We had a late golden week and we went to Thailand for the first time. Before the trip I was really excited. I borrowed a basic phrase book, came with an audio CD from the library. I learnt some phrases in Thai and I actually enjoyed to use them in Thailand! Kop khun ka (thank you) to this phrase book and nice Thai people. Yesterday we went to a Thai restaurant in Nakameguro, had Thai food with Chang Beer and talked about how great this trip was (again and again). I want to visit Thailand again, hopefully some time this year!

It's been nearly a month since I started yoga, I can finally use the yoga mat which I bought a year ago. I am an easily excited person (but quick to cool down sometimes) so I take four lessons a week now. A little problem I have now is I feel extremely relaxing while I do Shava Asana (the posture of a dead body), I fell asleep a few times... I also started to eat a grain and vegetable based diet on the weekdays only. I wouldn't call it macrobiotic diet, it's just very very simple Japanese food, probably my grandparents were eating something like this. My recent favourite is Kuromame (black beans) Genmai (unpolished whole grain rice). BTW this is not an April fool's story, my friends!

The other day I went to Hokkaido with C. The day after we arrived, I got a high fever and lost my voice. I was sick in bed for five days, so I had to give up going to the Asahiyama Zoo (although we managed to see the Sapporo Snow Festival on the last day). On our way back to our home from Haneda airport, my bad luck continued: I forgot a shopping bag full of Hokkaido sweets and seafood on the train. What a mess!

Tokyo has been really cold for about two weeks. I couldn't stand sleeping in a cold futon anymore, so I bought a 'futon kansouki' (futon dryer). I place an air mat on the futon and put the duvet on top of it, then I switch on the machine and the warm air dries the futon and duvet and warms them up. It feels so good and helps us to sleep well. I told mom that I bought a futon kansouki and she said that I could have taken the one at home which she bought more than twenty years ago. But I'm glad that I couldn't take hers. The one I bought from an online shop was a good offer: ¥5,410 including tax and shipping. Even though I'm not very happy about the design, it is quite light and smaller than the one from 20 years ago! It also has more features: apart from drying the futon, we can use it to dry boots too. In the springtime I suffer from hay fever, so I can't put the futon outside to air it (which I'm meant to do regularly). But they added a summer mode so I can air the futon with this dryer. I should have bought it earlier.

I can't believe it's already December. All cleaning need to be done by the end of the year, this is a Japanese tradition. Before a big cleaning, I need a big tidying up. I really feel like I'm constantly battling with a mountain of clutter, it's never ending. Those mountains seem grow very fast in our flat. Maybe I'm just moving around clutter from one room to another. This time I'm serious, I asked C's help and we decided to get rid of 140 CDs. I'm quite good at selling items on an Internet auction, but I asked e-BOOKOFF to buy our CDs. It's quick and easy.

The weather in Tokyo is perfect today. It is so nice to have sunshine and a clear sky! We wanted to watch David Lynch's Inland Empire showing at Yebisu Garden Cinema (in Japanese), so I tried to reserve good seats online, but I couldn't. I forgot about their entry system. When we visit their ticket counter on the day of the show, they stamp the number on our tickets. Fifteen minutes before the show, we enter the theater in the order of the stamped number. It seems like Saturday is really busy, so I was wondering how early we should be there to get OK seats. But C volunteered to go to the cinema by bike in the morning, and our numbers are 1 and 2! Nice one! This wouldn't have happened if it was raining, like yesterday.

Last month, the official GR digital blog was celebrating their second anniversary and there was a campaign to win a free GR photo album. I applied for it, but I completely forgot about it, and I've received the album yesterday. There were only two hundreds photo albums, so I'm happy about the fact that I got it, but I don't know if I use it. I hardly print photos any more these days...

I read Nintendo offers free Wii Remote jackets so I requested two jackets for our Wii remotes, and a few days ago I received the packet from Nintedo! I have to say that the removable silicone sleeves don't look so nice, not suiting to the Wii design. The transparent silicone will probably get dusty and dirty very quickly. But I know the jackets will definitely protect us/our belongings better, and I like Nintendo's attitude.

There is a nice cool early autumn breeze in the evening, I can finally sleep without air conditioning. I'm kind of used to the Japanese summer and I never liked it, but this year was amazingly hot and humid. Both our computers died this month and I blame the heat! I welcomed a MacBook Black as a new member of the family last week. I hope I can use this Mac for a long time. The PowerBook G4 which has just broken had a lifetime of three years and nine months and my previous PowerBook G3 was four years and three months old. When I calculated the monthly cost, it was more than I had imagined...

