Tuna Sandwiches...

Feeling faintly depressed today. You know, work blah blah blah... thankless task blah blah blah. Oh and it's raining too. Anyway, rather than go on about that, here are some interesting links.

An interesting article here about a recent police raid in London on a completely innocent family (based on a tip-off from a man with an I.Q. of 69) during which an unarmed man was shot at point blank range. Ironically one of the brothers involved was thinking of joining the police before this happened: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=10467

London police are bastards? Who would have thought it?

And another article here arguing that we absolutely NEED to eat fish for our brains to function properly but there soon won't be enough brain food to go around thanks to our horrible miss-management of marine resources:

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2006/06/21/not-enough-fish-in-the-sea/

Greepeace have more to say about that here:

http://oceans.greenpeace.org/en/the-expedition/news/back-to-the-future

Imagine a world with no tuna sandwiches!!!

Happy Birthday Christina!

The one in the middle is my sister Christina - and it's her birthday today. Have a good one!

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY...

Yesterday, was a long day and a tough one. Every class at Kyojo was noisy and uncooperative and I was working from 8.40 a.m. (first class at the girl's school) till 7.50 at night (my company class in Yamashina). When I jumped on the train at Yamashina around 8 o'clock, I thought to myself: "...ten minutes back to Keage station, then I'll hop on my trusty iron steed, cycle for 2o minutes, grab something to eat and soak up a beer." I was horribly (almost painfully) hungry and dying for that beer. But when I got to Keage station, I discovered someone had put a drawing pin into my back tyre and it was completely flat. So I had to walk. For forty minutes.

Yes, crazy-bicycle-hating-man is back to his old tricks again! It all started a couple of years ago when he started putting magazines and videos of an adult nature into my bicycle basket, before progressing to outright vandalism. It only ceased when I changed bicycles, but as he's now obviously figured out which one is mine, I'm going to have to start parking it in my apartment again.

For various reasons, I'm pretty much convinced it's the weirdo upstairs who is doing it, but as I can't prove it, there's not much (legally) I can do. I had the police round one time but they merely took notes and chuckled... Any suggestions?

Now it's 10 o'clock at night and I've been prepping tests and other stuff for work since 3 this afternoon. This is meant to be a part-time job!!! And I still have to prep for Saturday's mental clinic!

Oh, well. I saw this link on Neil Gaiman's website (of which I'm an avid reader as he's a writer and a good one and succesful to boot) and I clicked on it and thought it was brilliant. Take a look:

http://www.nineteeneightyeight.com/storybookshow.html

線香花火

It's summer in Japan and the season for fireworks... We went up onto a friend's roof last night with some of these little handheld numbers... They call them "senkou hanabi". This is what they look like before you light them: And this is what they look like afterwards:

Click here to watch how they burn!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBQbtbxYIcY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8DWquffviY

My first two "youtube" videos! My apologies for the pixelation. I was using my mobile phone.

Whale Cup News

See here!

http://oceans.greenpeace.org/en/the-expedition/news/IWC2006-mid

蛍

About two minutes from my house there's a nice little tree lined canal and if you follow it eastwards for about ten minutes or so it leads up to Tetsugaku no michi (The "Philosopher's walk"). Now around this time of year, lots of couples head towards Tetsugaku no michi hoping to see hotaru (fireflies in English but "hotaru" sounds nicer I think) because it's all romantic and all, innit. I've been up there a few times for a bit of a mooch myself (that's "mooch" as in "gander" - not "smooch" as in "canoodle"), but I've only seen one or two at a time. Still I was pretty thrilled because I hadn't seen any before this year. But then the other night, just by chance, I happened to be in the lesser well-known area of the canal that's closest to my house, it was really dark (bit scary) and I thought I saw the light of a cigarette bobbing about in the dark and I thought "Aye, aye. Who's that then?" but as I got closer I realised there was no one attached to the cigarette light and it wasn't a cigarette light at all, and as I looked about me, up and down the canal, hundreds of hotaru, all blinking in and out and beaconing and beckoning and bobbing about and I thought "Wow. That's really something." and there were no smooching couples there at all, just me and some pretty amazing illuminations. I was quite moved.

It was kind of like this, only real: http://www.wingsee.com/ghibli/fireflies/characters.html

Last night I met up with Chie for a drink. Chie is pals with two lovely girls called Chiara who I studied Japanese with a couple of years back, and she speaks fluent Italian (which is pretty cool). She just got back from Roma where she was hanging out with Roman Chiara (Genoan Chiara is apparently in Fukui-ken right now getting all fanatic over the Taiko drums). Anyway, she said Roman Chiara (mia sorella!) was reading my blog (somebody is reading my blog!) so I should write something about meeting up with Chie, so I said "Well, alright then. Let's take your picture." So here she is:

That's Chie on the left (and that's the tip of my finger on the right).

Chie drinks Guinness (wow!)...
Ciao for now...

Now I like Japan but....

Just a quick post. Japan is putting pressure on some of the smaller, economically disadvantaged countries of the world, in order to get control over the International Whaling Commision. Japan being the economic power house that it is, it is pretty much poised to succeed and being the world's most stubbornly pro-whaling country, this is a potential disaster for whales. We are losing enough species as it is through our own stupidity and greed. Don't let Japan add whales to the list! You can see more information on this and what you can do about it here:

http://oceans.greenpeace.org/en/the-expedition/news/2006-whale-meeting

It should take about a minute. I think you can manage that, eh?

Lots of News

Anyone see Japan play Australia last night? I tuned in for the last (and most important) 15 minutes and what a funny game eh? I especially liked the scenes after the match of the delighted dancing Aussie fans and the speechless Japanese. Today, at school, I kept accidentally dropping the name "Australia" into different contexts. Tee-hee.

Last week, (Monday June 5th) Hyon Joo, Yu Gyong and I went up to Hiezan and had a lovely day. Here's a picture of me looking gay among the poppies at the Hiezan Garden Museum.

I've been meaning to get up to Hiezan for the last two years but have somehow never managed it - until now. Anyway, last week the weather was perfect. You can see more pictures of flowers and temples and other recent stuff (sakura and so forth) if you click to my Flickr site here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/46253270@N00/sets/72157594164482825/

As it turns out that'll be the last Monday I have off for a while as there's been a major upheaval at my main place of work. Leilani has had to quit her full-time job so she can go home to New Zealand and look after her sick mum. As a result, my hours have increased from 12 to 19 a week... and though I'm a lot busier, it does mean a big increase in my monthly wage. And I still finish no later than 2 o'clock (and sometimes 12). It's a shame to see Leilani go but good news for my bank balance.

Here are some pictures you won't see on my Flickr site of Paul Spark's 10th Beer tasting party held last Saturday at his Tokyo pad. Once again Mr. Sparks excelled himself, getting all the beers, keeping us all fed and well imbibed and funtertaining us with his impossible quizzes. Sadly he was so busy running in and out of the kitchen I didn't get any pictures of HIM. Still, thanks for another good night Paul!

Below, left to right: Graham Chave, My Clam, and Chris Cotter.
We's tasting the beers, innit.
Graham looking coy...

True Chave comes out and finds new uses for chocolate "Pocky" sticks.