Big news!

I am going to be a father... it's beginning to sink in now, a little... lots of things to think about and plan for... busy times ahead...

2007 end of year round up

Yes, yes, it's very late and all that, but here it is.. a little round up of things that amused me during the last few months of 2007... here we go:





First of all, I managed my first 9 letter word in Anagrammatic, a nice word game that is a little like Countdown, but without the maths...





Next, I got my high score on Nanaca Crash, a fun little game which starts with a pervert being hit by a schoolgirl's bike...



... and ends with the pervert between the breasts of a different schoolgirl...




Penultimately, Ewan hangs his head in disappointment as Scotland fail to qualify for Euro 2008 thanks to a scandalous decision a minute from time, gifting the Italians a winning goal... a few days later, England crash out in lacklustre fashion...






And then on New Year's Eve, my sister in law watched the "New Year Pop Music Countdown Extravaganza", or as I call it, "one shit song after another"...

September Update

September began like most months for me - with a bloody funny TV show. This time it was one in which various women from various backgrounds tackled an obstacle course, with mixed results. Naturally, there were professional sportswomen and veterans who do this sort of thing for fun, but their runs were pretty run of the mill. The real fun was in the amateurs, and especially the amateurs who were SHIT. Such as the large lady below.



You're probably thinking the same thing I did.. "not a fucking chance, love!"




And you'd be right... woeful jump, even for a big lass..



Ahh, now I like this photo.. somehow I managed to capture the precise moment when the girl's face met the cold hard wood of the log. With a better camera I'd be tempted to enter it in a competition..



You can probably guess which one I chose..



A bit of a house party at Ewan's, one of the highlights being Roald's boardgame forfeit - eating a natto roll..



A snap of my dad's favourite shop in Kurume, taken from my wife's car..



The lovely Miwae returned to her old workplace to show off her little baby to us.. I could almost pick him up with one hand..



I went to a great bar called Cottonfields in Fukuoka with a chap called Peter. Our wives met eachother on the Japanese site Mixi, and we were soon out on the jag..

Fantastic bar, Cottonfields.. over 600 bottled beers from around the world, including, shock horror!, my favourite beer in the world, Theakston's Old Peculier!

For her health, my wife ate some pickled onions with her curry, and this was her reaction...

Tasted better than the name...

August Update

August began with two middle aged men on TV building a train set...



Apparently the show was well over an hour long... much of the ten or so minutes I watched were of the guy above growling at his train to go faster..




A few days later I found myself working at Kurume Youme Town, and with Kaori suffering from a touch of the hiccups.. a folktale from my childhood reared it's head, and before she could say "yatta!" I had slipped a cold key down between her shoulder blades and cured her. Here she is with the said key.
(note - putting my hand down a pretty girl's blouse was purely in the interests of Science)..



A few days later, and to local haunt Zawatami, for a few beers with Dunstan, Gerard, Roald and Ewan. We all worked together at Kurume Ekimae back in 2004 so it was something of a reunion for us, and it was a damn good night, despite the lack of pouring prowess of the waitress..



Another amusing TV show. By the way, if any young girls are reading this and thinking about going into the TV presenting game, be aware that you will most likely be surrounded by lots of men, probably men dressed as condoms, and they will take great delight in slapping you or tying you up or pushing you into pits of coloured water... still, this show was really memorable for one guest:

THE GUY WHO PLAYED MONKEY IN MONKEY MAGIC!

Later in the week, and to Yanagawa, where the lovely Hirono was enjoying her last day at Nova. Great English, a sharp dresser and wonderful to work with (as is Saki, wearing her trademark red "furip-u furop-usu")..

I watched quite a lot of TV in August... this was a great game, like Mario Party... contestants had to jump around the markers of a giant clock, trying not to get twatted by the vast hands..

Whilst at my inlaws' family graveyard, I happened upon a cicada shedding it's skin... kind of creepy..

Another party, this time it was Eloise's farewell to Nova thing... pictured are the little fingers of Brian Wilson. Believe it or not, his fingers are unbent... the ends of the little fingers jut out at angles, due to a rare Scandinavian genetic condition, apparently..

And finally.. a leading historian once said that our most poignant question was "what ever happened to Catholic England?"

Surely that is nothing next to "What ever happened to Jo-Ann's students?"

The blogger returns...

Ah, it's been a while... more than two months in fact. With no job presently due to the farcical end of Nova, I find myself with ample time to spend on my blog... though it took a verbal kick in the arse from Jon Spiker too. So, Jon, and for anyone else out there who reads this, here we go...

With two months having passed, I think a photo recap for August and September is due...

In July...

I realised, after 3 and a bit years of sitting at the train station, that every day I stare at the word "shite"...

A HUUUUUUUGE spider that was in one of the classrooms in Yanagawa! My goodness...

Gerard and Chand, as we wend our way to Omuta on a sultry Tuesday...

Amusing TV show with latex and make-up..

Ahh, yet more cool TV, featuring one of the most prolific non-Japanese comedians on TV, Bobby Oregon. Entering into an eating contest in what looked rather like a You Me Town, poor Bobby had no idea that the old lady sat a few people down from him was none other than "Gall Bladder", legendary eating champion, with a ton of prosthetics and make up on!

To give Bobby some credit, he did rather quickly seem to sense that something was amiss... the frail octogenerian was putting away 4 plates for every one of his... even the planted daughter in the audience's claim that "mother has a good appetite" had a suspicious ring to it...

(by the way, yes, in the top right hand corner of the screen there is a Japanese man with a beard and wizard's hat.. he was the host. Why as a beardy wizard? Why not.)

