muuranker

Another meme from a near-random person. This one is from coughingbear who I 'know' because she/he has a lot of books in common with Rivendell on Library Thing.

what i need is SkinPrep!

Yesterday our second choice York house (the smokestack) has been withdrawn from the market.  And today ExMemSec went to see a nearby one that looked really promising, but turned out not to be.

Oh fnuf!

Fnuf, oddly enough, is also the word to describe ExMemSec's uncle at the moment, who has a collapsed lung, and the air has gone into his body (sounds like one of those medical impossibilities which children whisper to one another, but it's true).  The treatment is working, which is great.  But the poor lad has been pulled between sorting out crisise in York, supporting frail mother to the West Midlands hospital, and looking forwards to a Very Grumpy Muuranker (as I am having the other hand operated on tomorrow).  He wants to be in three places at once.

Hi All,

Since we were talking a bit aback about risks and children, I thought I would pass on news of this conference, organized by the Royal Society of Arts:

To book your free place and find out more about the event, visit
http://rsariskconference.eventbrite.com

Doris has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. 

Which I think is splendid...  Bother those books being in boxes ....

I have tagged them in LibraryThing as 'Nobel prizewinner'.

A meme that numerous people have completed: very simple, ten things that have made me happy recently.

1/ Dates for hand operation
2/ Getting a lift back from the Runneymede Centre with Linda
3/ Looking for houses in York with ExMemSec
4/ The price the estate agent wants to put our house on the market for
5/ Morrisons roasted vegitable soup with ?Gordon Ramsey's croutons
6/ the glass of verdicchio I am drinking
7/ the way the house looks now we have decorated bits of it
8/ excuse given by a member of my team for being late : "I'm sorry I'm late, I had to take a were-marrow to my daughter's school this morning*
9/ the way the cultural strategy and Local Area Agreement are shaping up (if that's not two things).
10/ Japan.

Safely home, with all luggage, to find cats a little disturbed by our return, and new stairs carpet needing a through clean.

Landed at 15.35, only five mins late, and swiftly got to gate.  Swiftly got luggage.  Swiftly through customs and immigration.  Saw the 16.15 bus departing from Heathrow central.

Waited for 16.45 bus.  Did not come.  Bus came at 16.50, but driver left, saying his shift over, and that it would be the 17.15.  No, he had no idea where the 16.45 was: he had been driving a bus.  He did however leave the keys in the bus and the radio playing for our entertainment.

Another bus came at 16.55, disgorged passengers, Said it wasn't the 16.45, or anything else, and left without taking on passengers.

Driver arrived at 17.15, to find two busloads of passengers, who were rather annoyed that he wasted time checking tickets (and they always change how they do this - mostly its on the bus, which filled up with women with tickets and two lots of hand luggage, as men with two suitcases or back packs waited at the luggage bins... NOOOO Today it was tickets-in-order-to-get-your-luggage-on, so bus filled up with men coming back asking for tickets, and women working out what was going on and struggling out with them. 

Bus finally left at 17.23.  It was only 5 mins late into Woking, which given the horrendours traffic, was good going.  I wish we had loaded the bus ourselves, though, and been ready to set off when the driver arrived at 17.15 (or indeed persuaded anyone passing with a PSV that we'd have a whip-round and make sure s/he got a seat on the next bus back to heathrow).

We just missed the 18.28 from Woking, so waited for the 18.59, which was delayed by 9 minutes by the previous Exeter/Salisbury train which had suffered from a power failure in the Clapham area.  Finally got in at 19.32.

How come we have a traffic system that takes over 4 hours to get us a distance of under 30 miles, which in a car, on a bad day, takes an hour, BUT have an automated system for explaining the delays?

As the title says, the air con here in the UK is fierce, and seems to be particularly efficient at Woking station.  I like dusk and dawn. 

[And I will live journal the rest of the trip in due course, now there be laundry to be done, and five people coming to see house re move .... I think what with the cat sick, the green crates, me talking like a pirate, and large piles of rice crackers, green tea, and so on around the house, the relocation company, etc. are going to find this is one move that goes suprisingly well, after their first impressions].

[ Such a dissapointment - the machine issues paper cups of coffee, not cans]

Now, where was I... on the train heading back to Kyoto.