After the big typhoon No.4 hit Japan, I was cleaning the windows to the balcony, and I found there was a long-legged wasp’s nest in the bacony. Maybe wasps were also relieved that the typhoon has gone, they were quite busy, working hard. These seems kind of friendly, but I read the nest will be bigger in Summer, then I have to ask professional wasp busters. So I have to get rid of it soon although I was stung by a wasp when I was a kid, and I'm bit scared of them.

The other day the postman knocked on the door in the early morning. He had a nice little packet for me from Ogasawara police station. It was the fleece jacket C forgot on a bench by the beach in the very last moments of our Ogasawara island holiday. After we came back to Tokyo I phoned Ogasawara police station and talked to the person from the lost and found. He was very nice and told me that I shouldn't be so disappointed because it will be probably found, and that he would send it cash-on-delivery to me. A few days later I received a phone call from him, he had found it! It's nice to think that the jacket also went on a twenty five and a half hour journey on the boat that leaves only once a week, just like what we did. Thank you Ogasawara police station for your kind help, thank you Ogasawara Tourism Association for finding the jacket. We love Ogawasara!

Finally comments work again!

The rainy season will start soon in Tokyo, so I have to do KOROMOGAE 'a seasonal change of clothing' for our wardrobe. When the weather is sunny and dry, it's a chance to wash and air winter clothes and bedding. I feel like I go through and try to clear my wardrobe very often, but it's always overloaded. I finally decided to buy futon asshuku bukuro 'the vacuum storage bags' (in Japanese) even though I always thought this is a silly idea; fill a plastic bag with a duvet and suck the air inside a bag with a hoover to make a duvet loses its volume. But I realised my huge king size duvet needs to be vacuumed.

I went to the Setagaya police station in Sangenjaya to renew my driving licence. I always get a 'gold driving licence card' because I am a good driver with a clean driving record. Well that's what they think, actually I just haven't driven for years and years! The new card has an IC chip inside, so it seems slightly thicker than the old one.

PASMO was finally launched yesterday. I liked the Suica I've been using because of the nice penguin character, but I decided to use PASMO from now on, not Suica. Actually the commemorative PASMO cards were also available yesterday. I wanted this sweet PASMO card with the penguin character, but 110,000 cards were super quickly sold out everywhere. I forgot that there are many many train lovers, probably including a lot of station employees. Sigh!

I finally got wii today! There were 400 wiis available at Bic Camera store in Shinjuku West. I tried a little bit, and I realised that I need to move the TV. I'm going to arrange our living room furniture right now!

I had my annual physical examination. This time they suggested that I take the Ningen Dock (human dry dock), which has more tests compared to my usual examination. I'm getting OLD! So I had to drink barium for the first time to check my stomach. It was awful. The technician told me to drink the barium more quickly, but it didn't go down my throat and the foaming agent (for inflating the stomach) started to fizz in my mouth! After I managed to finish the cup of barium, I had to lie on a platform and was told to rotate my body twice to distribute the barium evenly. I didn't expect this, so I almost had to laugh and burp! If I burped, I would have had to drink another cup of barium. I was tilted left and right, up and down on the moving platform and it made me smile because I felt like an astronaut. When I went to rinse my mouth, I was surprised to see my face, it looked like kind of like this...

I still haven't used my GR Digital much, but I'm already considering buying some accessories (as usual). I was looking for a nice camera pouch online, but in the end I ordered a leather neckstrap for GR series, made by Artisan&Artist and Map Camera. Today I received the neck strap, it's not bad but not that great. I realised that maybe I don't like wearing a neck strap, but I might use it as a hand strap...

I went home to Sapporo in Hokkaido to spend Christmas and New Year's with my family. Because of the warm winter, it didn't snow much while I was there, but there was some old snow on the ground. I brought my ear warmers, but they were not necessary. So the weather was almost the same as in Tokyo, but I relied on this gadget. Do you know what it is?

Sunrise 07:06

I went to buy some rice at the rice shop near the station, and there was a prize draw to win a shopping voucher (there are many prize draw promotions in the end of the year in Japan). I was told to pick three tickets and I opened them one by one. The tickets said ¥100, ¥500 and ¥100. I spent ¥1000 for rice and I won ¥700! The owner was as surprised as I was, and she told me that I probably spent all my luck! I got a kilo of agricultural chemical free genmai brown rice with the vouchers, and I paid only ¥50 extra. I'm going to cook this rice with black soybeans.

Today I went to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store Shibuya to get some advice on my PowerBook (I strongly recommend to make a reservation online before you go to the Genius Bar). A genius told me that I have too many photos in my iPhoto library. That's what I had suspected, actually I haven't even made a backup for years... I didn't spend any money at the store, but I saw lots of stuff I want to get. And I think I saw Japanese actress Emiri Henmi with her MacBook at the Genius Bar.

