For your amusement

Here's something I found while sorting through some books today - getting them repacked into plastic bags and moved into storage in crates in the cellar instead of having them in damp cardboard boxes in the garage. It should be particularly amusing to anyone who met me after around 2002 when I started having my hair short!



This is a sketch of me from 1999, done by one of the students at Akechi High School in Japan where I worked as an assistant English teacher. Happy days.

Things that make me laugh out loud

Just spotted this on Gigazine: the city of Ueno, Nagano is collaborating with the computer game/anime 戦国BASARA to market apple wine and cake!

How could you resist this box of biscuits?

By the power of steam!

I can't believe it's July already.

Last Sunday was spent steaming steamed breads - three batches, two green tea and one cocoa - and then heading out for an amazing steam train ride out of Zurich up into the countryside and back!

And I've finally got the photos organised. Enjoy!

In other news, I got a registration card from the AHV, but no confirmation yet that they consider me to be a freelancer. But it's another piece in the puzzle. There is no point in thinking of this process as an orderly progression along some kind of path.

David's office party is tomorrow, there's a Japanese fundraising bazaar on on Saturday, Friday to Sunday is a festival in town, and next Saturday there's a showing by a small Japanese boutique in town. Things to do!

Ah, how Teutonic!

Seen in the big Co-op non-food shop in the local shopping centre. I was in there today to pick up some cute measuring spoons (shaped like fish and intended for children) and a small plastic spatula to run around the edges of the non-stick ramekins I'm using for the steamed breads. I made a second lot of green tea ones this morning... and they're all gone. ^_^; I also made the hijiki brown rice recipe from the same book last night and it was amazing.

In other news, I finally repaired Mom's bracelet and the latest Skulduggery Pleasant book and posted both off this morning. I got a letter from Stadt Adliswil, which I opened with bated breath, only to find it was not my residence permit but them wanting to know who my health insurer is. Well, that comes after the permit.

The birds are still eating everything we put out, and brown rice (cooked) is the new favourite. There were some very confused and upset great tits after himself took down the half coconut shell that was once filled with fat and seeds and now looks like it's been cleaned and polished. I swear they use it and the feeder as swings. We've been seeing some other kinds of birds that we're not able to identify, but at a minimum we have sparrows, great tits, blue tits, goldfinches and greenfinches. No need for TV!

Where there's green tea powder, there's cocoa powder!

After my surprisingly successful attempt at making steamed green tea bread (from the The Okinawa Diet Plan, which I recommend as a cookbook if nothing else) I decided to have a go with cocoa powder.



It worked beautifully! The flavour is subtle but delicious and the texture is amazingly dense. It's a definite tie with the green tea ones.

The one thing that didn't work so well was using both trays in the steamer. The ramekins I have are too large to put four in one tray, so I put two on each and the ones on the bottom steamer got dripped on, one worse than the other.



Himself insists he's going to eat the slightly soggy one regardless.

Been really enjoying the recipes and will probably try making the Hijiki Brown Rice tonight. After my cross-questioning from the lady at Nishi's Japanese shop while buying the hijiki yesterday - although to be fair, I didn't know you couldn't use it in soup, so I learned something this time.

Man to man

Reading up on the Japanese offensive in India in WWII for some work.

At this period a special jeep supply column was formed from a London Territorial Regiment. In its ranks were numbered many London taxi-drivers. General Messervy tells a story of one of these jeep crews. "All races produce tough, brave soldiers, but only the British soldier really has that sense of decency and kindly humanity which nothing can upset.

"A Jap was seen skulking in a bush near Jessami, by the side of the track. Out leapt the Gunners and seized him.

" 'Shall we kill the little bastard ? It's what he and his like deserve.'

" ' Oh, no, we can't. We'll take him back with us.'

"After a ' few hundred yards---"Ere, Tojo, you look pretty miserable. 'Ave a fag.'

"A mile farther on they had a puncture, and it was 'Come on, Tojo, give us a hand:'

"By the time Kohima was reached, 'Tojo' was a mascot, if not a friend."

From Anthony Brett-James' Ball of Fire: The Fifth Indian Division in the Second World War.

Seems there is always hope left somewhere in the world that people can just treat each other as people.

