what do you see?

Well we're back - maybe you didn't notice that we were even gone! We went to Hong Kong (and Macau) from Saturday to yesterday. It was very warm and humid, a few showers and a bit of sun too which was nice. Our plan was that we'd arrive back to find spring finally setting in in Sapporo, with not much snow left, this was unfortunately scuppered by a supposed "late winter storm" - basically a continuation of the never-ending Hokkaido winter. So when we landed yesterday afternoon it was "a 'cool' day with temperatures around zero degrees celsius", in the words of the Captain, Alan Taylor (!). The train plunged into the usual white-out blizzard on the way back and by this morning it looked like another 4 or 5 inches of fresh snow had fallen...
Anyway, the trip, must tell you about the trip. Later, I promise (then again that's what I always say...).

I had a quick dinner last night at Italia shokudo (also in the underground paradise of Apia) which I suppose means Italian Cantina. The chicken cutlet and rice set was good for the price and they were playing pretty decent reggae too...I know, not really very Italian, but who cares?

I forgot to mention yesterday that I fixed my homepage so it looks (almost) right in IE too.

Thank goodness for the Spring Equinox, celebrated (yesterday) in Japan with a public holiday! We had a relaxing day, mostly planning our upcoming trip.
On Saturday we ordered pizza from Strawberry Cones, which not only has probably the weirdest and most un-pizza-related name I can imagine, but actually also offers full, real, proper online ordering - yes, finally, I can do what I've wanted to do for years and not have to phone up for pizza and wonder what to say first ("I'd like to order pizza" just sounds too much like stating the obvious, in any language).

By the way, I haven't posted any pictures for a while, mainly because of the very sorry state of the city at the moment...as the snow melts it reveals all sorts of horrors, and what with all the grit and water, well, it's not a pretty sight. I'll save the pictures for the real springtime.

I've finally done it, I've redesigned my home page! It looks great in Firefox and I'm still working on a few tweaks for the nightmare that is Internet Explorer (should be done soon).

After the dream and "poem" entries recently, and a subsequent drop in visitor numbers, I decided it would be best to post some sensible entries for a while. So today I shall start by mentioning that we met for lunch, as is becoming traditional on Wednesdays, this time at the APIA Market Walk branch of Italian Tomato Cafe Jr. which has a pretty impressive line-up for its size. Actually, I don't know why it's called "Jr.", Junior I assume, as I've never seen a non-junior version(...I've just checked the official site and there are some in existence. So that explains it, but I'll leave this part of the entry anyway...). Anyway, the 700 yen pasta sets come with a croissant on the plate - I can't quite work if that's normal or not.

The streets are now at the "sherbet" stage, as it's known in Japanese - this is "sherbet" as in "sorbet" in (correct) British English. But unless you like eating grubby sorbet I'm not sure it's the best description. This is the time of year when horrific things happen to innocent pedestrians - like being covered by a sheet of muddy water by a passing car, attempting to traverse a wide area of slosh as you try and beat the traffic light or having your foot plunge unexpectedly over a foot into soft wet snow if you stray slightly off the beaten path. But of course on a positive note it's also the time for some welcome warmth and people do seem to be looking decidedly more cheerful and are making the most of being able to order iced-drinks again.

For the first time in what seems like living memory, the 7 day forecast is showing + temperatures every day! Unbelievable. I've opened a window today, which is equally unbelievable.
And that's all I have to write for today's fascinating post I'm afraid.

Got up unprecedentedly early today, for a Saturday. So needless to say I've been wasting my time this morning, reading blogs. I'm ashamed to say I've got kind of addicted to reading Dan Oakner and his group of friends, mainly because of the amazing insight it gives into the lives and minds of people like them, and perhaps, just a little, because I suspect I used to be like them too.
Tonight, we're definitely going to go out for yakiniku - we tried last weekend, but there was such a long wait (18 groups of people ahead of us) that we gave up and went to La Pausa instead - a little boring, but essential as we were too hungry to trawl around for somewhere new.

OK, own up! Who did a Google search for "what do wotsits contain inside them?" and ended up here? Incidentally, did you ever find your answer? I'm interested now!

By the way, the post from yesterday was not a poem, but the contents of a piece of paper that I used in a lesson recently. Looking at things like that later always confuses me.

