"I'm sorry but I did something which is going to cause you some problems..." and Plop! there goes a concert!

Hello Ozzies!

More, more, more! Today's post has a very special dedication to Davide. You may have seen him in some pictures of previous posts. He's an Italian Vulcanus who also works in Schlumberger. He's very good at cooking, but he's even better at giving surprises!

Let me take this from the beginning:

I suppose most people in Oz are aware that I'm a bit crazy about a couple of Djs called 2Many Djs. Well, my romance dates from a loooong time ago. To be precise, since my first FIB festival (how many memories...The Strokes, Franz Ferdinand, Pixies, Placebo, Depeche...it was a great year for the FIB, snif, snif). The first time I saw them, I really flipped out: I have never seen something like it before: they don't do just simple mixing. Oh, no, that's for the amateurs. They take songs from any different style you can imagine (from Christina Aguilera to 50cent, without forgetting things like David Bowie, The League, Marylin Manson, Arctic Monkeys or Armand van Helden), and mix them in such a way you will not say they are different songs, but just a natural continuation.

So much for the remember session...I knew from a Japanese friend that Vitalic and 2 Many Djs (Vitalic is also another Dj: he's French, and he's also very good, but his style has nothing to do since he's more in the traditional techno/electronic trip) were coming to Tokyo at the end of January. I was very excited, and started looking for someone to accompany me, but since this kind of music does not collect many followers (hey, electronic went outdated some years ago, so...), I finally had to give up. The ticket prize was not helping neither: 6500yens (something like 50euros) for a concert is a lot of money if you compare it to concerts in Europe (you only get those prizes if you go to see living myths like U2 or Bob Dylan, or maybe fashionable groups of dubious quality like Britney Spears). So no hope...until last Thursday. When I came back from the gym, I found a small post it on my door from Davide, telling me that he seriously needs to talk to me, and asking me to visit in his appartment asap. So there I go, thinking that something is going reeeeally wrong if Davide is getting so serious (since he's always joking and smiling around). Knock on the door, and there he is sitting on his bed with a very very serious face. He asks me to sit down, then starts talking: "Look Guillermo, I have done something which is going to cause you some troubles. For sure you are going to need to make some calls. I'm sorry if I have inconvenienced you...Look" And as he was saying that, he goes to one of the table drawers and pulls out a Lawson's envelope. He opens it in front of my eyes...and there they were, two brand-new tickets for the 2 Many Djs vs. Vitalic concert of last Saturday! I just could not believe what my eyes were seeing. Honestly! I want to keep a written record about this, it has been by far the biggest unexpected thing (aka surprise, aka something you really don't expect at all) that has happened to me in my life. Davide, you're big, veeeeery big!

Can you feel it? Something good is about to happen...

It was such a bit of a shock that even the very same day of the concert, while we were having dinner in an izakaya near the concert hall, I still didn't believe it at all!

 Our destination: Zepp Tokyo!

But sure it was real...we took the monorail and stepped in the Zepp just in time to see the beginning of Vitalic. My God, he's good! Last time I saw him, he was mixing in a much more hard-core fashion, and so I enjoyed it less. But this time, he was on fire! I think Japanese are one of the most responsive audiences an artist can have: you can really feel they're into it. Really into it, and that they deeply appreciate what the artist is doing, in a very festive way. You get a very good vibration of the people, nobody's being aggressive, and there is enough space to move. Being crowded as it was, we were able to get up until the third row without any problem, and still not feel oppressed. We (I mean Westerners) should learn about concert viewing here...

There you go! Some pics of the concert:
 





You see the bold man there? Let me introduce you: Vitalic, readers; readers, Vitalic.

And this is what he does:





Of course, there was a disco ball. (I love disco balls...)






At the beginning, Davide was not very enthusiastic about Vitalic, but during the concert, well...

(FYI, the sunglasses of that man had small LEDs...where did he buy them?)

Japanese really like to appear in pictures! But sometimes, they may wish they wouldn't...

After Vitalic, a Japanese Dj was in charge of making the transition towards the show of the night (people were really looking forward to it!)...2 Many Djs! See how they start their show...






Now, the crowd completely changed during this part: people just went mad!! I was not expecting this from the Japanese (although I must say that problems didn't come from their side, but from all the Westerners who gathered near the scenario). It was...like the Odakyu line in the mornings (please refer to previous posts for more information, or come to Tokyo to suffer at your own risk). It still was not as bad as concerts in Spain (we were always on the third row without problems), but everybody went in trance mode ( free buffet of happiness pills?). A picture of our beloved heroes, in the middle of the session...

