The other week we met up with some friends in Kyoto, the lovely Richard, and the even lovelier Clo. They were in Japan for a week and managed to get to Kyoto for a couple of days.
We caught up with them on a hot, humid day for lunch at a great noodle shop in the back streets of Kyoto. It was nice to see 2 sweating, smelly, Englishmen struggling with the sweltering heat (about 36ish in Kyoto these days) and humidity (about 110%), while the 2 hardly perspiring ladies floated along in the warmth.

I didn't have time to photoshop out my belly, so just try not to look at it please.

Aki and I had planned to go to a very nice (i.e. posh) Italian restaurant in Umeda, Osaka (the Salvatore I think it's called), that some friends (hi Gav and Max) had taken me to a few weeks before. It was so posh, the waiters had proper full on waiter uniforms and spoke a mix of Italian and Japanese. They also have a dress code..and as you can see from the picture, I'd not worn my tux to Kyoto...shorts, sandals, etc.
Well we decided to try anyway, and finally I had one of those movie scenes where the snooty Maitre d' peers down his nose at the shabby dressed customer, and asks him politely to leave...well not quite.

A very nice lady, asked us to wait, then, while apologising profusely (I think, couldn't follow all the Japanese, but the body language was apologetic), told us I couldn't wear shorts and sandals but they had some trousers and shoes I could change into!! And they did, and unbelievably (bearing in mind my feet are about 29cm's which is off the chart in Japan), they fitted!
I was led into the toilets, asked to change and then escorted to our table. A fantastic meal ensued which was much cheaper than it should have been - it was one of those places where the waiter explains what's on the plate just before you stuff it in your mouth - the food and wine were excellent!
Highly recommended if you're ever in Osaka, it's in the Herbis building near the Hilton hotel.
(Will try and confirm the name)

After 2 and a half years, I finally upgraded my phone (which was a "free" one, so although did all the necessary things a phone does, make calls, texts, take photos, etc, wasn't quite as "cool" and hi-tech Japanese as I had hoped)...
well now I have the latest Softbank 923SH which has amongst other things, TV! (One-seq tv is quite big here recently), GPS(!!), cool games, wide-screen video and photo capture, and what every phone needs, a pedometer!
It's gorgeous. And as you can see from the picture above, it flips up like a normal clam phone, then you can slide the top screen round to a widescreen format.
Obviously had to sign up for a 2 year contract, but it's great so far...well it does have a couple of problems....

For some reason the "predictive" text doesn't do any predicting even when activated, the headphone socket is infuriating (the flap covering the socket and the headphone connector seem to fight each other, so it takes a few minutes to connect - or maybe it's just my fat gaijin fingers),
and can't quite work out the quick and easy shortcuts - although to be fair, the manual was a weighty tome in japanese, and the English was just a quick A4 sheet covering basics, so I'm sure it does everything i want, if I can find out how.

The most annoying thing however is when the numbers were transferred over from my old phone, most of them lost the names!

So I have a list of about 20 numbers with no idea who they attach to. So if anyone I know in Japan reads this (in particular, Rodney and Steve - hi), can you email or text me with your number, as I've lost your details. Arigats.

I got a voice message last week, from some guy at head office of Nova, asking me if I wanted my old job back! Apparently they're pretty short staffed in Hyogo (the 'county' - or ken in Japanese, where I live).
Not sure if this is because they (allegedly) sacked or forced to leave (by making conditions unbearable) many of the teachers in the rural areas, but kept the schools open, so now have to ship people out of the city schools into the country thus leaving the city schools understaffed...(bizarre businees model), or that people are just leaving in droves (especially as apparently despite the Japanese humidity and summer heat, 37degress in Kyoto(!) there's a limit on air conditioner usage to save money).

I didn't call him back, but then a few days later, one of the Japanese staff from my old school called me up (a new lady, didn't know her), also asking me if I wanted to come back. When I told her "err..no", she burst out laughing (maybe she gets that reaction a lot), said she understood, and we parted very amicably, both still laughing at the absudity of it all.

Mind you, who knows what the future holds, maybe I shouldn't go burning too many bridges....

Also in the news this morning, Monkey Bridge (Sahashi, the ex nova president, currently indicted on embezzling over 300million Yen from his company), will not be charged with "intentionally" not paying all the staff. Guess he really did mean all those bizarre faxes he sent out to us...

Got a concerned email from this blog provider, wondering if I was okay, apparently it's been over a month since I last blogged!
Doesn't time fly, especially when you've got a wedding to go to.

Just got back from England and our wedding ceremony. It was kind of a fake wedding, as we got married in Japan 4 months ago, but we wanted a big family and friends gathering to celebrate with everyone. Aki got to wear a beautiful dressing and looked absolutely gorgeous. And my brother got to be a priest for the day and married us.

It was a fantastic day at the Mitre Hotel opposite Hampton Court, everything went right and pretty sure everyone had a really good time. If you were there, thank you for coming! The highlight for me (other than seeing my wife walk down the aisle of course), was everyone's reaction to our first dance.
We chose "You know my name (look up my number)" by the Beatles, and choreographed our own little dance, which included Bon Dori (traditional Japanese dance for Obon - summer festival). After the BonDori we broke into the Prince Charming! Which got a big cheer. We didn't realize it's been on a tv commercial in England recently, guess that's why people recognized it.

Flew back a couple of days later, and now back to work.
Still, got a 3 day weekend now, and it's the Ashiya Matsuri (festval) so there's fireworks tonight! yay.

The other Friday, I went out with my work colleagues for a party.
We went to a beer garden in Osaka. I've blogged about beer gardens before, but just to recap, they're not like English beer gardens (where the garden part is kind of important, trees, grass, etc.), here, due to lack of space, they tend to be on the roof of department stores or hotels, so the beer is more important.
Basically, you pay 3000Yen and it's nomihodai and tabehodai (all you can eat and drink!).
I didn't know at the time, but it turned out to be my "oiwai" party (wedding celebration party). Which was great They made me drink a lot, and gave me a beautifully wrapped envelope with money in for my wedding.
Aki and I are going to a newly opened sushi restaurant in Ashiya with the money - they do amazing sushi!

As it's not really summer here yet, the beer garden shut early (8:30) so we went to a very cool Okinawan restaurant afterwards.
I don't know how engineered it was, but I ended up right at the front of the small stage they had for live music. So when this fella came on...(the Japanese Omar Sharif)...

(apologies for the poor quality of the photo, but it was taken with a mobile phone, and I was drunk )

he spotted me straightaway and started talking to me (where are you from, etc. ). Then said he was going to sing some songs in English. He sang "I love you, I need you, I want you..." kinda embarassing.
After a few songs, he asked if a "James" was in the audience...I raised my hand, and he told me to stand up. He told eveyone in the restaurant I was getting married, and they all cheered and said congratulations. Again, pretty embarassing, but really nice. He then tried to play the wedding march on his shamisen!

It didn't end there. Okinawan music is great for dancing to, and this restaurant gets everyone dancing round the tables. So one of the waiters got some drunk salaryman up and dancing and they shuffled round to me and lifted me off the floor (I wasn't that drunk! - we were sitting on the floor, this is Japan remember), and we started a conga like dance around the restaurant. Everyone was so friendly, I got lots of hugs from sweaty salarymen, and high fives and hand shakes from everyone. Great fun!
I'll try to scan some pictures of the dancing in (I didn't take any obviously, a friend gave me some).

All in all, a fantastic night, and the food was great too. I recommend Okinawan pork, very soft and juicy.