So the BBC website told us that we'd have no snow this weekend after all, despite previously announcing we'd get a shedload. We wound up getting quite a bit on Friday, which was great except we didn't get back from work while about 9pm. Then last night we got the motherload - flakes like dinnerplates covered everything! from then on Louise & I have spent pretty much every waking moment playing in the snow like kids.

We did take time out to go to our local Chinese supermarket to pick up some Chinese, Japanese and Korean sweets 'n' treats for Christmas, and to start a series of Japanese language tests. We'll be quizzing each other as we learn from now on to make sure we don't skip over bits in our studies - for instance I found out I need to go back over the days of the week as I'd forgotten almost all of them...

Anyway, here's the fruits of last night's labour - a rather magnificent(?)-looking snowman!:

(hope this comes out - I'm blogging off my mobile and don't fully understand the app yet)

Happy winter everyone!

I'm getting really excited about Christmas now. Work's been so hectic but there's only four more days left before we break up, then I'm off until the 4th Jan, unless I choose to take some extra Football Live shifts. Sadly Louise is back at work on the 30th Dec for two days, but we still get a good amount of time off together.

Christmas brings out the kids in both Louise & I, and now we have a house to ourselves we're probably a bit badly behaved - no grown-ups to keep us in check. Christmas Eve is now, by tradition, spent moving bedding downstairs so we can sleep by the tree and presents and watch Christmas films all night.

This year will probably feature The Polar Express, The Muppet's Christmas Carol, and A Christmas Story. The latter is one I barely remember from my childhood, but I do recall quite liking it and I managed to pick it up at a bargain price from Tesco recently. Louise has been almost entirely put off by how creepy the kid, played by Peter Billingsley, looks on the cover:


Random Blog-End Note: We've been lucky enough to sample some delicious far-Eastern treats recently in mochi and bubble tea. Mochi, a traditional Japanese sweet made from sweetened rice paste and filled (in this instance) with red azuki-bean paste, is thoroughly delicious. I hear it's a traditional New Year thing in Japan, so I think we'll try making some in a few weeks. Bubble tea is sweetened flavoured tea with large tapioca pearls in, which is very unusual but equally delicious. I heartily recommend both!

Hi!

It's been another busy weekend, working on my second job
on Saturday (learned a new skill there too - it's always fun
to keep trying new things!), and had to have a quick trip into
Hull today. However, I had forgotten it would be so busy, with everyone rushing to the retail parks to stock up for Christmas,
so it wound up being quite a hectic afternoon. But how could
I forget about Christmas shopping? Well, I'm in quite a
fortunate position this year, as my lovely fiancee Louise
started up an online craft shop recently (shameless plug alert!: http://www.folksy.com/shops/catfaceandpancakes)
so we're uniquely placed to stock up on gifts.

On the road into Hull there's a big garden centre, all under glass, that has the best display of Christmas decorations and lights that I've ever seen. Every year I know it's time to start looking forward to Christmas when I see their lights on as I drive past. Fortunately it's not on a corner, or I'm sure it'd be an accident blackspot from the end of October 'til the New Year!

The rest of the weekend has been spent preparing for a craft fair in Bridlington next Saturday. We're selling some of Louise's items there, and we're going for a festive display. This has meant we've had to get the decorations down early, and we spent last night going through them all. As they're all wrapped up in newspaper it's like opening presents early.

We've been hitting Billy Idol's Happy Holidays and Bob Dylan's Christmas In The Heart albums pretty hard too.

And it's not even December yet...

Happy Winter!

Hi!

I mentioned recently that I've been busy at work, and here's why. At least, the first of a long line of reasons...

My weekday job basically involves making TV listings, and so in the run-up to Christmas, when the papers and TV networks have their big rush to get the festive schedules out, we have to do some pretty crazy shifts. This was the first of our special editions, which we did for the Daily Mirror. It was on-sale on Wednesday, and came out looking pretty good I think - which has given me a lot of confidence about the rest of the products we have to get out over the next month. It's still a daunting task though!

I also continue to find it tremendously satisfying to see the end product in the newsagents the morning after a late shift, even after doing it for so long (I'm on my ninth Christmas in this job!).

In a fitting celebration, Louise and I picked up a bottle of something nice this evening... We're neither of us particularly big drinkers but we both fancied a drop of whisky, and our local supermarket has the Yamazaki by Suntory on special offer. Besides, it'll keep while Christmas (or most of it will), so it's an investment! I'd never had a Japanese whisky before but I'm very partial to a Scottish single malt, and I'd heard they're very similar in style. After my first taste I must say I'm very impressed. Puts me in mind of a sweet Speyside malt like Glen Moray, only better finished. Certainly much easier-going than most.

