One of the must-dos in Kansai is to go to a Hanshin Tigers baseball game at home (Koshien Stadium). The fans have a reputation for being louder than any other team's, and are considered a little uncouth by their rivals. (Although they would be considered very polite in Australia). All the more reason to go! And now you can add a few more exciters into the mix: - it's getting towards the end of the season, and the Tigers are top of the table. - they're playing their arch-rivals, the Tokyo-based Yomiuri Giants, who are second on the table. - your mother-in-law is a crazed Tigers fan, and tells you you're handsome because you managed to get hold of tickets. I don't know much about baseball, it seems like a game of "Almost, almost, oh. Never ... read more

So, the weather in England was not great. Still, the weather in England is generally not great and it's something we stoically tolerate (and secretly enjoy pretending not to mind). We tend not to have earthquakes or tornadoes or poisonous animals (only one poisonous snake). But we do get floods, and Cheltenham (my hometown, aka The 'Nam) was very recently without running water as the nearby waterworks and surrounding countryside were well and truly submerged. The weather gods were thankfully briefed before my visit and things were back to normal for the return of the not particularly prodigal son. My first evening back was marked with a full roast chicken dinner at Mog and Beezer's (and for which Beezer cannot be thanked enough). It's one of the things the English do incredibly well (along with comedy, ... read more

I have been remiss at keeping you all updated, apologies. The blogs take a while to put together (partly because I'm so wordy and then anal about my prose). Going home and hearing appreciative things about them- as well as complaints for their prolonged absence- has propelled me back into the saddle. Mitsu and I rarely get days off together, in between me working a few Sundays and her invariably working the ones I don't. Or it seemed that way for a while. One of the rare ones we had was dedicated to a "bi' o' Kulcha" as we checked out the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Modern Art. I'd had the building recommended by someone at work- it's by perhaps the most famous Japanese architect, Tadao Ando. He is well-known for designing impressive but perhaps bleak ... read more

My friend Sarah is over from home and Mitsu is up in Tokyo on training for a month, so I had a double good reason to finally make it up to the nation’s capital. I took the day off on Saturday to give myself a three day weekend, we booked our shinkansen (bullet train) tickets and headed north. This was my first time out of Kansai since I’ve been in Japan!! True to form, we missed the first train. Someone made a mistake on the train times, we only realised what had happened once we saw that our train wasn’t on the departures list any more. I blamed it on Sarah at the time, but it was clearly my fault. Never mind, we found out that we could catch another train at no extra cost, ... read more

Greetings. I'm stuck at home with a most unwelcome and decidedly unpleasant cold. Boo hoo. Other than that, though, things are pretty peachsome. Fings wot 'as bin goin' on are as follows: Kaiyukan...aka Osaka Aquarium. This place is well worth a visit. Mitsu and I went last Friday. Getting there took a little longer than we'd anticipated. We got on the tube and were having one of those conversations where you don't notice much around you. After a while it eventually dawned on us that we should have arrived by now. So we checked and while we were on the right line, we were heading the wrong way. Oops. The Aquarium is relatively new, and in a very funkadelic building on the edge of the city in a sort of port area. There's also another ... read more