RANDOM STUFF

First thing; belated thanks to Mario and Shiori for putting me up and feeding me last weekend. I hope I didn’t wake you getting up so early when I left that morning. I’ve been meaning to text you but I hate texting so I probably never will. Your picture’s on Flickr by the way (more about that below). Mario’s soup has inspired me to order the Moosewood Cookbook. One of the greatest pleasures in life is eating good food, and one of the others is sharing it with others. I think I could easily get into cooking in a big way…

Next; I’ve added some more links to the right of this page. At the top we have the usual world-saving stuff that most of you simply “don’t have time for right now”… At the bottom I’ve added a link to my pictures on Flickr, so you can browse through some of the better snaps I’ve taken over the last few years. There’s only a few pictures on there now but I’ll be uploading more as the months progress. There’s also a link to Scott McCloud’s “Morning Improv”, a simple idea: “one hour each day, whatever comes into my head”, which is simply brilliant. Scott McCloud is the author of the ground-breaking “Understanding Comics”, which you can take a look at here:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006097625X/104-7974043-0563144?v=glance&n=283155. He’s also A MAN OF IDEAS and we like that don’t we?
Oh yes.
Here’s a sampling of some improvs for you: http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/mi/mi-12/mi-12.htmlhttp://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/mi/mi-06/mi-06.htmlhttp://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/mi/mi-07/mi-07.html

On the topic of comics I was interested to read on Neil Gaiman’s website that he is working with Roger Avary on a film adaptation of Charles Burns’ “Black Hole”: http://www.fantagraphics.com/artist/burns/burns.html. Could be interesting - although I can't imagine how... Gaiman’s site also had a link to this, which you can easily pass on to all you love (pun intended): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKi5kv7MwPg

Also, here’s a tale of character, attitude and resilience from the Motherland:
http://www.teamtalk.com/football/story/0,16368,2483_1187361,00.html

TEN GLORIOUS DAYS
As of Friday at 2:00pm I was on holiday. For Ten Glorious Days! This was of course an excellent reason to do something I haven’t done for a while – hit the town and have larks. We started off at Pizza Ya, which is undoubtedly the finest pizza restaurant in Kyoto and has the best pizzas I’ve tasted in Japan to be honest. To find it; head west on Shijo till you are roughly halfway between Kawaramachi and Karasuma (where Starbucks is). Then turn left and go south on Yanaginobanba. Keep your eyes peeled on the left as it’s tucked away in a corner and quite easy to miss. It’s a tiny wee place so you might need to book it in advance to be sure of a seat, but I think not that many people know about it to be honest. We enjoyed the anchovy and black olive pizza and washed it down with ice-sharp Sicilian beers. (In Sicilia fa sempre caldo!) http://www.pizaya.biz/

Here's the Pizza:

Here's the fine Sicilian beer:
Next, I fancied a bit of music so we went to “Sesamo” a little basement Spanish style Tacos bar off Kiyamachi (north of Sanjo). On Fridays and Saturdays they always have live music, French accordion players, jazz, Spanish guitar etc and the cover charge for the music is only ￥500. This time it was Spanish guitar which I was quite happy about. “Ah,” I thought as I knocked back another San Miguel, “the guitar is a beautiful instrument… when I’m not playing it”. I noticed on Friday that though the place was crowded, I was the only man in there. I wonder if it has anything to with the tall husky-voiced bar-tender…

Finally, my favorite bar: Tsurugi. For a long time I was looking for a bar I could call my own here in Kyoto. I stumbled across this one quite by accident. It’s small and scruffy (like me) and both the master Ueno-san and the regular customers are friendly and ready for a chat and a bit of a laugh. I shan’t tell you where it is though, ‘cos it’s my secret, special place. Ha ha.
Ueno-san: The Master of Tsurugi and a true master of "Om-rice" cuisine.
Suwa-san - a regular - having a bit of a laugh. I'm told he's a monk, but it's hard to believe. I'm going to visit his Temple on Thursday to make sure.
Mamiya-san; lovely chap. He knows a lot about 60's and 70's Japanese Rock and he shares his knowledge. He lent me a Ryo Kagawa CD the other night, once again furthering my education.

