Champions!

On May 25th my beloved football team Liverpool beat AC Milan on penalties to win the Champions League, the world's most prestigious club competition!



What made it extra special was the way in which we won it; 0-3 down at half-time against a team that was touted as the best in the world defensively, yet Liverpool produced a courageous, passionate second-half display to fight back to 3-3 and ultimately win 3-2 in the penalty shoot-out!

Possibly the greatest final of all time, and I was 6000 miles away! d'oh!

Fish Market, 築地

The Tokyo Central Wholesale Market in Tsukiji is one of the biggest markets in the world, handling around 2 billion yen's worth of marine products (£10 million) every day! I'd been wanting to check it out for ages having heard from other teachers what a unique place it was and it was true - having visited the typical, touristy sightseeing spots in Japan, it was fascinating to see the other side of Tokyo, being amongst the hustle and bustle of this heaving marketplace at 4:00 in the morning.

Making our way there was quite an adventure. All the trains in Tokyo stop around midnight and don't start again til around 5 in the morning, by which time the main action in the market would already have finished, so we took the last train from Konosu at night into central Tokyo and went to karaoke in Ginza til around 3 a.m. It was quite surreal making our way to Tsukiji afterwards - walking through central Tokyo on foot with hardly any people or cars around was a strange experience!

We were unsure what to do upon arriving at the market - after all, this was a place of business and visitors aren't particularly welcomed - but we wandered into where it looked like the action might be: a warehouse stretching as far as the eye could see with dozens of motorised carts buzzing around. Making our way through the maze of stalls and crates of fish was quite perilous seeing as the cart drivers were driving as if any gaijin casualties wouldn't spoil their day, but eventually we made it to the main auction hall.



Before daybreak, wholesalers had lain out hundreds of tuna in preparation for the start of the auction, and when we arrived to take some photos several traders were carefully examining the quality of the tuna and estimating the price. Feeling as though we'd outstayed our welcome and not wanting to get in anyone else's way, we soon headed out into the early morning light for a sushi breakfast!

Happy Birthday Tommy!

Tomoko you're getting old! 23 candles on the cake this year! (^-^)

Tomoko's gourmet birthday lunch came courtesy of our student Takami who is a trainer at McDonald's and gave us 3 free meal vouchers when he saw us!! いっただきます！

鎌倉

The Great Buddah in Kamakura.

English T-shirts

Walking around Japan, you cannot fail to notice the abundance of T-shirts with various English phrases printed on them... and when you take a closer look 99% of them make absolutely no sense at all!

This one was in a department store in Omiya.

芝桜の丘、秩父

This weekend I finally got a taste of the countryside after 7 months in the urban sprawls of Tokyo and Saitama! We drove to Chichibu to see these beautiful shibazakura, carpets of cherry blossoms.