Happy New Year!

Well, everyone's already commented on what a weird and terrifying year it's been. I won't bother with that, as plenty of other people have covered that ground. I think I just want to post something to signal the end of the year and the beginning of something new, hopefully with a lot of exciting things in store (on a personal level at least).

In the second half of last year I had a lot of upheaval - basically every element of my life is totally different from what it was twelve months ago, when I was eating dumplings in Taiwan and waiting for what turned out to be some rather pitiful New Year's fireworks (we'd gone to the wrong end of town by mistake). I'm pretty happy with the new life I've managed to cobble together, though. I'm settled in my new job, which thankfully is flexible enough to allow me to squeeze my hours into four days a week, leaving one day for me to pursue voluntary work and still keep the weekend for myself. The idea of "giving back" is hard to talk about without sounding clichéd and self-satisfied, but I find my role pretty challenging and interesting, and I'm glad I get to do something vaguely valuable with my time. Oh, and next week I'm moving into a new place - a place all of my own. I know it's a bit silly to find some big symbolic significance in that, but I feel like the whole idea of "new year, new me" actually has some sort of solid foundation this year. I'm already rubbing my hands at the thought of cooking in my own little kitchen as I play my music as loud as I want (well, as loud as I want without provoking the ire of the neighbours).

I've a few goals for 2017. Most relevant I guess is wanting to post at least once a week. I'm not sure about what yet, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

I want to cook more. I'm not a terrible cook but my skills don't go much beyond functional. In particular I'd like to focus more on improving the basics (scrambling eggs, prepping veg etc.) and trying more recipes from different kinds of cuisine from around the world - something I wasn't able to explore as fully in Japan.

I want to maintain my Japanese level. I've already got in the habit of watching Friends dubbed into Japanese (I've watched most episodes so many times in English that it's easy enough to follow even when I don't understand every word). Once I've moved I'll be in a much more convenient place for exploring Japanese language exchanges and meetups, and I might even take up lessons again if I have the time and money. I want to brush up on my Spanish, too, and maybe learn something new.

At the moment I'm getting a decent amount of exercise a day simply through my commute to my job, but the place I'm moving to is very close to work. While I'm relishing the idea of my 8.30 lie-ins, I do feel I'm probably going to become a lot more sedentary in my lifestyle if I'm not too careful. So I'm also thinking about that New Year's resolution that will make everyone sigh and roll their eyes - I want to exercise more.

Oh, and I want to get my dual citizenship, finally. When I was a kid and the laws on passports changed - so that children had to have their own individual passports rather than travel on their parents' - my mum asked me if I wanted a British or an Irish passport. I chose British - not out of any sense of patriotism, so much as thinking unicorns were cooler than harps. I've renewed my passport twice since then, and both times I went for British simply because it was easier to prove my citizenship. There's a lot of faffing around with birth certificates and whatnot to be done if I want to get first Irish citizenship and then a passport, but with the status of British passports so up in the air it feels like the right time to get around to it. Plus I like harps more than unicorns now.

That's all, really. See you in the new year. Don't be too hard on yourself. Don't be a dick to anyone.

5 Things I Love About Being Back in the UK

I've been back in the UK for about four months now. In some ways, it feels like I never left. I got rid of the habit of bowing, and I don't find it weird that trains are cancelled at random. I get stuck when I try to speak Japanese, and an inarticulate stream of nonsense syllables comes out instead. I miss a lot of things about it, and there are parts of living in the UK that frustrate me now. But let's do something positive and talk about 5 things I love and appreciate now that I'm back in the UK:

The wealth of food available - When I was in Japan, and people asked me what I missed about the UK, my mind always jumped to food first. There were a lot of individual things that I missed - sausage rolls, English breakfasts, parsnips, sausage rolls - but the whole picture was the most important thing for me. Apart from the US, I'm not sure the UK can be beaten for the sheer variety of what you can buy in the supermarket. There are some upsides to the more limited, focused approach of the Japanese supermarket - the fruit and vegetables always tend to be seasonal, for example, which provides you with a smug sense of being in tune with nature - but overall it could be pretty frustrating to walk into a Japanese supermarket and find entire aisles dedicated to ramen, but pretty much zero non-Japanese food apart from the token packets of spaghetti i.e. Italian ramen. Import stores exist, but are expensive and limited. Part of me dislikes the talons of the big supermarket chains and the way they slowly crush the British high street, but another part of me loves that I can buy nam pla, ras el hanout and marshmallow Fluff all in the same place. (Funnily enough, if you combine those three ingredients, you get my favourite midnight snack.)

