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We’re back, safe and sound, and loving it!

Driving from Narita to Miho’s sister’s house was weird. We went through Tokyo.

Past Ginza: I used to work there and met Leysh there too, when he was teaching Charlotte Church on her grand tour of the world, courtesy of Sony Corporation. Sony Corp supplies lovely cake if you get the chance, but alas not as good as a Buckingham Palace’s garden party.

Iidabashi: We got Ifan’s British passport from there many moons ago and I will start work/training there in just over a week.

The Imperial Palace: An idyllic haven in the chaos that is Tokyo Metropolitan - It’s the one place in Japan that foreigners take precedence over the locals, you see they (the locals) aren’t allowed in, but the average visitor off the street is. Most strange, especially when you what to take your half Japanese family to see it!!

Ikebukuro: Where I used to spend many a lazy afternoon. Indeed, it was there that I bought my dartboard!

Wako: Where Miho and I used to spend many a lazy evening. And where one day I was so annoyed with someone (can’t remember who) that in my rage I entered “the zone” and potted every ball on the pool table in front of a crowd of about 30 spectators just to get the hell out of the place.

Asakadai: Where Miho, Miki and I rented our first ever house together. Alas, it wasn’t long before we experienced our first ever eviction together too. It was supposedly for playing darts at 10pm, or at least that’s what he told the real estate agent. I think it was more to do with me being a foriegner because he kept on telling me, when he had finished banging on our wall for half an hour that “when you live in Japan, you should follow Japanese rules”. I explained the situation to all my Japanese friends and they were gob-smacked at what the idiot was saying. You see there is no rule in Japan that says, “All people should be silent at 10pm because their shortarsed neighbour’s wife has to be up at 5am to support the family because the husband chooses to be of an artistic inclination” All it really meant was that he wasn’t getting any from his wife and so he had to try and take it out on someone else. And take it out he tried to do… the fact that our idiot of a neighbour was about a foot shorter than me and 20 years my senior didn’t seem to worry him, he knew that the collar of my shirt needed some extra creases put in it. This assumption on his part resulted in me putting a No 3 wristlock on him. Shockwaves of pain later (and yet trying not to show it), he came upon a realisation that my shirt collar was quite fine without the extra creases. This must have come as a complete shock to him as it must have appeared that I had indeed been living as a Japanese for quite some time and some of it had surprisingly rubbed off on my uncultured self. Suffice to say, the estate agent was telling us to leave within a week and Yamato-shi was beckoning for the next big adventure in my life.

Let the new adventures begin!!