...and another video!





Still, it was awesome: they got in wearing smokings, and without losing their posture started hitting the audience with an endless chain of musical hits. They showed once again why they are the bests: there was a moment in which they switched from Sepultura to Eurythmics, then went on with some techno, which was particularly jaw-dropping (can someone see the similarities between Sepultura and Eurythmics? I don't...). And they also played with Kids, from MGMT, and it was pretty awesome too...




























So of these photos are creepy...We have to start learning how to pose, otherwise we're going to lose some friends...

To the next Ozzies!

Geeks strikes back! INTERNEPCON JAPAN

Hello Ozzies!

Friday 22nd I didn't go to work. Oh, I'm sooooo sorry for all of you who had to sit on the desk looking at an empty screen (or a screen full of numbers and letters, both are good for me). You know why? The group in which I'm working in Schlumberger was going to an electronics fair called INTERNEPCON JAPAN, and my supervisor asked me if I wanted to join. Do I want? Of course I do! Never been in such kind of family reunions (I have to admit it, start considering electronics my family may be a good idea...), so I thought I should give it a try.

I took this photo on the way there: the fair was located in Odaiba, an artificial island in Tokyo Bay, and in order to get there you need a...monorrail! As the wisest TV series says : "Lyle Lanley: Well, sir, there's nothing on earth Like a genuine, Bona fide, Electrified, Six-car Monorail! What'd I say? Ned Flanders: Monorail! ")

But what is INTERNEPCON JAPAN? Easy question! It's "Asia's largest electronics exhibition, featuring all kinds of equipment, materials and technologies for electronics manufacturing and SMT" (I'm quoting directly from the website of the event). Here's the web page, if you're thaaaaaat interested.

Here's the entrance to the building, and the building. Impressive, hum?

I suppose going to such events is something you have to do at least once in your life. Very interesting...if you like cables, transducers, cable sockets, fiber optics, and that stuff. If they give me some more years, I may find them interesting. Now...well, let's say it's not my piece of cake. Plus, you have to take into account that everything was in Japanese! Not sexy stuff +  info in Japanese + a lot of electro geeks swarming around, gathering near weird machines and automates = ... you get the point.

 The entrance...what are we going to find behind?....

To a certain extent, it was pretty much like going to a video games exhibition (or at least I think the target audience is pretty much the same, lol.). The omnipresent stand attendants were, of course, once again present:






Anyway, there were some interesting things (like a 3D TV that you could watch in 3D without using glasses), and it was a good opportunity to see how Japanese did business and behave in such events. Meishis (professional cards) were flying around everywhere, since otherwise the stands would not give you goodies (they have to make sure they have a mail address to spam).

Oh! And there was an assembling competition! Electronics gathered around, encouraging their favorite company's team in the race for the fastest electronic board assembler in history! Lol






Here are some videos with the highlights, and some photos too.

And after a looooooong visit, we all went to a nearby izakaya! Since the fair was located very near the Tsukiji market, here izakayas have very fresh fish. Here's the door of ours:

See you Ozzies!

Intermezzo: Yamanote's birthday party (Saturday 16)

Hello Ozzies!

Ok, I guess too much flipping back in time will piss off more than one. So I'll try to do some short posts about my recent boring life (now that I have to work, I get less time for trips, parties, dinners, etc, etc,...) in between.

Like Manuel's (a.k.a. Yamanote) birthday party. Why Yamanote? That is a fair enough question: like everybody else, Manuel enjoys sleeping after a good party. The only thing is that he is not able to wait until he arrives home...and do you know where he sleeps? Yes, you guessed right: in the metro! Tokyo has a circular line called Yamanote line, which Manuel seems to know pretty well since he's done the whole loop more than once, more than twice,...on both directions.

It was a surprise party : his flatmate (Riccardo, an Italian also from the Vulcanus program) made up a whole story in order to make him believe he was meeting a girl called Mayaka in Shibuya. He even created a Hotmail account for that purpose, and he told him "she" was a Japanese girl he met during a meeting at the EU Center (for the record, there was a meeting with alumni from the Vulcanus program in December). Poor Yamanote has a problem with names (specially girl's names), so it was a piece of cake making him believe all this.