BEANS

Now, I was reading the other day that scientists in South America have found that by fermenting beans they can both improve their nutritional value and reduce bowel-cheek-flapping-gas-passage. This inspired a flurry of headlines, the best of which was probably “Venezuelans Avert Gas Crisis”. (You can read a more serious article here: http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/health/HealthRepublish_1624063.htm)

This is all old news here in Japan the homeland of the fermented bean. Natto, despite the benefits to one’s health, does taste and smell exactly like what it is: rotten. That plus the stringy spidery slime that it produces can easily induce a gagging reflex in the first time consumer. The Japanese however, will often have their foreign guests try this unique dish and then fall about in mirth at the expressions of disgust and dismay these moldy beans give rise to. It was precisely this sort of thing that caused me during my early days in Japan, out of pure spite, to force myself to eat the stuff every day. Now, perversely, I actually quite like the stuff. What is interesting is that though natto is popular in the eastern Kanto area of Japan, people here in Kansai are none to keen on it. There’s a theory about this, to do with horses. It seems that natto was first created accidentally by soldiers in the 11th century. They were busy boiling beans as feed for their horses when they were suddenly attacked. Leaving in a hurry they packed the beans in straw and fled. On unpacking them later, the soldiers discovered that the heat of the horses sweating bodies plus the bacteria in the straw had worked together to ferment the beans into A NOXIOUS MOLDY BREW. Men of lesser hearts would have thrown them away, but our lads were famished so they ate them anyway – and weirdly, liked them. Thus natto culture was born (allegedly). Actually, there does seem to be a correlation between those areas of Japan where people like natto, and those areas where horses are traditionally reared. I’m not sure if these particular fermented beans can avert the blazing saddles phenomenon however, so more research may be needed on that. But why take the fun out of beans anyway?

The Japanese seem to know a bit about that too: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0916291529/ref=ase_recommendedrea06/104-7974043-0563144?s=books&v=glance&n=283155&tagActionCode=recommendedrea06

Click here for the facts on flatulence:

http://www.heptune.com/farts.html

Click here for Nattoland:http://www.ynest.com/nattoeng.htm

School / Doctor / Links

School
Good day today. I've had a bit of trouble here and there with some students seeing what they can get away with, with the new teacher, so this morning I adopted Leilani's "give 'em a good bollocking" approach, and changed the seating plan around too. I’m happy to report the 3rd years are under the thumb. What a relief!

Brown Sheets Up and Down the Land
I have words to say on the new series of Doctor Who (http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/). The first episode, “New Earth”, was total pants. The conclusion of the story where the Doctor says “I know a bit about medicine” and produces a miracle cure by mixing up a bunch of vari-colored intravenous drips in a bucket – what’s that?

However, last Saturday’s second episode “Tooth and Claw” was back on form. You can’t beat a good werewolf story and the humor worked better this time too. Although I’m still not sure why 19th century Scottish monks would be so proficient in kung fu, I am sure that the wonderfully grisly sounds of fangs grinding meat, gristle and bone as the wolf mauled and devoured one victim after another gave lots of tiny tots up and down the British Isles horrible nightmares. Hurrah! That’s what we want!

Now for some reason in the next episode they are bringing back the Doctor’s erstwhile companion Sarah Jane Smith and the robot “dog” K9. Why would they bother? I can clearly remember watching Doctor Who in the 70’s and thoroughly despising Sarah Jane Smith. All she ever did was get into trouble and scream and wail and whine and then scream a bit more. Maybe she and Rose Tyler could have a fight. That would be good. Rose could wipe the floor with her. But then she could wipe the floor with me too.

And I’d probably like it.

And K9. Yes lovable K9. K9 was lovable in the seventies but we were young then and it was the seventies. K9 is a robot who can’t climb stairs. Click here to see how far we’ve come: http://asimo.honda.com/inside_asimo_movies.asp

By the way, if you click on this next link and then scroll down the page to where it says “ Watch a clip from the Genesis Of A Classic documentary.” and then click on that, you can see a great clip of Tom Baker being brilliant. Click here first:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/news/cult/news/drwho/2006/03/17/30405.shtml Tom Baker, by the way, hated K9. Great man.

