Ok today is a mixed bag of problems! Somewhere roaming around my apartment or desk is my mobile phone. Having never been a very big user of said technology I’ve recently become rather attached to the its camera function of all things. Mainly cos it takes nice little pictures about the right size to post here, and I can email them direct and it easy and I am lazy and well, it a reaon to actually carry my mobile phone.

You mean carry it because people may want to actually get hold of me. Novel concept, never going to catch on, I mean who could stand the constant interuptions all the time. So now that I’ve actually got a reason for carrying it and having another crack at working out how some of the bloody functions work. (and if you say read the manual, I’ll send you the manual in frelling Japanese it is! yes!, so don’t look so smug – because if at this distance its so big it will hurt when it hits you. And the english translation, well lets say great effort guys, really appreciate the thought) I lose it. (the phone that is)

This is not the first time that I’ve lost a mobile phone, actually the count for lost mobile phones is past one hand and steadily climbing onto the other, it is however (or could be) the first thats going to have to come out of my own pocket! And if you ask why do I keep losing phones, I ask, why do they keep giving me ones that are so small? So it looks like we are going to have to an spring/spring clean to figure out where we have cleaned the phone away to, since it obvious I won’t have lost it outside the apartment as I never carry it with me. Time to put the mobile back into mobile.

As for the windy part, it blowing a gale outside and the noise on the windows sounds like a herd of elephants is going past all the time. Typhoon season promises to be interesting.
Update: Found my new little friend. Had to do the normal trick of phoning myself and there under the bed it was!! Anyway have decided its a great toy to take pictures with, an hey people can also get hold of me!

Well the votes are in and the rub stays!

So, chop up about 5 sprigs of rosemary, and about 1/2 sheet of Nori, (you can get it shredded over here which is well cool). Mix into this some garlic salt, 1/2 teaspoon cumin, teaspoon of Maldon Seasalt, load of cracked pepper, some chopped parsley, then rub all over said lamb. This lamb had the bone removed so I was able to fill the cavity area with the mixture and get contact with the meat. Into the dish, then additional salt and pepper on top. Into oven at 180 C for 25 mins per 450 gram i think it was, but as I have to use a Microwave Oven Combo and Lambo was 2.2 KGs it worked out to about 2 hours cooking at 180C then 30mins resting, for perfect tender, just pink lamb.

The Verdict ‘Oishii"
(Update: Leftover Lamby was carved and taken to work for a makeshift picnic. Which gave some other who had heard of the ‘feast’ and opportunity to try for themselves’ Verdict was very similiar and means next time I’m going to have to carve up all the leftovers for the next day ‘picnic’.

Suspect I’m going to be doing lamb for quite a while in this country as well.)

Since the main guest of honour is nicely defrosted in the fridge ready to be popped into the oven, the table is laid, the wine is a chillin!

All is ready!

In a string of co-incidences he happens to be a chef’s whose recipe for Gazpacho I am fliching for dinner tommorow night! And up until lunch time today I’d never really heard of him, well almost. I came across his recipe for Gazpacho on Recipezaar and it sounded reasonable even if the topping was a little bit that (over the top), and I figured he was some celebrity chef. Unbeknown to me today lunch was at the Wolfgang Puck Cafe. Did you to feel the chill feeling going down your spine—- yes creeepy. So after a Puck Chicken Pad Thai, I gave the Gazapacho another looky, still think the topping is a little bit over the top and will stay with the original idea.

So here is dinner menu.

Starter
Gazpacho Soup with a Creme Fraiche Wasabi Swirl
Garden Salad and Garlic Bread

Pacific Roasted Lamb
Roasted Pototoes/Pumpkin
Roasted Sweet Potatoes (Kumera – Traditional New Zealand Name)
Herbed Corn
Minted Buttered Peas

Desert is being provided by dinner diner

Choice of New Zealand White or Red Wine

and before you ask what Pacific Roasted Lamb is I was not entirely sure at the time and was extemperising when I wrote the menu. Its sorta working out to be rub of chopped Rosemary, Parsley, Ground Peppercorns, salt some cumin and chopped seaweed (nori) for a sea touch. Hey it will either go well, or spectacularly wrong. Since I come from the Pacific Coast highway I can lay some claim on this fingers crossed and all other body parts. Will report back on success!! Photo if it works.

Well its been a long time since I’ve posted stuff and I am sorry about that. I’ll tell you all about the adventures soon. Spent a wonderful two weeks with friends from the UK, and got to enjoy see Japan with them. Going through all the photographs now and posting them to the main web site. Basically spent a week in Kyoto during the cherry blossum season, which lasts about 1 weeks so timing was fantastic.

They are gone now so I’ve just spend the weekend doing a spring clean of the apartment getting ready for my next visitor during Golden week. Everything is basically finished now. This is the bedroom! Calling it the master bedroom might be a bit OTT as there is only one! Gotta go the lady of the bathroom is summoning me. Will explain that latter.