When he arrived there (after setting up the date, he still didn't remember her name, lol!) and so us, he could only say something like "Pero que cabrones, como me la habeis liado...Mamonazos..." (The soft translation would be: How could you! I cannot believe it! Hey, I know it's not the real one, but you never know who's reading, and Dorothy is still a young girl who cannot read such things...). Of course, he was delighted by the surprise. He was even more delighted when he saw that there were also presents coming along...We wanted to offer him tickets for the

So we all went together to an izakaya (Japanese version of a pub) Riccardo had previously booked and had a very nice and wonderful evening. Of course, our dear Manuel did some speeches. One of them is here.

Manuel giving his speech for the first toast:

Good thing about izakayas (that pubs don't have), is that they normally have an "all you can eat, all you

can drink menu" for two hours. I suppose only real Japanese speakers (or Japanese, lol) are able to read the menus and actually understand what they are ordering. We just order in a random mode, doing some wild guesses about what kind of food we're asking. It's funny, and most of the times you get something eatable, or even nice! Trial , error, trial, error...until you find the dishes you like!

I think Yamanote didn't do his Yamanote thing, and decided to sleep for once in a static place, lol. But we all had a great time. I hope they do the same for me when my birthday comes...(dropping this kind of comments in the net may help, don't you think Toto? lol).

Happy birthday Manu! (Lol, maybe this is not the best picture to wish him this...)

See you for the next one Ozzies!

Silver Week: Japanese Kansas is much more interesting, specially with Vulcanus! (Part 3)

Heeeeello Ozzies!

Silver Week, day 2! In the menu: Kurashiki and Okayama. Since I already spoke about Kurashiki on the previous post, I will go straight to the pictures. Voila!

The channel, before the tourists start the crash and burn...

The Impressionist museum of Kurashiki, and Monika's face (sunglasses for the morning...the life of a tourist is very hard!)

This small village has some really lovely corners (as in 'what a lovely hat you're wearing today Mrs. Potter!'), plus a very interesting Impressionist museum (here I'm just quoting one of the guides we were using during the trip: in our personal crusade against Western-style expression in Japan, we only visited places 100%-proof Japanese. Maybe it's stupid, but I can see paintings of Renoir when I get back to France, don't you think?). We also visited our first Buddhist temple (at least I did!). I have to say, I was quite impressed at the beginning: it was a world completely apart, surrounded by silence. And you can see that the arrangement of the space has been carefully chosen to make it more appealing to the eye. But this is also characteristic of the shinto shrine. I think it is in fact quite characteristic of the Japanese culture in general, even though religious spaces are more prompt to show it.


The stairs heading for the Buddhist shrine...(What is Pepe doing, sitting on the stairs?)

Group photo, in front of the buddhist temple!

Pepe, showing me how to take pictures with the camera (Don't center the people in the photo! You have to try and put the persons in one of the squares, blabla, blabla, blabla...)

More temple pictures, this time featuring Paul (Why the hell are you taking me in this picture? I'm kicking your ass...)

Davide, as "The thinker" (in a completely different background, but...).

Monika, and another view of the temple.

Entrance of the shinto shrine. Beautiful, isn't it? The silence, the light gently pouring through the trees...

Alina and Pedro, in the entrance to the shinto shrine. (Why everybody is looking at the camera with that look of Why the heck is he taking this pictures?)

The shinto shrine!

So we wondered around the temple, then went to a nearby shrine and its gardens, and finally dived into the touristic area of Kurashiki (= the place where all the tourists and the touristic shops where). Not a single Westerner on sight! We were completely surrounded by Japanese tourists of all sorts: groups, couples, families, loners,...Specially around a mall called Ivy Square. Now this I found it quite puzzling: if you tell a Japanese you've been to Kurashiki, and he happens to know the place, the first image that will come to his mind will be this mall packed up with souvenir shops, fashion shops, food shops, blablabla shops...Something like thinking associating Toledo with its touristic shops. Well, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit here: Ivy Square has SOME history. It was the former site of a textile company very important for the local economy during the 20th century or so. But that is it. I mean, the rest of Kurashiki has much more to offer.

Before getting to our next destination we did a small stop at the tourist office in order to look for the accomodation of our stay in Hagi (yes, always in a rush, yes...). Spanish photo in front of the Tourist Office.

