Chiba koen (our local park)

What better way to enjoy the day after (and on about 5 hours sleep) than a wander to the local park to have a row on the lake...

Jack got in the steering seat and was intent on hitting a duck or second to that, other rowers! He was actually rather good and he only teased the hardy ducks.





It was the start of the cherry blossom season (which lasts ~1-2 weeks) and some of the eager fans were having their hanami (picnic/party/drinks under cherry blossom trees) even though it wasn't really warm enough to be doing it just yet but I don't blame them, the blossom is pretty special.

British invasion - Part 1

Andy and Vicky in Japan!
The evening started off fairly acceptably - a few 300yen beers at the usual haunt in Shibuya...


However, we moved on to a 'club' which was more like a living room, where they served a drink that was 90% proof


It was also a birthday celebration of some kind so they were dishing out cake - Jack and Dan shared a piece in their own romantic way, nice.


It all seemed to hit Dan when we moved on to karaoke, Ben seemed amazingly compus mentis on the other hand.


Andy is awesome at karaoke, he really gives himself to his performances.


Dan goes for one final attempt to rise from the dead and sing, it was unsuccessful.

School trip to the Aquarium...

This girl figured me out in about two minutes and decided I as fair game for a biting soon after. Once biting me lost its shine she took to either holding my hand or trying to pull my trousers down.

This is May's posse, despite winning the guess how many penguins quiz I still think they were effectively a 'B' team....

My bludz....

Minori, one of the best school managers and favorite colleagues, and the biter, and a boy on my team who spoke quite good english but kept getting 'angry' and 'hungry' mixed up. So he spent the last 45 minutes telling me he was either seething or starving.

The beach in the surrounding park, quite similar to Weston beach in that the water looked like crap and was a bit smelly, but different in that there were jelly fish, and hobos living on the waterfront.

It's what you think it is.... a make your own candy floss machine. One of the teachers with us stuck his hand in and nearly lost a finger due to his greed.

As befits tradition Dan 'BrO' Leary' and me grindin' on a toy.

Cooking lesson - spring recipe

In March, there is Hina Matsuri (girl's festival). This involves a set of Japanese dolls being set-up in one of the rooms at home on a set of red display steps, and food offerings (usually 'rice cakes') are made to them for good luck. On the actual day itself, mothers and daughters usually make Chirashi Zushi, which is a kind of sushi that is eaten on special occasions such as birthdays and festivals.

This is the chirashi zushi - because the festival is at the start of spring, the dish is very colourful. In this there is rice, eel, prawns, pink ginger, shredded japanese omelette, nori (seaweed) and leaves and stems from the rape plant.


We also had a pink (for girls) tomato soup - made from tomatoes and dashi (Japanese fish stock)


This is tempura made from beansprouts, kombu (another seaweed), and these teeny tiny sardines. Apparently the key to a good tempura batter is to barely stir it (we hatch to ditch the first load as I stirred it and it turned into a gloopy glue-like substance) and to use very cold water or even drop an ice-cube in briefly whilst you coat the ingredients.


This was pudding - sakura mochi (cherry blossom rice cake). This is particular to this time of year and consists of a salted cherry blossom leaf wrapped around a 'cake' of anko (sweetened red beans) and a layer of sweet sticky rice. It was certainly something new to my palette and the leaf was extremely fragrant, but in a strange way I really enjoyed it.

Hittin' da slopes (skiing in Nagano)

Jack and I got up super-early on the Saturday morning to get the 5:30 (!!) train to get to Shinjuku for 7am but we were confident that it would be worth it for some Japanese skiing action. Any train at that time on a Saturday in the UK would surely be quite quiet with unfortunate souls that work ungodly hours or people on the less-attractive side of the night before. Not in Japan. The train was rammed with either young people and their snowboards, or chirpy middle-aged and older passengers all tooled-up for a day's hiking.

Each of them was more smug than the last

We arrived in good time and after navigating through the hoards of Japanese students and twentysomethings all ready for a day's slope action, Kaori located our coach and we settled back for our 5 hour jaunt along the Japanese highways. After a couple of hours, we stopped at a motorway services, Jack and I were pretty excited (I'm sad to say) to see what the place had to offer - see below.

It as like a rubber/fish disc with edamame inside it, an interesting prospect but pretty grim for a coach journey
To Jack's disappointment, there were no Ginster's pies or any kind of sausage rolls, but there were these things which were like soft, rubbery prawn-crackers with sesame seeds and edamame. Jack also had an interesting octopus thing on a stick!

Our delightful coach...
The guys behind us had clearly got up at the crack of dawn too...






This was our awesome accomodation...
Yes, it does look a bit like something from The Shining!


Jack limbering up

you can't teach style like that

Mark, Kaori and Jack geared-up and ready to go

you're either born with it or you're not







I pretty much owned the hill by the end of the first day


Mark took a nice tumble on his snowboard, hitting his left eye. What he hoped would come up as a nice shiner, only coloured as a couple of black lines like some thickly applied eyeliner. However hard his pose it, it was the gayest black eye ever!

Dinner time - Jack gave us all (priceless) commemorative ET necklaces

Dinner was nabe - a large pot with stock in, then they brought over a large plate with raw pork, dumplings, vegetables and tofu which we cooked in the pot, which we had with rice. It was really good wholesome stuff.


Day 2: enjoying the lift ride










Jack and Mark hired ski-bikes - it was second-nature to Jack after his youth of mountain-biking and he was bombing it down the slopes.These things were so awesome, best discovery of the weekend behind my skiing ability



PLAYAZ

I took on a blue run prematurely and over-turned and clipped out of my skis and couldn't get the blighters back on so had to walk down to a flatter part. I felt a little unsteady and couldn't understand why, and then the boys told me to look down...



They're really keen on their snowboarding in Japan, even wearing little dinosaur suits to do it!


After our final run, we hit the pancake hut before taking our skis back and getting the coach. This was their 'special' - ice-cream, bananas, strawberries, chocolate sauce and cream - beautifully modelled by Kaori...


Japan is awesome. FACT>