informage

I have somewhat of a backlog to clear, right from Simon and Su-yen's glorious sunny scottish wedding, through a whistlestop Boston tour, the much anticipated (and not a little dreaded) Minneapolist meet the parents visit through to one more wedding on a dramatic foggy clifftop in San Francisco.

That'll have to wait though: right now I'm overwhelmed by my initial impressions of Tokyo. We've been here less than 24 hours and already I've seen so much. It's just so darn japanese! General impressions include the overwhelming politeness and respectfulness of people here: bikes are just left unlocked on the street and although english is poorly spoken if spoken at all, every person we've met has strived hard to communicate effectively. The juxtaposition of the imperial elegance of the old japan aesthetic and the brash modernism of new japan is everywhere. The quaint noodle restaurant we ate at last night with it's fine examples of japanese art was only given away by the posters of bikini-clad models that accompanied the prints.

Other bits:

On the train in from the airport upon leaving the tunnel it felt like half the carriage got their funky flip phones out and starting SMSing.

The woman at the airport who sold me our train tickets was a character from Hello Kitty, clad in pink with her alluring knowing smile.

The train announcements sounded like english played backwards (wow - what an observation!)

The housing started rustic and truly japanese looking and gave way to more modern concrete as we entered the city, but each dwelling had a specific eastern look.

Today walking around the lake which was rendered almost invisible by fecund Lotus plants, several old men stopped spellbound to observe a single sparrow foraging in the undergrowth.

At traffic lights car switch off their engines and lights whilst waiting.

A sign: "Wine. The best friend of life"

Our month-long tour of Britain is complete. The recurring theme was that although it's usually inaccurate for American's to see this country through the rose-tinted slant of film's like Four Weddings and Notting Hill, Shannon and I have been blessed with a dream-like view of the isles. From Christian and Chloe's magical wedding in Suffolk, through the surprisingly aesthetic view of the midlands, to a nautical view of London from a canal narrow-boat leading up to Simon and Su-yen's scottish castle wedding.

According to this 'What Pixies song are you?' stupid quiz page, I'm 'Where is my mind?'. Well, the write-up (see below) is fairly convincing. I'm guessing that Wil Wheaton did the same test and came up with the same result.

So, speaking of Pixies, Jack Mottram describes a superb decision-making process in those situations when you should have an opinion but can't really be bothered to work through the pros and cons. The process is very simple: just ask "Who's a lovely little Pixie?". In fact its so simple I know I've made most of the important decisions of my life this way already, but Jack's manage to extrapolate this into a formal - STAY with me here - process.

Well done my man and thanks for explaining why I find myself agreeing with pretty much everything Shannon says!

(Oh, and on the hot issue that spurred Jack's creativity, a bimbling project to sort out exactly how blogs work under the hood, I have to say I don't care very much either. And I probably should, being a techy programmer sort, but I don't. And the Trotts are lovely little pixies and I like their software very much so I probably agree with them).

...'cos life's exciting over here in blighty:

Taken in Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds on the occasion of a wonderful picnic with my mother and stepfather and Shannon. The occasion was only marred by turning up in the car park of Dover's Hill to find that an elderly couple had just returned to their car to find the window smashed and their digital camera gone. Some of the aura of idyllic English rural life was shattered with their windows, but I do keep telling Shannon that it's not all like 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' here. Unlike Christian and Chloe's simply fabulous wedding we attended the previous weekend, and I mean fabulous literally here - it was almost too dreamily perfect to believe, as attested to by the picture below of us, or perhaps better by the picture Shannon used when she blogged about our time here.

Oh, and whilst I'm blogging backwards in time let me tell you that the Swiss Alps in summer are stunning.. Prior to the aforementioned wedding a small group of us went with Christian to his home country to celebrate and consummate his transition to manhood (enterrer la vie de garçon). I'm afraid I can say no more on what the consummation entailed, but I can tell you that the backdrop was picture-book; having only seen the alps cloaked in winter white this lush green wonderland was breathtaking.

So to be fair, withdrawing the sentiment with which I started this entry, the trip so far has been a surprising array of visual wonder to remind me that splendour lives on near my point of origin too.

It's the picture that makes it.

I'm off on Tuesday. For a while. To quite a few places.

(London, Switzerland, Coventry, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Boston, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpar).

I love her hair just the way she likes it.

"In 1995, The Lemonheads' Evan Dando missed his slot at the festival due to rock star excesses. Arriving late at the site, he attempted to force an impromptu acoustic set on a crowd waiting for Portishead. They were vastly unamused: Dando had to be removed from the stage for his own safety. It remains a solitary recorded example of coffee-table trip-hop fans erupting in a livid wave of anger - the musical equivalent of assistant librarians rioting."

Ami found this fine piece of festival writing in The Guardian today. I was one of the aforementioned coffee-table trip-hop fans and remember this event well. "Evan-fucking-who?" were I believe my exact words at the time as I tried to cope with having fought my way through an unexpected sea of Portishead aficionados only to hear a solo unknown (to me) guitarist's drivel.

Kieran Healy gives a droll account of the Eurovision song contest for the uninitiated. The strange thing is I remember getting genuinely excited about this in my youthful years.

"But in terms of kitsch, tackiness, geopolitical tension, and sheer entertainment value the U.S. has nothing, but nothing, to match the Eurovision Song Contest. The Eurovision is the common cultural bond uniting generations of Europeans, the continent’s one true collective ritual."

Wonderful pictures of Earth and the Moon from Mars.