Holiday in Japan August 2007

Ok here are my overdue pictures from my holiday too Japan in August, you should be able to click on them to enlarge them, hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I enjoyed taking them:)

Jinbei

After seeing Tony wearing jinbei on his site I decided to hunt out a picture of me in Jinbei, I love them they are cool and very comfortable and they look like pajamas so walking around the streets in them is really rather amusing for me, its like going shopping in slippers or something.

As you can see mine is of a slightly different design to Tony's, mine comes with extra padding in the abdomen area, a strange shielding device for the eyes and two fine young ladies attatched, now thats what I call Jinbei.

The Seven Faces Of....

Found a cool avatar site so I decided to make one of me, though I look nothing like this it would be cool if I did (I once had hair similar but now I haven't got much at all (check the second one on the top row for my current expression). Check out the site Doppelme.

More Origami

Heres another of my wifes origami pieces I love this one Stegosaurs rock :)

Origami

Here is a little piece that my wife did, she tinkered with the design slightly to make this Unicorn, she used textured paper which made the folds more difficult, excellent job I hope you agree:)

I Was Tagged

Well I have been tagged by Tony and now I have to give 7 random facts about myself, the rules are as follows (and they appear to be being changed along the chain). Ok so rule one is obvious 7 facts about yourself, rule 2 is to tag another 7 people and name them in your blog, there is a problem here. I don't know 7 people with blogs, I can only think of 3 off hand, and 2 of those I can't read because they are Japanese ;) I do know a few more but they are on msn spaces and I am not joining that just to play tag, so here goes,

1 I died when I was a baby (my mother dropped me down a flight of stairs and I landed on my head, and then my mother landed on top of me, explains alot about me now me thinks:) ).

2 I never travelled abroad until I was 31, my first foreign holiday was to Thailand.

3 The more I fly the more scared I get.

4 Up until the age of 27 I could do full splits.

5 I was once bumped by a large shark like looking creature whilst swimming in the sea in Thailand, I ws about 200 metres from the beach and I have never been so panicked in my life, I did the slowest doggie paddle in the world in fear of attracting it back, I had to wade through a shoal of jelly fish to reach the safety of the beach, my legs stung like hell but the relief I felt was amazing, I turned towards the sea to see dolphins in the bay.

6 I lived in a tent for a year.

7 I occasionally dress in a strange manner (in the good cause of various charities). Here is some of the photographic evidence.

PICTURES REMOVED DUE TO INDECENCY

Ok there you go, sorry the facts are boring but thats all I have, and now the part of passing on this game of TAG to someone else, and for those I mention you are not forced to take part, Ok I TAG Obachan, Kamosika and Priscilla sorry girls hope you don't mind to much.

Cute(Kawaii)

Here are my Gerbils Emi (the dark one) and Doris, they are amazing and cute:)

Roundhouse and Gerbil

As I mentioned previously I have been making a scale model of an Iron Age Roundhouse (Celtic), after alot of research I realized that there was no standard design, so I took parts from different styles and came up with what follows.

Initial construction, this involved drilling 19 holes and fitting pegs into place to act as wall structure, these pegs were then weaved with thin pieces of willow.

The next stage was using glue soaked newspaper(paper-mache) to replicate the use of Daub (which was a material made of dung, straw, mud, clay: you can see why I didn't want to use the authentic method) as you can see above I left a section un-daubed so that you can see the wood weaving.

Hmmm I didn't take an accurate photo graphic record, so what has happened is i painted the walls, then created the roof, this was the most time consuming part of the project. I had to make a temporary insert for the roof from paper (obviously not how the ancients did it) put the main frame poles in , add some support rings and voila, one conical shaped wooden construction. I then got a hanging basket liner and covered my roof beams with it, this was sewn into place with the obligatory missing section, then on top of this was sewn long dry grass to represent thatching, again my way is not the correct way but actually thatching the roof would of taken months, and I think my version looks relatively good.

On a completely different note here is Emi one of my gerbils, she's gorgeous :)

Busy

I have a few projects on the go at the moment, one is designing a logo for my friends band Streamline if you check out their site I also did their photo on the frontpage. The other thing I am doing is making a scale model of an Iron Age Roundhouse for my wife, she occasionally helps out in earth education at an Environmental Education Centre, I will post the pictures here if it turns out ok.
Oh good luck to Tony on his new status as a student in Japan, check his blog out English Man In Japan, he's a genuinely good guy, and his blogs always raise a smile on my usually miserable face. Yep I have mentioned his blog before but I am a big fan of his writing.

Nine Inch Nails Live

Date: Sunday march 4th
Location: Birmingham Carling Academy, England UK
Event: NIN Live.
As I said in my previous blog I had tickets to see NIN, we arrived at the academy at about 6:30pm got into the venue about 7:10pm, and after what seemed a lifetime finally the support act Ladytron appeared. Not really my kind of music but they were very professional and their music is very good if a little 80's synth Numanesque. Very good performance though but a half hearted reception from the crowd (I would hate to be a support act, it must be so hard being there in front of a crowd that you know DIDN'T come to see you).

LadyTron

After the support band went off we stood against the balcony to the left of the stage watching the audience to see how well dressed they were and how cool their hairstyles were
The engineers were on stage setting up and seemed to be trying to choke every one to death with the amount of dry ice they were letting off, when without even the house lights going off, there HE was Trent Reznor singing Somewhat Damaged, great start, loved the nonchalant way he appeared, start of an excellent gig, the only problem I had (and I apologise to the many many people who are a fan of his) Aaron North, ok the guy can play reasonably well and his noise does add to the NIN sound, but his guitar swinging antics and trying to hard to be rebellious and out there really annoy me, take a chill pill, it seems that he is in his own little competition to upstage Trent Reznor, sorry dude but I would not pay a penny to see you as a solo artist, your talented but very very annoying to see out of the corner of my eye (I apologise to all Aaron North fans, if you love him thats your bag, my view, your view, different leave it at that). Anyway apart from that the show was great, from the swinging UFO lamps above the stage to the awesome sound, and yes Aarons guitar sound is great, but obviously the man of the night was Trent, second time I have seen him perform and still blown away by the experience, I was tired out the next day and partly deaf(due to my advanced age).

Here's the set list:
Somewhat Damaged
Last
Heresy
March of the Pigs
Piggy
Ruiner
Closer
Burn
Gave Up
Help Me I Am In Hell
Eraser
Wish
The Big Come Down
Survivalism
Only
Suck
The Day the World Went Away
Hurt
The Hand That Feeds
Head Like a Hole

Tony and Priscilla

Tony and Priscilla, thankyou both very much for your support, I feel I have slightly misled you on the reasons for me stopping my blog, it wasn't so much that I had no readers (that was just something for me to bitch about:) ) it was more that I had a quite depressing Christmas and was feeling sorry for myself, I still think my writing is useless, very bland and boring to my eyes, but your kind words have given me something to think about. Hope you both had a wonderful new year, and Tony I hope your flight and visa are sorted soon, loved the snowman:) .