hour bus journey to Sendai. Pretty stressful, I'm sure you'll agree.

So, I got to Sendai at about 11pm on Saturday and met Mai for another lazy weekend. Literally nothing to report, I'm afraid! We arrived with the vague notion of "maybe we should go see some jazz," but we didn't even do that. Just sat around in coffee shops and wandered the very Christmassy streets for two days, then I took a bus home on Monday evening. Most enjoyable! Oh, we did meet up for coffee with my sister and her friend Mike. They had just endured the most difficult Japanese test in the world ever, but they did their best to converse with us nonetheless, and performed admirably.

As Sendai is pretty far north, I was hoping it would be a winter wonderland. Sadly, it wasn't the case. But it was really really cold at least, and there was a little bit of snow. I was so excited I took a picture:
I then jumped up and down on it, shouting "yuki yuki yuki" with glee.

I took one other picture this weekend. Here are some taxis for you.


On Sunday morning, I had the always-confusing experience of being woken up by an earthquake. But this time I didn't wake up properly, and I actually dreamed about an earthquake. In my dream, I was in my living room in Felixstowe with my whole family, including my late grandfather. I had brought a present back from Japan for them - an earthquake in a box! As soon as my dad opened the box, the earthquake started. He kept trying to take a picture of it but his tripod kept falling over!

---

When photographing
A natural disaster,
Use a good tripod.

Grr.

I was half way through a long and exciting post about my weekend when Firefox crashed. I'm too angry to start rewriting it now. Sorry, it'll have to wait until tomorrow.

That's twice Firefox 1.5 has crashed in one day. Good old 1.0 never used to do this. Grumble.

Unexpected Thursday

Well, it wasn't entirely unexpected. I did expect it to be a Thursday, since the day before was Wednesday. I didn't, however, expect it to be so interesting. In the morning I went to the British embassy to get some visa info for Mai, but found that it didn't open until 2pm, so I had a few hours to kill. I turned round to discover the Imperial Palace just across the road! It has a big moat around it. This is the only picture I managed to take before my camera's battery ran out.

The palace is only open 2 days a year, but you can always stroll through the grounds. Having done so, I was in the mood for walking, so I kept on wandering. I went to Hibiya park for a bit, where I played with stray cats and amiable tramps. I then started following any roadsign that pointed to an interesting-sounding place. Before I knew it, I'd nearly walked to Shinjuku. As I had started in Iidabashi, that means that I'd crossed the whole of central Tokyo! I had no idea that Tokyo was so small. Ever since then, I've given up on tube trains and I walk pretty much everywhere. It's much more interesting. It's also pretty easy, as there are a few absolutely massive skyscrapers that serve as good landmarks.

Later on, I went to school and a classmate gave me an invitation to some kind of launch party that evening in some nightclub in Roppongi. I had no idea what it was all about until I arrived, but it was a good excuse to exercise my new-found walking skills. I walked from school to the event (again, crossing the whole of Tokyo), accompanied all the way by some German guy (I've no idea who he was, and he took a train home as soon as I approached my destination). The event turned out to be a joint launch party for two different music/art/fashion/design/anything-cool magazines and a web design/hosting company. So the club was packed with a pleasing mixture of 2/3rds super-trendy arty people and 1/3rd geeks. And I got a free drink and some good Japanese practice out of it. Good stuff!

---

I'm on a roll now.
I'll write another blog post
Immediately.