Yeah gidday...I remember you guys....

Yep. Been a while.
Twas nice a week or two back to see Mike come on down and visit. The occasion was a Cosmic Wheels gig with some smashing new tunes (hits?) being tossed hither and yon in what this, the sole surviving member of the 100% club who doesn`t see Tom naked on a regular basis thought was one of their most accomplished, thorough and rich sounding gigs of their career.
Was especially nice to finally gain public acknowledgement of my role as manager of the band (in a very `hands off` manner mind), it will be even better when I get my hands of my 70% of any and all filthy lucre that accrues. That was the same day the Foxton High School 3rd 15 took on the Aussies and lost in some sort of competition in Australia. I forget which.
Last weekend saw a party in quite literally the middle of nowhere with representatives from many far-flung corners of this fair earth- including some particularly excited English chaps and some particularly heavy drinking Australian folk. My, I did shake the hands of those from old blighty and reminded them of my fondness for the mother country. They all agreed wholeheartedly that it was indeed about bloody time they won something, and good on them too. Twas a lovely night that disappeared into the morning time with a lot of standing outside and nattering and watching of the sun coming up and blearily wandering to bed as others arose and started (noisily I might add) making pancakes. Lovely day on the Sunday though, so plenty of sitting around in the garden and watching the day go by. Ooodles of fun. And what knocks a hangover on the head like a steaming pile of meat from the local Brazilian BBQ joint??? Not much. A truly grand cap to a roight noice noight.
Cold though. Well into the single digits now- 3 weeks tomorrow till we step off the plane in Sunny old NZ however, so we can deal with it with smiles firmly on faces.

BIG HAPPY BOITHDAYS TO MY BIGGEST SISTER PRU- TURNING **YEARS OLD JUST RIGHT THERE AT THE END OF NOVEMBER. CUMPLEANOS FELIZ (sp?) AND ALL THAT HOOHAA.

We had the fire brigade come to one of the Kindergartens I teach at the other day. Wow, was that weird. First off they set of an enormous smoke bomb inside the building and made the 5 yr old kids run through it to try and find their way out. Well trained though- when the fire was announced over the PA system, to a one they dropped to the ground, took their wee hankies out of their wee pockets, and bailed out. Then they made them walk through a tent filled with choking smoke (5yrs old people)....but that wasn`t the best part- hell no..... So we stroll upstairs and theres this old chap wearing a Fire Service dress uniform, he has a little chat to the kids, then puts on a manga video about a robot-firefighter that comes back from the future to chase a robot-pyromaniac from the future who is threatening to burn! burn! burn! modern day Tokyo. So that was pretty weird.

But not as weird as the guy in the dress uniform finishing up the tape, pulling a red hanky out of his pocket and making it disappear!!!! Thats right folks, teaching fire safety through MAGIC TRICKS!!! So we sat there for about an hour while this guy did card tricks, rope tricks, wand tricks, disappearing tricks, more and more and still more hanky tricks, he made flowers appear from places flowers shouldn`t be in the first place. The killer was when he made all the kids scream real loud to wake up his "little friend" in this case a stuffed badger. The idea was that they had to scream as loud as they would yell `fire` if they discovered one. So the kids were going ape screaming out this things name and he was making it jump around and stuff, and they kept getting louder and louder and he told them that that was perhaps enough and they had done a good job and well done and no really you should probably be quiet now and so on- but the kids- well they just kept a`screaming - that is until he stopped his badger moving and told the kids that they had yelled so loud that they had killed his "little friend" and now he wouldn`t be playing with them any more (5yrs old people).

I sat agog.

But it got worse....but this is the longest blog in the world so I`ll continue the story at a later date. Tune in- it`s a cracker.
b

Hello...