I'm back home! It was quite a hectic trip, I stayed one night at Frankfurt, one night at Köln, four nights at Bellaterra (Barcelona) and four nights at London. Yesterday, I slept almost 11 hours on the plane, I slept like a log for an hour on Narita Express (almost the whole journey), and I had eight hours sleep after I had a can of beer at home. So I woke up at 9am this morning, and I have no jet lag at all. Great! But I can't believe how much I slept.

I'm off for two weeks holiday! Last night I was too busy to prepare lots of things, and I didn't go to bed in the end. I still have some time before my flight, but I'm scared to sleep now. All TV channels show only about Princess Kiko gave birth, so I went for swimming and enjoyed sauna too. I'm sure I will have a good sleep on the plane. I just need to try not to sleep on the train, or at the airport!

Yesterday there was an Intensity 3 earthquake, but I didn't realised that because I was cycling! Today is disaster prevention day in Japan (the great Kanto earthquake struck 83 years ago), so there was a disaster prevention exhibition held at Shinjuku station last week. I didn't really care much about the exhibition, but I stop walking because of the firefighter's voice. He kept shouting 'does anyone wants to try this?' 'you don't need to wait for it!' I wondered what he was talking about, and I looked back at him. There was a special car which we can experience the worst earthquake 'Intensity 7'. And I decided to go in the car!

It has been sooo hot in Tokyo. I don't like to be in an air conditioned room all the time because it makes me tired. So I try to use air-con at home as little as possible. Last weekend, C and I escaped from our hot flat and met up with our neighbours in a small playground park near our place. We bought drinks from a convenience store and we enjoyed a few cans of beers! I don't like that there are not many open cafes or pubs in Tokyo, I guess it's because the Japanese summer is too hot to stay outside, especially in the daytime. Now we know that drinking in a park is very nice!

On a really hot day in Tokyo, I went to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office in Shinjuku to apply for a new passport with my married name. Japanese passport names are usually written in Hepburn romanization (Hebon siki), for example Smith will be written as Sumisu, and I didn't want it (I guess nobody with foreign name wants it). So I applied for Non-Hebon style writting.

The real Japanese summer has finally arrived in Tokyo after a long rainy season. It is incredibly hot, but I like eating Okinawan 'Goya Champuru' in this weather. It has been a month already since we went to a five day trip to Okinawa. I finally uploaded some photos to flickr!

These are pineapples from Ishigaki Island in Okinawa. I bought them ten days ago and I probably wouldn't have received them if I hadn't called the shop two days ago. We were meant to eat these pineapples last weekend with our friends, so we bought six of them. I don't know what to do now... I guess I'll freeze them and eat them as ice candy or use them for frozen margaritas.

Yesterday my sister, her husband and I went to IKEA Funabashi, which opened on April 24th. When I saw the IKEA pencils and tape measures in the store, it made me nostalgic for my college days in London. I used to go to IKEA in Croydon with my friends. IKEA Japan is pronounced /i'ke.a/, so I have to change from /aɪ'ki:ə/, which is how I used to pronounce it in London.

I asked C to get me lots of little things for my birthday and the swim cap and goggles from the SPEEDO and Comme des Garçons swimwear collection were among the presents I received. I don't think I mentioned before that I go swimming at least four days a week.

The F1 season started. For me, it means spring has come finally. I'm impressed if you can tell who is my favorite driver from looking at the cookies!

I thought that I had enough daily gargling and washing hands, but I got flu and I spent two days in bed. I know that only Japanese beleive that gargling prevents cold and flu. My throat still hurts badly so I had hot water mixed with lemon and ginger infused honey. I normally don't drink sweet drinks, but I enjoyed this drink with lots of honey.

I've just found out that it was impossible to comment on LDK. It's fixed now, so leave some comments please!

I went to meet up with my friends at JunkAdelic in Nakameguro, and we had tasty Tex-Mex food and Frozen Mango Margaritas which were nice as always! I also had a cup of hot wine, which was a one for the road. I have to say that our conversation topics were quite similar to the old ladies in the sauna of my sports club. We talked about Horiemon, cosmetics, travelling... but we can also talk about DS Lite (in Japanese) and the new mobile phone by Naoto Fukasawa (in Japanese) so not too behind, hopefully.

It keeps snowing! It hasn't snowed this much in Tokyo for eight years, and I slipped twice on the snowy pavement with my Converse All Stars. The word 'slipped' in Japanese could also mean 'failed an examination', so it is a taboo word for the 551,382 students who took university and college entrance exams today.

