In the summer of 2005 I went on a six-week cycle tour around the west of Japan, and when I got back to the UK the following year, wrote a book about it that remains unpublished to this day (all offers, advances and bidding wars between major publishing houses accepted – please leave a message and / or cash offer in the comments section for this post). Still, the tour was so inspiring that in the summer of 2008, when…
I woke up at about 6.30, got dressed, rolled up my sleeping bag and camping mat and unzipped the tent flap, only to find myself completely surrounded by school children. There was a sort of Mexican stand-off moment where we all stood and stared at each other, before I broke the silence by whispering a polite ‘good morning’ (somehow it didn’t feel right to raise my voice) and almost tip-toed my way to the car park to start loading the…
As we were sitting – or rather, kneeling – down for dinner at the in-law’s the other day, onii-san arrived back from the shops with a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau. My rule of thumb for judging the quality of a wine from its label – which I first heard in a comedy routine, but which I have found to be surprisingly reliable – is: Text only = good wineBlack & white picture + text = fair to middling wineColour picture…
‘This morning,’ K-sensei told me the other day, ‘when I looked at the thermometer it was minus eight degrees.’‘At 4.30, you mean?’ (K-sensei’s sleep patterns make Margaret Thatcher look like a lazy teenager, and 4.30am is when he usually gets up.)‘No, at 4,’ he said.‘You woke up at 4am?’‘No, no. I woke up at 3.30. I got up at 4, and by 4.30, the temperature was minus ten. It is the first time in my life this has happened.’ Statistically…