Snow, snow, snow...

Thursday 22nd January Emi and I walked to the bus stop in Hon-Atsugi to start our 3 day snowboarding holiday in Hokkaido. Having arrived we were told the bus was going to be late - no big deal, we have 40minutes in hand. Well the bus was late due to slow traffic caused by a traffic accident. As this bus goes between Haneda Airport and Hon-Atsugi this of course we had to go past the accident spot. This meant our 50 minute bus journey turned into 1.5hrs...
We got off the bus, quickly walked into the airport, checked-in, walked straight through security and boarded the plane at the final call...that was close!
Having sat down we were then told the plane might have to turn around due to poor weather! Thankfully the weather was fine. Having landed in Sapporo we had to wait 40 minutes for our bus before travelling to Kiroro snow resort. Within about a few minutes we were on the slopes and enjoying the snow!
We snowboarded until about 5:30 and then stopped as we were both tired and thought we should save ourselves for tomorrow. So we headed off to a Japanese fish restaurant for dinner and then went to bed.
Got up in the morning and looked out the window - that is a lot of snow! Walked down to breakfast and it was clear the snow wasn't light and there was a very strong wind. As I started tucking into my huge breakfast (it was eat as much as you can, I mean "want") it was announced the resort would be closed for the day! So our only full day of snowboarding wasn't. We went back to the room where Emi did some ringing around of the tourist information places and discovered a bus to Otaru was leaving in a few minutes. Ran down the stairs and out the front door...nothing. Asked a guy at the hotel, it was at another entrance so we ran across the hotel and got on just before it left. Too many close calls.
Having arrived in Otaru we got a local bus to the other side of the town to a large shop. This shop sold thousands of different music boxes/box inspired things - jewelry boxes, mirrors, mobiles etc. It all looked nice and the staff were very friendly but after 20 minutes I had had enough of Eminem, Sound of Music and Starwars in a musicbox stylie. After we finished here we started walking back towards the main bus stop and stopped off in a Ramen shop. Hokkaido has it's own distinctive ramen so I wanted to try it. My verdict is it was tasty but not so different to most other ramen types! As we walked we popped into various shops before going into a glass museum.
This glass museum was Venician Masquerade themed so there was lots of info about making glass, Venice and Masquerade. FYE (for your education) Masquerade was a big city-wide party before 40 days of fasting pre-Easter where they got drunk, partied and ate up the remaining food (like we have Shrove Tuesday in the UK but without the drunken partying). The word Carnival comes from the Latin "Carne" and "Vale" which mean "meat" and "without", it comes from this i.e to eat until there was no meat left. Anyway it was interesting if a little long but the resturant served a nice cuppa and some tasty cakes!
Other than popping into some very expensive chocolate shop we went back to the bus stop and then after an hour wait headed back to the hotel. For dinner it was another eat as much as you can restaurant and like any Englishman presented with this situation I ate until I was only just able to walk back to the hotel room.
In the morning we got up, looked our the window and were relieved to find that the weather was much better. More eat as much as you can breakfast washed down with the Earl of Grey's finest recipe and then onto the slopes. Unfortunately the higher slopes were closed and we had already exhausted the better slopes towards the bottom but enjoyed ourselves anyway. At lunchtime I had so very poor canteen Yakisoba and then we got ready to leave.
The return trip was smoother than the outbound trip but still it didn't go 100% smoothly - our return flight was cancelled. Thankfully because our bus has arrived early we were able to get an earlier plane so it actually worked out better.
Sunday 25th we didn't get up to much, just relaxed.