I like casual fashion, I owned something like 30 pairs of trainers, over 10 pairs of Levi's and at least 100 t-shirts since I was teenager, and my favourite hollywood fashion icon was (still is?) Elliott from E.T.. But when I needed to be dressed up a little bit, I visited HELMUT LANG and I bought his beautiful bag, shoes, shirt, jacket and coats etc. Yesterday I received a card from the HELMUT LANG shop, and I was surprised read that the label will end with this season! A few days ago, I accidentaly found the shop card from 1993 (left on the photo) and it brought back nice old memories. I need HELMUT LANG!

This is the forth winter since we've come to Japan. We were always wondering if we should buy an oil filled radiator around this time of the year, and we finally bought one. Maybe it was because C caught a cold, the nice radiator from De'Longhi (which was a little bit over the budget) became a discontinued model and all other models are very ugly round shape, I found radiator from MUJI was quite reasonable price and it was also 10%OFF from the original price during 23 Nov - 4 Dec (need to be an internet member) and finally mum visits our place very soon. Come to think of it, when she stayed with us two years ago, I bought a hot carpet because she suggested me! All people who I know from the cold cities in Japan hate winter in Tokyo. They live in a perfectly warm house with central heating radiators. But not many people have them in Tokyo.

On Sunday afternoon, we went to Roppongi Hills to meet up our friends, who haven't seen for a while. We had coffee at the cafe, but I didn't realised that it was Rojak (in Japanese) by IDÉE. I felt the atmosphere was bit different from the one in Aoyama. One of our friend ordered hot herb tea, and it came with a wine glass. It looked cool, but it was too hot to drink from!

On Sunday afternoon it was beautiful weather, so we packed some food and drink and cycled to Komazawa Olympic Park. But when we arrived there, the sun was gone and it was very cold! We saw many colourful girls outside of the indoor playing field, it was the 5th All Japan Cheerdance Competition. We went to inside to have a look, but it cost ¥2,300 to get in and they didn't allow anyone to take photos inside. Boo!

Yesterday, I got woken up by a phone call from dad. I didn't know that he was in Tokyo! He asked me if I had time for lunch and I invited him to come to our flat. We went to a Chinese restaurant near our place. He still had a bit of time before his flight, so I took him to a temple called Daienji (in Japanese) in Meguro. We wanted to see the buddha statue, which is an "important cultural asset", but it wasn't shown to the public. We can see it only during New Year's time and on a few other occasions every year. The temple is quite small compared to Yutenji temple near our place! It was too cold to walk around, even though the Japanese maple leaves are still green, maybe dad brought the cold from Hokkaido. I was in my bare feet in the flat until last week, but I need socks and sheepskin slippers. I also need a hot carpet very soon.

We visited our friends at the Cerulean Tower Tokyu Hotel. The view from the bar on the 40th floor was very nice because of the dry weather and clear sky. I could see the Shibuya station area very cleary.

On Sunday afternoon, there was a crazy thunderstorm just as I was about to leave our flat. I had an appointment, so I couldn't wait for long. So I gave up and went to vote in the lower house elections at the local elementary school. I was soaking wet. My umbrella didn't really help! I hurried to Harajuku and met up with C and C's friend. It seemed like the rain had gone, but as soon as we arrived at the main building of Meiji Shrine it started raining buckets, so we stayed there for quite a while. It was kind of nice and beautiful.

Today is the second anniversary of LDK so we went to Claska's rooftop "METROMINT LOUNGE" for drinks, it was very nice and chilled out, and a great view. It's a shame that this place is only open for one month. This last year of LDK seems to have gone by much quicker than the first year. I'm so surprised and happy that lots of people visit LDK every day! Thanks!

Today, Shiretoko Peninsula in eastern Hokkaido was declared a World Heritage Site. Shiretoko is famous for its wildlife, including Japanese brown bears (Higuma), Hokkaido fox (Kita-Kitsune) and Ezo deer (Ezo-Shika). And also endangered species like Steller's Sea Eagles (Owashi), Blakiston's Fish Owls (Shima-Fukuro), Black Woodpeckers (Kuma-Gera) etc. It sounds amazing that we can see all these animals in the wild. I read that the floating ice brings many different kinds of plankton to the area, so there is a very unusual and rare food chain, apparently. I feel like I want to do nature watching in Shiretoko this summer. I'm probably not the only one with this idea after watching the beatiful scenery on the TV news.

The image of Shiretoko was taken from here. Thanks!

It's been a while since musical batons were passing around. It seemed like everybody received one and I was relieved that I hadn't received one. But McCOCK from Silly Shally BLOG chose me finally! I used to listen to rock music a lot when I was younger, but these days C is my DJ and I listen to what he chooses. Anyway, here you go! (the photo: today's dinner 'Thai Green Curry' cooked by C)