The Last Picture of the Year

It was a freezing night. Snow all across Japan, flights and trains were cancelled and the country nearly came to a complete standstill. It seems like everybody goes to visit the shrine on New Year's Eve, so the Tsuji family took me to Ise-jingu to pray in the New Year. They were so worried that I'd be cold so they gave me two jumpers to put on over my long-sleeve top and cardigan, and I was so puffed up that I could barely put my arms by my side. I felt like the abominable snowman.

The shrine is situated in the middle of the woods, its a good two miles walk into the holy grounds to get to it, crossing several bridges on the way. The Shinto attendants, dressed in beautiful starch white robes, manned the huge camp-fires in the grounds to keep everybody warm, and to let people cook their rice cakes near the fire, which is a really popular tradition here.

We got to the entrance of the shrine, climbed the stone steps leading up to the gates, and waited for our turn to chuck a coin over the stone wall and to say our prayers. There's a special way of doing this. First, you throw your coin into the pool, clap your hands twice and then bow to the shrine. Finally, you'd say your prayer.

There were loads of people coming to the shrine, so we had to leave quickly to let other people have their turn. We joined the camp-fires, everybody was standing with their backs to the flame to warm their bums so we gave that a try too. Then, we cooked some rice cakes and shared them out. Rice cakes symbolises good fortune, so eating them at New Year will encourage good fortune to come your way for the entire year.

The end is nigh

The older I get, the faster the year seems to fly by. Life crawled by painfully slowly when I was little, I couldn’t wait to get older and do all these things I had planned in my head. Poor Emma had to endure many years of me jabbering on about The Grand Plan, all the things I want to achieve before thirty. I don’t know why I settled on thirty, perhaps I thought it was a good age to settle down and forget about Life. Of course, I realize now that Life doesn’t have to end on ‘settling down’, and the person I give credit for that is Big Thanh. Yes, my darlings, there is a Big Thanh, though she isn’t much taller than me. She was my supervisor at Conran; she got married, had a baby and then she took a year off work to go traveling with husband and one year-old baby. So, I thought, I don’t have to squeeze in traveling around the world in my twenties because I could spread it out. Do a little here, do a little there. Anyway, don’t they say that Life is a journey? Plus, in The Grand Plan of Things, I would have assumed a very important political position by the time I hit thirty and that takes some work so it would be wise to deduct some time from traveling to concentrate on career. Yes, that would be a wise move indeed.

What I really want to say is that 2004 has passed by in a happy, rosy blur. I really don’t know where all the time disappeared to. Its nearly been six months since I left our fair shores for Thailand. Think back to the long emails* I used to write detailing monsoon, landslides, full-moon parties- that was almost half a year ago.

I absolutely loved 2004. Life in Chertsey Road was wonderfully carefree, despite the constant presence of Politics deadlines looming over my head. Whenever I remember our little flat, it always put a big grin on my face. I laughed so much that it’d hurt, I love all the people coming and going to our tiny kitchen, bringing cakes and having tea, eating, drinking, hanging out of the window smoking, chatting on the ledge. I have two bestest flatmates to thank for that, but I think they already know that I love them both dearly.

* Insert 'incoherent ramblings' as appropriate

So, the Top Ten Moments of 2004 (in no particular order)

• Masquerade Law Ball (Feb).An event strictly for Bristol Law students, but we not only managed to blag meal tickets for Helena and I, but we got tickets for three UWE students too.Ashton Court was lavishly decorated, champagne reception, casino, dodgems, free bottle of wine, profiteroles, and to top it all off, it snowed at the end of the night.

• Dinner with Mum, Mother’s Day (March). A window-side table overlooking the Thames in the Oxo Tower Restaurant. Good food, good view, wonderful conversations.

• Sunrise at Angkor Wat, Cambodia (Aug). This would probably go down as one of the Top Ten experiences, ever. I wont wax lyrical about it again, but my God, it was stunning.

• Floating on a rubber dingy, sipping a fruit cocktail in the middle of the sea, Nha Trang, Vietnam (Aug). Matt, Char and I sweet-talked our way onto this boat trip for $1, and it was fantastic fun. The setting couldn’t be any more idyllic.

