Highlights from Milano

Near the heart of Milano.


Hanging about by the Milano Duomo.


On the roof.


Notice the details.


A view from the roof.


The top was closed.


Everyday sights in Italy.


The Dieselwall.

Highlights of Torino

Here we are with our friend Vanni in Milano. He put up with us for a few nights and days, even though he was sick. He's a nice guy.






The streets of Torino were filled with old buildings.


Here we are with the monuments of Egypt's dead. Jamie was really happy. She loves old dead things.


Ooooh. Scary.


Look at his hair!


Zelda anyone?


The relaxing ride home.

Highlights of Eze

So in France we visited a nice medieval village called Eze. It was an old village built around a hilltop castle. The castle was destroyed but the city was rebuilt and now is a great tourist spot between Nice and Monaco.

Here is the view from the bottom.

Looking out and enjoying the view.

The steps of Eze.

Jamie is re-thinking about learning Japanese as life in France can be quite wonderful.

I tried sneaking away but she found me.

Torino - mummy where are you?

So we went to Torino yesterday to see the Egyptian museum. Fantastic is all I have to say. It makes me want to go to Cairo and London again just to see the stuff they have there! No pics for you guys untiol maybe tomorrow - or when we get into Amsterdam in a few days.

In Italy

Hey, here we are in Italy. Milano, the city of fashion and flash! Eating pizza with our friend Vanni! He says, "Hey, from Nicholas."

The French Riviera.

Have I mentioned that my kind of vacation is one where you don't do alot, the weather and scenery and nice, and you can drink little drinks with umbrellas in them? Except for the little umbrellas, I was there. Except it was even more beautiful than I imagined. Did I mention the weather was fantastic? Here's the proof.

Yep, there's the water.

And there we are playing in it! Cedric, Michiko and Mauricio.

I'm contributing my whiteness to the beach. All the french here are sooooo tan. I know its the end of the season, but even so. I felt practically fluourescent.

Its a beach. A really nice one. We even rented a paddleboat thing for an hour. It was really fun!


Sheik Richard.

The Wedding - congrats Cedric and Michiko!

So the reason that we came to Europe in the first place was to go to Cedric and Michikos wedding. Here are the beautiful people that got married and some of the other folks that came to hang out. Mostly other french people, but hey we ARE in France. He he.
This was our first view of France from the plane. Pretty spectacular.

Ooooh, a visitor in our trailer. And he's edible! Free lunch.

The bride and groom the morning of the wedding.

Cedrics mother Pascale and brother Pierre.

Cedrics dad Gerard.

Me and the brides mom Kuniko. One of the few pictures of me on this day as I was the one snapping most of the pics that day.

The bride right before the wedding - waiting in the car. Does she look nervous?

And the groom. Looking good Ced!

And finally! Here they are the happy married couple.

One last pic. French people play fun games after the wedding like, can you identify your new husband by his hairy legs?

Anyways, congratulations Cedric and Michiko!!

Finally some pictures :) London!!

Alright guys, here are the pics from our first few days in Europe. Enjoy!!!

Hellooooo London. We managed to catch the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. Our hotel was not great, however location wise it was fantastic. We were literally a 5 minute walk from the palace.

Atten-SHUN! Tai and Richard at The Guards Museum. Its kinda weird. We met Tai in Canada. Then moved to Japan, and we live only an hour away from him, then he went to England on business - he's here for 6 months, but we didn't know until we emailed him about our trip. Then we saw him in London. We asked him, so which country is next? He said, "New Zealand". I guess we'll be seeing you soon Josh and Gypsy. LOL!

Westminster Abbey. Beautiful!

Quick! Into the tardis!

Big Ben.


The parliament buildings from across the Thames.

The London Eye.


Eros fountain in Piccadilly Circus.

The tower of London. He he.
In case you didn't notice, take a look at the weather in these pics. These pics are all from the same day. Gotta love it!
Well, thats London. I will post some pics of the wedding and France tomorrow!

Europe for Dummies. Chapter Three. You have to wear a speedo in France

WARNING.
This post is NOT for the faint of heart

Yes, it's true. One must wear a speedo in France. Luckily there is...

the original crotch holder

and

the new shorty shorts type.

Now that you're blind. You're probably glad you donate regularly to the Society for the Blind or something like that.

Weddings and friends, beaches and beautiful weather, and fantastic french food

What can I say? The wedding was beautiful. We headed out into the french countryside and frolicked amongst the locals. The bride (Michiko) looked fantastic and Cedric (the groom) looked great as well. After the ceremony we sat down to a good if long awaited dinner and danced til the sun went down and then a bit after. The next day we headed to the beach. The beautiful red cliffs and azure sky and sea contrasted wonderfully against my white pasty skin. The water was great. I am trying to make you all jealous. Is it working???? LOL! It really was nice though. Then we headed back to the 'campsite'. If you can call it that. It's really more like a private trailer park but french style. We ate a great late dinner with most of Ced's relatives. Mmmmmm. Today we just hung about the park and went swimming in the pool and now have finally arrived back in the city of Nice. We will be staying with Cedrics parents for a couple of days before heading on to Milan. Updates later.....