Even so, Bobby, a supermarket full of kids to egg you on, and all you could managed was 10 plates? I could eat 10 plates right now. I certainly could if an 83 year old woman was handing me a beatdown with 54 empty plates piled infront of her, for pride if nothing else...

When it was announced that the victorious grandma was actually Gall, Bobby snatched the photo board from her and tried to beat her with it (sadly I wasn't quick enough to capture that little gem). So you'll have to make do with Bobby's forced grin just beforehand...

A very pleasant weekend...

My wife and I rarely have two days off together in a row, so this weekend was rather special. We had some great food, great conversation, and -shock! horror! - went bowling twice!

Those of you reading this that know me know that I love bowling... and some of you know that my wife doesn't. Well, my wife didn't. She agreed to come to Sports Garden on a whim, and lo and behold she seems to have caught the bowling bug.

The highlight of the sessions was me making a 200 on the nose, shown in the below video... 3 strikes in the tenth, pressure from a camera... somehow I was Ben Gammon and not Ben Gammon's fool.

I only wish that Linh Dang was still in Kurume, so that I could wave the score sheet under her nose and generally pose in her direction...

So will Yoko keep bowling? I hope so.. she had a lot of fun, made some good shots and had her competitive streak tickled throughout...

Stung!

Imagine my horror - I walk into the instructors' room to find a CD player blaring out bagpipe music at a high volume...

I had been the victim of a sting, the brainchild of Ewan Macrae and his lackey, Saki...

Did I cut the CD in half with cackhanded scissors? No - I was laughing too hard at the oxymoronic sentence "bagpipe classics" on the face...

Crazy Japanese Eating Contest on TV..

Comedians in Japan do a lot of crazy things... it must be a hard life for them, always appearing on TV shows, commercials and posters. Living in Tokyo, dressing in ridiculous clothes, acting like wankers in public... and now eating until you almost die.

Yes, the other night saw yet another tart slice of Japanese TV, during which 4 comedians had to eat a succession of different plates of food within a set time limit (the time it takes for a plate to make a circuit of a kaiten zushi belt), with the last comedian eating being able to take home 8万円　(80,000 yen).

My money was on large lad "Banana Man", but as shown below he was done by the 15th plate...

The remaining 3 contestants were still in it by the coming of the 25th plate, and it was a picture to see their faces as the largest dumplings in the world waddled towards them!

It was all too much for the effeminate chap dressed as a drummer boy... once they were all back in the studio, the women inset in the top right hand corner of the screen chastised him for not eating the dumpling, giving him a hefty smack around the ear...

I was quite intrigued to see who would eventually win, but something came up and I couldn't watch the end. Whoever it was, all I can say is that anytime these sissy berks in their pastel shirts want to have a real contest they can come down to kyushu and take on me, Gerard, Dunstan and Jon's Rie ANYTIME...

New Plaza Beer Hall

With a free evening all round, we headed to the beer hall of the New Plaza Hotel in Kurume for 飲み放題(nomihoudai) and 食べ放題(tabehoudai), "all-you-can-drink" and "all-you-can-eat". In attendance were Yoko's two schoolfriends, Hitomi and Ako, as well as Hitomi's boyfriend Hiroaki, and of course Yoko and myself. All in all it was good, though the atmosphere of the hall was more "wedding reception in a working man's club" than "stylish hotel in Kurume". The beer was fair, the food was too, and at only 2500yen a head it wasn't to be sniffed at.



Hiroaki started off at a blistering pace with his beer, then changed to shochu and slipped down a couple of gears...



Ako laughing at one of my wife's witticisms...



Yoko enjoying the cheese filled spring rolls...



A classic moment... a drunken businessman attempts to fill two pitchers with beer from the tap, and succeeds in getting two pitchers of head... but just when I thought there was no hope for the beer-pullers of Japan:



... Hitomi shows how it should be done with a perfect pint.

Fatal car crash in Omuta...

Having a look at a Japanese news site today, one of the stories was of a car crash in Omuta... the story can be found here:

http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20070704p2a00m0na008000c.html

the Japanese version is here:

http://www.mainichi-msn.co.jp/shakai/jiken/news/20070704k0000e040039000c.html

Terrible... 3 people losing their lives, and two of them only 16 and 17... deepest condolences to the families...

Junko's leaving party...

Little Junko out of Amagi left the company at the end of June, and was thus given a little send off at local favourite, Dragon Cafe... it was a fun night, with lots of people drinking too much, not a few red faces (Hirono!) and forgotten bags... some of the players, in order of appearance:

Chand was a master of ceremonies of sorts, and dispensed witticisms and advice with equal aplomb, though he did unfortunately pick up a bit of food poisoning along the way... Eloise, on the other hand, seemed content to consider the merits of the grub...

Saki's boyfriend (with chopsticks in mouth) and Eloise's boyfriend, Yama, who put away a tidy amount of ale, with a smoking Ewan...

Gerard and wife Naoko, the latter looking on with her "here he goes again" face as G launches into another anecdote...

Omuta manager Kanade "the sponge" Nakanishi, so named due to her prowess with alcohol, and new staff member Eri...

Staff members Emi and Hitomi, working at Kurume and Tosu respectively (and a quick cameo from yours truly)..

The guest of honour herself, Junko, and Omuta staff member Rie..

Nishijin Yuko, pouting like it's the start of shimebi...

Yuko and Kurume Kaori, at the tail end of a stupendous joke...

Get togethers like this are always fun - the only downside is that they are usually because someone is leaving... much like Ben and others from the area, Junko, it has been great working with you, and you will be missed very much. Good luck in the future! もがんばって下さい！