<![CDATA[A Gaijins guide to getting lost - Blog]]>

<![CDATA[A Gaijins guide to getting lost - Blog]]>Tue, 15 May 2012 04:45:30 -0800Weebly<![CDATA[The water museum]]>Sun, 13 May 2012 07:07:46 -0800http://gettinglostinjapan.weebly.com/2/post/2012/05/the-water-museum.html

The water musuem

Actually I have been looking for a reason to make my blog a little more high-brow. Sometimes I wonder what other people think of my intelligence. I like to make comments that seem dumb intentionally. For instance, i wrote a small comment on a friends facebook photo. It is mothers day in Japan today and the photo was of a lady and baby. In her notes she wrote "this is me and my mother". I wrote "which one is you?", but she thought it was a serious question. There have been many an instance such as this in my life, although I admit now that when I asked my friend what I.O.U stood for, sadly I meant it.
So here I get a rare chance to show the brains behind the machine and discuss clever stuff, in this case art. The above picture is of one of the art museums I went to on my holidays. It is a water themed piece. You have to take your shoes of as you enter and building is basically a large concrete space with little water fountains scattered about the floor, but they are not powerfull fountains. As you walk around these globules of water appear at your feet. There must be a slight gradient within the building as the water starts moving about and snaking off to the centre of the room, like its alive. It was a neat trick, but I have no idea what it meant.

]]><![CDATA[James bond museum]]>Sun, 13 May 2012 06:33:00 -0800http://gettinglostinjapan.weebly.com/2/post/2012/05/james-bond-museum.htmlI went to naoshima for my golden week break an I was able to find time to vanquish my enemy the green mask man. He thought he might defeat me but James bond always gets his man. Our final conversation before his demise was this,
Me: looks like you have got me masked man. I am green with envy
Green masked man: ah! Even though you know your end is near you still pretend to be brave.
Me: it is not I who pretends. I wear not the mask.
Green masked man: indeed. My true identity intrigues you does it not bond. Then let me finally reveal my true self to you. It is I the wine seller from the market.
(I do a double back flip kick and punch him so that he falls off the edge of a cliff. I look down and he has caught his tongue on a rock and he is hanging from it)
Green masked man: help me bond
Me: You can hold your liquor sir, but your licker wont hold you!
Green masked man: nooooooooooo
And then I walk away smugly as he plummets to his doom.
I so love James bond. There was a James bond museum on naoshima among the arty ones. Its a place worth checking out.

]]><![CDATA[poison flavoured curry]]>Mon, 07 May 2012 06:50:06 -0800http://gettinglostinjapan.weebly.com/2/post/2012/05/poison-flavoured-curry.htmlJust finished cooking one of my Monday currys. I burned the garlic while i was washing beans that I don`t know go well with curry. I then added onions to the part fried beans which I part fried before part frying the eggplant. The next stage was to add the water and curry stock. I usually add beer and honey for extra flavor but there was no honey left so I added ketchup and stirred in chocolate covered biscuit snacks. I dont know if you can die from curry related injuries but I suppose when Yoko comes back from her sign language class today we shall find out.
Golden week finished today. Its about a week of holiday and I had enough money to go for a short trip around an art museum island. Its called Naoshima and there are museums scattered all across it. As per usual I hadnt quite planned everything right so we drove onto a ferry and onto the island and I called our hotel and discovered the hotel wasnt on that island so we drove around the island and back onto the ferry to get back to our hotel. The owner of the hotel was a bit like my brother. He openly mocked me for not reading his messages fully, but it takes way too much time to read messages in full. Better to skim it over then correct the mistakes on the day.
Anyway Naoshima was expensive but cool. There were giant fibre glass pumpkins littering the island, a james bond museum, and a whole load of art. Some of it was quite interesting....]]><![CDATA[Whats new?]]>Mon, 07 May 2012 03:57:42 -0800http://gettinglostinjapan.weebly.com/2/post/2012/05/whats-new.html