More Links
Now, onto more important things: here are some links to blogs more interesting than mine:

This chap’s in Osaka: http://anenglishmaninosaka.blogspot.com/
This chap’s in Tokyo: http://tokyoblog.livejournal.com/

And here’s a site I thought was kind of dumb at first but after reading a bit I soon found myself hooked: http://www.unphotographable.com/

He sometimes takes actual photographs, which are quite nice too:
http://www.michaeldavidmurphy.com/port/7.shtml

And for those of you who STILL haven’t seen it, here’s that sushi video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4946101556303618610&q=sushi

Earth Day(s)

Luka (The Alan Quatermain of Kyoto)

So some time ago I was sitting in Pagode (http://www.h3.dion.ne.jp/~pagode/ - a very nice bar on Kiyamachi with a superb view and not enough customers) chatting with Luka (the Alan Quartermain of Kyoto) and Luka said he was going to a free music festival in Tokyo and I said "What kind of music is that then?" and he said "Who cares? It's free." And then I said "Right... er, can I come?" and he said "Sure, why not?" So around 5 o'clock last Saturday morning, myself and 7 other characters I barely knew (then) piled into a van and drove to Tokyo. The music festival turned out to be Earth Day at Yoyogi Koen (http://www.earthday-tokyo.org/2006/message.html) and I had a top weekend all round seeing old friends, enjoying the festival atmosphere and of course LIVE MUSIC... Of course there was a rich assortment of hippies, idealists and pure wackos there to be appreciated too, like these guys: http://www.retired.jp/ who I actually quite liked because they gave me some sunflower seeds, and were super enthusiastic about it, and then there was another chap in a penguin suit representing a vegetarian organisation that seemed suspiciously religious so I said "So is your organisation... religious?" and he said "No! No! It's not religious at all! Nothing to do with religion!No!" And I said "Who's this Supreme Master Ching Hai then?" To which the penguin advised me to check out this suspiciously religious website: http://www.godsdirectcontact.org.tw/eng1/index.htm (featuring a fantastically unremarkable anecdotes section). I said thank you and then immediately went and had some takoyaki.
(Learn about Takoyaki here: http://web-japan.org/nipponia/nipponia14/whata02.html)

(Learn how to make it here: http://www.bento.com/tr-tako.html)

(Learn about "Gimme Gimme Octopus" here: http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/LG/Octopus/Music_Video.mp4 - Thanks Bridgie!)

Anyway, about the music, I have to say the best thing about this kind of event is that you have a chance to sample all kinds of music that you wouldn't normally listen to, and expand your horizons blah blah blah... I have to say that, but sadly I'm an old bore who sticks with what he knows, so I saw Love Psychedelico (http://www.lovepsychedelico.net/english/pro/index.html -not to be confused with Love Psychedelica) who were fairly pleasant and whose singer, Kumi, has an infectiously minx-like smile; Razoku (http://www.razoku.ne.nu/) who played some nice guitar funk and had the crowd kicking; Bonnie Pink who I like a lot ( see how cute she is on the "So Wonderful" video here: http://www.bonniepink.jp/); and finally UA. Previously all I knew about UA was that she was a funny looking actress on an intriguing DVD I watched a while back: 水の女　DVD (http://www.hmvjapan.jp/product/detail.asp?sku=1998510). She was the last to perform on Sunday and there was a long wait between acts during which some drunken twats got all rambunctious and one old drunken twat got a little bit too back to nature and started waving his wee skinny lad around. Then UA skipped pixy-like on stage and started singing and everyone stood there in the rain and shut up and just listened in pure awe. What an amazing voice! At first I thought "Hmmph! A bit arty for me..." but her music gradually started affecting parts of me I didn't know I had. Finally she sang this song about how the sun was going down this one time, and it was getting dark and gloomy and the crows were gathering in the trees and about how she had this somewhat unnerving presentiment of doom so she went to see an old fortune-telling lady and the old fortune-telling lady said "Don't worry dear. You'll be fine". Which sounds fairly dumb when I write it but when she sings it... she has an ancient soul I reckon. http://www.jvcmusic.co.jp/ua/uauaua/index.html I might even spend some money buying her CDs.