Three clappings of shoes after we landed in Okayama. Okayama is famous mainly for three reasons: pottery, the Kōraku-en (one of the Three Great Gardens of Japan, and...Momotarō! And you may wonder: 'Who's Momotarō?' He's the Peach Boy! I'm quoting the Wikipedia here: Momotarō came to Earth inside a giant peach, which was found floating down a river by an old, childless woman who was washing clothes there. The woman and her husband discovered the child when they tried to open the peach to eat it. The child explained that he had been sent by Heaven to be their son.Years later, Momotarō left his parents for an island called Onigashima to destroy the marauding oni (demons or ogres) that dwelt there. En route, Momotarō met and befriended a talking dog, monkey, and pheasant, who agreed to help him in his quest. At the island, Momotarō and his animal friends penetrated the demons' fort and beat the demons' leader, Ura, as well as his army, into surrendering. Momotarō returned home with his new friends, and his family lived comfortably from then on. There's even a song for kids! Here's a picture of his statue in front of the station. He even has a street named after him (and not a small one, no: I think it´s the one going from the station to the castle...)

We wanted to try the specialty of the region (barazushi), but the restaurant was closed, so some Chinese food had to do the trick.



The  city in itself is quite uninteresting since it's of very recent construction (WWII...). Still, the garden is worth the detour. It is considered one of the best three gardens of Japan (the other two are Karaiku-en in Mito and Kenroku-en in Kanazawa. I wonder why they are all located in remoted, totally boring cities...(sorry for that Hitachi people...but you really live in the inaka, apparently)) because of the design of the landscape and the arrangement of space.  Here´s some pictures to prove it, plus some other stupid ones we did on the way.

One of the bridges to walk around the park: Happy family pictures Inc.!

Artistic photo here...

We also took our first Japanese tea in this garden (remember I told you Okayama was famous for its pottery? In most cases, this means the spot is also famous for its Tea Ceremonies and the tea utensils it produces: pottery = flower pots + tea bowls + sweet bowls + ...).

Personally speaking, I prefer the Japanese way of preparing tea, and also the type of tea used. The taste is more bitter, the color more appealing to the eye, and the way it matches with the okashi (Japanese sweet) is simply great. But there are some exceptions of course (God saves me if I ever say something bad about Mariage Frères' tea!)

Marcin doesn't like much being taken in pictures, apparently...Smile!

We also went to Okayama's castle, also called "The Crow Castle" because it's black. A very beautiful reproduction of the original one (blown to pieces during WWII), made of concrete and iron...It kind of loses its magic, so we didn't get inside.

Apparently, the people from Okayama are not very used to seeing gaijins, specially kids. Well, the mother doesn't look very used to neither, lol.


Back to the hostel, we took some beers in a nearby pub...




...and while I was talking on the phone, my lovely and funny friends decided to give way to their artistic expression with my digital camera. So when I came back, everybody was looking at me with stupid smiles on their faces, watching my moves as I was approaching to my seat and taking the camera. The reason? Well, I think it has something to do with this picture, but I'm not sure...(here there was supposed to be a picture of XXXXX's ass, but you never know who's reading the blog, so in the final draft I had to erase it...sorry for all of you who had such high hopes...)

How am I to put barriers to so much creativity? I couldn't keep the world away from this. Better to share it with everyone, hehehehehe...

Since our previous night we couldn't grab some of the local food (we had to prioritize survival over other stuff and eat what a decent cooker would have called a bad joke), this time we had dinner at Mamakari-tei. The queen of the local food: sardines. And this restaurant conjugated them in all possible tenses: from raw to grilled, everything was possible in the menu. And you could see why the restaurant was famous in the area: a culinary pleasure. Plus, the decoration went with the ambience of Kurashiki: and old Japanese house, with the original wooden pillars and sober decoration. Unfortunately, there's always a but. And this one came with the cultural misunderstanding of the day:

Davide and Monika didn't want to eat the full sardine-course that the rest was eating. There was no problem regarding Monika's dish, but they didn't fully understand that in the case of Davide, and ordered for him a full course. The moment we realized, Davide had already eaten two of the dishes from the menu. We tried to explain the situation to the waiter, and he immediately understood it was his fault. But apparently the chef of the restaurant didn't care much, and wanted to force Davide pay for the whole course. It took us a lot of time to make him realize we were not going to let that happen, and he ended up really pissed off, but we managed to get away paying only the dishes he had ate. Anyway, we were all quite angry about the whole thing. A real pity, since I enjoyed a lot the meal and the place. What I found specially annoying about the whole issue was the attitude of the waiter. He wouldn't stop apologizing, yet you could clearly see he didn't give a damn about us paying for his mistake, and that all his apologies were just a cultural reflex. This is one of the most annoying aspects of the Japanese culture: when everything is fine, there's no problem. But if something turns out wrong, you will hear loads of apologies, but actually nothing will be done to try to amend the situation.

The entrance of the restaurant!