No weird bugs - you don't think of Japan as a tropical place, really. But make no mistake, it's in the geographical zone of Weird Bugs and Insect Horror. I've had far too many "what the hell is THAT" moments in Japan. Why does it have fur? Why does it move like that? Can it fly? Why is it eating my quiche?

Weather - this might seem like a weird one. Most people don't think of British weather as a plus, especially at this time of year. But to be honest, I love overcast weather. It makes things feel still and peaceful to me, and I guess gives me an odd sense of beginning-of-the-school-year nostalgia. I like that the leaves get wet and muddy and all clump together and make you tread carefully, so your autumn walks automatically become a little slower and more contemplative. I like the slow trends of temperature, not flashing straight from one season to the next but meandering back and forth. I like the contradictions; that warm sun can fall on frost and rain can fall six or seven times in a day without the pavement ever really getting wet. Plus, no horribly sticky summer.

Hearing different languages on the street - okay, some people don't like this one. Some people *really* don't like this one, as anyone who's kept up with the news this year could tell you. But I get excited walking down from Brighton station through the centre and hearing Spanish, then Chinese, then Korean, then Polish amongst all the English. For starters, my ears are still not quite used to being able to automatically understand most of the people around me, and it kind of hurts overhearing everyone at once, so it's a relief not to understand all of it. And it's just fun to me. Hearing other worlds interacting with your own is cool. Meeting people from other places is cool. It makes me want to learn every language in the world, even the ones that are of no use to me. That's a specific kind of energy I found missing in Japan.

Being able to engage with employees - Japan is well-known for its strong hospitality culture. People say the service is the best in the world. And that's....sort of true. Service staff always look happy to see you, they're always super-polite, and they always come running when you need them. The issue is that they will do everything they possibly can for you, so long as you are doing things in the specific way they expect you to. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't going round Japan asking waiters to put caramel sauce on my gyoza or demanding they only talk to me in rhyme. I'm not a demanding customer. But do something like ask for more than one sandwich or tell a hotel employee you'd rather walk to a certain place rather than get a taxi, and they will look at you like you've got two heads. It's like the whole tree of events has broken down in their minds, and they're not sure what crazy thing this weird foreigner's going to do next. Is it time to get the manager? Is this maniac going to get a gun out and start shooting at the ceilings? It's so nice just to be able to ask for a second sachet of ketchup, or a doggy-bag for your leftover dessert, and to have your needs instantly understood without feeling like any request is breaking The Unspoken Rules.

So that's five things I love about being here. Don't worry, I hate things too.

Update: I got electrocuted. Also, I moved back to the UK.

Well, now seems as good a time as ever to restart things.

(The title is slightly inaccurate, by the way. I didn't know this until today, but apparently "electrocution" refers specifically to death by electric shock - a portmanteau of "electric" and "execution". And as you may be able to tell, I'm not dead. But I like the term anyway.)

It's been a while, so let's recap. I moved from Japan, back to the UK. There will be more details about this later.

I readjusted to my old bedroom, which is in the loft and is therefore unbearably cold in winter and unfathomably warm in summer.

I got electrocuted by a rogue mains socket in the house. It hurt. It did not kill me or mess up my heartrate. It did, however, give me a mild phobia of charging my phone.

I found a new job and started volunteering.

I'm looking for a new place to live, because once you've lived away from home you realise that having full control of the TV remote is a lot more important than you thought it was. Also, living in a place that does not shoot you full of electricity is a lot more important than you thought it was.

I'm re-learning how to play the piano.