After that, one of the highlights of the weekend for me was meeting up with Takako and Reiko who I used to teach way back when they were high school students in Fukushima. Takako is off to Belgium soon to pursue her dancing career and also to be with her new Belgium boyfriend (lucky sod) and Reiko is working away at her art and you can check out her gallery here: http://www.mmp-n.com/~vitamin/vcm/kamiyama/gallery.html (I like the lion). It's always very refreshing to talk with those girls because they seem so clear minded in their pursuit of their dreams... even if it that means not always taking the easier path... Kind of inspiring.

Something to look forward to

"They called me "Sensei", and I accepted that with a straight face. I have nothing worth boasting about. No learning to speak of. No talent. My body's a mess, my heart impoverished. Only the fact that I've known suffering, enough suffering to feel qualified to let these youths call me "Sensei" without protesting - that's all I have, the only straw of pride I can cling to. But it's one I'll never let go of..." Osamu Dazai

Now if you took that quote and changed the word "suffering" for "games" it would probably fit quite well - except I don't know that many games. It's quite hard for me to keep a straight face when my students call me "Sensei" too. Today I came up against the harsh reality of the 3rd year students at the Junior High School. They are going through that difficult age it seems. That's what Leilani said anyway. Don't take it to heart she said. But of course I do. Anyway, if anyone has any games they'd like to recommend for stroppy Junior High girlies who really just want to sit around comparing nail varnish and having a good gossip - let me know. Meanwhile I'm looking forward to forgetting it all at earth day in Yoyogi Park this weekend. Looking forward to seeing some Tokyo friends if you're available. http://www.earthday-tokyo.org/2006/event/index.php?c=2

Here's something else to look forward to:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4922220.stm
Please note: Japan is "languishing at the bottom of the league". Anyone else thinking of moving to Austria?

So I had this dream the other night that the Queen (Elizabeth) had been found dead in a bathroom in Buckingham Palace with a pearl handled pistol of antique design. The press handled the subject delicately but it seemed pretty clear the old dear had topped herself. After all, how does one accidentally shoot oneself in THE BATHROOM? In my dream my brother-in-law John, kept repeating "It's a smoking gun, in it?". Anyone care to interpret that one for me?

Finally, here's something lovely I found that I wish I'd found sooner:
http://www.endicott-cards.com/
The Endicott Studio is producing a poetry e-card for each day of April. The month's not over yet, so there's still time to send one to someone you care about (if they speak English). Quite a nice site to browse through actually. Here's a poem I liked from the same site:
http://www.endicott-studio.com/cofhs/chGuardianAngels.html
If you don't click on any of the links I posted today, click on that last one. It'll take you a minute to read it and it's very nice indeed.

Spring Flower 散歩

First off: my mate Rik is officially a genius. Click here:
http://rik.typepad.com/blog/2004/04/norwegian_bluet.html

Also if you haven't seen Tim Burton's "The Corpse Bride" yet, you should. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/corpse_bride/
It's a lot of fun. I especially liked the puppets with the voices of Christopher Lee (Christopher Lee! - What a chap!) and Albert Finney. But I shan't tell you which ones they are, 'cos half the fun is in the guessing.

Here, we've finally had some nice weather. So I took the opportunity to take a stroll down to the river yesterday evening and take pictures of some spring flowers along the way.

There's something very calming about looking at flowers...


These pictures aren't half bad considering they were taken with my phone in fading light.

See more below...

Spring Flower 散歩 (continued)

鯉のぼり　- Carp streamers. They signify something or other and they look nice too.
Despite the terrible weather we've had of late, the sakura has held out very well...
Sometimes they look so lovely I just want to take a big bite out of them...



Aaaahhhh...

Cadbury's Cream Egg Day

Happy Easter!
http://www.pbfcomics.com/temporary/PBF022ADBunnyEaster.html
Yes! It’s Easter and religious obsession time! The day we celebrate Jesus jumping out of the egg! Check out some exclusive footage here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt1ki5J1XCM&search=monkey%20magic).