• Dinner at Deason’s (Jun). Some of my favourite people out to dinner together at one of my favourite restaurants. A very fitting farewell meal.

• My Birthday (May)- being absolutely spoilt by everybody, and off course, Maple 1 and Maple 2 as guests of honour. I have to thank Clare for the champagne and Big M for sorting out the bill.

• Joint Birthday with Emma, Blackheath (June). I don’t get to see Emma enough these days with her in London and me in Bristol, but its always a pleasure when we get together again.

• Henderson’s (March)- This might be several nights rolled into one, since memories of Henderson’s are usually a little hazy. It was the night when Matt and Charlotte danced to MJ, and then Char brought the house down doing the moonwalk.

• comeplay with Clare, Helena and Char (the boys might have been there too). Some music snobs scoff at comeplay, the music is simply too ‘mainstream’ and ‘commercial’ for them. Well darling, go and listen to a crap band that nobody likes for the sake of individuality. I love it, there’s nothing better than dancing with the girlies at comeplay.

• Liz’s Birthday Karaoke, Japan (Oct). A week into Japan and our first karaoke night, and the first time we all went out as a group. All these people I didn’t know a week before, yet we were all having such a laugh like old friends already
  

A family away from home

Introducing my adopted family: the Tsuji from Ise. I am going to stay with them for four days over New Year to get a glimpse of traditional life and hopefully, pick up some Japanese too. Ise is two-hours south-west of Nagoya, home to the most sacred Shinto shrine in the whole country, though apart from recommending the shrine, my Lonely Planet describes Ise as being ‘drab’. Still, Lonely Planet has been known to be wrong so I do hope that this is a case of Kanchanuburi, Thailand, where Matt and I had a great time but which did not come very highly recommended.

My new family is fairly young, husband and wife are 36 and 37 respectively, and the son is 3. He is so cute! I’ll probably spend most of my time trying to converse with the boy, since he can speak more Japanese than I can, and so he would be able to teach me a thing or two. We've established the other day that my Japanese is at the level of a one year-old because I could just about understand a conversation between mother and child in the hospital’s waiting room. It’s a sad fact but Tom Cruise speaks much better Japanese too. We were watching The Last Samurai last night and I was all smug at first because Tom was just learning the word for chopsticks and things like that, which I already know. Then, he was coming out with all these long, complicated sentences with perfect pronunciation and I could no longer keep up. I shudder in the shame of it all.

Three is the magic number…

My academic adviser was in his office on Friday when I visited, which is a miracle of miracles since I have been trying to get hold of him for the last two weeks. He’s apologises for rushing about, while asking me how I am. I haven’t seen him for nearly two months, though I’m not sure whether this is a good or bad thing. Some people see their academic adviser every week, and they’d go mushroom picking and things together at the weekend. I really don’t know what the etiquette is regarding meetings with my adviser, and since I haven’t had any problems I haven’t felt the need to trouble him. Anyway, he tells me, ‘oh, I am so busy… busy like a bee’. He was really pleased with that simile.

December always proves to be a busy month. At home, everybody is preparing for Christmas and the end of term at uni, which always brings dreaded essay deadlines. Here, our semester doesn’t end until early February but leaving all the assignments to then would be insane, so I’ve been chipping away and clearing some work to give myself time for Japanese finals and the Peace-building final essay.

But it hasn’t been all work and no play, thank God. The lazy weekend in Takayama was blissful, and a refreshing change from Nagoya city life. Tokyo was manic, we tried to squeeze too much into three days but it was great seeing Ruth and Lily again. Seeing DJ Marky with Ruth and Derry was absolutely fantastic, he was so good! Our legs took a good two days to recover from that particular dance fest. The highlight of the month was Emma’s birthday, I hadn’t laughed so much for ages and its always nice when all of us get together for a big dinner.

The great thing is, no more homesickness! I was really worried about Christmas away from everybody but I was worrying about nothing. It wasn’t like Christmas at home, but hey, I am in Japan so that’s to be expected. I don’t know what prompted the change, but I started seeing Japan as home, albeit a temporary one, rather than always thinking back to England through a rosy haze. Its taken ages, but New Year plans are coming together and we’ve managed to book a short break away to Hong Kong. Its been a brilliant month!

