We spent the new year in Sasebo, a town outside of Nagasaki. We stayed there with Joanne’s host family from when she was an exchange student here. That was fun, though it severely tested my rudimentary Japanese language skills. I have been learning the Japanese equivalent of BBC English, but Sasebo folks speak some kind of dialect. (It reminded me of when I first moved to Scotland.)
Journal articles
Karaoke stripper
A lot of karaoke machines display a “Calories” rating after each song to show how well you sang the somg. Some are a bit more fun.
One night in Sasebo, our hosts took us to a bar where the karaoke machine had a different way of rating your singing: After each song, the screen would be covered with a pattern and a percentage: “0%”. Then the percentage would count up to whatever your rating was, and the background would dissolve piece-by-piece, slowly revealing a naked woman. If you scored 70%, the woman would still be fairly well-covered.
Fugu
At the same restaurant in Sasebo where we ate live fish, we were treated to some fugu, the famous blowfish that is supposedly fatal if incorrectly prepared. It was good, with an exquisite texture, and there were no ill effects (except to the poor fish).
Eating live fish
We were taken to a very nice restaurant during the new year. Among the many delicacies we had were a fish that had been freshly filleted and turned into sushi. The rest of the fish was artfully arranged on the serving plate. It was still twitching. On the next plate was a similarly spasmodic squid. Both were delicious.
New Year in Sasebo
Japanese new year in Sasebo (Nagasaki prefecture). Sake, sashimi, rice cakes, temples, cats, snow.
Whale meat
I tried a bit of whale at somebody’s house at new year. It was nice enough, if a bit chewy, but it seemed odd eating whale (even thought it was presumably killed purely for scientific research purposes). All my life I have thought of whales as things to be saved, not served.
Harry Potter to Himitsu no Heya
In deference to the small Japanese children in our party, we went to see “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” dubbed into Japanese. It seemed a bit slow, but maybe that’s just because I only understood every 20th word. Even so, I thought the giant spiders were quite scary, though they didn’t seem to bother the 5-year-old girl next to me.
Waking Life
Amazing animation, though Joanne found the pervasive floatiness a bit disorienting. Lots of interesting talk about dreams.
Eternal Youth — Future Bible Heroes
Not as good as their first album Memories of Love, but still with those mordant lyrics and cheesy synthesizers.
Chocolate Beckham
Following the trail of rumour, we mounted a search for the giant chocolate statue of David Beckham. We found him in Shibuya, complete a with long queue of people waiting for a photo with their chocolate hero. It was pretty impressive, perhaps 2 metres tall. (Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me when we found the Beckham.)