Rings and lamps

During wc 12th Jan I and a guy at work, Steve, had been doing some research on my car. For the UK it needs a rear fog lamp fitting. This is also true of cars sold in Australia but the Austalian service manual didn't have a wiring diagram! Thankfully Steve was an wiring harness engineer. He managed to dig out some Japanese wiring diagrams from work and thought he had worked everything out. To complicate things the car at SOP (Start Of Production) had one wiring harness but over the course of it's life ended up with 4 separate harnesses to make cars cheaper by not carrying redundant features. You have to remember when the car was launched in early 1999 it was only a few months before Renault bailed out Nissan from bankruptsy and by 2002 when they stopped building it Nissan anounced the average car was 30% cheaper to build!
Come Saturday he came over and we spent a while checking volts and continuity, wired everything together and... nothing except for 2 blown fuses. He had to get home but came around again on the Sunday.
He had had a think over the past evening and realised that we had wired up the fog lamp switching and relay to the trailer lamps circuit, hence to blown fuses. Being a high-spec model he thought he would have everything built in but it appeared not. Having worked out that the car didn't have the required wiring in place we ran a wire down the car and wired everything up and... it all worked first time! I always had faith in him, honest!
On the Saturday after Steve had left Emi and I went to SHinjuku to pick up our wedding rings. While there I also popped into Yodabashi Camera to buy a new Sony Walkman. I ended up very disapointed.
The standard model in the shop with the various Yodabashi discount points taken off came to 21,000Yen. However all standard Sony products in Japan only support Japanese, to get English support I needed to buy the international version. So we walked to the other end of the shop to find out that the international model A) didn't come with noise-cancelling headphones that the Japanese model did and B) come out at 39,000Yen, nearly twice as much! At current exchange rate that works out at 312 quid when Amazon in the UK are selling them for 170! Being a Sony fan - I've always bought Sony Walkmans, have had Sony car stereos, have a Sony TV etc - I am very disapointed. Still, I'll end up buy the Sony anyway as I don't want to be anothing Apple fashion victim.

Meeting more of the family

Saturday 10th January Emi and I met up with her sister and cousin, Rutsuko-san (Ru-chan) for dinner. Ru-chan had been to Tokyo to take some company exams for a promotion she was hoping to get. As she was in the area she wanted to see her cousins and the new member of the family - me!
Emi and I met Ru-chan at Sagami-Ono station and went to a nice Izukaya and her later joined by Emi's sister when she finished work. It was a great evening because Ru-chan's mother (Emi's aunt) was an English teacher she her English wasn't perfect but still very very good. So with her speaking English, Emi's sister having a go and me trying out a little Japanese we all had a good time.
Sunday wasn't so interesting. I went to my local Nissan Dealer to get a windscreen crack fixed and fitted a set of locking wheel nuts so some tea-leaf wouldn't have them off when the car lands in the UK!

New Year

Rather than stay up late and see in New Year we did something a little different - watch the sunrise on 1st January.

The night before we picked up Emi's mother, she stayed at ours for the night.

In the morning we got up, dressed etc. and jumper in the car.

Then we drove to Odawara and up the Hakone Turnpike (which was a little scary with frost on the road). At the end of the Turnpike is a Cafe that on one side has a clear view over the Pacific and on the other a view of Lake Ashi (Ashinoko means Ashi Lake) and Mt.Fuji.

We arrived early expecting it to be busy at is was - got there just after 4am and the car park was nearly full. If global warming isn't a load of rubbish (I'm not yet convinced) it wouldn't be helped by nearly every car in the car park having it's engine running to keep its ocupants warm. We headed straight for th Cafe and had something to eat and drink.

At 6:20 the horizon started get light so we headed outside, setup our tripods and started snapping away. At about 6:40 the sun started to be seening trying to shine through the cloud in the distance and 5 minutes later started poking out over the cloud.

5 minutes after this I ran across to the other side and started taking pictures of Fuji, which was changing as the sun rose - initially the light is a little orange and only Fuji is lit but as the sun comes up the light turns more white and the area around Fuji brightens.

In the end we spent around 1 hour taking pictures and I couldn't feel my fingers and toes it was so cold!

In the evening I took some pictures of sunset with Fuji from close to where I work. I got some good pictures of Fuji but unfortunately the huge Cannon technical centre blocked my view of the sun itself - better planning required next time!

I hope you like my pictures.

Wedding Day!!!

Didn't get up to much on Saturday 27th but Sunday 28th was a very important day - the day we got married!

Now before you all think"wow, congratulations, where are the pictures" getting married in Japan is very different.

In the UK (and most of the west) you have a "white dress" ceramony with the legal paper signing in the middle followed by a party.

In Japan each stage of the wedding is separate and not all held on the same day.

The 28th was the day we handed in our official marriage paperwork, only the legal part of the wedding. Due to winter holiday our paperwork will not be processed until sometime in week commencing 5th Jan but once processed it will show 28th December as our legal marriage date.

