March 30, 2005
The Rose and Crown Arrives!
There is a small chain of 'British' pubs in Tokyo called The Rose and Crown. It's quite nice - a bit expensive and not very British, but decent and pleasant enough. They are expanding their operations, so have been distributing flyers near the station. I'd like to share some of their prose with you.
"Clothes made Saku Saku who encompassed the white meat fish". This describes, obviosly, their traditional fish and chips.
"Original meaning of shepherd's thing, so to speak,shepherd's pie home in Britain that made it from the remainder of roast beef dish Sheparz". Clearly a succint explanation of what that old favourite Shepher's pie is.
One of the new pubs is in "Adult town Shiodome" - I'm not quite sure if this means that only adults are allowed in the town, or if it was built by adults, or what. Is Ginza, for example, a child's town? Shinjuku an infant's town?
Finally, here's my favourite section:
"There seems yet to be no what for production and sales of the lugger to exceed the yell though the ice cold has been brewed as for Britain since the latter half of the century the 19th in the country where the brewing of yelled beer is active fromof old. 250 or more has the one brewery, and a variety of yelled beers are made in Britain in those breweries. However, the yell of Britain doesn't feel very sweetness."
The above nonsense makes a little more sense when you know that yell means ale, and lugger is referring to lager...
March 24, 2005
Megumi and Miyuki
Here's a picture of Megumi and her bump at the wedding party of John and Miyuki.
Megumi is the one not in the wedding dress!
Matt Read's Recovery Continues
You may recall that my cousin, Matt Read, was in a pretty horrific motorbike accident last year. He stopped breathing, and his life was basically saved by some very quick-thinking medical folk. He had severe back and neck problems, as well as a punctured lung. He was allowed to go back to the UK at the end of the year (the accident was in France), and he is now out of the hospital, and continuing his recovery from home.
Matt is still in a wheelchair, but he is able to get up and walk about for short periods. He and his fiancee Claire postponed their wedding plans, but have now set a date for the end of July, just about the time that Rosie's little brother or sister is due to emerge.
This picture is of Matt and Claire dancing at a recent event that was held to raise money for the two of them.
March 22, 2005
State of Mind
As you will have realised, if you know me and Megumi, we have some good days and some bad days. You may even be able to figure that out from reading my drivel on the site here.
Recently, we have been having a lot of good days. Megumi's swelling stomach is a very real reminder that we will be parents again in the very near future. We haven't forgotten about Rosie. In fact we think about her and talk about her every day. But we are looking forwards, rather than backwards. We have lots of love to give, and are excited about sharing our love with a new baby Garner. The 4-D ultrasound photos are very realistic, and Megumi is convinced that 'baby-chan' looks like his/her older sister (I'm a little more skeptical!)
In many ways, it may, bizarrely, be easier for us to come to terms with what happened than it has been for our families. As I said, we have evidence of a new life growing inside Megumi, whereas my parents and Megumi's parents only have our second-hand accounts to console them. Perhaps I should take a picture of the ultrasound photo to cheer up the folks a bit...
Comments, Spam etc
Some of you may have noticed that my site gets periodically blitzed by what is known as comment spam. My Dad was a bit surprised a week or two ago to click on a link from GBB and be inundated with 'adult' sites offering him all sorts of ways to improve his sexual performance.
I will keep trying to stay on top of the problem, but occasionally there may be links that you don't want to click. Sorry about that. I am also going to close comments on all of the older entries, so if you wamt to comment on something old and can't, email me or comment on a new post, and I will add your thoughts to the 'debate'.
March 17, 2005
All Change
As you can see, I'm messing around with the template a bit. I like this style, but not the colours. Will find the 'right' colours soon. Maybe pink for hanami?
March 15, 2005
Thinking of the Wyatt Family
I cannot really imagine what the Wyatt family are going through, but I have probably thought about the issues involved more than most people. (BBC article)
The parents, of course, are not willing to give up on their daughter, the light of their life. In the latest news, they have seen development and improvement in Charlotte's condition which the medical professionals can not see. The medical professionals, whose job it is to cure disease and sickness and alleviate pain, do not want to give Charlotte any more treatment which will prolong her pain and suffering. It seems like a classic case of the logical head battling with the emotional heart.
Neither side is right, neither side is wrong. The Wyatts cannot bring themselves to accept that their daughter cannot survive and live a painless life. Accepting this fact (if it is a fact) would lead them to the conclusion that they have to follow the advice of the medical experts, and let Charlotte go.
Late in the afternoon of August 20th last year, when Rosie's condition was steadily getting worse, it became clear to me that she was not going to bounce back. Her heartbeat was erratic, and we could see Rosie's condition deteriorating on the machines. I asked the doctor how much time she had left. He told me that her heart could stop at any minute. I asked him how long she would live if taken off the machines. He said "Just a few minutes". I gently spoke to Megumi, and we agreed. We decided that, since Rosie could pass away at any minute, we would prefer her to do so in our arms than strapped down and connected to machines. We thought that she would prefer this, and I felt that Megumi needed this. I think we gave Rosie a bit of dignity for those final few moments, and allowed her to move on to the next place happy, knowing that she was loved and adored. I am sure we made the right decision, and I have no regrets.
