Nutz: Chasing a Noodle

I used to be indecisive... now I'm not so sure. 

Half-English Breakfast

This morning we ate breakfast in the hotel and I was pleasantly surprised to find a spread that included some nice looking fruit (photograph 1).

Tell me: why is that we, as humans, feel the need to saunter into a breakfast room, walk up to a table and move a chair about 2 inches before we go up and start drooling over the breakfast delights? I guess it is a form of staking ownership on territory. In the animal kingdom, of course, an animal will mark its territory by urinating around the edge of it - something that I think the restaurant manager, this morning, would undoubtedly have frowned upon.

Whilst teaching Sayaka some important English phrases, such as "shut your cakehole", I tucked into what I named my 'half-English breakfast' (photograph 2). This consisted of cold egg formed into shapes (not fun shapes, like hedgehogs or lions, though), with ham, sausages and toast. Ok, I say "toast", but I actually mean "warm bread". The toaster was about as much use as a jelly in a rainstorm (marginally useful, because you could use it as a hat).

I was part way through eating my cooked breakfast when I looked to my left and saw Sayaka mixing up a disgusting looking substance in a little pot. Rather stupidly, I asked what it was, and she told me to taste some. Even more stupidly, I agreed and tried it. I can only describe it as a mixture of beans, marmite and snot - in looks and taste. Photograph 3 shows this grim concoction.

The final photograph of this ever-expanding blog post is of a cool little contraption that I've nicknamed Maggie Jam. Rather than spending time applying margarine and jam to your warm bread, you simply grip the little plastic thing and squeeze. Bingo, out comes your margarine and jam together (photograph 4). It's very clever. However, you don't need Theo Profiterole, the Dragon, to point out its fatal flaw:- supposing you don't want margarine?

I'm told that this will be our last non-Japanese style breakfast for a few days. So, no doubt it'll be snot, beans and marmite for breakfast tomorrow. Would you like me to put some in a pot and bring it back for you to taste?

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Japan Day 12 - Nii-san in Osaka

Greetings!! After yesterday's 'constipation crisis', today you must watch out for vegetable tourettes whilst reading my blog post. I may at any moment spontaneously shout out the random name of a vegetable or fruit. I'm rather missing my fruit and veg, you see, and yesterday's "very berry smoothie" was a BIG disappointment.

Before I begin, Nii-san means "older brother" (not to be confused with a certain Japanese car manufacturer), and the reason I've included that as part of today's headline is that EVERYONE seems to think that I'm Mark's older brother. Having received a couple of comments about it in the last few days, Mark has taken it upon himself to constantly remind me about it! I would, therefore, like to go on record as saying that I am the Otouto (younger brother) and not the Niisan, Sunny!

Today, we left Kyoto and headed for Osaka. But not before we visited a few department stores in Kyoto and retrieved the car from the vertical car park, which had conveniently turned the car around for us (photograph 1). I must admit that a cruel part of me was hoping that the vertical car park might have acted with the randomness of a vending machine; opening the door to reveal the car sitting on its roof.

We arrived at Osaka in time for lunch, and decided to try Okonomiyaki - a dish containing cabbage, fish, sticky potato, flour and meat. It was all cooked on a hot plate on the table, right infront of us. I took photographs at various stages of the cooking process. Photograph 2 shows a moment part way through, when fish flakes were added to the top. They moved around like a load of moths trying desperately to escape the heat. Photographs 3 to 5 are of the other stages of the cooking process. Notice how photograph 4 bears an uncanny resemblance to a pair of… "MELONS" (oops!)

Whilst the food is cooked, the restaurant provide you with a survey to fill in (how handy!). So, next time you are on Family Fortunes and get asked the question "We surveyed 100 people and asked them to name a food that looks like a pair of breasts", you will know to answer "Okonomiyaki". You'll probably win a prize for your trouble, like a second hand hamster wheel. If the rest of your family then answer "water melons", "cupcakes" and "fried eggs", then you're sure to win the star prize.

We had planned to eat lunch and then visit the cinema to see a film. However, after finishing lunch early we found ourselves with some time to kill, allowing us a small amount of time to act like silly children. We started in a sports store. But not any old sports store, oh no. It made JJB look like s.h.i.t, with 26 aisles filled with equipment from baseball to tiddlywinks (ok, not quite. Besides, tiddlywinks isn't a sport… yet). Photograph 6 was taken from one end of the store looking towards the other end. Photograph 7 shows some cute kiddies ski sets. Photograph 8 is of Mark trying on a coat… which made him look like a… "MANGE TOUT" (damn it!)