There was another waitress serving us. An old lady whose face was a poem when she saw us discussing, joking and making gestures about the whole affair. I think that at some point she got scared too, lol.

Sleep tight Ozzies!

Silver Week: Japanese Kansas is much more interesting, specially with Vulcanus! (Part 2)

Hello Ozzies!

Happy New Year 2010! The Year of the Tiger...Lion is a bit angry because his archi enemy got a year and he didn't, but since he's not the most courageous animal on Oz (in fact, courage may be too big of a word for him), he's just weeping in a corner. Anyway, I hope everybody took their raisins in time, and that their wishes and/or hopes will come true during this year (you may still have to wait a bit longer for the house on the beach and the Ferrari, though).

Long time no see, hum? My most sincere apologies to you faithful (now I presume faithless) follower - by the way, does anyone know how to add a visitor's counter to the blog? I'm curious about the amount of people who wastes his time reading nonsense like my crappy writing on the web... - You may have heard I was very busy, but believe me if I tell you that the last four months have been reeeeeally intense. Since you deserve the best, I had to wotk very hard to get you the best stories I could gather. We'll see if they are good enough.

So new year, new proposals! Here's my top 3: being punctual, being organised...and yes, catching up with the blog. We're at the end of the second week of January, and I've already been late to some appointments, so we'll have to leave that one for next year. And ferocious armies of paper piles are gathering around my desktop, so I'll have to attack fast before that proposal goes to the dust bin too. Let's see how it works for the blog.

I've decided to take it from where I left it and tell you what I have been up to in the past months. Starting from Hiroshima's trip (Good Lord, that was in September. Yet it seems as if ages had passed). Hey Boy, Hey Girl, Here we go!

Once upon a time...



Where were we? Ah, yes! We were talking about Hiroshima, just after a tasty okonomiyaki (by the way, last Friday we met a guy from Hiroshima, and he told us that the place where we ate was a crappy one! To be honest, I enjoyed it a lot! And if ours was good, I just can't imagine how the good ones taste. Maybe I'll have to come back to Hiroshima...).

So in order to digest such I nice meal, we took the Peace Boulevard and went to the Peace Memorial Park and the Peace Memorial Museum which hosts inside.

Some buildings on the way...

...And the Peace Memorial Museum!

They were so glad we finally made it!

The museum is really worth seeing, frankly speaking. First of all architectonically speaking, it was designed by the Japanese architect Kenzo Tange. But it is the least important reason why everybody should come to see it.  If you didn't know what kind of horrors can be related to nuclear bombing, here you know. In detail. For example, next picture shows Hiroshima just before the bombing...

...and this one Hiroshima just after the bombing. Pictures are better than words, here more than ever.

The whole museum explains the historical, social, economic and political reasons which lead to the dropping of the bombings (my heart broke when I read that one of the reasons for the bombings was to show Americans that their money from taxes was being well spent in nuclear research...). The exhibition shows testimonies of survivors, everyday objects which suffered the blast. But it doesn't stay on the before and on the moment of the bombing. It goes on with the physical sequels on the bodies of the survivors, and explains the functioning of nuclear bombs, as well as its environmental impacts. The only word which comes to my mind is heart-breaking. I hope someday we will be different, but it is quite difficult to believe such thing. We never learn, at it seems like we will never will....

Here are some pictures of the Peace Memorial Park:

This is the Memorial Cenotaph, with the A-Dome at the end of the park. It frames the Flame of Peace, which will be extinguished once the last nuclear weapon on Earth has been destroyed (which is pretty much like a long time, sadly.)

The area where the park stands now was once the city's busiest downtown commercial and residential district.

There are a lot of paper cranes everywhere. This is due to Sadako Sasaki, a girl victim of the bombings. She developed leukaemia at 10, at she believed that if she was able to fold 1000 paper cranes, she would recover (paper cranes are associated in Japan with longevity and happiness). She couldn't make it. Her school mates finished the work for her. But it soon spread, and you can see many paper cranes everywhere around the park.

Here's a link to a video of the Peace Bell at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. I put in Youtube, because with the new interface of Blogger is not that easy to add videos directly to the page.

Just writing about this brings back the whole feeling of being there. There are no words for human imagination when it comes to destroying ourselves...Really, it is like when I went to Dachau in Munich. Your soul simply falls to the ground, and the only thing you can do is cry. There is no place for hope when you see with your own eyes what we're capable of doing for God knows what reason...

Time to dry tears and move on: This is the baseball team of Hiroshima, Hiroshima's Carps (remember Hiroshima's castle?)