In my first week of work at the Junior High this week I managed to catch a nasty stomach bug that had me riding the porcelain train much of Wednesday night, and from which I’ve still not fully recovered. God knows what brought it on, apparently something matching my symptoms (shakes, sweats and shits) has been going around, but then the spicy Korean hot-pot and amber beverages enjoyed on Tuesday evening probably exacerbated it a tad. Anyway, I worked through it (it being my first week and all) and was rewarded with high praise indeed by one of my new co-workers who told me my class was “brilliant” because I was so calm and quiet and all those noisy little girls still listened to me. I managed not to have any nasty accidents in the classroom too, which was a relief.

As said I’m still not fully myself so I’m taking it easy this weekend and just reading lots to pass the time. I came across this wacky article on Z-net by Robert Jensen, explaining why or how he is a Christian AND an Athiest:
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2006-03/27jensen.cfm.
His argument is that though he doesn’t believe in God or that Jesus was the son of God he does believe in certain “core principles” that the Gospels tell us Jesus preached, i.e. compassion and empathy for one’s fellow man. The problem is that the Gospels tell us quite a lot of other rather more wacky stuff too. Jensen is pretty much doing what everyone does who comes to these books. They have their own agenda and pick out the stuff they like and edit out the stuff they don’t. This might mean picking out the peace, love and harmony as the like and editing out the fire and brimstone and race hatred as the don't like (or vice versa depending on one’s agenda). I fear Jensen is trying to please all people at once but he does put forward a thought provoking argument: that if religious people spent more time promoting the fundamental values of their faith rather than quibbling over what separates them from the unbelievers, yes boundaries would be blurred, but that would be a good thing, and that in fact the ultimate aim of all religions should be to bring about a world of justice based on true love, compassion and solidarity in which religion itself would be happily irrelevant.
The question for me is; why do we need a religious figurehead or authority to show us the way toward compassion and solidarity anyway? Figureheads and authorities tend to preach absolutes and discourage questioning. I don’t trust them. Why can’t we come to these values ourselves as a community of equals?

I was brought up religiously and so naturally the Gospel story intrigues me but I think whatever interpretation of Christ one has is basically a fiction of some kind. As the writer A. N. Wilson wrote; looking for the historical Jesus is like entering a room a moment after its occupant has gone; a cigar still smoking in an ashtray, an impression still left upon a chair, all the signs but nothing you can really pin down. So I believe imaginative accounts of Jesus’ life are valid explorations of who or what he might have been or of what he represents. They are entertaining too. So here are some books I can and can’t recommend:

“The Gospel According to the Son” by Norman Mailer
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345421329/sr=8-4/qid=1145129334/ref=sr_1_4/104-7296785-1731926?%5Fencoding=UTF8

In this is stupendously tedious book Jesus comes across as a complete pompous and humorless ass, which he may well have been, but I don’t want to read about it. Didn’t get past Chapter 12 (the chapters are short too).

“Behold The Man” by Michael Moorcock
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1585677647/qid=1145129562/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-7296785-1731926?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

This was kind of fun. The conceit is a man goes back in time seeking the historical Christ, finds a drooling idiot and ends up stepping into his sandals so that history is fulfilled. It’s very 60s though, and Moorcock does tend to overdo the Jungian thing. Some of the dream sequences had me laughing.

“The Gospel According to Jesus Christ” by Jose Saramago
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0156001411/qid=1145130161/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-7296785-1731926?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

There’s a lot to dwell on in this book. It’s very dark and very rich and I really should find the time to read it again and puzzle out some of the deeper symbolism. One thing it brought home to me was the bloodthirsty nature of the God of Israel. Historically, thousands of animals were sacrificed daily at the Temple in Jerusalem to appease the wrathful divinity. Saramago (a Nobel Prize winner) depicts a cruel God demanding the endless sacrifice of the innocent and a rather kindly and sympathetic Devil. Poor Jesus is caught up in between and ultimately sacrificed himself. I found the way things tied up at the end dissatisfying personally, but still it’s a good story told well.

“Quarantine” by Jim Crace
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312199511/qid=1145130822/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-7296785-1731926?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

In this book Jesus never gets past his 40 days in the desert and in fact he isn’t even a central figure in the book, merely a misguided youth starving himself in a cave. This is a wonderfully written book, and very, very dark; a study of evil and in some ways of redemption too. This guy Crace is good. I recommend his “Gift of Stones” too.