I do not know what is best for the Wyatts. I just hope that they stay strong, and continue to keep the best interests of their daughter at heart.
March 14, 2005
Podcasting
My 'techie' readers will know what a Podcast is, and probably be listening to them already. I have known about the technology for a while, but only recently started listening to 'podcasts'. Below is a quick tutorial on what it's all about:
Equipment needed to listen to a podcast
1)first you need a computer connected to the internet, preferably at a decent speed
2)then you need an iPod or one of the inferior, copycat devices, which can play back digital music, particularly in mp3 format.
3)finally, you need to install a piece of 'podcasting' software on your computer. Somthing like iPodder is good.
What you then do is set up the software to download 'podcasts' at regular intervals to your computer. Using iTunes or other inferior software, you can then copy the downloaded shows to your iPod or MP3 player.
Basically, a podcast is like a radio broadcast. The major difference is that the listener can choose when they want to listen to the show. They do not need to listen to a radio at a specific time, nor even be connected to the internet. Download the show you want from the internet, pop it on your iPod, and listen to it on the train/bus/plane or whenever you feel like it (although I wouldn't recommend listening in the bath).
There are a couple of reasons why I just recently started podcasting. The first, and major one, is that a lot of the people actually creating these shows a few months ago were techie folks, a bit geeky, and there wasn't much content that I fancied listening to.
Podcasting has now gone 'mainstream', and both Radio 4 and Virgin Radio in the UK are making certain shows available to download. The Virgin show is a bit disappointing - removing music and news fromthe Breakfast show just leaves a shell of emptry chatter, in my opinion. The Radio 4 show is better, with whole episodes of In Our Time now available to download.
If other iPod owners are anything like me, they will have also eventually got bored of listening to the songs on their iPods (even if you can fit you whole collection on the things), so spicing it up with the odd free radio show is just the thing.
1million yen for 3rd Child
Since Megumi wants to have 3 children, I wish we lived here...
While China fines you for having a second child, one town in Japan is rewarding women who have a 3rd. This often comes up in dsiscussions with friends as one effective way to help solve the birth-rate problem here.
(from Yahoo, which annoyingly changes the links on its news stories, making it a pointless exercise to link to them.)
Japan Town Will Pay Women Who Have 3rd Kid
Sat Mar 12, 5:48 AM ET World - AP Asia
TOKYO - How about getting paid 1 million yen for having a baby? To combat a shrinking population, a small town in northern Japan has decided to give a cash award worth about $9,600 to each female resident who has a third child, an official said Friday.
To be eligible, the women must have lived in Yamatsuri town for more than a year, town hall spokesman Eiichi Takanobu said.
Yamatsuri, where the population has fallen from 7,400 a decade ago to 7,000 this year, is not alone among Japanese towns who are losing people.
As the country's birthrate declines, demographers have predicted Japan's population will peak at about 127.7 million next year and fall rapidly over the next half-century to about 100 million.
The situation is raising concerns about how future generations will support the growing ranks of elderly and how businesses will survive as the labor pool shrinks.
To encourage families to have more children, the central government has started building more day-care centers and encouraged men to take paternity leave.
It is rare, however, for a town to offer its female residents a large sum for having a baby.
Yamatsuri will hand mothers a lump sum of $4,800 within three months after giving birth to a third baby. The women will then be given $480 each year between the child's second and 11th birthday, Takanobu said.
Last year, 50 babies were born in Yamatsuri, up from 40 in 2003, Takanobu said.
Japan's birthrate fell to a record low of 1.29 in 2003 as improved career opportunities give women more options aside from marriage. Many families also put off having children due to the difficulties of finding affordable child care and weak support for working mothers from companies and communities.
March 09, 2005
Spring is Springing
I prepare myself for the short walk to the station by donning a white surgical mask and sunglasses. I remove the sunglasses at the station, but I keep the mask until I get off the train at the other end. There is a reason, and it's not just to scare the life out of the neighbourhood children : )
Hay Fever seems to get worse every year in Japan. The book Dogs and Demons outlines the process whereby large sections of Japanese mountainsides were razed, and the indigenous trees and plants were replaced with cedars, which look much nicer and neater. This, combined with the pollution of city life, has led to increasing numbers of people suffering from hay fever. As in so many places in the world, the weather forecast here now includes a 'pollen count'. Hence the sunglasses and mask.
The other reason I have been wearing a mask on the train for the past couple of months is to avoid catching a cold or the flu. Japanese people are extremely generous with sharing their germs with others, and when surrounded by hundreds of coughing, hacking workers on the packed train, it is very easy to pick up something nasty. With Megumi being pregnant, I don't want to pass on a cold or the flu to her, so I have sacrificed my street-cred, and thankfully steered clear of nasty bugs up until now.