Where is the Music?

Saturday 1st November Emi was out with her friends but I had an awesome evening. There was a festival called "Where Is The Music? 2008" of WISM for short. Playing were Jamie Cullum with Soil and "Pimp" Sessions (Japanese "Death Jazz" group), Medeski Martin & Wood (from NYC) and Cyro Baptista & Branquet of the Spirits (Brazil and NY).
Jamie and the Pimps were up first. Good atmosphere,good songs, very enjoyable. Only complaint was that they had the volume turned up to 11, a Germany girl and Swiss lad I got chatting with outside didn't appreciate it.
Next up was Cyro and his group. For the first 3rd of their session Cryo's mic wasn't working and the Japanese crew didn't seem to be doing much about it, much to the anoyance of the group. The music was fairly good up to that point. Then they changed Cyro's mic over and suddenly the whole thing came alive. It was definately the best musical experience of my live, it was absolutely unbelievable. It was almost like some sort of drug free high.
To finish were the final group. I felt really sorry for them because they were obviously extremely good but felt like a masive comedown after Cryo's and his crew. Very enjoyable.
So in summary I"m so glad I stumbled upon this concert by accident, if I had known what it was like before but wasn't able to go I would have moved heaven and earth to be there.
Sunday was quite relaxing, I didn't make any notes. However I woke up at 2am in the morning to watch the last F1 race of the year in Brazil. If you didn't see it, you really missed out on the most heart stopping race ever - hollywood couldn't have come up with a better script. And best of all Lewis Hamilton became the youngest every World Champion, he has plenty of years to beat Schumacher's record if he chooses to and has the right fortune.

Afternoon Tea...

No not the Japanese cafe and shop chain but "proper like".
October 25th Emi woke up deciding that she wanted to eat lunch at a fancy hotel in Tokyo. Well by the time she sorted her clothes, face, hair and decided where she wanted to go it was too late so instead we went for afternoon tea.
The place we visited was the Westin Hotel at Ebisu in Tokyo. Dark marbles was everywhere in the reception area as was a number of brides in big dresses and smartly dressed wedding guests - it is come to have western style wedding events in big fancy hotels. Feely a little under dressed we went in the elevator to the lounge and ordered some Earl Grey tea, a cake and sat overlooking Tokyo. We atmosphere in the louge was very nice although a little smokey, we really enjoyed are little treat to ourselves.
On the way home I discovered a Jamie Cullum concert in Ebisu and popped into HMV in Shinjuku to purchase some CDs.
On the Sunday we visited Emi's mothers and didn't really do much else, we were tired from travelling on the Saturday. According to my notes I made a really nice dinner consisting of Spaghetti, beef mince, mushroom soup, red peppers and spinich. Unfortunately I can't tell you any more as I can't remember, I'm writing this one month later! However it must have been good if I wrote it donw so give it a try!

Engaged!

Sunday 19th October I asked Emi's parent if Emi and I could marry.

They said yes so we are now officially engaged!

I had asked Emi when we went to Kamakochi back in August but couldn't write anything until it was all official.

Basically we picked up Emi's parents and went to a Shabu shabu resturant in Ebina. We discussed various things - Emi's father being a bit of a joker made comments about my lack of hair as usual!

Afterwards we took them home and had some pictures taken to remember the day, it was very important after all!

Dolifuto!

One of Emis old colleage friends is getting married soon. Emi and her friends want to make a memory book/poster/thing so wanted to get some pictures of their colleage. Therefore on Saturday 11th October Emi and I went to her old colleage and met up with one of her friends to take some pictures. It was interesting wandering around and seeing where Emi had been when she was younger - life before Stuart! Afterwards we went to a resturant for a bite to eat and then headed back home so I could catch the end of F1 qualifying!

Sunday I met up with Hirakawa-san and Kohei-san. I knew them both from my previous stay in Japan and both are into drifting. We met up at a service station on the Tomei expressway and with 6 or 8 other cars headed off to Nikko circuit. This is a drifting and racing track in Tochigi prefecture about 25km from Nikko itself. I got out the 200m lense and spent a lot of the day tacking pictures from various locations, experiementing with the camera setting and trying to improve my technique. The things I have learn are A) I can't hold a camera steady when panning and B) most of the time the shutter speed setting was wrong, I kept it open too long. Anyway I hope you enjoy a small selection of my photos.

First pics with new camera!

Saturday 4th October Emi and I went to visit her mother. We had borrowed some beding from her for when my friends came and also she wanted us to do some shopping for her. After that was done we thought we would try out my new camera so headed off for Enoshima.

From Sagamihara to Enoshima ended up taking two hours, I could have cycled faster! And when we got there it was rammed and there was nowhere to park. In the end we found an icecream shop that gave you 1 hours free parking so I got a waffle cone with Strawberry cheesecake and choclate icecream and then wandered around to find some good picture spots.

As we were near the Enoshima train line we thought about taking some pics near there. My, there are so many train geeks in Japan, turned out 4 or 5 people were hanging around to take pictures of the trains! Any took some pictures and experimented with the settings, it was interesting. Afterwards we headed off.

Sunday was just a bit of shopping and relaxing