I'm looking forward to my first proper Christmas in three years.

And, hopefully, I'm blogging. It's something I like to do for fun - and for the vast swathes of adoring compliments it brings me - but I'm not really sure what direction this blog is going to take now, once I've finished the last few posts about my final months in Japan. When I was there, it was pretty easy to figure out what I was going to write about. Being in Japan is interesting and people wanted to know things about it. Whenever I went to places, I took pictures, I posted them and I wrote things about them. Now I'm back here, I get pretty excited about things I didn't get to see for a while - hey, a red squirrel! look, a cancelled train! - but I don't think that's very interesting to anyone else, so I'm not sure what I'll end up writing. Like life, I'll just have to figure the blog out as I go along, I guess.

I think that brings us up to speed. Let me know if you have any ideas about what to do with this blog, or whether you think I should use my new electric-type superpowers for good or for evil.

Gird your loins.

Big update coming soon. BE PREPARED.

On icicles

Trust the Internet to convince you to get a shinkansen, two trains and a bus to see something on the basis of one, very pretty photo. I saw the icicles of Misotsuchi on some online article about a year ago, most likely at 1 a.m. in between late-night kanji study and late-night cheese on toast, and for whatever reason it ended up on my big to-do list, even though it was very out-of-the-way. Getting there straight from Nagoya would easily take the whole day, so we planned a short trip around it instead.

From Tokyo you can get a scenic train to Chichibu, an industrial town nestled in the mountains of Sendai. Chichibu has tried in recent years to attract a few more tourists, but to be honest the town itself doesn't have huge amounts to offer in the dead of winter. Except snow, a lot of snow. The background scenery is admittedly pretty spectacular in winter, and there are a few nearby sightseeing spots. We visited a temple at the foot of a mountain, which seemed lost in the spectres of time until you saw the sign suggesting you follow it on Instagram. After that we ate some udon and did a short river cruise with some Chinese tourists whilst a guide explained the surroundings, blithely commenting every few minutes that most of his audience didn't speak Japanese and thus how pointless his whole spiel was.

The highlight of the trip was, of course, the icicles, which were another train ride and obscure bus away. As we neared the final stop on the train, some schoolgirls got on and I wondered what it must be like to grow up somewhere so isolated; whether the boredom sets in deep like frost or if you find your own entertainment. On the bus I got pretty nervous because we had little idea of where we were going, but managed to get off at the right stop - on the side of a road carved into a mountainside surrounded by snow, and cliffs, and very little else, apart from a hut selling sweet sake and some illuminated icicles.

Nick da

The photo doesn't really do it justice, but even though these are just icicles with lights behind them, being in such a small, sequestered place, along with just a few dozen people taking photos and humming with pleasant conversation, made me feel all warm and fuzzy. It was like we all had some shared wintery secret. Afterwards we tried hot sweet sake for the first time, which is often sold at winter festivals and always seems so tempting. It was...not pleasant, to be honest. A bit sickly and sour, and it's got bits floating in it, which is never appealing. Crossed it off the list, at least, and gave me something to contemplate in horror on the long trip home.

On naked men

Who doesn't love nudity? Japan certainly does. Here, there are a lot of festivals that you can't really imagine being allowed to continue in the UK - there are many where people run through fire, slide down mountains or other activities that could easily end in death or a severe maiming. Also, there are many festivals which involve local men getting extremely drunk while wearing loincloths.

Hadaka Matsuri - literally 'naked festival' - covers both these categories. Groups of men tour through the city wearing nothing but modesty rags, handing out ribbons, downing cartons of sake or, in a couple of cases, getting furious over some grudge or perceived insult and starting fights with each other (I'm not sure which of these are traditional activities, and which were improvised later). Towards the end of the day, one man - the pre-designated "Man of God", who has shaved his head and purified his body in preparation - goes out into the crowds, completely naked, and makes his way to the shrine. All the other men attempt to touch him, as doing so is said to prevent bad luck for the rest of the year.

