Nutz: Chasing a Noodle

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

Japan

Welcome to the Japan blog archive, containing all of my recent blogs about this subject.


 

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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Who Wants To Be a Chocolate Eclair?

This is an extra little bonus on top of today's Japan blog (day 9). Whilst on our road trip today, it seemed like an opportune moment to do some brainstorming and come up a new, crazy Japanese game show. I based my idea on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire. So, without further ado, let me introduce to you to my game show… Who Wants To Be a Chocolate Eclair?

The show is based upon the same format as the original - 15 questions to win - with just a few changes... 

Firstly, instead of 'fastest finger first', it's 'fastest sponge finger first' - the quickest contestant to eat a packet of sponge fingers gets to take his/her place in the hotseat.

Secondly, the three 'life lines' have changed:

Phone a Fiend: You have the opportunity to phone a fiend from a pre-selected list of well-known fiends. This list includes, but is not limited to, The Joker, Dracula, Hannibal Lector (useful for questions about wine), Skeletor and Dastardly & Mutley (I would advise not speaking to Mutley, or your 30 seconds will just end up being filled with his evil 'hehehehehehehehehehe'). Unlike the original 'phone a friend' option, fiends are unlikely to want to help you find the correct answer. A few of them will probably just want to know where you live and what blood type you are…

Ask The Asylum: This gives you the opportunity to survey the audience… which is made up of lunatics (there are plenty of those in Bexhill who are ready and waiting to be involved!) dressed in straight jackets. The audience participants have to push the button for the correct answer using their nose.

0/0/0: Instead of the regular 50/50, this time the computer takes away the right answer and leaves you to pick from the three remaining wrong ones.

For every correct answer that you make, you earn a share in Royal Mail. If you get all your questions right, you win a plate of cooked cow intestines. If you lose, which seems rather inevitable, you get covered in cream, wrapped in choux pastry and covered in chocolate. The asylum members then get released to "tuck in".

So, who wants to go first?


For my Japan day 9 blog post, please scroll down or view it here.

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Japan Day 9 - It's Turned Out Oranges & Lemons Again!

Evenin' All. Now, I know that I've been posting a lot of photographs of food lately. As a refreshing change, today's blog contains some really lovely and unusual photographs.

Before I begin, I discovered something interesting when talking to Sayaka and Mark earlier. Apparently, I've been saying "kireee des ne" wrongly. You may remember that I told you that it meant "you look beautiful" and that I said it to both Nonchan and Sayaka on the day of the dinner party. As it turns out, I was actually saying "Kiri des ne". It's amazing how a simple mis-pronunciation can
mean that instead of telling them they looked beautiful, I actually called them both a cucumber. No wonder Nonchan looked at me slightly confused when I said it!

Today, we left Nagano behind and headed South for about 380 kilometres, to Hikone. We stopped a few times en-route, all of which were pre-planned. We had a Japanese Sat Nav to help/hinder us. However, when we tried to enter the name of the town into the Sat Nav, it told us it didn't exist. Mark quickly thought of a work around - he brought up Google on his mobile phone, searched for restaurants in that town, took the PHONE NUMBER of the top one listed and entered it into the Sat Nav. *bing*, it pinpointed it and displayed the route. Towns don't exist, it seems, but phone numbers do!

Our first stop along the journey was at Ina. The first two photographs, including one of Sayaka eating (that's 3 consecutive blog posts where I've included a photo of someone eating), were taken there. This was also the location of my sighting of the biggest wasp I've ever seen. Revelation: the wasps in Japan are as big as airships!

After our stop at Ina, we headed off towards our lunch destination - a quaint little area called Magome. This really was a beautiful little place, and most of the remaining photographs on today's blog post are from there. Photograph 3 is of, what I named, 'the windy pig' - a strange little hanging pig that was dangling from the top of a shop front. It looks a little bit like a pig with a leaf stuck up it's bottom (though, when you look close-up, they are actually feathers). When the wind blows, the propellor thing turns around. I've heard of 'wind farms', but this is ridiculous.

I will leave you to look through the rest of the photographs 4 to 14. I think that most of them speak for themselves. I loved the scenery and colours of that traditional little Japanese street. To make things interesting, there's also a silly photo of me in there, for you to spot.

Photograph 15 is of lunch (ok, so I do have one photo of food in this blog). It was a dish with rice at the bottom and fried chicken and vegetables on the top. Very nice indeed. As a side-point, I have to say that today is the first day that I have really found myself craving English food. The thought of a nice prawn sandwich washed down with a berry smoothie. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Photograph 16 is of a couple of masks, from a large collection of hanging masks at the restaurant that we ate lunch in. To me, it looks as if the one on the right has blown off and the one on the left has just got a whiff of it.

Photograph 17 is of the three of us, as we took in a spectacular mountain view.

After enjoying our lunch and walk, we headed off to Hikone. Arriving at our hotel, I took photograph 18 out of the window.

Tomorrow we are going to visit our friend Liz, who is currently teaching and living in Japan. Sayaka mentioned to me that it will be nice for me to have another English person to use my humour on. I reminded her that I don't have any humour - I'm a very serious, somber person… it's just that no-one takes what I say seriously!

Right, that's it from me for tonight. There is one thing from today that I haven't included in this blog, as I'm going to do a separate blog post about it tomorrow. You lucky people!

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Japan Day 8 - Read This Or The Dog Gets It!

On the third day of Starbucks Christmas, my good bruv gave to me: one sugar doughnut and a nice cup of hot chai tea.