I don't know if I mentioned something about it in the previous post, but Silver Week trip to Hiroshima was organized in an incredible rush: in something like 72 hours we charted a route, decided where to sleep, what to see, etc. And the big issue when preparing trips like this (specially on hot dates like the Silver Week in Japan) is that hostels just don't pick up the phone and gently say: 'Room for 10? Sure, we've got plenty!' Most cases, what you get is closer to '10...Did you say 10? 10!'...and then the pi pi pi of the phone when the other side has hung up. This was obviously our case, of course: Out of 5 nights, we only managed to reserve something like two (the first and the second one). But, - surprise, surprise! - the night of the second day turned out to be located in a rather inconvenient place (like 10km away from the nearest train station, with the last train arriving there at 5pm, and at least 3 changes of train to get there). so there we were, in Hiroshima, walking around with a 1-week knowledge of Japanese and no place to sleep for the following nights!

Rush, rush, rush, and out of the hat we had to pop out a completely improvised Youth Hostel in Kurashiki. Depending on the guide you take, you may not even find it. It doesn't mean it was not worth it, though. Some of its streets still keep the charm of the old Japan. Some that you may not find by any means in some of the arguably top 10 places to see in Japan. But that's a different story...

Kurashiki has at his center a whole district from the Edo period surrounding a canal of water. It is a very quiet, peaceful place to relax, walk around and taste a bit of the old Japan.

Ok, here it doesn't look like it...But our Edo houses are somewhere past the bricks!

And guess what! They have an amusement park dedicated to The Wizard of Oz!!!!! There's Toto, and Dorothy, and the scarecrow...All of them. Isn't it a wonderful coincidence?

It was already dark when we got to Kurashiki's station, and the owner of the hostel was already waiting for us. As I said, we were supposed to sleep here only for one night, but since Matsue, or Izumo, or anything remotely near to these places was fully packed up, we extended our stay another night. Respectable bedding, tidy place,...

The only inconvenient was the curfew (around 10pm). Which meant only 1 hour to have dinner. (Short break here: Does someone know why the Polish call supper to what it's actually lunch? I've been trying very hard to understand why someone would call in English 'supper' to the evening meal, instead of using the word lunch. I mean, if there's a word in English which actually means that, why would you use another English word which means something different? No matter how many times you try to explain them that in fact their translation is wrong, they keep on calling it 'supper'. I guess cultural shocks don't come only from Japanese culture...)

Pepe, using that well-trained golden mouth of his - and more important, his incredibly amazing Japanese sentence book of Lonely Planet. Guys, if you're ever considering about coming to Japan, buy that book. It's like Nostradamus' book and Baden-Powell's Scout Book, all in one: everything you may need, or you can think of, is condensed in a wonderful sentence inside. The creepy part here, is that the examples used may be strangely similar to what you want to say. Let me put an example: we were taking the Shinkansen from Tokyo St. to Hiroshima, and we didn't know at what time did it leave. We open the book and...what do we find? 'Could you please tell me when the next Shinkansen for Hiroshima leaves?' Creepy... - convinced the owners of the hostel to give us one hour more (which at the end became 1h30'...hehehe). And off we went! the Youth Hostel was located on top of a hill, near a Buddhist cemetery. No street lights, not even a pedestrian pathway (now you know why they picked us up at the train station,lol).

As we had a bit of an issue with the curfew, we ended up in the first restaurant we saw open...a Jonathan's. The joy of any gipsy in Spain (because of the name, nothing else!). The call it "A family restaurant". One of these chains of restaurants that are soooo common in Japan, with "American & European" "food". I put different inverted commas for each, because I still doubt you can call that piece of junk "food", and that "cooking style" "American & European" (I should think if a different term for what they do to raw food, something nearer to torture, if the ingredients could talk). At least that's what they presume they do if you read the menu. Inside the kitchen, a completely different story goes on. I don't even believe you can call it a kitchen: massive gastrintestinal destruction zone is a more accurate term...Anyway, it was something we could eat, and we needed to eat, so...but I will always remember the face of Davide while reading the menu, specially the part dedicated to Pasta & Pizza. Special mention deserves the so called "tiramisu". Something to see (not to taste, of course!).

At least Marcin go to have a taste on some real potatoes which he misses very much from Poland!

Oh! And this is a funny ad I found on a cigarettes machine. Very much in the old American 50s style...Although the sentences use a funny English, don't you think?

After that, straight to bed.

See you Ozzies.

Off with the lights Toto!