This year was a rainy one. The path to the shrine is basically dirt, so the crowds of men - including some young boys - were trudging through mud in bare feet. Some had sandals which were soaked and weighed down with liquid dirt. It doesn't look pleasant, to be honest, so the booze and fights sort of make sense. My friend and I got cold and wet so we only stayed for a few hours, which was plenty of time to collect a bunch of ribbons ad good-luck hair-ruffles from the guys (as foreigners we clearly stood out). Unfortunately we couldn't really see the "Man of God" himself because he gets so surrounded by all the other men (and often ends up with a lot of injuries), and left soon after he arrived because the cold had crept up on us so badly.

Overall, would recommend. 8/10 for novelty, 7/10 for nudity.

Happy birthday to me!

Recently it was my birthday! Another year to panic about and hope I'm doing okay. My birthday itself was pretty low-key since I had to work, but I got a present from a thoughtful student, some chicken skewers in a smokey bar and an evening watching First Dates with my friends, so I can't really complain. Still, it didn't really feel like a birthday. My new age feels big and wrong on me, like a jumper that's been stretched out in the wash. Fortunately, the day after my birthday I got a long weekend off thanks to a national holiday, so I was able to spend a bit more time doing fun things.

I celebrated by heading out to a karaoke room in nearby Inuyama. Previously, I'd only ever been to big karaoke places where everyone gets their own private rooms, but my friends love this place for its thoroughly weird but extremely friendly and fun atmosphere. It's owned by an old couple who can't possibly make any money from the place, seeing as whatever you pay they end up returning to you threefold in snacks. Within half an hour they'd brought us plates of sandwiches, fruit, rice balls, cream puffs, big bottles of orange juice, wine punch and some sake, and we'd only paid for about two songs. Their extreme niceness convinced me to put aside my anxieties about singing in public, and I went ahead and inflicted my voice on the handful of other people in the room. That part wasn't fun for anyone, I'm sure. But the rest of the time was good.

The last couple of weeks have been very busy. I finished up at my job, which was weird, and I've moved into a new place (a little further out of town, but bigger and nicer for less money). There was a lot of stress involved in the move, of course - a lot of last-minute hawking of my old stuff to acquaintances, a lot of subway trips weighed down with suitcases and backpacks, a lot of angry scrubbing at wall stains that just wouldn't go away and which I'm fairly sure were here when I moved in anyway. When I had to hand over my key to my landlord, I couldn't find it in my pocket due to all the other random crap I'd shoved in there, causing a mortifying panic. But I didn't cry or scream once the whole time, so I think I did okay. I'm feeling settled in at the new flat now, which is mostly all sorted except for the fact that our curtains are made of paper. The next few months should be exciting, mainly dedicated to Japanese study, travelling, and working on the next stages of my glittering career. Watch this space!

On boob toilets and pottery lessons.

Wall sculpture, Seto

In Japan, you meet a lot more people who are the nth generation of something. This guy is the third generation of sumo wrestlers in his family, that guy is the fifth generation of actors. People like tradition, I guess. A few weeks back, I was lucky enough to have pottery lessons with Hiroshige Kato, whose family have been making pottery for twelve generations. That's the same family making pottery for four hundred years, in a town called Seto which has been well-known for its clay for over a thousand years. With all that history under its belt, I think the residents of Seto have the right to lighten up a bit and make ceramics like the boob-toilet pictured above, or any of the other weird scultpures I found on top of one particular wall there.

Some friends and I had heard about Kato's studio, where he often has foreign students come for lessons. Some even come for intensive one-month courses, where they live in the studio. Given that I can barely hold a pencil without breaking it, I think an intensive course would probably be wasted on me, but we thought it would be fun to do a one-hour lesson with the master.

Very professional-looking, if you ignore the previous attempt at the front.