Voulez vous choucher avec moi?

Hey, we hit the French Riviera last night. The beaches looked hot. So we are knee deep in wedding stuff so updates may be slow. Just to let everyone know in Osaka. The weather in Europe is nice and hot but not humid. Yeah!

Europe for Dummies. Chapter Two: Taking photos is not a crime yet.

Every time you go on vacation it is essential you take a picture so you remember what you did. That way if anyone asks you can say, "I did go to London bridge". Otherwise you could lie and break out the Photoshop or GIMP.

Thank goodness for friends!

So, yah! We finally got our trip booked to Nice, thanks to Rebecca T! Thankyou thankyou thankyou! It was absurdly expensive, but we will be able to go to our friends wedding. No thanks to Visa, who said they were GOING to send our credit cards to Osaka in time for us to book it there. Ahem. Anyways, tix are booked and we are ready to head out tomorrow.

Apologies to Quasar 9. I was supposed to give him a ring when we were here, but we had some problems with the cellphone - it wouldn't work. We topped up a sim card, and then waited 24 hours for it to work. It never did. We ended up buying new one today which worked right away, but the other 10 pounds we spent I think we have basically lost....

Anyways, we were gonna hit Cambridge because it is reasonably close to London, but due to no phone (unable to contact him) and no credit card (needed money for hotel etc and couldn't buy train tix) we had to give it up. To make up for it, can everyone please take a look at his site (Quasar 9) and give him some love. He has a neat site that features poetry, beautiful pics and.....science. Physics and astonomy. I really like his site because sometimes you can just relax and enjoy the pics, and sometimes he has interesting things to say about space travel or philosophy. So what are you waiting for? Go check him out.

So back to our trip! We went to a ton of places today. We got ahold of Tai, and first went to the see the changing of the guard at the palace which our hotel was actually very close to. After that, we walked to Westminster Abbey and Big Ben and walked around in that area for awhile. I wanted to see Piccadilly Circus so we took a train and wandered around in that area for awhile. We also saw the Tower of London and London Bridge. I can't upload any pics right now because I'm in am internet cafe and I realised that, no, Jamie, you cannot use your Japanese phone to email pics to your computer email. Ha ha. How I forgot that one!! Anyway, we will load our pics from our regulat camera onto the laptop over the next couple of days and I'll post some of those.

For those of you in Osaka, and other places - tell me whats up with you guys??

Europe for Dummies. Chapter One: Make good friends who are NET savvy.

So far London has been a lot of stress. No-one ever plans to fail, but we failed to plan. We showed up with no hotel and no way to get to France. We had some money. But no credit card so we couldn't get the really cheap airline tickets to France. We also found a cheap place to stay but it was kind of sketchy. We booked with a guy at a kiosk at the airport and he arranged it all. It seemed good at the time because it was 9 pounds cheaper than one that our friend Adelle had suggested. But on the sheet it said it included breakfast, and it wasn't when we got to the hotel. When we got there they explained that the last person had forgotten to give back the key and they'd get a new key made. (Later, they told me that they had good news as the former tenant was returning with the key later that day.) We also paid 5 pounds (ridiculous I know but...) for the wireless internet which comes and goes like herpes on a bad week.

We tried topping up a simcard loaned to us from Adelle, but it didn't work. The cellphone staff seemed uneducated about their products and told us to wait some more it could take HOURS... I think we topped up a wrong account.

On a good note we found Tai in town at the right subway station as we were about to give up the hunt.

But thanks to Rebecca T. we were able to get a flight to Nice on the 18th. Thanks Rebecca you rock. We'll do lunch some time. Now I'm relaxed. It's 6AM here and I should go to bed.

I need a vacaaaaaation!

So, we will be headed to Europe on the 15th! (the 14th for those of you on the other side of the date line) We won't be touching Japanese soil again for 3 weeks. I will try and blog something from over there, but I don't think we're gonna have alot of time so......I'll try to at least blog SOMETHING while I'm gone. No promises of quality posts! Hopefully Osakajock and Machievelli will keep ya entertained. I'll be back around September 6th. Don't y'all forget about me now! I expect to see you back here in September :)

More recent news - yesterday was Blaines Birthday!! Yah!! Happy birthday Blaine :) We went clubbing with some of his friends and it was a blast. I hadn't been to Sazae before but it was really nice. After, we went to this small place in Miyakojima called Oasis. It was a friendly little place. Fun was had by all. I didn't bring my camera cause I planned on being highly intoxicated and didn't want to lose it - so I will be begging, borrowing and stealing photos from whoever I can! Will post once I have them.

Aaaand, Mr Fab has moved his site. I updated the link on my page so go check him out at Pointless Drivel :)

If you haven't checked out the other links on my page, please do! I love Elaine at Sanity Interrupted. Her fan letter fridays nearly make me pee my pants I laugh so hard.