Next up will be the marriage ceramony and party. Our current plan is to have the ceramony in Japan but after I have already returned to the UK so I'll have to come back "for the weekend". Following that there will be a party in Japan too.

After this when Emi has come to the UK will will have some sort of ceramony and a party for UK friends and relatives.

People think weddings are expensive but most people only have one (or one per marriage anyway).

The picture is of us stood outside the city hall

Christmas!

Christmas Day isn't a Nissan holiday but I took a days vacation. Emi on the other hand had a project deadline so could take the day off even though she wasn't very busy. I pottered about and did lots of surfing on the web - it was quite depressing really. The worst part was that Emi had planned to return home in good time so I was expecting her home by 5:30 or 6pm. Although she wasn't busy with her own work she started to help one of her colleuages mid-afternoon and ended up having to stay at work so late that she didn't get home until 9pm. Spoke with relatives on the phone which was nice.
Boxing day we decided to go for a drive as the weather was nice. We basically did the same route I did a few weeks ago except we also tried to drive up Mt.Fuji but the road was blocked at about 1000m due to snow further up. Armed with my new lens and CPL filter I took lots of pictures in similar place to the other week hoping to improve on them. The CPL filter took a little playing with to understand it but I think it has been a good investment - I hope you like the pictures.

In the evening we went to a resturant in Ebisu called Tableaux. I was very very nice, even though I dressed up (I wore a shirt!) I still felt underdressed. They cocked up our order (we got two starters each rather than a different one each) but otherwise the service was great. Also the food was absolutely fantastic. The first glass of wine I ordered was tiny, hardley filled 20% of the glass. We asked if it was correct to check. However when I ordered my next glass they gave me 3 times as much so I drank more than I planned! Also after desert I thought I would push the boat out and had an expensive glass of port to wash it all down! In the end it came to just over 160 quid at current exchange rate but it was fnatatsic. Also I'm not paid at the current exchange rate thankfully!

Expensive weekend!

On Friday 19th after work I popped into Up-Garage on R129 - Up-Garage is a used car parts shops. I spotted a set of wheels that I liked in the size I wanted, the correct tyre size and a good price too, almost too good to be true...
On the saturday I got up and went to Up-Garage. I just wanted to buy the wheels but they insisted that I have them trial fitted to make sure they did infact fit the car. I conceeded and I'm glad I did as the wheels would fit on the front due to the huge 4-pot caliper. We even tried with a 5mm spacer but it still wasn't enough. Damn! So I bought a HKS flywheel for my AE86 and headed off.
I decided the go home via Part-off, another used car parts shop, this time on R246 in Atsugi. I saw a set of wheels I liked in the correct size made by Impul, a well known Nissan tuner. I got the guy to trial fit them and they only just fitted, they was about 1mm clearance between the front caliper and the wheel. So I bought the wheels and a set of 3mm spacers. It was only after I had bought them that I realised the wheels were infact brand new (they even had the all the stickers on the inside of the rim) and the rubbish tyres that came with them were new also so it made the dealer even better!
In fact since I've had the wheels fitted I have totally change my view of the tyres. They are Nankang NS-1 tyres, marked on the sidewalls as "M+S" - meaning mud and snow i.e. all season tyres - so had very low expectations of them. However they are one of the best sets of tyres I've ever had on a car - tyre/road noise is reduced, ride comfort has improved despite a shorter sidewall, vehicle response is still good in normal driving conditions (not taken it to a track). And to think they are half the price of the Yokohama tyres I have on the original wheels.
On the Sunday we went to Shinjuku to pickup Emi's engagement ring, order the engraving on our wedding rings and pay the balance. After this Emi met up with her friends and I went off the MAP Camera and Yodabashi Camera shops. I ended up walking away with a Sigma 10-20mm lens (used, from MAP - 20~30% off new price), Nikon SB-400 Speedlight flash (used, from MAP - 15% off new price) and some lens filters (from Yodabashi) - Konka UV in 77mm (Sigma lens) and 55mm (Nikon lens) plus a CPL in 55mm (Nikon lens). Thankfully after all the expense of the day I got the filters free as I had so many Yodabashi points saved up!