Kato is not only immensely skilled - I'm pretty sure he was born with a ball of clay in his hands - but he's also a great teacher. He told us how he learned to speak English decades ago by listening to records and writing down the lyrics of songs, and at a time where a lot of smaller businesses might have folded, he's taken advantage of Japan's 'cool factor' and expanded his family's business by teaching people from all over the world about the art of Japanese ceramics (I believe he's currently teaching a masterclass in Australia). He was honest when we made mistakes - very honest - but always cheerful and helpful, and when you'd done something well enough for him to compliment your work, it felt earned. Since we were all beginners, he rolled the clay and set up the wheel for us, and effortlessly corrected our inevitable blunders. Using the wheel is very therapeutic - I can definitely see myself taking it up as a hobby sometime in the future.

The almost-final results...

Kato told us that the pottery we made revealed our character, which is why I wanted to keep the cup on the bottom-left of the picture. (There's actually an ancient aesthetic in Japan called 'wabi-sabi' which prizes the beauty of imperfection, so clearly I was totally going for that.) For a small fee we could have as many of our pieces fired and glazed as we liked, and then sent to our homes. Today, a new ramen bowl, two new cups, and a creation we have named "Drippy-Cup" are all nestling in our cupboard, my scratchy initials carved into the bottoms. I feel very proud.

The lessons were great fun, the teacher was amazing and the price was affordable. I'd recommend it to anyone, even if pottery's not usually your thing. The studio's website is here.

On creepy parks.

Look at how bleak this park is.

This is what Newsnight cuts to in a piece about something generically sad. This is the place where a rusty swing squeaks just before the monster appears in a horror film.

These parks are on every other street in Japan and children actually play in them. There's none of that special soft-landing playground asphalt here. If you fall, you are falling properly, and you are falling hard. The only sign on that noticeboard is a warning to beware of conmen, by the way, which simply adds to the atmosphere in my opinion.

I love these parks. They show you don't need grass or fancy equipment or comfort to have fun, you just need imagination. More horrible sketchy parks for England please.

Babyfoot!

Japan LOVES babies. Sure, Japan isn't HAVING babies - the birth rate is at an all-time low and the aging population is a major cause of concern - but it clearly loves babies. Go to the beauty section of any pharmacy or supermarket, what are you going to see? Babies.

Achieve baby skin. Baby lips. Be a baby. Be a baby again. Make the noise. Waaaahhh.

Okay, you don't have to make the noise. My point is, whereas Western cosmetic campaigns might make the occasional reference to baby-softness, Japanese companies go all out and put pictures of babies on a good 60% of the skincare products, 80-90% of the base makeup and approximately 400% of the lipbalms. That way, you know they really work. They wouldn't go round putting pictures of babies on things for nothing.

All very well and good. But what of Baby Foot?

Yes, by putting your feet in some special acid bags (?), you too could peel off all the skin from the surface of your toesies. Soak your feet in fruit acid, then over the course of several days, your outer skin will shed like a cocoon. Behold, your feet are reborn.

I bought a pack of Baby Foot a good year and a half ago and still haven't got around to using it. I'm not sure whether that's lethargy or fear. But the time must come in all our lives when we stand up, hold our heads high, and put our feet in special acid bags. I'm not even particularly fussed about the state of my leg-hands (as we should all call them). In winter I am permanently covered up in at least two pairs of tights, and even when I notice any roughness, I take a kind of perverse pride in it. I think it comes from growing up near a beach, walking frequently over pebbles without shoes in an attempt to impress a person who wasn't there. But I would take even more perverse pride in removing layers of my skin for no reason, and curiosity is a much-underrated quality, so whatever, I'm going to try the Baby Foot.

Will report soon.

Setsubun!

Apparently, a couple of weeks ago it was risshun, the official beginning of spring in Japan. I think I've noticed the change - I now only wear two jumpers around the house instead of three. The day before risshun is setsubun, when people throw soybeans in order to drive away evil. The beans are thrown either out of one's front door, or at someone dressed as a demon (or oni - see last year's post on Oni Matsuri for more delicious oni-themed fun), all the while shouting "DEMONS, OUT! LUCK, IN!"