Today was our final day in Nagano and it started off with some sensible reflection on what I have discovered so far. There is much to admire and be impressed with about Japanese society. There is hardly any crime. Over the last week I have only seen one police car. This is because, by committing crime, they would be bringing shame upon their family. Consequently, you feel safe where-ever you go and you can safely leave your bag on a seat and go up and order coffee. Everyone takes pride in their appearance and their work. Unemployment is low and there is no 'benefit culture' here - if someone loses their job they feel ashamed, so they go straight out to find another one.

To continue this subject further - one thing that bugs me when walking around back home, in Bexhill town centre, is the amount of rubbish bins overflowing with litter. Here in Japan, there are no litter bins. Does that mean that the streets are full of litter? No - completely the opposite. People take pride in their towns and take their rubbish home. Consequently, when you walk around the main shopping streets there isn't a piece of litter to be seen anywhere.

Ok, lets move on to the diary of the day, which mainly revolves around, yes, you guessed it, food. For lunch we met up with Esdras and ate ramen, a traditional Japanese noodle soup with a soft-boiled egg in the middle. This is one of Mark's favourite dishes and it was delicious (photograph 1). After enjoying our ramen, we headed to Starbucks, once again, to do a few hours of work to the background music of "I'm dreaming of a White Christmas". Photograph 2 shows the sugar doughnut and chai tea that I consumed.

After an afternoon of work, we went out to dinner with Sayaka's Mum and Dad for a final goodbye meal. It was great fun and we had a lot of laughs. It also gave me the opportunity to practice some Japanese, Ally style:

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh?" is "eh?" (they use that a lot, and I've been singing it in multiple voices, including suprano)
"Toki Doki, Ichy Nichy" is "sometimes….. 1 day" (yes, the English doesn't make sense - I've combined two separate phrases into one for the purposes of 'super-catchy-coolness'. Doesn't the Japanese version sound great!

Sayaka's parents also told me, in Japanese, that my souvenir, for coming to Japan, is my cold. So, I'd just like to put your minds at rest - don't worry, I will be bringing souvenirs home for all of you...

For this evening's meal, we went out to a Korean restaurant. I know what you're thinking at this point, and you're wrong. Lassie was not on the menu. However, there were a few unusual options. Before I begin on that, I must just tell you about my trip to the toilet (ok, stay with me on this one). After opening the door and walking into the closet (I can't read Japanese), I opened the door to the toilet and went inside. There I was greeted with what can only be described as a urinal for midgets with very long necks. I couldn't resist taking a photograph (photograph 3).

Right, now, back to our gastronomic festival of cow. As well as the regular cuts of beef, we ate tongue and organs such as the heart and intestines. All of this was brought to our table for us to cook on a small fire-heated grate in the middle of the table, and was washed down with a nice cold beer.

Whilst chewing on my intestine (that's the first time I've ever been able to say that!), I found myself picturing cows wandering the fields of Japan holding organ donor cards with the restaurant's name at the top. Incidentally, if you're wondering what it's like to eat cow intestine, go and pull the inner-tube out of your bicycle tyre, cut a bit off, dip it in barbecue sauce and stick it in your mouth. Quick tip - make sure you've got a puncture repair kit handy to put it all back together afterwards.

Now, I've mentioned before that Japanese people seem able to eat about 4 times their own body weight at every evening meal. Well, tonight was no exception. I haven't seen so much meat consumed since Takanohana, the Sumo Wrestler, visited an Atkins restaurant for an all-you-can-eat buffet (after a month of religious fasting).

Ok, lets go through the food and drink. Photograph 4 shows Sayaka's Dad with two pints of beer - one small one (mine) and one larger one (his). Photograph 5 is of him drinking his (larger) beer. Photograph 6 is of cow tongue, which is thin and slightly chewy. Photograph 7 is one of the normal cuts of beef - delicious. Photograph 8 shows the meat cooking in the middle of the table. Photograph 9 is of the raw meat dish that we ate WITHOUT cooking it. It was mixed with tomato and a small amount of chilli - delicious. Bicycle tyre at the ready, it's the intestine in photograph 10 (the yellow one).

As a break from the food, photographs 11 and 12 are of Mark and me and of Mark, me, Sayaka's Mum and Sayaka's Dad.

After we had stuffed ourselves stupid (seems to be a continuing theme of this trip), Sayaka's Mum and Dad decided that they hadn't quite had enough of my company. So, they suggested that we drive to another local place that served a more comprehensive menu of delicious desserts. How could we refuse? So, off we went.

After arriving at Coco's - the dessert restaurant owned by a clown (I made that bit up) - I ordered a banana pancake (photograph 13), Sayaka's Dad ordered a chocolate sundae (photo 14), Sayaka's Mum ordered a "green tea chocolate fondant" (photo 15) and Mark ordered a chocolate fondant (photo 16). I tried all of their desserts and they were delicious (I didn't let them try mine though - HAHAHAHA!!!!!) Oh, I forgot to say, photograph 13 also shows the origami rose and swan that I made out of the paper napkins and gave to Sayaka's Mum.

Right, that's about it from me for today. Tomorrow we head south on a road trip. Before I go, though, I must reveal that I tried a Japanese toilet properly for the first time today (no, I haven't been shitting on the bathroom floor all week). I thought I owed it to myself and my… handful… of followers to give it a go. At the start, it's quite strange and un-natural as the water is sprayed into your derriere. You find yourself chuckling slightly - firstly out of slight embarrassment at the thought of what is going on and secondly at the slight tickling sensation. Get your garden hose out and try it yourself - just make sure the neighbours are away and, for goodness sake, don't get frostbite!

To conclude - if you ever find yourself walking past a toilet door in Japan and you hear someone chuckling, they're either having their bottom sprayed or... they're reading my blog (or both… hmm, that's a weird thought!)

Good night.

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