飲みほ～だい

One of the sweetest words in the Japanese langauge we've come across is nomihodai. Translated as 'drink all you want' in Japanese, we tend to interpret this as 'drink all you can'!



For around £10 you usually get 2 hours of unlimited beer, cocktails and wine, as well as a selection of food. This doesn't represent too bad a deal for the Japanese izakayas since Japanese people drink tend to drink in moderation, but they certainly count their losses whenever the gaijin roll into town!! (Don't know if any of you remember that scene from the Simpsons where Homer goes to the Frying Dutchman for all-you-can-eat, but it's kind of reminiscent of that!). So whenever we book a party, we always reserve it in a Japanese name so they can't hide away all the alcohol before we get there!

京都

This day was the highlight of my trip to Kyoto with Tomoko and my friends Matthew & Animesh! We had our photos taken in traditional Japanese costumes on a film set used for countless Japanese films and TV series. We thought it was fun just to be able to dress up and have our photos taken, but the bonus was that after the photo shoot we could walk around the movie set for 1 hour in full costume which was great - we took loads of action photos of us fighting, jumping off small buildings and bridges etc! :-)



Animesh & I were dressed as Shinsengumi Samurai warriors, Matthew was an infamous Samurai called 'Musashi Miyamoto' and Tomoko looked great as an elegant geisha.

Join the revolution!

It's the craze that's sweeping the nation - anyone who's anyone is wearing one of these stylish accessories!



When I first saw people wearing these I assumed it was so they wouldn't catch germs from other people but in fact people wear them so they don't pass on their colds to anyone else. These were everywhere in Japan in spring time!