Selected quotes from Atheism for Lent 2018 study
8 years ago
Christmas was a few days ago now and I thought I should post a bit about how I spent the holidays and how I intend to spend the rest of them.
My holidays started on the 23rd. Well at least, that was a day off Lok had in the run up to Christmas. December 23rd is the Emperor's Birthday and is therefor a National Holiday here in Japan. We took the time to bake Sweet Potato cake's for Lok's Colleagues and have Shabu Shabu (a kind of hot pot dish that involves cooking very thin slices of meat in a pot of boiling stock for a very short amount of time). It worked out pretty well even though we are sure we prepared it wrong. Still it was a chance to eat a lot of meat, which we don't get to do often.
The next day it was back to work (well not for me) as Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are just another holiday over here. In the evening though we were able to eat a few things we'd been missing. Treating ourselves to food stuffs that are more difficult to find over here such as mozzarella, cheddar cheese, balsamic vinegar and cured ham. I was surprised how much I missed cheddar cheese.
On Christmas Day, as luck would have it, there was a Christmas Party being held that I was invited to and Lok had to attend through work. It was mostly for the benefit of a group of children who all get help from a teacher we happen to know. So we ate some Japanese style Curry, played a few games (..badly), and there was cake (bonus). There was also a couple of children's stories that were read out during the party. What was interesting (to me) about these was the methods used. One was read out by someone wearing an apron. Using said apron and numerous felt figures in the pouch in order to tell a much more visual story. The other method was essentially an over sized picture book that had been placed into a wooden frame. This was made to look like a small scale theatre. I don't know why there things stuck me as interesting, I guess I just found it an interesting way to make things a bit more visual.
On boxing day I had to work. I had a lesson in the afternoon. Fortunately it went better than expected.
That brings us almost up to now. We are currently both on holiday for about 9 days (including weekends) and are planning to use the time to do some much needed cleaning. We have already done 2 rooms in the last 2 days. Its going to be a long hard job I think, the windows of this place are filthy and may not have seen a good clean in years. And the cupboards are full of junk. Hopefully we will be able to get out a bit as well but we are conserving money for a later holiday at the moment so we probably won't get far. Also its been very cold so hiding in a heated sitting room is much more tempting.
This isn't anything like any other Christmas I've ever had, but it hasn't bothered me very much which is good.
As the title suggests we haven't been up to much here in Japan this last few weeks. This is partly as we went to Tokyo a few weeks ago and are planning to go to Osaka and Okayama in a few weeks (with Mother in Law). So we don't really want to stray too far as transport is expensive. We have managed to get out to both Fukuchiyama and Omiya again though as they are both close by.
The trip to Fukuchiyama was mostly an excuse to eat donuts and KFC.... we had cravings. We also went to Fukuchiyama Castle which was nice, well it looked nice from the outside but it turned out to be little more than a small museum. This wouldn't have been a bad thing only it was Japanese language only so I couldn't actually read anything. We were able to get up to the top of the castle and take a few pictures of the surrounding (small) City.
These day trips have also been a chance to stock up on food and clothes for the cold season, which has started in earnest. Still no snow though which is surprising allot of the locals.
I've also managed to have a couple more English lessons, which is nice but I'm still unsure as to whether I'm finding enough of them yet.
.... Its now time for a small Movie Review....
We got round to renting "the Mummy 3" yesterday. It sucked. Big surprise really as we both figured it would. The script was terrible and contained some truly bad lines such as "the Yak Yakked" and another that I shan't mention out of context. The story was just a rehash of the first. The caste were mostly irritating. The special effects were over the top and mostly unnecessary. But worst of all (for me) was the action scenes. They just lacked any of the rawness that was so good in the first film. In the first "the Mummy" the fighting scenes staring Brendan Fraser arguably made the film. They were gritty battles that were less about style and more about hitting the guy harder and getting hit less. Flash forward again to "the Mummy 3" and you find that the inclusion of the Chinese characters has been used to try slot in more stylish fight scenes like you'd expect from Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh. But it just seems tacked on, and if I wanted Kung Fu I'd watch a Chinese film.
It's a shame really as it wouldn't have been difficult for them to put out a bad film that at least got the action right. I could end by concluding that even though it had so many faults it was still an entertaining way to spend two hours (like I might conclude of Indy 4). But I can't. I'm glad I watched it, but it was painful to watch, and there are so many better bad movies to waste 2 hours on. Leave it on the shelf unless your a "the Mummy" fan that just doesn't care how badly it sucks.