Just wanting to see how this will all work. The picture comes from my phone, but the text from the PC. If it all works I can blog directly from my phone! Anyway it quickie of a bullet train that I went to Yuzawa on. Actually they are a little bit of a let down in that you just don’t realise how fast you are going.

Update: 28 April Pictures from phones only work if you live in the States, I can send the text from the my directly to the blog which is very handy and I’ve been doing that alot, to at least get the outline going. Pictures from the phone need to be emailed to home PC and added back in later. Still works quite well and gives a new dimension to the stories!.

This evening its raining in Tokyo, not the summer rainy season, just the sorta end of winter shower and on a little trip to the supermarket I did something that I’ve got completely used to. I put my umbrella into is little plastic baggy at the door, aka the condom. I’ve not yet lived through the rainy season but in Japan it rains just like every where else, so what do you do with thousands of people with umbrella’s walking around your store.

Well here they have come up with an ingenious solution (Jury is still on on how eco friendly, more on that later). Actually you have two choices. At the small stores there is a rack outsite the store where you place your umbrella. (oh I think I may be ahead of myself slightly, everyone and I mean everyone owns at least 1 umbrella. I have 3 at last count, and I am sure there a few somewhere from London, the other city of rain).

The great thing about Japan is that if you put your umbrella into the rack, it will be there when you get back. Honesty is such a great part of living here. I suppose there could be mix ups, but I’ve never seen it happen. The other option at larger store is the Umbrella condom machine. This is a machine that sits outside the door, you walk upto it, put the tip of you collasped umbrella into it, put all the way down, the pull forward. Suddenly you wet dripping brolly is now encapsulated in a drip proof plastic baggy. No dripping in the store.

After your little shopping jolly all you do when you walk out of the store is take you little baggy off and put in into the bin provided! How cool!

Now for the eco side of things. Well, all the plastic is collected back into special bins so it can be easily re-cycled. If that happens and I really hope it does. Also what is the cost of all the dripping and cleaning and chemicals mopping it all up, again I don’t know. So end of day maybe an issue, but damn it is cool

I’m posting dating this entry as I did write much over the last week. But I there are so many thing s I want to say about having living here for a year. Basically I’m falling in love with the place.

Its taken quite some time to adapt to this point, and it really has been stages. I think that I adapted fairly quickly in the first two months to actually being here, but then each month after has been a growth from there as well.

I remember when I first go here I didn’t go out and see much as it was all quite overwhelming, then I waited until my friends came for Spring and I visited Kyoto with them. As you will know if you have read this blog I have fallen in love with Kyoto. Not because its the first place I really ‘saw’ but more as I really connected to the place.

During that trip I really had to step out of my little ‘world’ and it was difficult as then I was not comfortable with my language skills. I’m still not, but much better now.

After that it’s been an accelerated process of adapting, and it was not until I left this year for 10 days in Sydney that I really noticed how much I had adapted and grown fond of the Japan and Tokyo. I stil don’t know how a city this large with so many people can work as well as it does, but beleive me it really does work. Its clean, safe, the transport system works everyday and I’ve never had a power outage!!.

Yes, its crowded and that takes some getting used to, being crowded into a train, but its very different from London trains, here there is a ettiquite for boarding a crowded train that does not offend. Its totally silent, but learn that skill and its all easy!

I guess I’ll be writing more about it as I’ve decided to stay for another year, why not, so much more to see and learn!.

Was surfing last night and came across this image. It speaks so loudly itself that really what can you say. Writing a blog means proof reading is a common practice. I think this guy should maybe have done a little. Perhaps then his message may have had the impact he was after instead of the reverse.?

Received an email from my cousin in law which had the following

"Anyway, I was reading a book about raising boys and it said that men use a lot of non-verbal communication. I had never noticed this and thought it interesting. So I asked Gordon, “Do you think men use a lot of non-verbal communication?”

He shrugged. "

It reminded my of a trip to Paris with my cousin Mark.

When living in London Mark, Heather, Natasha, Bernadette and I decided to goto Paris for the weekend. Well Heather openly admits she is a talker, Natasha admitted that she could carry on three different converstations at the same time (and I beleive her) while Bernadette was also no slouch when it came to the talking olympics either.

This then left me and mark. As you may or maynot know Mark and I shared a house together in NZ just before I left and could happily spend the entire weekend together in the same house and maybe have three sentences of conversation. So here we are going away for a weekend with three women who could overtalk a hurricane. What chance did we have. Actually we were fine, the whole weekend the two of us maybe spoke three of four times, yet knew exactly what each other was doing or thinking.

On the train back the girls finally took a breath and observed that we did talk very much. We just looked at each other shrugged, and they continued on with the conversation about how uncommunicative men were. We could have taken a stand for the male team, but we passed something interesting outside the train and by the time we looked back the conversation was back on hand bags.
shrug.