Happy Cliffmas

We stayed up til 4am on Christmas day watching Return of the King- The Extended Version, so we were all late for the 8am opening presents session. I finally got a phone call from George rousing me at 10ish and we all gathered in the lobby in our PJs with our parcels. Helena made my Christmas with an ingenius choice of wrapping paper: Cliff Richards and Christina Aguliera because no Christmas is complete without our dear Cliff and despite the awful outfits, I still passionately defend Christina’s erm… individualism. I have to say that this definitely tops the Darius/Simon Cowel/Alan Partridge photo-frame and Geri Halliwell wrapping paper. Well done, chica!

An unconventional Christmas in Nagoya: I went back to bed after the presents opening, all that excitement had tired me out. Then, some essaying, followed by dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant with Jonathan and Kevin, strange to be having Vietnamese food on Christmas Day in Japan but it was really good food (I wouldn’t have expected anything less from Vietnamese people). We went to the party at the nearby hall to dance off our dinner under the revolving disco ball: lots of bootyshakin’, some grinding, a little bit of salsa and a free bar!

Ben's 2.3

Everybody had already made different plans for Christmas Day so we decided to have the Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve instead. It coincided with Chinese Ben’s Birthday so there were over 40 of us in the lobby for dinner and Ben got very very drunk. He went bright pink half way through the meal having already consumed copious amounts of alcohol, and started chucking up at 9, then preceding passing out. I decided there and then, no way Jose, am I gonna be that wasted and chucking up on my 21^st birthday. I do not want to be that ill…ever. Anyway, we exchanged Secret Santa pressies, I was Secret Santa to Lauren and Alex was my Secret Santa. It took me ages to find pressies for Lauren with our budget of a fiver, but in the end I got her some incense, a wooden burner and a pretty hair clip. I was very pleased with that. Alex, bless him, bought me some socks, some bath stuff and a really cute toothbrush holder. Now, we weren’t supposed to know the identity of our Secret Santa, hence the name, but Alex gave it away cos he tried to “subtly” ask me if I’d liked my pressies. Dead giveaway!

Christmas Eve in Nagoya

3 girls, 12 boys. Who says its a man's world?

A Cinderella Story

This is another Thanh-Being-Jammy story. I received an invite to the traditional Adults Day in January, which is a huge event for all teenagers turning twenty because twenty marks the transition into adulthood. Yes, I know I am already twenty but my ward office, for a reason unknown, must have got the information wrong, though this is very unlike Japanese bureaucracy. I replied saying I'll go even though I had no idea what it entails.

Well, it entails being decked out in your best kimono, having hair and makeup done by professionals and getting taxied to the grand hall for a traditional ceremony and receiving a present from the ward. Now, I dont even have a kimono, let alone a best kimono, and do you know how much one of those cost? 25-grand plus to buy, and "only" a thousand pounds to rent. One thousand pounds sterling, my dear. I was trying to explain to a Japanese girl that a thousand pounds is a little excessive, and she looked all incredulous and said 'but you only turn twenty once!' Being an impoverished pauper that I am, I couldnt well justify spending a grand on a kimono, especially one that I wouldnt even get to keep.

George and I spent over a week putting out feelers and asking for favours, hoping someone would just lend me one, preferably for free. Lady Luck was looking over me because I just happened to mention to the right person who had the right contacts that I was in desperate need of getting a kimono for this event. She made me an appointment to see a kimono teacher who has an extensive collection of kimonos, so George and I headed to her school to see her. Over four hours later, after some tea and biscuits and trying on different kimonos and obis, we settled on a dusty pink and green kimono, she made me an appointment at the hairdressers and makeup artist, and I dont have to pay the grand for it all.

George and I were speechless. Im just too lucky for words.

Thank you Santa!

Checking the mailbox here is as dull a ritual as it is at home, its always clustered with junk mail and bills, bills, bills. I have to say that you guys are awful with the written word, what happened to all the handwritten letters that I'd expected? Im crushed with disappointment, even Master 'I study English Literature darling, I respect the written word' Benjamin Forsythe has let me down on that front! Honestly love, everybody else I can understand but I expected more from you (finger awagging).