After finding the exit of the sports store, we bought some cake and headed for the cinema to see "Drag Me To Hell"; a horror thriller based upon a girl being cursed and finding out that her fortune comes true, with lots of unfortunate incidents happening along the way. So, a perfect choice of film to see following my incident with the fortune telling machine. Ah well, at least while we were watching the film I made a new and interesting discovery to shock the world of desserts… grapefruit sorbet!

Once the film had finished, we left for our hotel and were greeted with a nice surprise. One of Mark's friends works as a receptionist at the hotel and was nice enough to book us into a £200 a night traditional Japanese room, at a total cost of £7 each. Saboy! (wow!) Photograph 9 shows the room we are sleeping in this evening (on futons on the floor). The view out of the room is amazing - as demonstrated in photographs 10 and 11.

After dumping our luggage in the room, we went out to dinner at an Indian restaurant. The food was really delicious - various curries plus rice and naan bread (or 'nun bread' as the menu pronounced it). Photograph 12 shows our meal... with the nuns sitting in the middle of the table.

The final two photographs of the day are of our walk back along to the hotel. Photograph 13 is of a famous part of Osaka called Dotonbori. Photograph 14 is of a garage that we walked past, containing many millions of pounds of cars (Lamborghinis, etc). These are apparently owned by some of the hosts of the local cabaret clubs. They're obviously rather rich... "PRUNUS DOMESTICA (plums)".

Right, enough of this madness. Tomorrow we leave Osaka and head South West to Himeji. I'm not quite sure what the Internet access is going to be, as we will be travelling into some remote areas. So, the next blog may not be for a day or two.

TTFN

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Japanese Archery (Kyudo)

Kyudo means "way of the bow" and is the Japanese art of archery. Notice my use of the word "art" there. Unlike the standard types of archery that we see practiced in the UK, Kyudo is much more to do with meditation and seeking a natural release, whilst shooting to hit the target. For that reason, it takes many hours of learning the meditation side of things before you would normally pick up a bow. So, our little attempt at Kyudo would only be a very basic, fun demonstration.

On our final day in Kyoto (day 11 of my trip), Mark and Sayaka took me along to a little place just outside of the Kiyomizu Temple. The lady instructor handed us a bow and we were told to sit down facing the wall, as if on a horse, and hold our bow at 90 degrees to shoot down the tunnel.

The Japanese bow reminded me a lot of a standard long bow. However, it was a lot taller and the grip used on the arrow was different. When pulling back on the string, we had to partly hold the nock of the arrow onto the string and then pull the string back right the way past our ear. Also, we were told to twist the bow with our left hand as we pulled back with our right. It was quite tricky to get the hang of, especially with me being used to a standard recurve bow and string grip.

Photograph 1 shows the 'archery cave', as I have named it. A series of mats placed on a long seat, with targets in the dirt in the distance. Impressively, this archery cave dated back over 150 years, to the Edo Period. The lady instructor had been doing demonstrations herself for over 30 years. As you will see from the first two photographs, there are people's names on boards and pieces of paper attached to the walls all around the room. These are the names of people who have successfully completed the challenge (getting 3 arrows in the targets from 10 shots).

It was great fun to try this different form of archery. However, it was also quite tricky because the equipment wasn't of terrific quality. The strings on the bows were quite worn. The feather flights on the arrows were very old and I noticed, when looking down the arrows, that many of them were very bent. I guess Mark could use that as his excuse for shooting his first 5 arrows off to the right… nearly hitting my target and Sayaka could use it as an excuse for shooting several arrows into the hay in the roof (I hope there were no birds nesting in there!). 

In the end, we all managed to hit our target once. But, to be honest, that didn't really matter as it made for a fascinating experience anyway.

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Japan Day 11 - Kyoto And The Wig Of Love

I received a blog comment this morning from Sue in Bexhill (this is becoming like Points of View), who says: "Alastair, this whole holiday seems to be centred round eating."

With that being the case, it would surely mean that something like constipation would be very unfortunate and probably quite amusing, right? No, wrong! I'm not a great fan of discussing bowel movements on blogs (do you think there is some kind of cult that does?), but no-one has been this full of crap since Bill Clinton stood in court and explained that Monica was only bending over to pick up a pencil. I haven't had a number 2 for two and a half days! It must be all the meat we've been eating.

