Go west

I was born in Kochi, south west of Japan. Sometimes I visit my grandmother there. This time I took an overnight sleeper train from Tokyo.


The most economical way is to take the overnight bus. The overnight bus in Japan usually is quite comfirtable. But to my surprise, my mother had decided to come with me which I did not know.

A young and good looking man like me (who said that?) would quite be ok with the bus journey, but probably it is too hard for my mother. So, I decided to take a sleeper train.

Sleeper train in Japan used to be called "blue train".

(yes very blue)
But the one we took was the new generation of the sleeper.
When a beautifully colored 14coaches overnight train "Sunrise Express" appeared at the platform number 9 in Tokyo station, I was quite excited.


Well, this can not be called "blue train" anymore, can it?

A 900 kilometre journey was about to start...

A new time zone again

Hi All

It's been a long time. How are you guys?
I came back from Japan to Ireland on Wednesday.

I heard that it is depend on person whether if jetlug would bother or not.

My case it is quite hard to get used to a new time zone. Dublin and Tokyo has 9hours time gap. I woke up at 2 a.m. this morning and could not sleep again.
For me, it will take about 10days to recover.

Japan was colder than usual. New York (stayed one night) was extremely mild. Dublin is quite mild as well. I wonder how it is like in India...

Time is 3:30 p.m. I am getting tired already. I do have some more news about my stay in Japan. Will be updated soon.

For now,
Good night...

11cm Snow in Tokyo on last Sunday.

Forgotten photos for three years

I have mentioned about my old laptop sometime in December. The photos I found in there are quite nice. They are for my holiday in Scotland.

On the 2nd day of holiday I was at the south of Highland. Such a wild scenery...


Magnificent, is the word I would describe.

Then I drove in to a very narrow road beside the hill. Driving into a valley, suddenly the fog was rapidly growing around the car. It was so sudden...
Moment later, the fog covered the area completely and I could not see the thing.

All the sudden, a police woman appeared from the middle of nowhere, and gestured "wait for a while".



After a while, again the fog was going away so so rapidly, and I thought I was drunk.

I asked the police woman, as I was totally confused:

"What have just happened?"

She said,

"Ah, it was an artificial fog. They are filming a scene of Harry Potter up there. Well, the road is now clear enough. You can go."

Oh, really?


So this is a photo I took on the way, going through a valley.


After the holiday, I was wondering what was that strange building for in the movie, and couldn't wait for the movie released.

If you have seen the 3rd eddition of Harry potter, it was a hut for a professor Hagrid who teaches about "dangerous creatures", you might have already noticed...


---Well guys, I am flying to Japan tomorrow. While I am in Japan, I might not be able to update this page. But please check from time to time.

Ridiculously cheap.....can't complain

Now my date for holiday is fixed. I will be flying to Japan on 11th January.

By the way, I have to buy a separate ticket from Dublin to London. My flight from Dublin to London (60minutes flight)....

9 euro.

London to Dublin....

1 euro....

Tax?

about 60 euro.


This became quite normal in Europe. I will definitely have a heart attack when I have to fly domestically in Japan. From Tokyo to Kochi (90minutes flight)where I was born will probably cost around 350 euro round trip...

So I will take a coach (long distance bus), I think.

A technical issue

For those who reads Japanese, the problem on my Japanese site has been sorted. The old version at hidekisjp.blogspot.com was formatted as Universal UTF-8 code. A lot of Japanese PC that does not support UTF-8 shows a blank screen.

The new one at hidekiss.blogspot.com is now formatted as Japanese Shift-JIS which should not be a problem. Anyone who does not have Japanese Operation System but do have Japanese font installed, please use new version and encord it as Shift-JIS.
The old version will not be updated anymore.
Sorry guys, it took a long time to figure out what was a problem.

For Delhi people, if you still can not get to the garden, send me an email. I will send you a link to the page.

Best regards

A Happy New Year...

...to you all.
And thank you for supporting and your comments on this page in 2005. I will continue writing news around myself. 2006 is the year of Dog. Japanese year is Heisei 18. Anybody who were born in 1910/22/34/46/58/70/82/94, this is your lucky year. I wish the year 2006 will bring you a wonderful time.

I am still not sure when and how long I am going for holiday in Japan (hopefully as soon as possible). Will send you some update from Japan too.

Take care.