A skiing we will go...

Yesterday, we went skiing.

Kind of.

I went skiing, Sanae and Cian stayed inside the lodge eating their body weight in chocolate and cake, occasionally venturing outside to check the weather before scurrying back inside and declaring they need more chocolate before they can hit the slopes. Admittedly the weather wasn't all that conducive to skiing (or pretty much anything else beyond a grim, desperate need to stay warm and not die in a frozen Hemming-way, in a snow drift, alone. After being emasculated in the First World War).

Anyway, we rocked on up to Karurusu, the local ski resort. Actually 'resort' is too grand a term. More like 'the local ski slopes on the side of a windswept hill'. Normally, I would only venture out 'on the piste' as it were in conditions like those below.

However, yesterday was not such a day. Rather it was more akin to below but with more frozen bodies littering the slopes.

I am not an avid skier, or rather not any more. I used to be. Back when I was living in Shibetsu (or to be more precise, 'Back in the day, when I was the Man'), I used to jump in my little Toyota Cynos on a Friday evening and drive impossible distances in impossibler conditions to Makari, home of 'Smooth' Ben G. . We would then ski the feck out of Niseko all day Saturday and like the powder heroes we were, spend all Saturday night drinking our body weight in Asahi Super Dry whilst fending off the determined advances of the local female high schoolers. Or rather I fended them off. Ben G. took a more of a "Oh no, not again. Please, please be gentle with me. It's my first time. Again"; and then would be led off into the night to prove to the girls' volleyball team that he had not, in fact, been emasculated in the first world war.

On the Sunday, replete with the mother of all hangovers, I would jump back in my Cynos and power the 10 hours or so across the width of Hokkaido (with only a brief refueling stop at McDonalds in Tomakomai) to my forgotten part of the world. Where I would resume being 'The Man', albeit one with a very sore Hemmingway like head.

Chi-Deji

On July 24th of this year, Japan will end all analog broadcasts and switch to digital television. Yesterday marked the 6 months to go deadline, which in not-quite-sure-why Japanese fashion, brought forth a rash of news reports on this soon to be piece of domestic television history. According to our very own Hokkaido Shimbun ("De Paper"), as of the end of December 120,000 households had yet to prepare (read: shell out for a new digital tv) for this momentous event. The Gaynor-Takahashi family, luddites to the last, are among this number though for all the television we watch, I am not sure why we should bother (though Daddy is excited at the prospect of updating the house's 17 year old Mitsubishi tv to something that may sneakily incorporate a built-in Blu-Ray disc player. Control you envy).
De Paper also informed us that some 4,600 households will be unable to receive the new digital channels because, even by Hokkaido's pretty rural standards, they are too far 'Mucker gone' to have the authorities build relay antennas in their godforsaken parts of the world. In a WTF! alternative plan, said authorities will instead broadcast the digital channels to these lonely outposts via satellite. The WTF! part is that they intend to beam Tokyo tv stations to them rather than their hitherto beloved local Hokkaido stations. This means that Ma and Pa Wackibakki living in some place like Engaru on the (incredibly) remote Okhotsk Sea in north Hokkaido will, from the end of July, be treated to all the news and weather from Tokyo. That's the equivalent, in terms of both geographical distance and climate difference, of the fine people in Buncrana in Co. Donegal sitting down each evening to watch the news and weather from Barcelona.
You have to laugh. Unless you live in Engaru where the weatherman has just told you it will be fine tomorrow with a high of 15 C and you can't see out your sitting room window because the drifting snow is now up to the roof.
As part of their promotional campaign to convince the Gaynor-Takahashi family (and others, but mainly us, as where we lead, the other 119,999 analog loving families will surely follow) that digital is a good thing, they have a mascot.
A yellow, tank-top wearing deer mascot of course, named 'Chi Dejika' (a play on the Japanese words for 'deer' and 'muscle t-shirt'). A somewhat effeminate deer too, if it's possible (and slightly disturbing) to read that into a cartoon character.
And the second picture below deserves a caption - so best caption gets a prize of a box of Pocky and a much sought after Dejika t-shirt (and yes, I will ship them worldwide, even to you, dear readers in Malaysia).

Aer Lingus

So there I am at the Aer Lingus ticketing desk at Dublin airport. I have been sent there by the woman at the check in counter as the shadowy, omnipotent 'system' won't let us check in (because, as it turns out, the feckin arses at Travelocity had double booked our itinerary. 'Travelshitty' more like it).

Anyway I rock on up to the ticketing desk where a single Aer Lingus rep is dealing with a queue of 6 people.