At my Monday morning Japanese class, we all had a chance to have a go with some setsubun activities. First, we drew out omikuji (fortunes) from a box at random, so we could get a glimpse of what luck we would have in the upcoming year. All the fortunes are labelled from "great luck" to "no luck whatsoever". Naturally, I ended up with the one labelled "no luck whatsoever", along with the rather gnomic advice "if you eat cold food, you will become cold." (If anyone figures out what this means, please tell me.) However, my teachers told me that if you get the worst fortune, you can reverse your fortune by volunteering to be the oni, and throwing out sweets to everyone. If you do this, apparently, your luck will turn from non-existent to great. Maybe this is good advice to live by - if you're finding life is not bringing you what you want, you should turn to doing things for others, and through that you will find satisfaction. Or maybe I should just throw things at people more.

After throwing sweets at my classmates and reversing my luck, I still felt I hadn't done enough to secure a good year. My nearby temple was doing a setsubun ceremony where people would throw beans at the crowd, who would hope to catch them for good luck. Said temple is also near an amazing Italian restaurant and I really wanted one of their mushroom and truffle-oil pizzas, so I was completely set for the afternoon. In front of the temple, I waited for ages for the crowds to disperse and to get a chance to be near enough to catch beans. I saw lots of well-prepared people who had brought massive bean-catching bags with them, but alas I had not been so thoughtful. I tried to use a tiny old plastic bag from the bottom of my handbag, but it was pretty much useless. I saw a few girls using their big snood-style scarves as receptacles, but my puny regular scarf was no good. Finally I settled on using my hat - too small for my liking, but it would do. I waited for about an hour as temple officials and enthusiastic volunteers got up on the big platform and threw beans out to their hopeful audience, but I didn't get one single bean. (I wasn't the only one - I shared a few soulful looks with fellow ill-fortuned crowd members, including an old man carrying a dachshund like a baby).

Any luck? Well, my patience was eventually rewarded, and I did catch one lone bean! I'm not sure about the exact bean-to-luck exchange rate but I decided to count it as a symbolic victory, and scampered off to get my prize (pizza).

When I got home, I found that my one-month-old laptop had broken. Ah well, better luck next year.

Unperky Tries Chocolate Fries

Well, obviously this is something I tried. It was on a day when I'd called in sick for work because I was buzzing with headaches and fatigue, so instead of taking the borderline-homeopathic nonsense that passes for over-the-counter pain relief in this country, I chose to self-medicate with fast food. I had struggled my way through my morning Japanese class because I knew I wouldn't get my money back from a same-day cancellation, and thinking about the McDonald's across the street - and its special, limited-time-only chocolate-covered French fries - was the only thing that got me through the whole hour.

Japan loves limited-edition stuff, even when the resulting product is something seemingly no-one would ever want to eat. I've even seen plum-flavoured crisps, so by Japanese standards the McChoco Potato is actually pretty tame. Your eyes are not deceiving you -  it's just regular fries that come with a chocolate and white-chocolate sauce, which you drizzle on yourself from a special double-pocketed packet designed to evenly disperse both sauces at the same time. (I wish I'd kept the packet; it was quite a feat of engineering.)

I was half-expecting the McChoco Potato to be a freakshow of a dish, but it was actually quite pleasant. The saltiness and sweetness makes for a fine combination - a bit like salted caramel, but more honest in its appeal to humanity's base desires. The only issue is that the sauce tends to cover the top of the pile of fries, but get less plentiful down the bottom, which leads to a slightly confusing ending. Chocolate-covered fries are good, but if you just have a normal fry with a dab of chocolate on them, it just feels like a mistake. Thorough dispersal is necessary to improve the product, I think. Maybe it should come packed with a pair of miniature salad tongs, so you can toss the sauce through like a Ceasar dressing.

The good news is that if you aren't in Japan, or you were too late to the party and McChoco Potato is no longer available by the time you read this, you can recreate them at home quite easily yourself with McDonalds fries and a jar of Nutella. I know I will.

Stinky Tofu Ruins Everything

The blog enters 2016! I'm excited. Are you excited?

This year is shaping up to be one of the oddest ones yet for me, as my plans are yet unformed. I've had a great time teaching here but I want to move on to new things, so I will be leaving Japan later this year to do other stuff. I won't mention anything specific because everything is still in the works right now, but hopefully it should be good and not terrible.