....to everyone. I went to a Toyota factory last week. And right excited I was about it too, whacking great MACHINES I thought, ROBOTS, I thought, WOW!!!
It was pretty cool. We strolled above the factory floor of one of the 9 Toyota factories in the region (Aichi-Prefecture, the one wot has Nagoya in it is home to all of the Toyota factories in Japan.) This one in particular made smaller cars, in particular the Corolla, and the `Vitz`, (a snazzy little mid-sized number that has its own racing leagues over here, like Mini-7`s, but not as cool. Those of you familiar with Gran Turismo 3 on the PS2 will know the Vitz as an underpowered lump, curiously with its own championship in the Professional League). Anywhoo, above the factory floor we walked, we didn`t get to see all the super cool stuff like the stamping presses and the welding robots and the painting pool -dash it all- but we did get to see a fairly well oiled production process make some fairly well oiled machines and some, presumably, fairly OOS riddled line workers.
We started with the cars in their basic shape being guided around, over and below us on the nifty rack system- the fun thing is the car is bought in after being painted, the doors are mounted and straightened and checked out, then taken off. The doors then float around the factory on another conveyer system, presumably passing the time of day, than when the cars are finished having their sound-proofing, fuel tanks, dashes, seats, engines, running gear, pretty much everything elses installed, the doors appear out of nowhere, in order, the right colour and exactly on time for them to be slotted in and off it rolls. That was pretty nifty.
The chaps assembling the engines looked a little bored. There was one fellow whose job it was to attach 5 bolts to each engine as it rolled past on a conveyor, he was on a conveyer too, then would walk back to meet the next engine, for another 5 bolts, then he would walk back to the next engine.........
It was a very interesting time indeed. Walking out there was a commemorative wall made in 1989 for the 20 millionth vehicle to comke out of the factory....thats a lot of Corollas out there.
The town the Toyota factory was in was called....Toyota Town. And woe betide any poor chump fool　enough to NOT drive a Toyota in the town limits. According to the chaps at the factory if you don`t drive a Toyota you don`t get a parking space- making it a little difficult to get to work on time....which doesn`t show you off in a good light come worker review time.....and well, you know, if your not a team player and your can`t support the company....and what with all those unemployed people out there, many of whom presumably drive Toyotas....if you get what I mean....
Following the factory we were bundled off to the Toyota Stadium, 60,000 seat home of the 3rd Division Nagoya Whatsadoodles. It`s like Buller having a stadium that size. We took our seats during the stadium tour and our attention was drawn to the cables under them....they were heated seats...60,000 of them...in a 3rd division stadium...and, oh, don`t worry about the rain, because this 60,000 (heated) seat 3rd division stadium has....thats right, a retractable roof (rampant overfunded construction industry anyone??). It was pretty cool. Now if they could just spend some of their money on buying good players.....
Cold now. Leaves a stunning array of colours...right nice....
Looking forward to the Cosmic Wheels gig this weekend in the Minokamo.
Have fun all,
lots of love,
Berin

Struttin`...

For thats what we were doing. All over the three day weekend like a rash. Thanks to `Culture Day` being observed yesterday we decided to take advantage of it all and head down to Kyoto and indeed absorb some culture. Friday saw us in an almost record breaking trip down to Archs place and out for tasty, tasty Indian din-dins. Arch has struck up somewhat of a rapport with the Indian chap who owns the place and on a frighteningly regular basis receives gifts of Indian "Old Calcutta Fire" Rum....which burns the throat AND the eyes and removes tar from clothing and animal fur in no time flat.
Alas, he was not present on Friday, tending his new restaurant down the line somewhere, so, no free stuff aside, it was still rather good. Off home for some natters and beer and then a relatively early nap time for Saturday was reserved for.....

Uji.

Uji is a place about 35 minutes out of Kyoto by expressway which, as far as Japanese history and culture and the like goes, is just plain right up there. For those of you familier with the Japanese currency system, the temple at Uji (Byodo-In) is the one on the back of the 10 yen coin. And right nice it is too.

One of the really fun things that one can do in Japan is stroll along to a building like this one, all wooden, not a nail used in the whole damn thing and read signs that start of something like this "When this temple was built in 983 it was blah, blah, blah, blah".
Your eyes scan in vain for a fourth number on the date, but all to often to no avail. Then, you look over again at the temple, and see the roof, the walls, the steps, the huuuuuge Budda guy inside that have been standing, in the same spot, unchanged, for a 1000 years. And then you whig out. It`s quite, quite neat.

In addition to that, the gardens and surrounds of the temple have been suggested and studied as probable sites of scenes from the worlds first novel, The Tale of Genji...more about that later.
Must dash.
Toodle pip.
b