I wait. And wait. And ponder how much I hate traveling by plane and when did that all come about. Years ago there was a glamour about flying, a certain frisson attached to becoming, albeit momentarily, a member of the jet set, though strictly only an economy class member (except for those all too rare times when I got upgraded to business class, the dream like memory of same still brings Proustian tears to my eyes).

Anyway, finally get to the counter. The phone rings. Aer Lingus rep gives me the universal palm of the hand halt sign indicating that no matter who is calling and what they want, this telephone call is more important than the person standing in front of them.

Conversation goes something like this.

"Hallo...Frank! How' s the man?...Fine, fine...No, your grand, only got one person waiting, fire away...Yeah, yeah, great game, cracking goal too...Well, I don't know, they'd want to win a couple more before you'd say they've a chance of winning the league...yeah, yeah...the roster, on the 12th...Jaysus, yeah, yeah, no problem. When do you want to change...to the Tuesday, fine, fine...from 12.00pm, yeah, fine...will you fill in the roster then...yeah, yeah...nah, didn't go anywhere for Christmas, weather was shite like. Yourself?..."

And this went on for a good ten minutes.

Aer Lingus rep finally hangs up. I approach counter.

"Sorry, it's me lunch break, my replacement will be here shortly and she'll help you".

His replacement is outside the ticketing desk and can't get in because her swipe card won't work. Aer Lingus rep goes out to help her. Much hilarity ensues. Brings her into the ticketing desk and spends the next 5 minutes explaining to her what she has to do.

Me, I'm still waiting.

Tells her all the printers don't work, the fax isn't connected and the 'system' keeps crashing. But other than that everything is fine. Also tells her that Frank rang, the roster has changed and that he'll be working Tuesday instead. She's not entirely happy with this development and goes into the room behind the ticketing desk to check something.

Me, I'm still waiting.

More banter and muffled hilarity ensues. Come back to the ticketing desk where the first Aer Lingus rep continues with her on the job training.

Me, I'm still waiting.

Finally, it takes a phone call from the Aer Lingus rep we originally went to at the check-in counter to see what the delay is, before I finally get my tickets reissued, a process which takes all of three minutes after I have been waiting for over thirty minutes.

At Tokyo airport we had the same double booking problem at check in (you can't hide from the 'system') but there the JAL rep immediately took us to one side, apologized for the inconvenience, sat down at a computer terminal and sorted out our reservations whilst all the time repeatedly apologizing to us.

Me, I'm not flying Aer Lingus again.

The Athgoe Sessions

A belated Happy New Year to one and all (or to my Middle-Eastern readership that doesn't follow the Gregorian calendar, a greeting of 'Death to the Infidel!'). Apologies for the break in correspondence but we decided to spend the winter caught up in the airport apocalypse that was Christmas in Europe. Never again. Much as it was nice to get back and see friends and family, the 'getting back' bit outweighed the joys of the 'seeing', and the Gaynor-Takahashi family has taken the unilateral decision of banning all further winter travel. Unless it is to Hawaii. No, henceforth we will spend our December-January in agnostic, turkey-free bliss here in Japan, or on the beach at Waikiki.

There is a long, whining, barely tolerable post I want to write about our trip to and from Ireland, but I will leave that for another day (or jet-lagged early morning. It's 3.00am as I'm writing this, and there's nary a sound in the house except for Cian's snoring). Rather, I'll begin 2011 on a bright note, or rather notes, for you, dear readers, are about to enjoy a little piece of musical history. One of the highlights from our trip home, hell, what am I saying, the undoubted highlight was the spontaneous coming together of some of contemporary jazz's greatest talents for a unique, once off performance that has redefined the possibilities of what jazz and music can do.

Not since Miles Davis assembled Bill Evans, Wynton Kelly, Jimmy Cobb, Paul Chambers, John Coltrane and Julian 'Cannonball' Adderley to record a 'Kind of Blue', has there been such an array of genius like talent gathered in one place.

For the 'Athgoe Sessions', as they have already become known, East met West when Patrick 'The Cat' O'Sullivan (piano, vocals), Cian 'Tokyo Joe' Takahashi-Gaynor (piano, snores), Allannah 'Jelly Roll' O'Sullivan (piano, vibes, lots of 'em), and Brian 'King of Swing' Gaynor (rhythm, impossible cool), came together to produce an unforgettable evening's worth of jazz with a 'j' for 'jenius'. Yeah. Right on.

But enough of my yakking, hipsters, let the music do the talking, for I give you, in all its unfocused 67 second glory, the Athgoe Sessions.