To make matters more interesting - when the inevitable 'avalanche' does occur, the toilet paper here isn't exactly triple velvet… it's more like single tracing!

Enough of this excrement. There's rumours going around here that John and Edward have survived another week on the X-Factor... and that Simon Cowell is actually their father… I can't believe that!

Back to the story of the day. After initially spending some time blogging over breakfast, we headed out to the Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto. We picked a lovely day for it - the sun was out and it was lovely and warm as we made our way through the tiny streets (photograph 1) and up through the main gate (photograph 2). The temple itself was a very interesting place and we spent some time wandering around the area taking photographs (photographs 3 and 4). There were a few interesting sights - the temple itself, the lovely scenery, a Japanese transvestite (very scary) and the Kyoto Teachers' Union petitioning to abolish nuclear weapons (photograph 5). Yes, if Obama, Gordon and the United Nations can't get Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons programme, the Kyoto Teachers' Union surely will! No, good on them, I say.

One of the buildings near the temple itself was the Kyoto Jishu Shrine (said to be The Cupid of Japan), together with a statue of Ojuninushino-Mokoto (photograph 6), the Japanese God who is "in charge of love and good matches" (not the kind used for lighting fires). In front of the main shrine building, there are a couple of stones set about ten metres apart. These are named the 'love-fortune-telling' stones (photograph 7). I felt a bit wary of them, after my fortune telling experience from yesterday.

Supposedly, if a person manages to safely walk from one love stone to the other with their eyes closed, and, I guess, avoiding the swarms of tourists, their love "will be realised". I saw a few people trying this. However, something inside me felt worried. I had a vision of myself starting to walk from the first love stone, eyes shut, arms out infront… and that Japanese transvestite walking infront right at the most in-opportune moment. A handful of male buttocks (or worse) would not be a pleasant experience. If that incident isn't frightening enough, there is the prospect of it signifying that my love will "be realised" with a man in a wig.

On the way back down from the love stones, I spotted a little section containing bad fortunes tied to posts (photograph 8). If you remember from my earlier post, people start by picking or buying a fortune. If it is good they keep it, if it is bad they dispose of it by attaching it to a tree or post. I have questions about this. Firstly, do pessimists act differently to everyone else and tie good fortunes to those posts? Secondly, if you have someone that you really hate - is it acceptable to tie your bad fortune around their ankles instead of around a tree branch? Come on, I haven't got all day, what are the answers?

After our visit to the Kyoto Jishu Shrine, we took a few more photographs (9,10 and 11) and then headed off for lunch (no fascinating photos this time - we had pizza). Then we walked around the corner to a little house that taught some quick lessons in Japanese archery. I'm going to blog about this separately as it was quite fascinating and great fun.

The final photograph on tonight's blog is of dinner. I couldn't go without having a photo of food now, could I? This dish is Taiwanese dumplings - meat or fish surrounded in a pasta-like substance (don't you just love detail) or in a bready bun. I really enjoyed them.

News update: Mark has just called my room to tell me that we've just had a small earthquake. "It was 10km deep around Kyoto at magnitude 2.9." I didn't feel a thing.

Good night all. If you haven't yet read my three extra blog posts from this morning: Japanese Spinach Doughnuts, Purikura (Japanese Photo Booth) and Misfortune Favours The Unfortunate please feel free to either scroll down (assuming you're on the homepage) or click the link of your choice.

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Misfortune Favours The Unfortunate

I'm not greatly into the whole 'fortune telling' thing (to say the least). But, yesterday, Liz and I paid some money into a little fortune telling machine here in Kyoto. Hey, it looked like fun, what harm could it do? I've attached a small video to this blog post, so that you can see what it was like. I've also included a photo of the fortune itself. 