New and old

It's nice to get something off the long-term to-do list. I now have a functioning backup system, and it's bootable to boot. What finally got me to do it? I've decided that I really want to upgrade from OSX Tiger to Snow Leopard. The performance should be better, things may stop supporting Tiger soon as it was two releases ago, I get Boot Camp which means SDL will support me when I run on my Windows partition and I get to use Chrome instead of Firefox. I don't know what has happened to it, but it's become slower and slower and chews up up to 20% of my CPU. So, everything is copied over safely. Twice.

I finally managed to give in my application for my residence permit and registration in the community this week. It will take up to a month to hear back, but can take less time. I successfully registered with the Handelsregisteramt, despite technically not being able to get a notarisation without a permit, and they informed the SVA (national insurance) of my existence. I've filled in the form for them and sent it back with piles of contracts, invoices, etc. to convince them I'm self-employed - it's also missing lots of information like my permit number and bank details. But they wanted a response within the month so this is what I can give them.

Work has been reasonably busy. Well, it's been furiously busy or nothing, as usual. I still need to get used to it. And use some of the downtime to do my accounts and figure out how well I'm actually doing in the grand scheme of things.

I got my official results from the exam board - I passed! So I can now add another MA after my name (MA squared?). And ACIL - Associate Member of the Chartered Institute of Linguists. And I took the final set of training for SDL Trados Studio 2009 on Friday, just have to do the exam now and that's the lot. Other than the Termbase one. It's all professional development.

Right. Now for the rather scary endeavour of upgrading my OS.

And boom!

The doorbell went at about 9:00am - David was in the bathroom and I wasn't very dressed, so I peeked out the door of the flat and saw that someone had abandoned a box outside the front door.

I'm assuming this was Swiss Post. Contrary to expectations they seem to be even dodgier than Deutsche Post - so far they've delivered an enormous box to the mother & baby shop in front of our building despite being told it was the wrong address and rammed a box that was too big into our postbox (thankfully the contents were in hard boxes). Oh, and not delivered letters for no apparent reason, causing our ISP to cut us off for non-payment when we hadn't received the bills.

This abandoned package (which a kind neighbour had brought inside the door by the time we went to get it) contained something David had put in an order for months ago but assumed he hadn't got as it was only available in limited quantities - the pocket-böögg!

For those of you who enjoy Sechseläuten, you can get your very own mini-Böögg, the exploding farmer-snowman. It came in a lovely box with three stepped wooden bases, a set of stickers to make the face and bowtie, a removable hat, pipe... and mini firecrackers to put under the hat. And the wooden bases appear to be prepared with something flammable, as the bottom one has three wicks in it. There's a video of one being assembled and burnt on the site, along with the traditional Sechseläuten march music.

So, not only are these made by adults with cerebral palsy, but sent by post? The Swiss really do have a different idea of health and safety!

More updates later - it's been busy, and I've been tired.

Shhh

Woke up an hour early, still on Swiss time. Have caught up with some emails I needed to answer - I'm always annoyed when people flake out on me and don't respond, so I have to not do it myself.

Still surrounded by boxes, but less of them and they have the contents written on the top and have been logged in a packing list and someone is going to print them for us before the movers arrive. A day early. We were going to go into London and treat ourselves to a hotel for the last night we're here - now without a bed - but we have return tickets already bought from Reading so we're going to keep the inflatable bed out and just crash here instead.

Seen lots of people, didn't managed to catch others. Had two Japanese meals on Thurs and wound up the staff at the new Jamie Oliver Italian restaurant in Reading last night. Just have to keep on going and get everything ready to go, including the Amazon order that arrived yesterday. Bought N.K. Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, the complete Ouran High School Host Club, Afro Samurai (it was cheap enough on Blu-Ray to buy on a whim), Barry Atkins' More Than a Game and a book on vegetarian sushi for himself along with the Lekue Makisu sushi mat which for reasons best known to Amazon is arriving a week later than everything else and after we leave.

Must get dressed and clear the front room. This isn't over yet.

Oh, and apparently the Sheffield exam board met on Thursday but I haven't got final results yet. Will have to harrass the office. Ah, how nostalgic.