“The Last Temptation of Christ” by Nikos Kazantzakis
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/068485256X/qid=1145131159/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-7296785-1731926?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

A very brave book. Kazantzakis’s theme is the human struggling towards the divine and it really is a desperate struggle in his writings. Jesus is a very human figure in this book and full of failings but ultimately… well you know the story. I love this book and last year I read his “Saint Francis” too. Both books are beautifully written. Here’s a choice quote from “Saint Francis”:

“Night was falling. The western sky was dark, the color of wild cherries; odd-looking, compassionate clouds began to rise and to cool the earth, which was still boiling from the great heat of the day. The fruitful plain of Umbria was resting. It had accomplished its duty, had given wheat, wine, and olive oil to men. Now in repose, it gazed at the sky, waiting with confidence for rain so that the seeds beneath its soil could once more grow and form fruit.”

Wonderful stuff. And that’s in translation too. The next book I want to read is about another kind of savior however:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060779004/sr=8-2/qid=1145106282/ref=pd_bbs_2/104-7296785-1731926?%5Fencoding=UTF8

Zorro! What little boy doesn’t want to be Zorro? Or a ninja？
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A07vYT3p0aI

Now last night I watched “A Merchant of Venice” with Al Pacino.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/merchant_of_venice/
This is a troublesome play. There’s no getting away from the fact that our lad Shakespeare, (possibly the greatest literary genius ever to grace God’s sweet earth), didn’t like Jews. And despite careful editing it’s still clear watching the movie that the play is anti-semitic. However, some of the hated Shylock’s speeches present a valid counterpoint to the general thrust of the play and Al Pacino does a good job in showing us his humanity. At the end of the movie, poor Shylock in trying to better those who have so long persecuted him is boxed in on all sides and his wealth, his daughter and even his faith are taken from him. The makers of the movie do a good job in arousing our sympathy and showing how hate breeds yet more hate. It’s a troublesome play alright but perhaps it is good to be troubled.

We live in troubling times. Apparently the body-count in Iraq is steadily increasing year by year:

“In terms of average violent deaths per day this represents:
20 per day in Year 1
31 per day in Year 2 and
36 per day in Year 3”

http://www.threemonkeysonline.com/threemon_article_iraq_body_count_death_toll_three_years_on_.htm

But soft! Is that a ray of hope on the horizon:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401451.html

I hope so.

Here’s a nice quote from “A Merchant of Venice” on music:

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.

(Shaekspeare - A Merchant of Venice Act 5)

And with that in mind I urge you all to listen to Sufjan Stevens and mark his music as soon as possible. Here’s a review to give you an idea of what he’s about:

http://www.threemonkeysonline.com/review_illinoise_sufjan_stevens.htm

Enjoy your eggs!

Hiraganakan

On Saturday I went to Hiraganakan. This place is great. It's two minutes from my house and just across the road from Kyoto University on Mikage Dori, so I guess the fact it caters for a lot of penniless students may explain the great value. For ￥1,200 yen you get a main course AND rice AND miso soup AND salad AND a drink. As Mike Joe said "Lots of STUFF!". And it all tastes wonderful too. One draw back: it's mostly meat so not good for true vegetarians, but for fish eaters like me the turbot is fantastic.
A close up of the ムニエル　(Turbot in a very nice mustard sauce).
Five minutes later.

And a very satisfied customer...

Again it's raining! Howling winds! Driving rains! And cold! Weather fit to wither a banshee's tits! I guess that's the end of the sakura then. I took a stroll along 哲学の道　(The Path of Philosophy) yesterday and took some pics (in the rain) which I'll try to upload later but not today as the server's down again. My news is I taught my first class at the junior high school today. It went ok. Not great! But not bad either. Now I have a better idea of what the little imps are capable of, I can fine tune my lessons a bit more. Had coffee with new colleague Leilani afterwards. She seems like a good egg. She married a man from Pakistan she met on a chat site last year which intrigued me and somehow we ended up quoting Pulp Fiction at each other "The pig is a filthy animal.... But bacon tastes good. Pork-chops taste good..." etc. Anyway teaching the 3rd years tomorrow. May be a whole different story.

