michael lambe

The year and a decade (arguably) is coming to an end! Busy busy! Time to clean up the house and sweep out all the corners! It’s been a good year for me – I got to work with these two chaps (Chris and Andrew)

- and enjoyed the experience greatly (they are sirs of the kind variety). And I moved to a great location (tho my new apartment is as messy as my old one). Also I started karate and tho I’m still quite terrible and clumsy – am still going! A tiny miracle of sorts for lazy old me. In recent days I’ve been to an onsen, eaten at a posh restaurant and had a very nice Boxing Day lunch… All of which you can read about on DK. Also, on Christmas Day, I saw this (with very heavy 3D glasses) -

A visual (and visceral) feast – but somewhat lacking in the visionary department. There’s much discussion of it here and Greg Egan has reviewed it here too. My own two pennies worth is that the story is unimaginative/derivative (very dances-with-wolvesian complete with alien war whoops) misses an excellent opportunity to explore one’s sense of self identity… and instead serves up a dose of Disney-like isn’t nature lovely and we are all one Pocahontas type guff. But I still enjoyed it.

I also liked this (not the stupid Hollywood style trailer mind you but the actual movie):

Spooky and (though it has its fairly obvious plotholes) ultimately heartbreaking.

And I’m looking forward to the final episode of Doctor Who with David Tennant as the Doctor… Really John Simm makes an excellent Master. I hope he doesn’t regenerate. And the Time Lords are back with Timothy Dalton in charge. Golly.

So all that’s left to say is yoi otoshi wo and a Happy New Year to you all. See you in 2010! I’m off to Joao!

Great party the other night. The most memorable thing though was discovering that Massun is in fact Edward Furlong. Here are a couple of pictures for your perusal. I won’t even bother labeling them because they are so clearly the same person.

This is my favorite picture of the evening though.

You can see the rest here:

Every year in December I give myself a Christmas present. Throughout the year, when I see a book I want to read, I add it to my amazon wishlist and then wait… Then come December, I study the ridiculously long list it has become and ask myself “How much do I really want this?” and if I’m still interested, I order it just in time for Xmas and the winter holidays. Anyway we got our bonus last Thursday, I placed the order on Friday and seven of the books came today. Aren’t they lovely?

It’s an odd mix I suppose. I’ve enjoyed “The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror” collections in previous years but missed out in 2008 as Junkudo didn’t stock it, so I ordered that one. Then it seems the editor Ellen Datlow has gone solo with “The Best Horror of the Year 2009″ so I ordered that one too. I love to read something creepy at Christmas. The Van Gogh book – which is both beautiful and immense! – I bought because we’ve been doing a chapter on his life in reading class at school and I became intrigued and wanted to read and see more. As for the others they are mostly Japan or Kyoto related because I live here (and write a blog called Deep Kyoto) – so I figure I ought to really. Here are the first seven (plus a couple more that haven’t arrived yet) in a handy little browsable widget.

Last night Mewby and I went to see the illuminated aumtumn leaves at Kodaiji temple. It was the last night of the illuminations so it was pretty crowded. The crowds do tend to take away from the experience a bit – but what can you do? This is Japan. Here are some pictures.

Ha! Ghastly November is finally over! Actually I realised that part of my gloom last month was simply down to a lack of exercise. Catching a cold and feeling terrible kept me out of the gym for almost 3 weeks. When I got back in there I did exactly 6 squats and then immediately felt the effects of the endorphins coursing through my body and into my brain. All of a sudden I was all happy and positive and rushing from weight machine to weight machine like a giddy child running round a playground.  So that’s good then. Here are some pictures from the weekend.

Neon SoundCollage: When we finally made it to Collage on Friday night, we were just in time to be told by pretty much everybody that Satoko had just finished her set (moments earlier) and how very very brilliant it was. Which was a shame. And somewhat galling. However, Yamada-san himself was in very high spirits as the event was clearly a great success. Lots of people were there and some of them were even dancing. Wow! I however, drank exactly 3 beers and took exactly one picture. Here it is:
Saturday was boy’s night at Joao.

Taisho in an especially jolly mood, broke out the guitars and we had a singalong.

One last picture. Jeff Trambley posted this on facebook today and made me laugh out loud. It’s a picture from 1998 of he and I performing some Madonna at the Fukushima Jets Leavers’ Party. Those were the days!

And don’t I look skinny!

I don’t like November. The sudden sharp shift from warm blue October skies to day after day of grey cold drear (and my school’s refusal to turn on the heating) leads me to one inevitable conclusion: this is the long dark dentist’s waiting room of the soul. And on top of my seasonal gloom add self pity; I’ve had a nasty lingering chest cold for over two weeks now, which no amount of syrups, pills, antibiotics, hot lemony drinks or cough sweets have done anything to improve. I want rid of it and I want December to hurry up and cheer me with it’s bright and tawdry festive ways. Still, I reluctantly admit there have been one or two bright moments this month too. Here belatedly are pictures from Taisho’s birthday party, over two weeks back:

And here are a few pictures from a pleasant day out with Mewby at Uji Botanical Gardens one week later:

Many apologies for their tardy appearance – I’m lazy.

I know this is traditionally the time of year when people complain about how early the Christmas decorations have gone up, but this Brooks Brothers Xmas tree made us laugh when we saw it yesterday.

Popped into my old school today (after an income tax form), and met some of my old students. I first taught them when they were noisy little junior high 3rd years and now they are senior high 3rd years talking excitedly about the study abroad program they will have at their university. Time’s arrow, eh? Actually they haven’t changed a bit. Scallywags. Many thanks to Matsui-sensei for taking the following picture. Left to right: Yurika, Tamami, ワタシ, Tomoko.

いい感じでしょう？

Back in October Mewby and I spent a day at Universal Studios Japan. And we had a very nice day there. And I completely neglected to post the pictures until now. Here they are (you can of course also view them properly on flickr).

So yeah, we had a lot of fun. I enjoyed the 3D Terminator experience, and zipping about in Spiderman’s cartoon universe, and the wee (but plucky) little girl who captained our boat and who single handedly fought off JAWS was also quite entertaining. One ride however remains etched into my memory: Jurassic Park.

The thing with Jurassic Park is you are just cruising along in this boat, looking at the life size moving dinosaur replicas, thinking “Ha ha! Moving dinosaur replicas! Life size! Oh my!” and then you know they throw in some scary ones that roar at you and you think “Oh, ha ha! Velociraptors! Scary!”. Then your boat heads through the legs of a monstrously huge and very angry Tyrannousaurus Rex, “Marvellous!” you think, “Lovely old Tyrannousaurus Rex!” And then for no apparent reason, the boat suddenly drops vertically, front first, EIGHTY-FIVE FEET. That’s 25 meters you know. This is what it looks like from the outside.

And this is what it looks like from the inside:

Let’s take a closer look at that shall we?

I was a wee bit surprised.

This month’s word or 今月の言葉 went up in the classrooms this week.

失敗は終わりではない
その失敗を反省し
成功に結びつければよい。

失敗 shippai – failure, defeat
終わり owari – the end
反省する hansei suru – reflect, consider
成功 seikou – success
結びつく musubi tsuku – conclude, reach, result in

Failure is not the end
It is better to reflect on that failure
And finally reach success

And here’s a timely case in point! A couple of years ago, the school I used to work at, Lado International College Japan, went bottom up, largely due to mismanagament it seems. My old workmate Malcolm, obviously upset but undeterred by the sad demise of the school he loved, kept his pecker up, worked hard and now he has his own school! Good for you Malcolm!  You can check out the school’s website here: www.malcolm.jp