Big rain

Here in Japan, they have a lot of words for different types of rain. Normal rain is called ame, but since yesterday I've been having my first taste of oo-ame (literally, big rain!). It's incredible. We just don't get rain like this back home. And it doesn't seem like it's ever going to stop.


I was on the tube in Sendai today, and saw the coolest advert ever. The train was going through a tunnel, and there was a huge long string of TV screens attached to the tunnel wall. Each screen showed one frame of the advert, and it was all perfectly timed to the speed of the train, so as we whizzed past the screens, we could see the advert in its proper animated form. Very snazzy, but it must have taken a couple of hundred of those fancy flatscreen TVs. Was it really worth it?


I just stumbled across this piece of news, and then wished I hadn't:

http://www.news10.net/storyfull2.aspx?storyid=20266

Eeeeeewwwwww!

Onsen buddy

Today I went to an onsen. My Japanese friend picked me up from my flat and drove me there. More specifically, he picked me up from my flat and drove me there in his spanking new Porsche Carrera! He's 62 (yes, really), loves jazz, speaks really good English, has been to England loads of times, and is generally fascinating.

We got there and did the usual onsen stuff - sat around in hot water, went in the sauna, etc. This place had an outdoor bath, which is my favourite kind, especially in the early evening. Best of all is in winter when it's snowing - your top half is absolutely freezing and your bottom half is all warm and lovely.

After that, we went to his friend's little tiny restaurant, where we met a couple of his old man friends, feasted on such delicacies as octopus tentacles and fried pig tripe, drank lots of ume sour (potato wine with sour plum cordial) and generally set the world to rights. Even though he can speak excellent English, I refused to speak a word of English today, so got lots of Japanese practice.

We're now onsen buddies, and we're gonna do this every week. Can't wait till next Sunday!

Picasa

Just a quick note. Because uploading pictures to Blogger is an absolutely soul-destroying experience, and I seem to be putting up more pictures than text recently, I've started putting my pictures on a Picasa Web Albums account:

http://picasaweb.google.com/chris.birchall

You can add comments to the pics, just like on the blog. And for those of you who know what it means, there's an RSS feed available as well.

Edit: it seems you can only add comments if you are a Picasa Web Albums member. You can sign up in just one step, as long as you have a Gmail account.

Keitai

I thought you might like to see some pics of my fancy Japanese mobile.







And of course a picture of the obligatory keitai strap. This one was a present from Ninkle, Toshio and Sarah. I don't understand the Japanese but it says something like "Simply reverse the digestive process!"


For you phone geeks out there, here's the vital stats. It's got a very nice 2Mpixel camera, an always-on 2.4MBps data connection (the data costs are capped at about £25/month), and in the back it's got an RFID chip, so I can use it as an oyster card, credit card, fast airport check-in, all kinds of crazy stuff. The 3G protocol is called CDMA 1x WIN and is based on CDMA2000.

Because it does that cool screen-swizzly thing, it's really useful as a camera which I can whip out at opportune moments. The other day it came in handy when I spotted this. It seems they have a whole aisle for it! [NOTE: I was only the adult diaper aisle long enough to take the picture!]

Oh, and as I haven't said a word about teaching yet, here's a picture of some students. Aren't they cute? A whole bunch of them painted Japanese flags on each other's cheeks and then ran around like mad eejits, shouting "Japanese sponsor! Japanese sponsor!"