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Despite having only met a particular Japanese husband and wife for the first time they asked me directly within the first ten minutes if I had any marriage plans! True, the subject of marriage was brought up by someone else, but still… It shouldn’t really surprise me any more when this kind of thing happens but it still catches me off guard. To me, it’s amazing how much emphasis the Japanese place on marriage. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, just that it’s interesting from a cultural viewpoint.
This restaurant doesn’t recommended certain dishes on its own dim sum menu! Interestingly, the Chinese version on the other side doesn’t have such a comment. Should the comment have read ‘not recommended for non-Chinese?’
I took this photo on the way to Hiezan, Japan. If you can’t read any Japanese you might wonder what the advert is actually for but it looks like it’s for a hair salon. Is it just me or does it remind you of MJ? A friend gave me a bottle of Purdey’s rejuvenation multivitamin fruit drink. Rejuvenation? Just the ticket! It smelled quite artificial and medicinal, if anything. The taste wasn’t much better - though there are people I talk to who love it.
Looking at the nutritional information, it didn’t look too bad. Then I noticed a single bottle contains 22g of sugar! I started to wonder how this would compare to freshly squeezed juices and to drinks like Coke. I found a site called Sugar Stacks, which will really put you off Coke when you see the equivalent amount of sugar cubes stacked up next to a can or bottle. I haven’t drunk Coke in a few years now and I think I’ll keep it that way. My iPhone appears to be faulty, I thought. The YouTube app started playing audio through the speakers even though I had flicked the mute switch on. Apparently, this is by design and that apps can just ignore the switch! Apart from the alarm clock, that is the most ridiculous system design decision ever. After talking about it for months and months I’ve finally got an iPhone 4. Wohoo! So far I’m loving it! It almost feels like there’s nothing it can’t do. Yeah, the reception issue isn’t great but once I get a case that I would have bought anyway… Although it’s not a great comparison when looking at these little bars (with different algorithms, it seems), reception seems much worse with the iPhone 4 than my C905 - even when not touching any part of it. Which apps would you recommend I get started with? I was looking forward to all the Japanese related apps but apart from the ‘Kotoba’ dictionary you have to pay for most things. On the subject of Kotoba, its kanji animation feature beats my £200+ electronic dictionary! Today London saw its first air-conditioned Tube train going into service!
I think I’ll have to move to a location on the Met Line until 2015 Last Friday saw the launch of Boris Johnson’s London bike hire scheme. ’Bike stations’, if you will, have popped up in quite a number of locations across London. Here are some of the bikes in Covent Garden.
If you ask me, the scheme seems a little over priced, charging both an access fee and a usage charge if you use a bike for longer than half an hour. The real killer is that your Oyster card/season ticket isn’t applicable. Still, it’s an interesting idea and I do want to try out the bikes at some point. A Chinese friend invited me to KTV. I had to Google the term to find out it’s what the Chinese call karaoke. I’m not really one for singing but tagged along anyway. The place was near Holborn/Chancery Lane in London. The feel was very different to any other karaoke box I’ve been to. It was quite a dark and chic with shiny surfaces and accented lighting under the tables and along the walls. Many of the rooms were glass walled so that you could see inside from outside but because it was so dark it didn’t feel too intrusive. The actual KTV itself left me baffled. I felt like I should be able to pick out some of the kanji from the Chinese songs but apart from very common words like ‘love’, there weren’t that many I could recognise. Even those which I did didn’t see to match the on-yomi very closely. There were a couple of Japanese people there, too, so I did get to hear some Japanese songs, too. There was the theme song to the first anime I ever watched, Rurouni Kenshin. That brought me back… to where I’m not sure, but some time in the past. Then there was an HY song a Japanese friend sang a little too well for my liking! Even with Japanese, my reading ability is far too slow and fragmented to keep up with karaoke, though. It’s definitively a good avenue to learn Japanese but something I never really got into. The venue felt quite luxurious and there was a price tag to match. We were told we were £90 short of the minimum spend so someone ended up ordering champagne just for the sake of it! A minimum spend for karaoke and a high one at that? Considering how much everyone had drunk, it seemed a little over the top. By the end it was £35 a head. As I turned up late and missed the food I have to say that was the most expensive soft drink I’ve ever had! |
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