.....
Well that enough for now. If I don't post again for a few weeks (I will try though) -
Merry Christmas (to those that celebrate it) and a Happy New Year to all.
I didn't expect to add another of these so soon, but I literally just saw this one and had to share it.
And.....
I couldn't resist putting up a youtube link to some odd Japanese adverts I have to put up with here. Some of them are charming, some of them are funny, some plain odd, and others just don't seem to make any sense. The following advert is one of the later. Its an advert for Processors (the ones that give computers the ability to number crunch).....
I think is time for another update on this blog thing again so here goes.
I think I have been up to two things of note since my last update - one was a trip to a restaurant to try out a local delicacy and the other was a trip to Tokyo to erm..... well it was more situational really.
Starting with the easy topic we went to Amanohashidate and had some Crab. It's a pretty famous thing to go eat around here and can be quite expensive as they are kinda tight with the fishing quota's for it. I don't feel like going into detail (as it was a few weeks ago now and I talk about food enough as it is) but I will say this. It was a bit much....
This picture doesn't show it well but essentially we were served grilled crab, crab stew, crab soup, crab custard like savoury dish, crab sashimi (raw crab (actually very nice)), there was also a few other non crab things and well..... I might have missed something. It all started very well with some simple grilled crab and sashimi but then it just got too much. I gave up before the end not so much because I was full but just because I couldn't face any more crab. And yet this kinda meal is a very popular treat here....
I don't really think it works, too much of a good thing, far too much. But it was good and an experience even though it was REALLY expensive.
Oddly the best thing about the short trip to Amanohashidate for crab wasn't the crab but was instead the walk afterwards. We walked across the "stairway to heaven" land bridge bit. It made for a very nice walk and I suspect we will do that again.
More recently (last week) we went to Tokyo as Lok had a conference there. This gave me a chance to wander around and well.... geek out a bit. First day I went to Ginza to see the Sony building again. It was nice.... lots of stuff I couldn't afford, some very thin TVs (OLED for those in the know), many MP3 players, blah. It was good and all but its just a giant Sony advert and they don't really disguise the fact. Also if you look at tech blogs enough there is nothing new to you (or me).
Wandering around Ginza a bit I stumbled across a very odd art museum. It was free, gave me tea, and I think it was trying to support some charity but there wasn't really anyone to explain it to me. What was perhaps the weirdest thing about it was the art. It was lots of pictures of Planets and Solar Systems using lots of colours. It looked very like Computer Generated stuff till you got up close and realised it was painted. This made it somewhat impressive but most of the pieces weren't really of interest to me. I did like the last one I saw but was unable to get a postcard or anything of it.... It kinda had a man (read tiny speck) on a mountain looking over a huge barren landscape with the moon in the sky and stuff. I'm not great at describing this kinda thing so I'll leave it there. But it was odd and a nice little find.
The next day I went to Tokyo National Museum where there was a very good exhibition on Sri Lanka's Buddhist civilisation from 500bc to present. I new nothing about it and left feeling I knew a little. So it was quite good, very bilingual, informative, with lots of pretty things to look at. It was a special exhibit but I'm glad I paid the extra to see it as the rest of the museum was just a collection of Japanese artifacts shown of more as individual art pieces then any kinda informative collaboration.
The second half of the day was spent at Akihabira. In like one gigantic store. For like 2 hours. Hehehehehe. It was filled to the brim with electronics and it was just so very nice to see everything in the one place. It could really make me get back into building computers and such though. Its odd but just having everything in the one place at a reasonable price makes things so much more tempting to buy then having to trawl through endless web stores just to get what you think your looking for. It was also nice because it also contained almost all the kinda items that you'd go to Akihabira for in one place which is much nicer to go around then the district itself. It didn't however contain the kinda manga that make Italians turn pale and stagger out of shops in shock saying "there's just so much.......". Just meeting that Italian was worth the trip.
My final day in Tokyo was a lot less productive. I looked around a couple of districts but never really found anything of interest or what I was looking for. Also got a fair bit of shopping done but don't think I got anything in the end.
On the way back to Yosano we stopped in Kyoto for a short while to see some of the Autumn leaves. This is another popular Japanese past time and shows a real appreciation for Nature's Beauty and for the Seasons in general.
I think that's a nice note to leave it and I'm fed up of typing too.
For more pictures look under the areas I have talked about.
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