I have written an article for the local Niihama magazine "What`s New" about my life in Japan and things to do in this area. It will be posted at this web address
http://www.city.niihama.lg.jp/soshiki/detail.php?lif_id=11452

11452_57063_misc.pdf
File Size:	646 kb
File Type:	pdf

]]><![CDATA[life in Japan]]>Wed, 25 Apr 2012 20:55:42 -0800http://gettinglostinjapan.weebly.com/2/post/2012/04/life-in-japan.htmlThose more observant of my readership may have noticed my slight change of outlook on the world, from it being filled with wonder and joy to it actually being a bit annoying. What you may not have noticed is that I also believe all of the people of the world who are not my friends are bastards and they are not to be trusted. This makes it somewhat difficult for me to meet new people and more important to hang on to friends I have already made but that can be quite difficult living in Japan. I only really create enough news to make any kind of meaningful email back home once or twice a year and so whenever I get any replies people have made big changes in there lives. Theres no real continuity. If I were to write the biography of a typical one of my friends back home it would be
I leave japan...he is recently playing a cool video game an watched a movie with some hot woman in it...he has a girlfriend who might be "the one"...He is divorced with child from a different woman...he is divorced with child from a man...etc
I dont think its really the same when people get emails from me. I havent gotten married nor turned gay yet. There really hasnt been much change in my life from since I was a university student, except that these days I clean my clothes in the washing machine instead of hiding the smell by spraying up a storm of fabrisse and running through it before I leave the house. I opened an English school in Niihama which is going well right now. We have been having some Doctor Who based charity lessons this week, to raise money for Cancer research. We had 4 lessons in all and managed to raise about 100 pounds. The research institute will only accept 100 pounds at a minimum so we just reached our target. Overall they were good lessons but I don`t care to do the same thing again for atleast another 2 months. Exhausting, and I have been talking about Doctor Who for 4 hours in about a week. I love Doctor Who but even I need a change of topic sometimes!]]><![CDATA[babies]]>Fri, 20 Apr 2012 00:41:52 -0800http://gettinglostinjapan.weebly.com/2/post/2012/04/babies.htmlBabies. Does any other creature on earth have quite such a disfunctional offspring? Why do they all have massive faces and small bodies? How does the umbilical cord work and what happens to it when the baby comes out. If I wanted to could I still eat with my belly button if I undid the kind of knot thing its tied up in?
I have many questions about babies. I recently became an uncle. As an uncle, as far as I`m aware, it is my responsibility to cook the meat on barbeques at parties and grow a beard. I was actually thinking of having that electric shock treatment to have my facial hair entirely removed but I guess thats not possible now. It got me thinking of having a child of my own though. I think theres always going to be a kind of ripple effect when one person gives birth. Its not that theyre cute or anything but when I think of the amount of money Im gonna have to spend from now on birthday presents and Christmas presents, a baby seems like the only way to claw some of it back. Certainly all Ill be getting presentwise from the baby is some pictures that it has spent 2 minutes drawing, but in fairness Im pretty sure thats all i`ve got in presents from my sister in the last 5 years too.]]><![CDATA[My article for I-news, a foreigners magazine for Imabari]]>Thu, 05 Apr 2012 20:57:12 -0800http://gettinglostinjapan.weebly.com/2/post/2012/04/my-article-for-i-news-a-foreigners-magazine-for-imabari.htmlI`m in print. check it out

