Organic food vs heroin

The good thing about heroin is that you rarely get trapped in conversations with people about how good for you it is, and how you need to get the right kind. Unlike olive oil. Or pasta. Or vegetables. (But not quinoa, because you can't have conversations about something nobody knows how to pronounce.)

Koya-san

Today I got up early to go to Koya-san, a small town in the mountains near Osaka, filled with Buddhist temples and shrines.

Koya-san was declared a UNESCO world heritage site in 2004; I wonder if they were a bit slow to classify it, seeing as some of the temples have been around since the twelfth century. Still, I suppose there was no real rush: if the buildings had been there for that long, they could wait a few more years.

Although since the Kondo temple "has been repeatedly destroyed" according to our pamphlet from tourist information, perhaps it's best not to delay these things.

Leaving Shikoku

One of the joys of the Japanese rail system is how easy everything is. We arrived at the station an hour and a half early, and in just a few minutes we had our seats changed to a train leaving immediately, without any penalty or complaint from the ticket booth.

Try that in England, and from what I recall any mucking around with your ticket so you're not on exactly the train you specified three months ago, and you're in for a world of pain.

Trains and booze

I'm cold and tired, after another day of training. Some of it is physically tiring (having a big lad try to pull your hands off your arms always is), some of it is fatiguing to my self-esteem (being corrected by a youngster when we don't have a language in common is, it turns out, harder than when you aren't struggling for comprehension). I've also had a chance to get really bored by a powerpoint presentation.

Nothing much doing in Shikoku

This morning I woke from strange but prosaic dreams, wherein the Hotel Okura in Marugame was charging me like a wounded bull for internet access, to discover that it was foggy outside and cold, although as I was incompetent with the air conditioning the inside of my room was a miniature sauna. I snaffled down the strange raisin bread I'd purchased last night, gagged a little on my instant cream of onion soup, and then faffed around doing nothing much at all for a few hours before taking the train to Tadotsu, going for a walk round town and finding there was nothing at all to eat apart from hash browns at the bakery next to the station.

A salutary lesson about car hire in Japan

This morning was a bit difficult; after waking up with hair that appeared to have exploded, and a mouth like dessicated coconut, I had a nutritious breakfast of French fries and croissants. I didn't boast too much about how I'd got a taxi home last night, rather than walk for a couple of miles from the station to the flickering beacon of the ANA Gate Tower Hotel. Then we went over to the airport to pick up our hire car.

Unfortunately, to hire a car in Japan it's a legal requirement to have a Japanese translation of your license.

Meeting up in Osaka

Because I know absolutely nobody in Osaka, I went on to meetup.com and looked there for people, and arranged to have dinner at a Canadian pizza restaurant north of the main station. Because I enjoy partaking of local customs, and when in Osaka, what could be more culturally appropriate than Canadian pizza?

Terrified of Luke Haines / Eleven Minutes Late

I'm sat alone in my flat, ruddy petrified at the noise coming from my television, yet finding it laughable at the same time. Or perhaps it's just the onset of hysteria. Yes, I'm listening to Luke Haines' The Great Brain Robbery again, from his 21st Century Man album, and the combination of Haines' intimidating, hate-spitting voice and the constant buzz of the electricity transformer that he's recruited as a musical instrument, makes me feel like my head is trapped in a box of pure evil vitriol. And 1990s Brit-art. And the fact that I could turn it off whenever I like, but don't, adds a delicious absurdity to it all.

It's rather like when you listen to Slayer's Decade of Aggression live album, and the CD comes to an end, and you suddenly find yourself relaxing now that the horrible, horrible noise has stopped.

Or, more prosaically, like the great feeling you get when you stop hitting yourself on the head with a hammer. But, er, in a good way.