Interesting times

Well, that will teach me to complain about not having enough work. Client A emailed me last Monday with a huge project to get done in 2 weeks. Great, thank you! Then Client B checks in with a project I could get done in a day, and is games related. I'll take that, thank you! Then... Client C pops up asking for some small but short turnaround work. Um, yes, let's split this with someone else and I'll get you my bit in 2 days...

The worst of the crush is over and I'm now concentrating on my big file which has a lovely amount of repetition in it which the translation tools handles all by itself. It's dull, but relatively easy and definitely makes me happy I have the translation tool.

I did the two training exams on Sunday, while hiding out in himself's office while our broadband was down - thankfully just a fault instead of their billing section cutting us off thinking we hadn't paid again. Today is a bank holiday in Zurich and we went out to pick up a van to collect a shelving unit from a colleague of himself's who is moving back to the US. Except it wouldn't fit in the van. Himself and colleague managed to take out one side and some shelves with a hammer, so it fit in the end, but we were looking around for irate neighbours if not the police.

The weekend has been gloriously sunny and 31 degrees today, although it's clouded over now. May has just disappeared, and we're off to the UK on Wed night to pack up and finalise all our stuff. I hope a week will be enough. The leasehold extension for the flats has gone through, so we can now put ours on the market, although the two that are up for sale have been so for some time now.

Particularly looking forward to Thurs, when I'll meet up with people at the Japan Society to discuss doing more work with them, and meet up with people for dinner!

Oh, and I shall be waiting for my official exam board results for the MA on May 27, and for a decision on my application to the IoL on June 5. Fingers crossed they all go smoothly.

Ook! Ook!

This goes in with Freelance Folder as something to read when I'm feeling a bit beaten around the head by my chosen profession: No Peanuts! for Translators - a collection of confidence-boosting writings on rates and the value (monetary and otherwise) of translation.

And another one!

Despite getting a terrible night's sleep on Wednesday I had a very productive day on Thursday with a good German lesson and lots of work done on two sites where I'm trying to integrate content from a blog onto a static web page.

As part of that I started looking around for good blogs on general translation, Japanese-English translation and games translation. I've found many of the first so far and am about to start following another possibly infinite chain of blogs about English. I think I should take a break.

Spent Friday in two 3-hour training sessions for my chosen translation tool, which were good but not absolutely required for the exams - I may do the other two exams I want to get without the training sessions. I don't believe that the certification you get for them is absolutely necessary, but it's professional development. And I have time for that now, so I may as well use it.

The birds in the garden are still routinely decimating the two feeders we hang out for them, and himself was concerned that they might need different food if they're raising young, so we went into the pet shops in town to look for some mealworms. We didn't get any, but at least got to see some very cute animals. Well, I find spiders cute - not everyone does...

In other news, I managed to successfully raise a rate offered by a client with everyone happy with the end result and baked two half-batches of muffins, one black sesame and one green tea. Making the two batches distracted me to the extent that I forgot to add the oil to the green tea batch, which came out squat and heavy (still very edible). But I am easily distracted.

Getting back into playing my 漢字検定試験 and 美文字 games on the DS. That and trying to finish Dragon Quest: Chapters of the Chosen. I still have to adjust to the feast and famine cycle. Staring at my laptop waiting for work to come in doesn't help, but neither does endless surfing. I'm not on holiday, I'm waiting for work. And what else is there to do but polish up my skills?

Tortillas and aliens and the Japan Society, oh my

I've been invited by the Japan Society to take on more work for their Japan-UK Live! school exchange/twinning project: checking translations by other Japanese to English translators, helping to plan some of the exchange themes, testing a new website and encouraging UK teachers to keep their links going. Hoping to get stuck into that in the next few weeks! I've also booked a training day on Friday, getting "certified" in my chosen translation tool. I don't think it's entirely worth it, but I need to get back into using it to get the most out of it, and as I learned it on the job and as a project manager instead of a translator I'm sure there are bits I missed. I also get a massive discount on the training and exams through a translation website I'm a member of - wouldn't contemplate it otherwise.