But, oh glorious day, my first Christmas parcel arrived yesterday. It took me all of my non-existent will-power not to open it straight-away so I had to go and hide it away from myself in my room. Emma was very impressed that I succeeded in my mission and some 24-hrs later, Im happy to report that it lies still unopened, under my bed.

Something guaranteed to impress your dinner dates

I've actually learnt something useful the other day. Wagamama means 'selfishness' in Japanese! And if you ever happen to be in South Kensington, there's a little sushi joint off Fulham Broadway called 'Itsu' and that, my friends, means 'when'. Cilla recommends casually throwing that little fact into conversations across the ebi and soba, and your dinner date will be impressed beyond comprehension. Dont thank me now, just let me know when to start looking for a hat. Lots of Love, Cilla

NUPACE Christmas Party

My first Christmas Party this year held at the International Students Centre. Strange to be having sushi and edamame instead of turkey and cranberry sauce, but we did have some mulled wine. I stopped after a cup cos the smell of it still turns me a bit funny with memories from last year.

This picture is of my Japanese 101 language class, and thats one of our teachers in the middle. The standing few, still persevering with all those grammar points! At the party, I got hit on so badly by Sven's academic advisor, of all people. He's well into his fifties but within five minutes of being introduced to me, he'd managed to work into the conversation the fact that he thinks I'm too cute to be Japanese and that he finds my accent terribly sexy. I just stood there, completely flabbergasted, while Sven started offering to replace his alcoholic beverage with some coke. It was hysterical! He went on about how I must take his independent guided study class next semester and that it wouldnt involve 'too much studying'!

Semi-Naked Sumo-Wrestling

As a little treat for finishing the 24-page essay, I went out with the others for some 100 yen tacos, though in the end, I simply couldnt resist having the full rack of ribs instead. Its been bloody ages since I had some ribs! Between the dozen or so of us, we had over a hundred tacos and cleared the kitchen out. So food and drinks were-aflowing and everybody got a little merry.

DJ and David were well hammered by closing time and somehow, Sven and DJ ended up having a semi-naked sumo wrestling match in the subway station. Then, there was a pile up as all the boys jumped on to David while he tried to undo his trousers, though I cant remember why he was doing that. What is it with men and alcohol that always make them turn pseudo-gay?

Superwoman

A meeting with my Peace-building presentation group:

Them: 'How about 9 o'clock on Sunday morning?'
Me: 'Its Sunday! Its against my religion to start working that early'.
Them: 'Okay, we wont make you get up that early'
Me: 'Thank you'.

Considering that this is a year 'out' and therefore, doesnt contribute anything to my BA, I sometimes wonder why an earth I am working harder than I ever did at Bristol. Last week was completely manic; I had a huge presentation to prepare for my graduate class, a 24-page law essay to re-write as a token of thanks for some private Japanese lessons, Japanese report on England, 3 politics essays, and then daily Japanese homework. AAARRRGH!

My group for Peacebuillding had to give a presentation on proposals for a Social Development project in a conflict zone. We decided to choose a region that the professors would have very little experience off in the hope that we might be able to hold up during the Q&A session. So Burundi, Chechnya and the likes were immediately struck off the list, and we settled on Mindanao, an island in the Phillippines. At the beginning of the week, I didnt know a single thing about Mindanao but my Lord, I was an expert on it by Wednesday. Our presentation kicked ass, we gave a 40 minutes lecture followed by a 50 minutes Q&A on detailed proposals for microfinance project and non-formal community-orientated education for a town in Mindanao. Even God, one of the Lecturers, couldnt faze us with his questions.

We received 20/20 for our efforts and the senior professor put the icing on the cake by saying that if we polish it up a little, he could try and sell the idea to an actual NGO.

Emma's 2.1

The big 2.1! We decided on having a meal, everybody bringing either food or drinks in contribution, and then we'd do some sketches cos Emma loves English Lit. George and I went shopping for supplies during the day and also to pick up Emma's birthday present. I came up with the idea of getting Emma a large print of a NUPACE group photo and then having it framed. Admittedly, I'd stolen the idea from Charlotte's birthday present to me, which I absolutely love. She had a picture of me picking shells in Sri Lanka blown up and put in a beautiful silver frame. Its so gorgeous, and so I thought Emma would really like something similar.