So, 'til next time, Kanpai!

In my line of work, Christmas preparations begin early. This means I've spent the past week being rushed off my feet and doing overtime, which has left me little time to keep up my Japanese lessons. I'm still finding time to play the odd game on my trusty DS so I don't forget what I've already learned, But still, I feel as though I've ground oddly to a halt. Similarly, my progress on the language-based mobile phone adventure Survive Japanese has stalled, as I've reached a point where I need to know kanji for the colours to move to the next level. And kanji and me don't seem to be getting on... Is there a trick to learning kanji of which I'm not aware?

However, having nothing new to report gives me the chance to do one of the things I've wanted to do since beginning my blog - a trip down memory lane to my Japan holiday last year. I quite like the idea of occasionally revisiting that holiday, a day at a time, here.


Back in October 2008, me and Louise (my decidedly better half) finally got the chance to go on our dream trip to Tokyo. It would be the first time that I'd ever set foot on a plane, and so I was slightly nervous - after all, if I didn't like it, a 15 hour flight was not the time to discover the fact! I think Louise was a bit worried I'd turn out to be scared of flying or airsick, too. Although we needn't have worried - as soon as our little 'City Hopper' to Amsterdam took off, I was enraptured by the whole experience. Yeah, it was kinda cramped (ok - really cramped! I'm well over six foot...), but the vistas and the feeling thrilled me. Louise still laughs at how, even after changing at Amsterdam and spending the best part of a day in the air, I was still beaming out of the window at the views of clouds...

Arriving at Narita was something of a blur. Never having been on a plane before means never having been through customs before either. To be honest I still don't know what really happened and why, I just sleepily allowed myself to be herded about until eventually it felt like we were free to explore the country. We got the limousine bus to Shinjuku, and enjoyed the scenery on the way. As we got closer, we could see Tokyo growing and growing on the horizon, but nothing prepared us for the sheer scale of the place when we actually got there.

Finding the hotel proved tricky. I realised that reading how to say, for instance, "where is the hotel?" in a foreign language is one thing; actually trusting my pronunciation, and understanding the response, was quite another. I think it was these early difficulties that made me all the more determined to keep up my studies.

When we got there, we were immediately blown away by the view. Then, we were blown away by the room itself. And then by the futuristic toilet (it doesn't take much to impress a hick like me)... And then by the view again!

We slept fitfully for a while. Jetlag won over excitement, but only just. Every time I woke up, I just wanted to look out of the window some more. We were both really excited about getting out there after a rest and exploring. And explore we did - but that will wait 'til another blog...

Thanks for reading!

I'm currently sitting in my car in rainy Hull, waiting for 6pm when i can do my last job of the day, and listening to some rather good electro music (Ladytron - underrated).
Eerily, as i sit, and the windows begin to mist up as the rain pours, some ghostly Japanese characters are forming all around me. Now I know that this is just because Louise & I like to practice our hiragana when we're stuck in traffic and the glass makes a good temporary (or so I thought) surface for this. But nevertheless I feel as though I'm in a creepy scene from a J-Horror film of some description...
As Gary Numan sang, "you can lock all your doors, in cars" - but am I locking things out, or locking something in...?
So although I'm feeling quite freaked out, I thought I'd take the opportunity to try out the new blogging app for my phone. If the formatting & casing's a bit off, that's why.
If it's not been fixed by tomorrow, that'll be because I've been eaten by the Grudge...


(Edit: I got out alive - hurray!)

Living near Hull may not sound too glamorous (Hull has something of a bad rep in the UK) but it has its advantages. Chief among which are the two excellent theatres - Hull Truck and Hull New Theatre. Hull Truck has the history and the reputation - John Godber is artistic director, and its productions often tour the country - and it was to Hull Truck that we went tonight for a Friday 13th performance of Macbeth.
I was really impressed. I was concerned to begin with as it was a modern-dress production, and the last Shakespeare play I saw in modern dress missed the mark in my view (Lear at the Sheffield Crucible). They either keep the original dialogue, in which case it seems anachronistic, or they update it, in which case it's just not Shakespeare. But Hull Truck managed to keep it neat and other-worldly without conveying a specific era, so it tied in nicely.
Impressively, the minimalist effects included scented smoke that was evocative of musty Highland castles, the sound was fantastic, and - most importantly - the whole thing was acted impeccably (it strikes me that many actors find it hard to deliver Shakespeare's lines convincingly as they're too busy focusing on how it sounds, rather than what it means).

And it's a brave theatre that puts on the famously cursed play on Friday 13th...