Valentines Day is over. The men have been fed their tidbits and now the supermarket shelves are lined with white chocolate products. The same bloody thing as Valentines Day. Different name, less cocoa. Any cocoa? White Day happens a month later, reciprocating the 'obligation' chocolate to female workmates and responding to the handmade 'love' choc ( Read more... )

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/17/shoichi-nakagawa-resignation-drunken-anticsRead more... )

The subject of this entry is the name of a dreadful film starring Kate Winslet and Leo DiCaprio as ambitious but utterly self-distructive American suburbanites. I had hoped for something a little more inspiring than the vaguely ironic fact that the couple live on an actual road of that name. I want meat at the moment! My hunger was in part ( Read more... )

A man just came into the office trying to sell apples, slicing us each a bit to taste. I always feel self-conscious when put on the spot in front of my quiet colleagues- this place really is the pits to work in, no banter WHATSOEVER. Thought the apples might be local and thus worth a peck, but no, they're from bloody Nagano. I guess it's in-country ( Read more... )

I was reading around the entrails of the Zeitgeist-induced compulsion to inform myself about things that really matter, and found myself delving into bits that are shaded from functioning memory (post-structuralism as a possible critique of Joseph Campbell's idea of the 'monomyth' in his 'Hero with a Thousand faces', which I must read- the familiar ( Read more... )

A poorly-executed jump during one of my adrenalin-seeking off-piste missions on the Annupuri side of Niseko saw my back clunk into a painful disjoint that saw me quit the slopes early and stay parked in the hotel for the rest of the holiday. I had a sexy doctor come and strap it up with tape, a shiatsu massage and guzzled down the strong ibuprofens ( Read more... )

forget loving japan a moment i feel a rant coming on. luckily it's almost 4.15 and i am not going to dignify japan's shortcomings with overtime- i'm outta here. But all this bowing and apologising to someone for bringing you a cup of shit coffee and having to decipher whispers and being the shit at the bottom of a pile of people who put you there ( Read more... )

Or, Happy New Year ( Read more... )

The anthropological training, of which I have only had a very minor taste, makes you think alot about your role as participant in what you seek to learn about, regardless of the general given that there is no such thing as innocent observation, unmediated by interpretation and fixed in space and time. Do I learn more about my kids interaction and ( Read more... )

A month of dear friends' birthdays. Quite pleased with myself for getting sorted on the posted greetings front, although I fear none arrived exactly on time. Still, it's nice to receive a morsel on the doormat when the excitement has turned to disillusionment ( Read more... )