The roads are slushy now.
There are many puddles.
"Dig in!" "Help yourself."
Food from
all over the world

How does it taste?
brick
Could you give me a discount?

We just had lunch at Hanamaru, a kaitenzushi place, also on the 6th floor of Stellar Place. 'Twas good, with a pleasingly rowdy performance from the sushi chefs in the middle.

Want to hear my dream from last night? It included Kim Jong Il (of North Korea fame) getting married, although he looked very much like an old lady, wearing a long red overcoat and carrying a plastic bag. I was watching from my window in a house I used to live in (Sawbridgeworth). He was presented with a refrigerator as a gift and drove off, presumably on honeymoon, in some kind of 50s American car. The fridge was later loaded onto a battered truck by various officials who were weakly celebrating (with helium balloons). Unfortunately, later they found his car had skidded off the road in the snow, and he and his new bride were missing...Christine and I, as witnesses to this whole affair were rather understandably in danger and in fact a rather terse female official attempted - unsuccessfully to get our passports (using the ruse of playing a guessing game).

Well, I s'pose it means that we should always try to pay back everything we owe, to Caesar, or to God. And as everything is God's...we should try to give back everything. So all our lives should be for Him. Which isn't easy by any means.

On the hip-hop, aka rap thing, I say read this entry from Wikipedia, which is well in-depth. If you want to sample some of Roots Manuva's fine wares, try his offical site - follow the Discography link and you can listen to clips from various records.

Well, the first main shock was that I walked out of the building and actually felt warmth for the first time in a l o n g while. 8 degrees C here, that's Plus you know. And that's almost Hot you know.

It took me longer to get to the tax office than to actually do the tax - just waited a couple of minutes, handed the paperwork over at a table, waited for it to be checked and stamped and that was it. Well, I have to physically pay the tax now of course, but the worst is over. You might think it's not worth doing all this, but Caesar is Japanese in this case, and so "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's".

Yesterday: the Sunday morning service at Grace Church was good, followed by 2 baptisms too. We spent some time after lunch catching up with the dreaded cleaning tasks around the aparto, and then in the evening went to Brian Brew - an Irish pub (around Minami-3) which was really nice. It's small, but it has proper pay-at-the-bar service (called "cash-on-delivery" here, which almost makes sense I think) and serves decent, authentic pints of Guinness and Kilkenny. Very nice, and will maybe stave off some of the cravings for home that I get from time to time.
Today, I make the Tax Run. Full report soon.

Did I ever mention Roots Manuva, best thing in British hip-hop, ever? Well anyway, I've been listening to his 3rd album, "Awfully Deep", which I got the other day, and it's good. It's not often I can really get excited about much new music these days, but this is different. His last album kind of became a soundtrack to driving around Kitami and Abashiri last year for me, and this one looks like it will become a Sapporo spring-time record. Try it if you can.
And apart from that advertising, not much else from me at the moment. I'm off to sit in various Doutors in a bit (not without reason I assure you).

As part of the 3 year thingy I'm also creating some alternative stylesheets for the blog...if you have a browser that lets you switch styles (so that's not IE6 unfortunately), then you'll be able to use them. For example, on Firefox, just go to View->Page Style and select the style you want.

Today is Hina Matsuri in Japan - literally "Princess Festival" but usually called Girl's Day, or sometimes known as Doll's Day in English. This is celebrated by families in the hope that the daughters will grow up healthy and strong. People set up a multi-stepped shrine in the house, with dolls representing the royal family from the Heian period (aout 1300 years ago I think), with the emperor and empress on the top step and various ladies, musicians and attendants on the other steps. There are some good pictures of various styles of hina dolls and other info on Judy Shoaf's page here.

If you're reading this, you might notice that I changed the design very slightly...actually I spent a long time doing this as I changed the coding a lot, and this page is now satisfyingly W3C compliant, and uses brand spanking new CSS throughout. Anyway, it's all in honour of my 3rd anniversary of blogging, which will be on March 12th (here's the first entry I wrote). Any ideas for what you'd like as a special anniversary entry?

After a freezing night, down to -10 or 11 last night, it's sunny, and dare I say, almost feeling like spri- no, I daren't say it actually. Too soon. Anyway, it's a nice day.

By the way, and alas, Globalchat is closing down, so no more lessons there after this week...

(if you saw the blog earlier today, sorry about the MASSIVE text, I set it at 140pt instead of 14...oops)