Which chapter of my Japan memoir would you be most interested in reading?

#cannedcoffeeandkimonos

Over an infinite time period a monkey sitting at a typewriter will type the entire works of Shakespeare without a single error.

If he uses a smartphone instead, no matter how long he sits there, 'To be or not to be....' will always finish, 'That is the quesadilla'.

I'd be enormously grateful if you could retweet this post.

I'll let you be the judge of whether my book is any good or whether it's complete rubbish.

I would be over the moon if this post could get 100 shares.
Don't be kind. Give your honest feedback.

amazon.co.uk/Canned-Coffee-…?

Today my mother asked me to 'pick up a thingamajig from the whatsit for whatsisface' and genuinely got annoyed when I responded that I didn't know what she meant.

What's your region/country's equivalent of these kind of words.

Yasukuni dori, Shinjuku, Tokyo

You may recognise this location from The Killers' 'Read My Mind' music video or the film 'Lost in Translation'.

By the way, can you spot Godzilla?

photo by Tom Fitzmaurice, February, 2023

#cannedcoffeeandkimonos

The most traitorous things I've witnessed in #TheTraitors are crimes to the English language. Since 3rd January I've watched as they've looked across the round table at one another and declared, 'I'm sorry, I'm voting for yourself.'

#TheTraitors

I currently teach a fidgety 8-year-old whose parents have installed a machine on their chair that yells 'Sit up!' in Chinese whenever they don't sit up straight. And the child never sits up straight.
It's like SAS resistance to interrogation training.

Are you useless at buying Christmas presents, like me?

Have you still not thought of anything for that difficult-to-buy-for family member obsessed with Japan?

I've got you covered.

amazon.co.uk/Canned-Coffee-…

An encounter with the namahage- a kind of divine boogeyman sent to scare the bejeezus out of kids on New Year’s Eve in and around Akita Prefecture’s Oga Peninsula 👹

Am I completely mad, or have people now totally lost command of the English language?

2 BBC News headlines

1. 'Australian beach overrun by dead rats'

Can anything deceased overrun anything?

2. 'Watch flash mob rob Nike store in Los Angeles'

Aren't flash mobs silly & fun?

One reason I prefer Tokyo to London is that I like having food served to me on plates and in bowls.

Call me old-fashioned, but I believe tiles should live on roofs and that watering cans belong in gardens.

I think many British people find Japan fascinatingly twee because they still have respect for their own culture and a clear sense of national identity. Gosh, look at all these Japanese people here in Japan doing Japanese things. How funny!

If I ever get arrested for underage drinking in a Wiltshire field in the 90s and put on some newly-formed British death-row, should they offer me a 'final meal', this will most definitely be it.

Those Sunday Bike Rides.

Nogata. Tokyo.

Do people who move abroad need to respect, agree with and conform to the values and culture of the country to which they move?

The best thing Japan has done over recent decades is to look at what Western Europe and North America are doing to themselves and then not follow suit.

As a proud Englishman, I feel like a traitor for saying this, but no national anthem on Earth makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up like the Welsh one. When sung with passion, it's incredible.

I think TV adverts are a metaphor for the changes in our society Crafted for those with a deficit of attention, as unnecessarily loud as the bloke on the train's phone conversation. Noise, flashes & annoying indecipherable English & an underlying sense of 'what is this even for?'

What are your top tips for a battle-winning conker?

Mine? Soak them in vinegar and then bake them rock hard in the oven.

I wasn't my primary school's conker tournament champion for nothing.

All hail British TV commercials' determined campaign to massacre the adverb at the hands of the adjective:

'Tread careful'
'Live happy'
'Clean easy'
'Live bold'
'Play nice'
'Smile bright'
'Live good'
'Play safe'
'Write amazing!'