Minnie Hands

Snaps from Gold Mountain

7:30 am

Benches in the shopping area

Er, the karaoke is inside mate.

Nah, it's local election time again. Many a promise made outside a karaoke place has been broken.

Have and have not

'Townwork' is one of the local employment magazines.

Reezento...

... is the Japanese name for a quiff!

Dancers through water

The Oasis 21 building in Sakae, Nagoya has a glass roof over which flows a contant stream of water.

On Sunday I walked around the top of the glass roof and through the water took the shot below of some girls from a local dance school doing their yearly recital.

Reflection

Train Driver

Going to School

Buddha in the window

Dior Advertising

On the way to the cinema, this Dior advert caught my eye. Not that I have any interest in (or ability to buy) Dior, but I do think that if one is going to advertise something, one should take a little more care of the manner in which your name or logo is displayed.

Free Hugs

Yesterday at Mei-eki we met these three people offering free hugs. When I asked them why the younger one told me that they just wanted do do something to make people happier. He had taken over from someone doing the same in the morning. They don't belong to any group and just wanted to do this to make a difference.

Australian in London

Lucky London living folks, click here to visit the homepage of an interesting gallery with an interesting exhibition.

The Family Lunch

On the 2nd, we went for the yearly family new year lunch. The first time I met the whole family was at one of these lunches 6 years ago. Can you imagine it? Less kids then obviously but lots of drunk old fellas giving me sake and me just about being able to say thank you. Still, that was then.

New Year T.V

No visual aids for this, just use your imagination.

Japanese T.V has a reputation abroad for people doing crazy, often dangerous and very often painful things on gameshows. The show on T.V at the moment is along those lines.

Two teams competing for points. The challenge I just saw had two men sitting in a bath of water, trying to name 7 characters from the famous animation show "Doraemon" while the water was heated to 50 degrees using stones heated red hot over a fire.

The first to do so won 1 point and the first use of the bucket of ice set beside the bath.

Great balls of fire!

Happy New Year

Have a good'un.
There will probably be a saying in the not too distant future 'don't post when drunk'. Bearing ths in mnd... here's just three snaps from the new year here in J.A.P of AN.

It's fairly traditional to head down to a shrine after the clock strikes 12, so this we did. Nice bonfire, chance to make a wish for the coming year, and eat some mochi.

Thanks to Nomura San of Bar Arco for shots 2 and 3, and for the idea for shot 1.