We're back in the UK from May 26 - June 1, and this time the movers are booked. Everything is going into a van on the morning of June 1 and being driven over by a moving company. While I dread another round of throwing out and giving away (especially as the less precious things are now gone) it will be a great relief to have it done, over a year after we started. The silver lining is an email from Oxfam - they raised £258.09 from the sale of my donated goods, and can also get over £70 in Gift Aid (as I'm still a UK taxpayer). That's a fitting end for so many books, CDs, DVDs and comics.

Had a fun night last Saturday with some friends over for our attempt at Mexican cooking - fill-it-yourself tortillas made with Quorn pieces. All very nice and accompanied by Belgian, French, English and even African beer! (Barley ice tea for me.) And a box of Luxemburgerlis, which always go down well. We then all watched District 9 together, and agreed unanimously that some of the very small injuries that happen to the protagonist earlier on are far more flinch-inducing that the massive acts of gore that follow. It's all too easy to imagine the smaller ones happening, I suppose.

I went to one of the spouses' association dinners last night, at the Japanese oKara restaurant, which I recommended. I had the sashimi special and I have to say I wasn't that impressed - the tonkatsu was amazing though. And there should be a warning on udon noodles for people who aren't used to chopsticks.

Weather has been quite bad all week, with wind and rain and general gloom. There was even snow forecast. So long as we don't get an ash cloud.

Bats and frogs and fish, oh my

We went for a short walk last night - himself persuaded me to go out just as it was getting dark. I didn't need much persuading as I'd been indoors all day working. I was a little worried when I saw a flash of lightning while waiting for the train, but I'll get back to that...

It was spitting rain when we got to the station two up from ours that links to the lovely woodland/riverside trail. We crossed under the platform (where some police were talking to what looked like a group of travellers, but it didn't seem confrontational) and across the stream to walk under the trees - which were full of bats! They were wheeling and swinging between the trees and the water, and I'm sure they were having a feast as the air was full of midges. They looked quite small and there seemed to be quite a few (well, there could have been two of them following us too). We carried on as the rain wasn't so bad, and just as we were having second thoughts we found one of the created ponds fenced off at the side of the path. There had been frog spawn there before so we decided to look and see if there were any frogs now. Himself shone his bike light in... there must have been about 20 frogs. We don't know if the light set them off or what happened, but they started croaking in a huge range of tones and pitches and frequencies and we just stood there and laughed in the wind and rain.

We eventually decided to cut back across to the station one up from ours and get the train the rest of the way back. But it was well worth getting wet for.

In other news, I braved the fish counter today. Although I still have problems understanding Swiss German, it does seem to be true that if you speak standard/High/German German you will be understood. Not that it's that difficult to ask for 200g of wild salmon. When you can point for half of it. It was on sale and looks amazing. I'm going to have it for dinner tonight with some organic courgettes and (normal) mushrooms. Strawberries are in too! I got 500g of them for 1.90 CHF (down from 2.50) which was nice. Especially as I paid almost that much for a single red pepper last week.

Banditry

Once again I have made out like it's my birthday and Christmas combined at the Swiss Japanese Friendship Society. We went to their bowling event today - himself came third overall, I came last. Yes, my bowling really is that bad.

He got a medal, a bag, a poster, a can of "neri-an" (red bean paste), three food bowl covers and a box of toothpicks. I got a scarf and pendant, three small cases (all flourescent orange) and a box with seven white bowls! Mr. Yamaguchi bought my drink while I wasn't looking and the Society picked up half the tab when we went for pizza afterwards, and Mr. Yamaguchi drove us all home. He's doing an origami course nearby in October. I am so signed up for it...

But of course

A live hockey match in a mini-stadium. Inside Zurich Hauptbahnhof.

Edit: Apparently they also do beach volleyball in the station. With sand.

Just wow.

I was extremely touched to find that a letter from a client in Japan, which I assumed had a signed contract in it, actually contained a gift of an A4 plastic folder with white rabbits and a sheet of stickers illustrating the town of Kawagoe. I'd hoped to meet him while I was in Japan but wasn't able to, and he'd bought these for me as omiyage.

How sweet. I almost don't know what to say.

Just in case

For those of you who absolutely have to see an effigy of a farmer snowman being blown to nothing, the photos are up!

No groundhogs, please, we're Swiss.