Quite simply, the fortune machine included a wooden lion dancing robot mask thing (great description, eh? Mark came up with that one after I asked him what it was!). After we put our money in, the 'wooden lion dancing robot mask thing' danced around a bit, bowed several times and then grabbed a fortune and dropped it down the hole. Liz and I immediately unwrapped our fortunes and read them. Mine was said to be an "excellent" one. So, no need for me to locate a tree and tie it to it… or so I thought. Here are some of the things it said (my comments are in brackets):

Business: "Take your time"
(ok, I will. Thanks. I now have an excuse for being a bit slack with getting projects done!)
Study: "All right. Continue studying."
(ok…. goooooooood…. what studying is that then!?)
Speculation: "The market is fluctuating now. It's time you make it"
(isn't the market always fluctuating - that's just the economic cycle, surely? It's a bit like saying "time is ticking by" or "the post men are on strike...")
Game and match: "Depend on your partner or team mates"
(sounds pretty normal to me)
Childbirth: "Keep regular hours"
(I wasn't aware I was going to be giving birth any time soon, but thanks for the tip!)
Wish: "It will surely be fulfilled later."
(super… would you like to expand a bit more and give me an estimated timescale on when I can expect my extra arm to grow?)
Missing Thing: "It's hard to be found. It will fall into other hands."
(that's the amazing thing about missing things - it's always so hard to find them. I guess that's why they are called "missing")
Expected Visitor: "He (or she) is sure to come, even if later."
(hmm, it's rather hedging it's bets on this one - the expected visitor could be a he OR a she. Also, whoever he/she is, they are sure to come at some point, even if it takes them 50 years. Great, I'll put the kettle on...")

Now, at this point I can tell what you're thinking - "well, knock me down with a spinach doughnut -  how does that fortune telling machine know you so well?" I really don't know - it's amazing. But wait, it gets better - here is the really interesting bit:

Travel: "Little profit. Something bad will happen on your way home"

That's right - that 'wooden lion dancing robot mask thing' gave me a (mis)fortune that said that something bad is going to happen to me on Sunday, when I travel home. I have been thinking about it and the list of potential catastrophes is fairly large: everything from me choking on an airline pretzel to my plane crash-landing on a desert island.

So, what I need you to do now is to put your hands together in prayer, and lets hope that the 'bad thing' is just that I stub my toe on the plane toilet door.

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Purikura (Japanese Photo Booth)

Whilst in Kyoto yesterday, Liz, Sayaka, Mark and I tried out the latest in trendy teenage fads - Purikura. Purikura involves using a series of machines to take photographs (whilst striking up funny poses) and then decorating the photographs with all sorts of horrible, garish, pretty graphics. Liz had tried this ordeal before and had somehow survived. So, she was determined to get us all to try it. Let me take you through what happened:

The shop itself was a bit like an amusement arcade, only it was filled with teenage girls (photograph 2). I felt half like a pervert holding a bag of sweets and half like a granddad (does that give you a good vision?). There were several machines located around the room, so we walked around to try and find one that was free, which we eventually (thankfully) did.

The Photo Booth

This was stage one of the process, and proved a good opportunity to hide my embarrassed face away from the young female onlookers. Photograph 2 shows what you see when you walk into the photo booth. Essentially, it was a series of lights with a camera in the middle and a screen to show you what you look like. When we entered, there was an aroma of teenage girl sweat which made you consider vomiting in the corner right there and then (what a great photograph that would have made!). The machine took 6 photographs, with breaks in between so that we could move around and strike up different poses. The difficult thing to remember was to look at the camera and not at the screen. Once the machine had taken the 6 photographs, we sprinted out of the booth, like excited teenagers shoplifting for the first time, and moved on to machine 2…

Customising Your Photographs

Stage two involved using a computer pen to touch the screen and personalise the photographs. However, there was a catch. Everything was timed, which made the whole thing incredibly stressful. I could feel my pacemaker going nineteen-to-the-dozen and I found myself biting my Werthers Originals so hard that my dentures almost cracked and fell out. All of the instructions were in Japanese, with pictures to aid us and a big countdown clock in the middle (no sign of Carol Vorderman anywhere!). After adding all sorts of colourful graphics, the system gave us the opportunity to send the pictures to our phone. Once again, we only had a certain number of seconds in which to enter our details.

By the end of the ordeal, we left the place perspiring and I felt like I had aged another 20 years. It was sort-of fun, in a similar way to picking up a knife and sticking it into a hot toaster 'just to see what happens'…. and similarly shocking.

Photograph 3 shows us sweating outside the Purikura place and photographs 4 and 5 are two of the resulting photographs.

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Japanese Spinach Doughnuts

Well folks, I can excitedly reveal that I have finally tried the spinach doughnuts… *applause*… They were very nice and didn't really taste of spinach at all; a fact that I actually felt a bit disappointed about. Popeye won't be doing much heavy lifting after eating this snack pack.

What I'm wondering now is whether a pack of spinach doughnuts constitutes my 5-a-day!?

