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.