Zurich has its own traditional method of weather forecasting, the Sechseläuten (Sächsilüüte?) (pronounced a bit like "sex-er-loiter"), which involves putting an effigy of a snowman packed with explosives on top of a bonfire. The faster the head blows off, the better summer will be. This is a holiday in Zurich (not anywhere else) with shops closed and himself on a half day.

In the event that that the effigy does not go off, it will be assisted - witness the description of the 2008 burning on the link above, where the fire brigade used their considerable knowledge and a supply of kerosene to help it along. It also involves fleets of guild members in period dress on horseback distributing flowers around the city.

I may just put "busy" in my calendar and go see what photos I can get.

Ikea does manga?

Well, it's close. Saw these in the wonderful Ikea fabric section today. Anyone for Godzilla prints and origami moose?

Just looking at these again - is that the Little Mermaid in the bottom left of the print? Is Godzilla destroying Copenhagen?

Sushi!

I promised a friend a photo of the chirimen (crepe) sushi I got at the Chirimen Museum in Kyoto - here they are! One tamago-nigiri (a slice of Japanese omelette on rice with a band of seaweed) and one inari-zushi (a cured tofu pocket stuffed with rice, dusted with black sesame seeds).

Lazing on a Sunday afternoon

Well, kind of. It's also our day to use the washing room, and I'm having a general tidy up since I can't find space to put my mug down on my desk any more. But other than that, it's sunny outside and the birds are loving the food we put out, so there's much fun to be had sitting inside in a sunbeam watching them flutter about. Himself is in charge of identifying species. So far, we've had blackbirds, starlings, blue tits and finches. There are also bumblebees flying around as well as midges and a resurgence of spiders. I'm sure the woodland cockroaches will follow in due course. These are related to the despised and exterminated cockroaches, but apparently cannot live indoors and only come into houses because they're attracted by light. The fly screens I bought in Frankfurt last year are still up, so hopefully they will keep them out this year.

In other news - not much. I cleared Endless Ocean 2 and am now doing side quests. I need to do more tidying up and shredding. I haven't got any further on registering, other than the Migrationsamt saying I don't need to give the community office any documentation about work. I hope the community office doesn't have a different take on it. Himself is out testing his new road bike by seeing if he can go around the lake.

Time to empty the dryer and put the next load on.

Cats. Ants. Birds. など。Etw.

We have been feeding the birds recently, and himself is complaining that they wake him up in the morning. You can't have it both ways. It's a lot of fun watching them scamper around the garden and selectively pull sunflower seeds out of the feed and hammer them open on the tree.

On the other hand, we've also noticed ants in the flat. Time to start being ruthless about clearing up in the kitchen.

And seen in Migros today - catnip!

Success!

Behold the chocolate matcha muffins! The recipe is fairly fiddly and only makes 6, but they were delicious and very fluffy. Stuck to the silicone cups though.

Our first fondue on Sunday went very well. I had terrible memories of fondue from school ski trips, but enjoyed this one very much. We had the matcha cake I picked up in Narita duty free for desert - highly recommend it if you're passing through there!

So today it's back to being ready for work if it should arrive and also trying - again - to register here. I've spent the morning reading around what I'm supposed to do and have just confused myself again. I may go back to the town hall just to see if I speak to someone else and they tell me something different. I've had a few leads to try from different people, but still no clear path. All I can do is keep on trying, I suppose.

And I need more matcha powder. And a haircut. And to write loads of thank you emails.

Matcha! II

Back from our trip in to Zurich, and himself has everything he needs to do a fondue tomorrow. We just need to make the place look less like a bomb hit. ^_^;

In the interests of spreading around all that matcha goodness, here are the recipes I've found:
Matcha chocolate swirl cake/cupcakes
Matcha latte
Matcha cheesecake and fresh chocolate

Matcha!

After tasting so many tasty matcha (powdered green tea used in the tea ceremony) things in Japan - especially the matcha chocolate in Uji - I went and found some recipes online for matcha chocolate cake and ended up finding one for the highly desirable matcha latte as well!

Next step was to find some matcha powder and for that we headed into Zurich to check the wonderland that is the basement food shop in Globus. They had some matcha milk chocolate, which I snapped up. They had matcha powder too - from Uji! - for the exorbitant sum of 37 CHF.