i-news85-07.pdf
File Size:	592 kb
File Type:	pdf

and in Japanese

i-news85-08.pdf
File Size:	929 kb
File Type:	pdf

]]><![CDATA[food]]>Mon, 26 Mar 2012 03:17:31 -0800http://gettinglostinjapan.weebly.com/2/post/2012/03/food.htmlI went to a food festival yesterday. Its basically a festival for food you get at carnivals and stuff. It`s called "B grade gourmet". For some reason its really popular in Japan right now, even though it basically means that it`s worse quality than stuff you get in retaurants. You do find some unusual stuff in them though. I tried some wild boar crouquette and soup, followed up by a lemon jam drink which tasted like a lot like our lemsip back home.
In history class I remember I learned about how orphan children used to go to a special advisor woman who would help them get more money from begging by poking them in the eye with a biro or something, and so people would take pitty on them more and give them more money. I think the people at that festival may have employed a similar tactic. I notice the most undesirable people with eyeballs hanging on their cheeks and stuff were at the front serving the food. The food tasted good though. Wild boar tastes a bit like pig, but possibly a bit chewier and less fatty. I`m not sure if I`d go crazy for it like in that French comic Asteriks and Obelix. I think it has probably taken mankind many years of trying and testing animals meat and by trial and error we have selected chicken, beef and pork. It`s times like these that I am reminded to be grateful to my ancestors and the hardships they have suffered.

]]><![CDATA[Hirose house]]>Thu, 08 Mar 2012 01:51:57 -0800http://gettinglostinjapan.weebly.com/2/post/2012/03/hirose-house.htmlI notice I seem t have gone off topic a lot recently. I imagine a certain percentage of readership are more interested in my experiences in Japan than hair transplant. Last weekend I visited a place in Niihama called Hirose house, which is where the guy who owned the copper mines that ran for 300 years in the mountains that overlook Niihama used to live. He was a cool guy and his house was pretty interesting. There is a room especially built into it where Mr Hirose could proudly watch the smoke rising from the factories in the city below him. It kind of reminds me of Mr Smythers from the Simpsons. The was a map of the villages that were built in the mountainside for workers at the mine to live. It`s described as Japans Machu Pichu so I was a little disappointed when I went there and looked at the ruins of the building,wondering what life must have been like living there, only to read that it was only abandoned 40 years ago. They would have had TV`s in those days and yet they only had black and white photos in the museum to make it look older. Bit of a swizz.
When I first came to Japan I believed I would be going to a world of ninja and samurai and the highest of technology. Living in Niihama I have seen no ninja. There have been no sightings of samurai, but I have found some cool technology. According to a magazine I read there is a robot mouth in Takamatsu that has a tongue and can perfectly mimic human voices. There is also a new machine in my local cheap meat restaurant. Its an automatic "irrashaimase (welcome)" machine. I`m pretty sure theres a lazer sensory that tells it when to speak. It also says "arigatou gozaimasu (thank you)" as you leave. I wonder how advanced the technology is. If I left through the window would it get confused and greet me with arigatou? or if I stick my leg out infront of the sensor and then retract it could I do a kind of farewell rap "ari-ari-arigatou.."? ]]><![CDATA[experimentation]]>Mon, 05 Mar 2012 20:42:19 -0800http://gettinglostinjapan.weebly.com/2/post/2012/03/experimentation.htmlTalking of one`s youth, as I recall I was quite the scientist as a child. I may have been the first person to attempt to perform hair transplants, though my methods nowadays could be considered quite crude. What I did was I plucked eyelashes from either eye (I think if you concentrate your plucking on one eye you may end up looking a bit strange) and then I balanced them delicately on the ends of my fingers and hoped they would take root, like a daffodil.
It didn`t work but it`s just one example of when an idea of mine has gone on to make other people billions of pounds. I also had a dream in university where, due to a malfunction, a guy woke up in a chamber to discover that he was missing various limbs and organs. He pulls out tubing and probes from his body and wanders around the facility that he finds himself in to find out that he is a clone of the real him and his body is being used as a harvest for parts so that the other him can live without fear of there being no organs to translant if neccessary. He then goes out ing search of the real him and thats where his adventure begins.
That story was pretty much the basis of a movie with ewan macgreggor recently. I think it financially bombed, and I watched it and it was rubbish. ]]>