CP at oxymoron has great stuff to blog about as well as helping charity. She participated in the 24 hour blogathon and donated all the money to charity. Go CP!! Sorry, I didn't donate anything, but its awfully hard to donate when you don't have a credit card, live in a different country etc. I wholeheartedly support you though!

Check out the others as well, I would write more, but I am falling assslleeep at the computer and must hit the hay. More tomorrow......

Nara Tokae (Candle festival)

After work yesterday Adelle and I decided to hit Nara. We dressed up in our finest Japanese gear (the summer kimono known as yukata) and got on the train. We took the wrong train (right destination but a slow train) and it took forever to get there, but boy was it worth it. They had candles in these cute little cylindrical holders all over Nara. I bought a little lantern that holds candles as well that we carried around with us. Here are some of the beautiful pics!
The pagoda at night. Sorry the pic is a bit dark, but I did take this picture with my cell phone.

Lanterns on the bridge. You can see more of the candles in the background.

Aaaahh. Beautiful.

I'll add more pics later. I forgot my camera at home so I have to get copies from Adelle. Update soon.....

Friends and Kyoto

So, my friend (Karla) and her friend (Sarah), both from Canada, are visiting us here in Japan. Well, not just us, but the last few days they've been in the Kansai area. My friend Adelle (who lives here and works with my husband) also had the day off today. I didn't but was not really so busy so decided, to hell with it, I am taking today off. We decided to go to Kyoto. Aaaaah, historic Kyoto. We decided to go to this old house that had secret ninja ceilings and hidden staircases etc. Except that it was closed by the time we got there. Damn. So, change of plans, on to Kiyomizudera. Its a famous temple in Kyoto that has a waterfall that you can drink from. Its supposed to have mystic healing qualities. If you drink the water, you're supposed to be healthy for a year. Great. I can use it. I have a nasty summer cold right now. Thankyou honey for bringing that one home from work. Anyways, here are some fun pics from our adventure in Kyoto today.

Here we are, trudging up the hill to the temple.

The beautiful red entrance gates.

These are a common sight at most temples. Write a wish on on of these for a few hundred yen.

He he. These funny Japanese boys were so cute. They were surprised we could speak Japanese, and then proceeded to try and pick us up. I had to take a picture of them.

This is a picture taken by cute Japanese boys. Karla, Sarah and me. Its actually a really good pic I think! Adelle was wandering aound the area of the next picture....

Obon is coming up very shortly here in Japan. What is Obon you ask? One of the most importanat holidays here in Japan. People visit their family and various shrines to pray for their anscestors. This time period is when their anscestors can visit them here and protect them for a few days and give them good luck for the rest of the year. A monk will write one of these out for you with your anscestors name on them. Its to welcome them back. This one is for my grampa. He died a long time ago but was a very important person in my life. Not that I need to remind him that he is welcome to visit me anytime!

Here I am holding it after the monk finished writing it out :)

Here is why people go to this temple. The name translated means something like clear water. We're laughing because when I stuck the cup under the water, it sprayed all over both of us.

A cute little mini shrine building.

Me, flexing my artistic muscles. AKA goofing around on my camera. Still a pretty cool effect.

An old style building in the city.

Don't cry Karla! Just because you had to watch the other 3 of us eat while you waited for you food. He he. We're such good friends, uhmmmm yeah, your food should be here soon. I'm just gonna chow down ok?

Back and ready for action!

So, in case you were looking at the previous post and were thinking, "Wow. Great party. Whats it for???" It was the Grand opening of Dunk downtown in Dottonbori. Here are a few more pics.
Dali and Chris.

Cleveland and Bec

Rich, me and Lou

Jessica, Hiroko and Kevin

Yoshi

Masa, Lorna and Sally in the middle!

Masaki

Me, Marcus and Miho

Adelle

Blaine and me

Lou, Masa and Heather

On. My. Gawd!

Follow up to Shirahama

So, a little follow up to our beach trip. The other reason we went was for the onsens. Aaaah, japanese hot spring baths. Bec brought her camera. I finally figured out how to download pics off her flickr site.


Bec. From behind. Ha ha! Sorry I made myself laugh. Get it - behind?? Ahem...Ok, I'll be quiet now.

Me and the other girls. Guess which ones me!

Aaaaah, onsen.

Holy chopsticks batman!

The 100th post, and boy its a goodun!

You lookin at me. You must be lookin at me...

Walk like an Egyptian.

Damn fine set of...ears ya got there!

Sally

Damn smooth. Steady there ladies.

Lucky bastard

Adele

Rebecca as...well, I'm not quite sure.

Marcus and Sally

The always lovely Kat.

Jamie

Jessica; lookin fab in hostess gear

Yoko (I hope I remembered her name correctly).

I'm sorry Jamie. It was an accidental cleavage shot! I couldn't help myself!

Matt. With ideas above his station.

See you at the new Club Dunk on the 8th August.

Copyright Infringement?

Maybe, but it's very funny.

The best part is the "I'm big c*ck man" on the second column, bottom row picture.

Q: What are your hobbies?
A: I work. etto sleep. Going to shopping. Go Lova.
Hmmm. So desune.

For the "real" lessons follow the links:
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