I went to the Nishi Japanese food shop - they were closed, but I could see on their site that they have matcha powder for 13 CHF. I can either go there on Tuesday and get it, or else use the "green tea" mix I was given by Nozaki-sensei which appears to be matcha with added sugar. I can work with that...

[Note: my "green tea" mix appears to be tea with ground brown rice. Not sure how they'll do, but they make a very nice tea!]

Easter means pandas!

At himself's office anyway. I got back safely, stayed up for a bit then slept like the dead. Having a real bed helps lot!

On Thursday I amazingly woke up at 8am, got up and cleared the 200-odd emails that had arrived over the holidays and started listening to my new Asian Kung-Fu Generation CDs. I even went and tagged and filed the several hundred unsorted ones left over from when I moved my stored emails over.

Then it was a quick shower and in to himself's office for lunch and possibly my German lesson. It wasn't clear if it was happening because I was the only person scheduled to be there and the office was having a half day. The Berlitz office were utterly clueless. The lady at reception told me that our teacher had left but we had a new one in a different room. Maybe. Her info from Berlitz was out of date as well.

It turned out to be correct and there were three of us there, one guy from my class had got his holiday dates wrong and a guy from another class joined ours - which the new teacher hadn't heard about. I survived it remarkably well and hung around while himself finished up some things, then home to scan through photos and finally watch Ponyo before crashing.

Up early again today and trying a post from my phone here as it also has a camera. Not used to the keyboard yet though!

Because one flavour is not enough

That's it for this trip. Have to get this phone into the post and me into security. Thanks to everyone for such a wonderful trip!

Last breakfast

At Tokyo Soup Stock. Not Japanese food, but I like it.

That takes me back

The Uniqlo in Narita T1 is doing anime t-shirts - Dragonball, Galaxy Express 999, Cobra, Mazinger and this.

Last train

As usual, I don't want to leave!

Dawn out the window

Woke up - or rather ceased to be able to sleep - about quarter to six. Not sure where this is, but we were popping in and out of tunnels and the dawn was fading as fishing boats set out to sea.

The nobi nobi compartments are as uncomfortable as they look. The carriage is super-heated and the bunks have some kind of under carpet heating as well. It was fun, but I think I'll just plan my way out of needing it again. That or pay for a real bunk.

We've had the wake-up call for Yokohama, and will be in Tokyo in about 40 minutes. There's nowhere to put cases and when I asked the conductor he advised me to move into an unoccupied pair of top bunks and store my luggage in one. I was most grateful for the second blanket to use as a pillow.

Dinner on the move

I had planned to get something to eat at Fukuoka when changing trains, but the shop there was totally cleaned out - not even a rice ball. Thankfully the bullet train's on-board catering had a bento.

Peek-a-boo

The spectacles bridge in Nagasaki.

Last lunch

As I was going to be on the move from that evening, I had a proper sit-down lunch at a tonkatsu place.

Moomintrolls!

Seen in a shopping center in Nagasaki (I was only there because it had a ferris wheel, honest). I'm used to the giant Ghibli plushies (they seem to get bigger every year) but first time I'd seen a giant plush Moomintroll.

Alcohol and tentacles

Sakai took us to a favourite place of his, a bar specialising in shochu that also served food, cooked by the owner. It was amazing, from the fish cake amuse-bouche to the kara-age, grilled mushrooms, deep-fried aubergine and house special mackerel. There was serious talk of my abducting the owner for his culinary skills, but he declined. The shochu sounded equally good, especially one called Nagome.

We then went on to a Chinese restaurant - both places were tiny and would seat no more than 10 or 12 people. I'm not sure if I've ever had Ma Po Tofu before, but this place would take some beating.

And another thing

The cleaner's cart in Himeji station plays a bleepy version of 'It's a Small World After All' when moving.

Night train

In Himeji waiting for the Sunrise Seto sleeper train. No heated waiting room. Updates from Nagasaki once I'm safely on board...

Sailing back from Ioujima

The trip to Ioujima was the idea of Sakai, a friend of Yumi's. (We finally got around to dropping the -san and -sensei and just calling each other by our first names.) The island is lovely, and the slightly salty onsen was amazing. There were rotenburo, outdoor baths, with fantastic views and a lovely cool breeze. On the way back the catamaran was sailing into the wind and it was almost hard to breathe. I got some good photos in while being harrassed by a primary school on a day trip.