Anyway: my winter holiday in Taiwan. This was my second attempt to go to Taiwan, and I was finally successful (my first attempt was thwarted by an ill-timed megatyphoon). The weather was balmy, the people were friendly, and I only got food poisoning for half a day. I learned about eight Mandarin phrases and somehow managed to remember and repeat them at the appropriate times. It was great. Some highlights:

• I ate Maltesers, Galaxy and Kinder Buenos for the first time in two years. I found them in the convenience store at the airport arrivals lounge, so right away I knew I was in for a good time. Taiwan has lots of branches of FamilyMart, same as in Japan, but they somehow manage to be better. Good Western chocolate selection and a much better array of microwave meals - lots of things you might actually want to eat, instead of weird pasta splattered with mayo.
  

Sadly, those Buenos left me no room for Modern Toilet ice cream.

• Night markets. This holiday was basically an eating holiday - wander down to a street market, hand over almost no money, eat something amazing. The surprise highlight was deep-fried mushrooms - simply seasoned with grey and red pepper, spicy, filling, delicious. I also got to try muskmelon, and dragonfruit (which tastes different from what I expected - not explicitly tropical, more gently perfumey and....aquatic?). Soup dumplings, tiny bites that burst into an explosion of yummy soup. I had an ice cream in a flowerpot, dusted with tiramisu powder to look like soil. I was also bullied into buying a big bag of nougat, but it was so cheap I didn't mind.
  
  
                                 
  
  
  It wasn't all great - I bought some intriguing stuff which I soon realised was chicken feet. I gave them a try, but they were cold and chewy. Also, one of the most popular night market snacks is something literally called stinky tofu, which is exactly what you imagine it might be. Walking through a market and simply enjoying all the smells could have been great, except you were always wondering when you were going to get the hit of briney, pungent awfulness.
  
  
  
• When you cross the street, the pedestrian light shows a cartoon of a little man walking, and when there are only a few seconds left to cross he suddenly starts running. It's adorable. It's also helpful, as you really don't want to be hit by the millions of scooters everywhere.
  
  
  
•  You can get an hour-long shampoo and head massage for almost no money, which is great when you're all tense from trying to communicate to non-English speakers that you want a shampoo and head massage.
  
  
  
• Seeing in the New Year with the most underwhelming fireworks ever. We were told that fireworks would take place outside a certain mall, and that they were renowned for being spectacular. When we got to the mall we found crowds of people, and joined in the countdown - as much as we could in Chinese - only to find that at the end two piddling flares went off and everyone instantly went home. When we got back to our hostel we found out that they had changed the venue for the fireworks that year. Still, got to walk back through the markets full of tofu.
  
  
  
• Instead of getting a ticket at the subway, you get these cool tokens. Look how cool!
  
  
  

                                           

So that's Taiwan. Let's see what the rest of the year brings us.

On Being Convinced To Join The Army By a Cheerful Tangerine

Japan loves mascots. Mascots for products, mascots for towns, even mascots for emergency procedures (the one for earthquakes is a big mythical catfish). Cute and/or terrifying, mascots are now an essential part of any ad campaign in Japan, and can literally generate billions of yen in new revenue. In November I went to see the Yuru-kyara mascot tournament in Hamamatsu, which is basically a big convention where you get to see all the different mascots wandering around, and vote for your favourite. They even have mascot wrestling (I took videos which unfortunately won't load).

Again, I must stress the 'cute/terrifying' dynamic. Some play it safe with baby birds, pigs, cats and so on. Others take a risk - the nearby suburb of Ama chose a sneering dominatrix who whips people with leeks and screams (no, really). No-one liked that. Not even the people who you suspected might be the type to enjoy it. Another surprise was seeing a big smiley tangerine in a khaki cap, who turned out to be the mascot for the Japanese Self-Defense Force. See, even the military can be cute.

P.S. I got a new laptop. It has a Japanese keyboard, which means sometimes it takes me ages to find quote marks and the @ sign. Still, it works okay.