The 8th Wonder of the World

The T-Rex is loose!!!

King Kong has sooooo got my money already.

What price a life?

Last Sunday I went drinking with a few ex-students of the the school.

We met up at Hachiko, a famous statue outside Shibuya Station at 6pm, and walked the short distance to the restaurant where we had the dinner booking.

The seating was of a sunken style. You sit at floor level with your feet in a hollow that the table projects out of. Because the table covers most of the hollow, one can't see under it so well.

When we sat down one of the students felt something soft with her foot. We looked under the table.

What a surprise - a dead rat!

After some jumping back accompanied by revulsion / laughter a waiter came and took it away.

There were too many of us to be seated at another table, and since the rat seemed to have no dead cousins under there we sat back down.

Got 5000 yen off the bill though.

THX-443556

So as Mari and I are soon to be embarking on our sellout Australian tour, I had to make my way to the Immigration Department to get a re-entry permit.

A re-entry permit is a little money making scheme by the Japanese government to charge visa holders to get back into the country. A “one use only” re-entry permit sets you back 3000-yen. A “multiple use” one (it expires when your working visa expires) sets you back an additional 3000-yen. So if you know that you’re going to come back into Japan more than once during the term of your visa the “multiple use” one is the way to go.

The re-entry permit has changed since I last had one. The new one has a 2-D barcode. These new barcodes are everywhere here now. Many mobile phones have a scanner in them that can read these new barcodes. For instance, if a shop’s advertisement has the barcode then a quick scan will take you to the shop’s web page. Handy if you want to find out where the shop is, what’s on sale, etc…



I wonder what information the barcode on my permit links to?

Contains Traces of Buddha Nature

A few weeks ago Mari and I went to Kyoto for the weekend. A couple of hours on the bullet train got us to Kyoto Station.

We went straight to one of Kyoto’s most famous temples – Kiyomizu.





Kiyomizu is so beautiful. In summer the surrounding forest is verdant, which made the walk around the temple grounds pleasant, even though the morning was becoming increasingly humid. The weather report had promised 27 – 31 with very high humidity. Although those temperatures were never reached (in fact Saturday night was cool), for a couple of hours around lunch time on Saturday the humidity was uncomfortable.

From Kiyomizu we walked to the Gion area. Along the way we saw Koudai Temple…





and Yasaka Shrine…





and at Heian Shrine saw the most beautiful garden in what would be 2 days of exquisitely beautiful gardens.



We ate the most delicious tempura for lunch. The accompanying green tea ice cream was sublime.

The afternoon saw us at Ginkaku Temple, which also has beautiful gardens…





and an infestation of bizarro ant lions.



After Ginkaku we made our way back into central Kyoto to check into the hotel and get ready for our dinner reservation. Unless you want the excitement of traveling with the bus driver who is so behind on his schedule that he decides to ignore the traffic signals, push his way into the already crowded intersection (thus causing a hail of horn blowing) and so also blocking the way for pedestrians who then smack the side of the bus in anger, I suggest you take the subway. Actually Kyoto inner city seemed to become one big traffic jam in the mid-afternoon of both days, so my advice to travelers is to use the subway to get out of the city, and then change to the bus to get to where you want.

Dinner was a wonderful experience. We were picked up by the courtesy bus and taken into the mountains. There we got out of the big bus, and got into a smaller bus to take us along the windy road to the restaurant. The restaurant was outside on a veranda that was next to a mountain stream. It was a traditional Japanese-style dinner that consisted of many small dishes. But this place had 2 special features.

The first was that maiko came to talk with us. Maiko are trainee geisha. The 2 girls in the pictures are 16 and 18 years old. The six or so maiko went from table to table and politely answered questions that they have probably been asked a thousand times before. After that they did a couple of dances. The dances must have been hard work under the lights in all the makeup and with the heavy costume, because even though the night was by now quite cool (thanks to the weather report I’d taken no jacket on the trip), they were sweating quite freely.





The second feature was that just before the dessert course all the lights were turned off, and we could watch fireflies. This was another first for me, and I was amazed at how bright they were.

The second day was more of the same jaunts to temples, with the two most famous being Kinkaku Temple…



and Ryouan Temple.



By about 4 we were suffering from temple fatigue and decided to go somewhere that had the harsh and unnatural glare of fluorescent lights. The last few hours were spent ambling around in the department stores at Kyoto station and eating a scrumptious dinner at a Chinese restaurant.

A quick whoosh home on the bullet train and we were in bed before curfew.

Tour Dates

winstoninabox self-promotions is proud to announce dates for the Australian tour of

“somewhere in Japan there’s a megalopolis without an idiot”

August 15th to 19th – Sydney
August 20th – Melbourne (1 NITE ONLY!!)
Somewhere in these – Newcastle (1 nite TBA)

Supported by Mari with her “Raptor vs. Gundam Maxx” hand puppet show.

Guaranteed to amuse the toddlers or the feeble minded.

What the critics have to say:

“Avoid it like one of those plagues that one reads about, but never has the misfortune to run into” – Time Magazine

“This show was a bigger menace to the city than Spider-Man and Dr. Octopus combined” – The Daily Bugle

Yes, we're coming to Australia. Sorry, but we can't get out to Townsville or Canberra this time. But I'm letting you know (yes, you) just in case you (yes, still you) should be in Sydney at this time. Maybe we can meet up and do a touristy thing together.

And yet...

the more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that I'd already done this. For reasons that will be explained in a much longer post, I'd done a lot of extra work last week so that I would be free last weekend. I even had a dim memory of the finished article.

So I asked the person whom I thought I'd sent it to if they had indeed copied it and passed it onto the relevant people.

They hadn't, nor did they have the original file, nor did they have a printout of it. My only copy was on the computer at home. Not much good to me with less than 2 hours to go.

So I had to remake it from memory.

And here is the reason I'm wasting 2 bloggettes on a work-related tale.

As I started to remake it, I was reminded of some things that I had wanted to include but hadn't, and I thought of some better ways to lay it all out. All in all it worked out for the better, as I liked the new version much more.

So even when you've done all that was expected of you, and someone else lets you down, and even though it's a waste of your time, you may be a little more tired but a lot more satisfied with the result.

Have you finished...

that thing for tomorrow morning [now this morning]?

Yes, it was finished last week.

No, that what last week's thing. What about tomorrow's?

Eeeep!