Meanwhile... The News from France: student and trade union protests prevail and the government's wildly unpopular employment law is scrapped. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4897898.stm

News from Italy: Romano Prodi looks set to defeat the right-wing media mogul Silvio Berlusconi in the elections. Another victory for the Left in our inevitable march toward world revolution! (etc.) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4897994.stm

News from Tokyo: Masayoshi is getting married! Our little Masa's all growed up! Here's a pic of him and the girl who finally pinned the blighter down. Congratulations!

My good friend Rik (http://www.43things.com/person/rikabel) recommended this to me and so now I recommend it to you: http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail150.html Inspired.

Also for different reasons this is kind of nice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Sl0M39R4qU&search=banjer

If you like that sort of thing.

Hayfever

I sneezed....
... and all my hair fell off.


Starting a new job tomorrow as a Junior High Teacher for girls, so the Lambe's been shorn. Do I look like a teacher?

Cafe Peace

The weather has been something rotten lately. Mostly rainy (a hard, driving incessant rain knocking all the blossoms off the trees) and grey (so crap for taking sakura pictures). In such times there's not much else to do but eat. So on Wednesday I went to Cafe Peace (http://www.cafepeace.com/) on the Hyakumanben intersection, a ten minute walk from my house and 100% VEGAN (and ironically situated above a yakiniku (barbecued beef) emporium. Their speciality seems to be fake meats (chicken, pork, beef etc) that do indeed taste and even have the texture of actual meats... almost disturbingly so. More importantly, they have HEARTLAND beer (http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/kirin-heartland/16899/) and these cutesy HEARTLAND beer glasses which I was quite taken by. Anyway, the atmosphere is nice, there's a wide range of dishes on the menu, and it's mostly very good indeed. Worth a try... and um kind to animals... Now please compliment me on my arty pictures.

Main Course

First: Thai Curry Set. Only ￥1,250！ And very tasty to boot! But the desert the menu claims is included is actually just a slice of lemon.
Second: Tofu and Miso Hot Pot. ￥１，０００．This was actually very good and if you're a fan of fake meats the tofu-pork was actually convincingly pork-like, taste-wise, smell-wise, even texture. Impressive stuff.

The Cherry Blossoms are Blooming

I went down to the breadshop yesterday and played "Gomoku Narabe" or "Five-in-a-row" a ridiculously simple yet thoroughly addictive board game for a while and thoroughly beat Philippe who claimed (as he always does) that I cheated. Hyon Ju (with her superior intellect) then thoroughly and humiliatingly beat me. Twice. (http://www.xmission.com/~psneeley/Shareware/japanese.htm )
Later, having packed my bag full of free bread, Philippe and I went for a few quiet ones in town. We started off in "Africa", a bar off Kiyamachi with an excess of TVs, white people, unsmiling staff but half price beers during happy hour. Once happy hour was over we strolled down Kiyamachi paying scant attention to the clouds of cherry blossom above us and found a bar called "Pon" which practically defines the phrase "hole in the wall". The way in is a wooden door about 4 ft high that looks as if it is part of the wall, like some kind of secret passageway (http://www.hiddenpassageway.com/). So we stooped down and had a couple of beers there with the owner who refers to himself as "The Doctor" and then went on to "Pagode" for a couple more beers with Luka (Kyoto's answer to Alan Quartermain). He said he's going up to Tokyo for a free music festival on the 23rd so I invited myself along. Could be fun! Anyway, it's a brand new day, the sun is shining and the cherry blossoms are out, so no time to lose - I'm off outside for larks and thrills.

BREAD

It's been raining heavily all day so I stayed in bed with Tolstoy, or rather a book on Tolstoy. Just got mail from Hyon Ju. She runs a little Sunday breadshop down by Gojo. Very tasty bread, but the weather is keeping her customers away. She reckons she'll be lucky to sell half of it. The wider implication of this? Free bread for me if I go down there around 5 o'clock. Lots of it. Yum.

All Fools

It's All Fools!

I started my blog!

Huzzah!