Decide, after looking at LonelyPlanent book, that it is best to ask at tourist information how to get to the Holiday Inn.  LP book says that prefectural TIC is closed every second and fourth  tuesday of the month.  Rapid calculation on fingers.  _Yes, today is the second tuesday of September.  It also says 'very limited' English is spoken at the city TIC.... so go there, but find instead the building TIC.  Where our question slightly baffles the assistant (English very fluent, thank you): why don:t we want to take the free shuttle bus?  Why not, indeed?  It leaves in five minutes, so we fly to the left luggage locker, to the place we think she has marked on the map ... no bus.  We then realise that what appeared to be the bottom of an escalator was in fact a very busy triple-carriageway main road, and the bus would have been over there five minutes ago. ASIDE; I am delighted to report that Japanese does not do locations the way English does- we think of things being 'here' and 'there' - Japanese has 'near to the speaker', 'near to the listener', and 'near neighter of us'.  I am pleased I found this out before reading one of the poems in the atomic bomb museum, about :those children: which I cound now understand to be about :children distant to both me-the-speaker and you-the-listener). I am less delighted that Japanese keyboards have the apostrophe as a 7-shift.

So with 80 minutes for the next bus, we went and had cheesecake.  Not quite up to Huis ten Bosch standards, but pretty good.  ExmemSec had two iced coffees. Quite suprised he was able to sleep!

Arrived at hotel.  Nice big room, full of two queen sized beds.  Allegedly a mountain view (tipping it down by the time we looked out, and Kyoto not visible, let alone mountains).

Not being able to go out to eat, and not fancying v. expensive beef, chinese, or sushi, went into food court of neighbouring shopping centre.  All unapealing, until found little proper sit-down restaurant, with models of somthing that looked like dumplings...  They turned out to be three-bite size omlettes, with suprise fillings (eg octopus, cheese, bacon, prawn). Exmemset had a 'set' with soup and pickles, I had a 'set' with soup and pudding.  There was obviously some 'selection' involved with mine, but I determinedly kept pointing at the picture and saying that was what I wanted, and that was what I got.  Turned out to be less fresh fruit than I had thought it was, and more glutenous rice / bathmat.  But red beans, and green tea jelly were in there, so on balance, a fine 'selection'.  I asked for 'o-cha' but they said they didn't do it ... and produced oolong.  So exmemsec drank mine.

And so to bed.

Woke early, read more Japan Sinks, and pottered while exmemsec slept.  No where around for breakfast, so decided to wait until nine, when the bread shop opened. Sadly, did not serve breakfast then, so just bought buns with cheese, bacon, radish and onion and icedcoffee.  Decided to splash out and take a taxi to the castle, as everything on different railway lines.  Kyoto is big.  Huge. And our hotel is way out.  But has free internet.  So sent
alitalf
 an email while waiting for bread shop to open.

Photos and notes about castle need to go here.

Then went to Museum of Kyoto (used tube).  From first bit thought there was no labelling in English, so asked for volunteer guide which had been suggested when we bought tickets, but had been reluctant to take up (see experience in Nagasaki).  Turned out to be a Good Thing, even though most exhibits were labelled.  She was very eembarrassed that she was lacking some vocabulary (but we could supply 'defenses' and 'tombs' and so on, so we got on very well).

Then had lunch in :merchants alley: - quite like the street in York Castle museum, but shops are real.  Alas, exmemsecs legs not up to Japanese restaurants.  (worry about next few days - we are dinner-bed-and-breakfast for three nights in traditional inns).

Then by a different train company:s metro to National Museum of Kyoto for very good coffee desert (cream, coffee jelly, iced coffee, soft ice cream - all complicated by the presence of too many ice cubes which had to be decanted so that the cubes of jelly could be eaten). NM o K also suffers from Too Many Buddhas.  But has excellent ceramics and laquerware and textiles of great beauty (and some interpretation).

Back to hotel room by same metro, and a private train line (with interchange ticket).  After a shower, went round shopping centre, and bought bickies for work colleagues - some might be savory (have seeds on top), and some definitely will be (have prawns in the picture).  Exmemsec persuaded me not to buy rice cakes with seaweed and anchovies/other nameless in English little fishies, as might not be allowed through customs.

Dinner in bread place ... the 'set' promised pasta, bread and wine,but it turned out to be pasta, salad and wine ... so much better.  Note to self: do not order red wine again in Japan - as others at Worldcon found out, it comes chilled. It was fine, once it had warmed up.

Pasta was 'wild duck with onion' - was 'chinese noodle', with a fish stock base, seaweed, Japanese oinion (like spring onion or chive, but bigger) and very angry duck.  Very different - and very delicious.

Then back to room to pack ... and me having done before he had, I came down to live journal, and now to check emails ...


Apologies if this appears twice ... appears not to have been sent first time