It took us over an hour to hunt down the frame, and then the problem of printing the photo since the shop couldnt print it off a CD. Its stupid I know. To cut a long story short, Goo came to the rescue and cycled the memory stick with the photo on it to the shop and so a happy ending. Otherwise, we would have had to present Emma with an I.O.U. on her 21st, which would have sucked.

Foodwise, we had a feast! There was shepherd's pie (George), miso katsu (Olivier), gyozas (Jay), carbonara (Sven), quiche (Emmanuelle), tortillas (Kevin), and then everybody else brought drinks and snacks. My contribution? I made a chicken pie from scratch, pastry and everything. Check me out! I have never attempted to make puff pastry before so it was a steep learning curve, especially because we didnt have the right utensils so I had to roll the pastry with a wine bottle. Plus, its been a while since I've made a chicken pie and usually then, Giles would be standing by stopping me from burning the food. Hmmm, I miss having a handy kitchen helper about. I burnt the pastry a little- well actually I left Sven and Jay in charge of it for a little while and they let my pie burn! We scrapped off the offending charred bits and it still looked good.

To top it off, George made a cake, and decorated it fresh strawberries and cream. We were all pretty merry and well fed, it was a really lovely meal.

Romeo and Juliet

George came up with the idea to perform scenes from Shakespeare plays in different languages for Emma. Antonio did a fantastic monologue from Julius Ceaser, it was really impressive. Honestly, we were all speechless because he put us all to shame, proper acting and no script! George and I made a valiant effort for Romeo and Juliet and managed to laugh our way through some of Shakespeare's most moving scenes. George was so funny in his dying speech, holding a massive cup as his vial of poison so I ended up nearly crying with laughter when I was supposed to be 'dead'. Alex, Felix and Frank were absolutely brilliant in giving a German performance of Macbeth's three witches around the bubbling cauldron. And Sarah and Olivier were Ophelia and Hamlet in French. Hamlet sounds so sexy in French, actually French is sexy full stop.

Olivier as Hamlet

The furrowed brows, the tortured gaze, the plastic cup...a perfect Hamlet!

Dont Report Me!

I know major neglect of the site of late, I am sorry. Huge update is promised for tomorrow.

Are you taking the Mickey?

It is Liz's dream to go to Tokyo Disneyland so a bunch of us made a trip to the big, bad city for the weekend to fulfil her dream. Liz loves all things Disney, she owns all the DVDs and knows all the songs, and has even worked in a Disney Park! There were a few problems with getting tickets, I've never known it to happen but the Park was sold out, thats right, too many people inside so they had to stop ticket sales. It was just an ordinary weekend, no special occassion yet it seemed like half of Tokyo decided to take their kids on a day out.

Tokyo Disneyland is supposed to be an exact replica of the Californian Park, though having been to the parks in Paris and California, I would say that it was more like the former than the latter. There were so many people there, and they'd start queueing for the parades two hours before it starts! We didnt have much luck to begin with, having queued for over an hour for Thunder Mountain then to be told that the ride has broken down! It also started to rain in the late afternoon; there was no escaping it, we had to get a Disney raincoat.

It was quite an experience to hear Mickey speaks Japanese. We fell about laughing; the high-pitched voice is there, its the Mickey we all know and love, but speaking Japanese.　It made my day when Mickey said 'そうですか', which means 'Is that so?'. It was one of the first things they taught us in Japanese 101, and we always have to throw it in the end of our role plays.

In a moment of genius, we decided to do the human kanji for 'Genki', which looks like this 元気, meaning fit/ healthy when on the way down Splash Mountain for our group photo. There were 6 of us, so we manouvered ourselves so that we could do the twelve-strokes kanji with Sven and Jonathan doing the top strokes, Goo and Felix in the middle and Liz and I at the bottom. The picture is great, though it is with Jonathan at the mo so will post it up when I get a copy.

Cool Kids

Snazzy 3-D specs for the Imax experience. Clothes, models' own.

I have seen this before in California but it was still just as good the second time round. Basically, its based on 'Honey I Shrunk the Kids' but this time they shrink the audience by accident. It was really funny and well-scripted, and the best bit was when they ejected a quick spurt of air around our legs to make it feel like the mice were crawling up us! The entire auditorium screamed.