Only here

Chocolate sparkling water in the gift shop in Ioujima Onsen. They also had castella (pound cake) and champon flavoured drops. And more Sakamoto Ryoma merchandise than you could shake a sword at. I especially liked the t-shirt with 'Ryoma, what would you think of Japan today?' - and having your cartoon likeness or actor on sweets, curry, coffee, keyrings and who knows what else.

Cherry time!

You can't get away from them. Cherry blossom steamer and biscotti from Starbucks. Being consumed on a blazingly sunny Dejima Wharf waiting to meet people for local champon noodles and a boat trip to an island onsen!

Silence for the views

Kondo-sensei took me to the Endo Shusaku museum north of Nagasaki, in the area where his novel 'Silence' is set. Nice little museum and amazing views.

Elementary cherry blossom viewing

I spent the vast majority of yesterday with Kondo-sensei's friends at a cherry blossom viewing party, or hanami. Then we went to one of their houses. Then we went to Chinatown. A day of eating, drinking, seeing things I otherwise wouldn't have seen and more eating.

This is relevant to my interests

This morning I went to Dejima, the former Portuguese and then Dutch trading post that operated during the period of national seclusion. I thought it would only take an hour to see, but I could have spent most of a day there. The reconstructed buildings are wonderful, and there are loads of exhibits and information.

Some drama about Sakamoto Ryoma is on at the moment, and he's everywhere. There's even a Doumo-kun dressed up as him. And most tenuous of all, curry.

Obviously

A loggerhead turtle at the Canal City shopping centre.

I had ramen at a ticket-based fake stall restaurant in the basement. I'm sure Andy will throttle me next time I see him.

I visited the lovely Kushida Shrine with its carnival floats and then the Machiya Folk Museum - worth the trip for the video of the festival and the chance to buy a tenugui (kind of hand towel) with a rear view of each team's jacket worn by a man essentially naked from the waist down.

Nowhere is safe

Another amazing shop, Beniya, with kimono, yukata and lots of things made of traditional fabrics. I got some gorgeous t-shirts on sale.

Why? WHY?

Sky Dream Fukuoka, the world's second largest ferris wheel, ceased operation in September 2009. Dammit, this was one of the reasons I decided to stop over here!

I was wondering on the way in why an outlet mall needed two ferris wheels. I rode the smaller Sky Wheel which mostly gives you views of the car park and, well, Sky Dream. It's hard to miss from that close. I got a free ticket for the Sky Wheel after buying something at a shop - I passed.

This coffee is as strong as Godzilla

It's all about that powerful body.

Surfing rabbit

Statue outside Meinohama Station. On my way to the world's second largest ferris wheel!

If only it were that simple

Fukuoka's 'subway diet' - walk to the station, take the subway, walk from the station.

Walk in the park

The wonderful Ohori Park in Fukuoka. I think people would move here just for this.

Pink cocktails in the GReen Room

My one night out! Andy, my boss at Nintendo, lived in Fukuoka for many years and the GReen Room bar is owned by a friend of his. I had some delicious food, including three kinds of mushroom with garlic, and cocktails made with coffee syrup and sparkling water. Ended up chatting all evening to the bartenders and two of the patrons (one gave me a cut-out Mickey Mouse) and time flew, leaving me hoping I hadn't stayed out past Fukuoka's last tube. If only it was non-smoking. I got back to the hotel with no problems and now that I have tomorrow planned out, it's time for bed.

Muji

I miss the Muji in Reading (neither it nor I am there any more). But it never had cheese cream or matcha marshmallows.

What Zurich needs is a 100 Yen shop like Beppu's. Far better selection of origami paper at a fraction of the price.

Mine?

This beauty came and demanded bits of my lunch as I ate on the promenade. Sat on the seat beside me, swatted food off my chopsticks and nearly got up on the table.

Shochu!

One of the two attractions at the bottom of the mountain, the Kyushu Shochu Kan with over 300 varieties. The other place to go is a lovely Japanese garden you can see from the cable car. But I'm going to wait at the bus stop in the sun, listen to the hideously cheesy music on the loudspeakears and eat my ginger senbei.