Kurima Island Video

Avec, en bonus ce mois-ci, des toilettes avec television, des poissons clowns, un ours qui fait du chamisen.
With, this month only, extras including tv in public toilets, a teddy-bear playing shamisen, and clownfishes.

Voila.

Council Tax

I just deleted all occurrences of the reminder 'Council Tax' on my calendar every 1st of the month.
Ah hu.

There are days I want to study four chapters of my japanese grammar book at once, create a new piano tune, make samples, create an audio track a from all the recordings I gathered in Japan so far, finish a video, go for a walk with the dog, send a fourteen pages letter to a friend, clean the car, carry on my drawing series of uncanny cats and hares in a world of fine lines straight out of my brain to wash my head and then add them to an online portfolio to show a gallery - to say it short, be productive.

Today is not such a day.

Today I want to go to bed at 8pm and watch My Fair Lady while drinking bed time infusions after finishing my book half asleep in the afternoon sun, only a few hours after waking up very late.

Now if anybody has something against that, they may leave the room. Now.

Thank you. Now let's enjoy the movie.

Little images from Kurima

Bridge linking Miyako Jima to Kurima

Miyako Jima (Okinawa Prefecture)

Happy in the mangroves. Well. Not quite in cause it was full of tiny bright red crabs.

Cooking sweet potatoes in a fire. Mochiron!!! Sure!!! A fond!!!

WARNING: food follows.

Fellow vegan travellers: don't trust those who tell you it's impossible to stay vegan in Japan, that you will miss out on everything, and that you're a pain. It's just not true. Just saying. That's all. I've been staying in tokyo, in the rich type country side, and in totally lost places with not a kombini for miles (that's saying something), well I'm still alive, I've been eating fine, I haven't been a pain to people, I even made friends who cooked for me and made sure I stayed vegan while in the supermarket, and while eating in little shacks.

Those are called little tortoises - they are amazingly yummy rice and salt snacks from Okinawa prefecture, and are vegan.
And I didn't at all buy 10 packets of them until my suitcase wouldn't close.

'Petites tortues', des petits snacks salés de la prefecture d'Okinawa, et vegan.
Et j'en ai pas du tout acheté 10 paquets jusqu'a ce que ma valise ne ferme plus.

Little local restaurant. No problem to order vegan thanks to my host.

Who said vegan miss out on social events? Whhhaaaaattt?

Ok, where else in the world you stop to fill up your tank (well, actually, you don't do it, in Japan people run around - literally- and do it for you, don't ask me why you can't do it yourself like everywhere else), 

and for doing so you get free popcorn and free MELON FLAVOURED (yes, I just said MELON flavoured) cotton candy? I say: hell YES!

Rika-chan and I getting fat.

Vietnamese style spring rolls out of the blue from my host, with shitake, lettuce, carrots and secret soya sauce.

Te-chan fixing his line after he went fishing in...a tree... for leaves, I guess...

San-chan, le chien de l'auberge Hibiscus.

Al.

りかーちゃん in the mangroves, Miyako-Jima.

Kicked ass and got my ass kicked at ping pong.
Time for some sleep,
but before,
this warmed my heart:

Back from Kurima!

SO! I'm back and I'm tanned
and I made a friend (Rika-chan, which means pear-sent, she's a hip-hop dancer and we understood each other through the language barrier and it felt great),
and between the airport and home, I used all of my money to the last yen to buy my train ticket back here. I also tried to break into a car that I thought was ours, but wasn't (man, it was the same car, how am I supposed to know!),
and I also successfully reversed and caught the front of the car on a fence that just appeared all of a sudden. I swear it wasn't there before I put the car into reverse gear, surely I would have seen it. It never happened to me before, so travellers: beware! Japanese parking lots are full of out-of-nowhere-fences! Oh well, I didn't hit a person, so let's say it gives the car character.
I had no money to pay the parking so I hoovered the car bottom with my fingers until I found enough coins. Yummy.

Now I am going to Ueda to check out a school, then tonight I'm gonna kick some asses at ping pong (NOT... those Japanese guys know how to play table tennis, I tell you), then I might take a coffee with a nice lady who want to speak English while I speak Japanese.

Hitting the floor running, that's called!
Bye bye little hibiscus flowers and turquoise see, hello mud and snow :D !

Some pictures as an apero.

We tried to make fire. For 4 days. No success. We made a mess, that's all.

Te-chan, Rika-chan, Fan-chan, and San-chan!

Dinner at Hibiscus

Man, you're not a real blogger if you don't post pictures of your food.
Am I a real blogger now? Please?

San-chan

San-chan checking me out.

Me in the morning. Is this why I am still single? 

Bridge between Kurima Island and Miyako Jima.

Youpi!

Say it loud:

I'm back and brown!

Bien clair entre nous

Nan mais ca fait pas de mal.
Bien clair entre nous.

Marching March

SO today, I woke up and started reading my book and discovered George Orwell was huh...how to put it... a big racist fu*k?
I tell you, the first words you want to read in the morning seldom are :

'Fear of the mob is a superstitious fear. It is based on the idea that there is some mysterious, fundamental difference between rich and poor, 

as though they were two different races, like Negroes and white men.'

Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell

I am a little bit baffled that there is no preface or afterword... this is a well respected author that most students will read with 1984 or Animal Farm (Hello? Anybody out there that bought another book from an author they enjoyed?). And there's just nothing to say anything about either the vocabulary used nor the bluntly racists views held in it. Wow. Ok.  WHAAAATTTT???
The 'n word' had been used in the book before, but I thought 'hhhmm, written in 1933, ok, maybe,...'. I haven't finished the book nor looked at any article on it, especially at how I am guessing he was just totally focussing on one battle (the social classes one) and absolutely oblivious to anything else going on, but I will finish and read about it, though it made me feel a little sick to read that half awake.

But anyways, yesterday I had a small chat with pickachu so I was in a good mood. I went to dance on the mountain (I did, see the video below), fell asleep in the sun (yes! this is how warm it got, and how tired I am), and totally got put in my place (not) by the family's grand-ma, who doesn't know what an au-pair is and used to be a servant (I won't even go there).

If you think he should become my boyfriend, press #1. If not, press #2.

Below a video in French for my family and friends. If you don't speak french, well... I don't know. Learn it.