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Japan Day 10 - Journey To Kyoto

Well, I hope you've all been enjoying lovely weekends. Here in Japan, we've just come to the end of another event packed day.

We left our hotel early, and headed off in the direction of Coco (not the clown) to meet up with our friend Liz. Before leaving Hikone completely, Mark stumbled across a Starbucks. However, this one was slightly unusual - it was a drive-thru Starbucks (I guess you have to supply the Christmas music yourself).

After buying our hot drinks and playing around trying to get the ancient Japanese Sat Nav to work, we went on our way. It proved to be a delightful little journey, taking us out of the built-up areas and into some little country roads, with fields of colour and traditional Japanese houses dotted around. Photographs 1 and 2 are of a colourful little flower field that we found (one photo with me in, one with a Japanese family). Photograph 3 is of a sunflower field, with Mark taking a photograph in the distance.

At one point, en-route, Sayaka pointed out a special shrine at which a large family appeared to be gathering. She explained to me that a blessing is traditionally held for boys at 5 years of age and for girls at 3 and 7. The blessing is said to get rid of any bad spirits. It made me wonder, though, why girls have two blessings compared to one for the boys. What happens to girls between the ages of 3 and 7 that means that their bad spirits return during that time? Hannah Montana?

After about an hour and a half of driving, we met up with Liz. I quickly seized the opportunity to impress her with my Japanese… by calling her a cucumber. She didn't seem too impressed. Disappointed, we got in the car and headed off for some lunch at what I called the Little Chef of Japan. Photograph 4 shows Liz, Mark and Sayaka looking through about 30 different menus. After eating, we left - destination Kyoto.

En-route to Kyoto, Liz helped me to learn some more Japanese words. But she also revealed some other interesting facts, including one about an interesting new habit. Having been in Japan for four months, she is now so used to bowing when talking to people that she even bows when talking to someone on the phone!

After about an hour of driving, we arrived in Kyoto and found our hotel, which had a rather nifty vertical car park. You drive in through a front door and park on the lift plate. Then, you get out of the car and leave it. The doors then shut. When the attendant hits the button, the car is automatically turned around 180 degrees and is lifted upwards. It is then stored somewhere in the vertical block. Photograph 5 shows the car, having been parked on the lift plate. Photograph 6 is of the inside - with the cars stacked vertically up the side. Clever!

Having dropped our bags off at the hotel, we made our way towards the city centre. There, we wandered through a couple of the more famous market areas (photograph 7). We tasted lots of different Japanese foods, looked at expensive chopsticks (the pair in photograph 8 were £100!), bought souvenirs and tried wacky Japanese amusements (more on that in a future blog post). Photograph 9 is of Liz standing alongside a character called Tanuki. Liz told me that this famous Japanese character is a "racoon bear dog" and that it famously has big testicles. It is said to be a sign of virility (or he just needs to learn to adjust the posture he adopts when he sits down).

Ok. I'm going to finish today's blog off there. However, there are a couple of very funny things that happened today that I will be blogging about separately, and individually. Those posts will be appearing in due course.

Night night.

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Driving My Japanese Train

Here are a few photographs of me driving a model train (taken in Hikone). There was a massive train track laid out at the top of one of the department stores in Hikone - what I would describe as a train fan's ultimate dream (I'm not a train fan, by the way). It cost about 300 yen (two pounds) to have a go at driving. So, I had a go for my 3 year old son and his love of trains. I was able to control my train around the track using two leavers - one for the speed and one for the brake. The lady told me to brake when going around the bends, but in actual fact it didn't make any difference. No matter how badly I got it wrong, I couldn't de-rail my train (damn it!). It was great fun though. As you can see, the view from the front of the train is beamed back to my monitor screen by a small camera. Clever stuff.

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Hadron Collider stalled again... thanks to baguette

How funny...

The rehabilitation of the beleaguered Large Hadron Collider was on hold tonight after the failure of one of its powerful cooling units caused by an errant chunk of baguette.

The £4 billion particle-collider faced more than a year of delays after a helium leak stymied the project in its first few days of operation. It is gradually being switched back on over the coming months but suffered a new setback on Tuesday morning.

Scientists at the CERN particle physics laboratory in Geneva noticed that the system’s carefully monitored temperatures were creeping up.

Further investigation into the failure of a cryogenic cooling plant revealed an unusual impediment. A piece of crusty bread had paralysed a high voltage installation that should have been powering the cooling unit. 

Read the full article in The Times 

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