There were 55 people come to my blog yesterday. 99% of my soul says stop writing this thing and then there is the 1% that looks at those figures and thinks someday I`m gonna have a New York best seller on my hands. I did actually send exerpts of my blog to publishers last week. I recon this blog could be a great travel guide for anyone interested in exploring the mining city of Niihama or anyone who wondered what factories producing paper in the nearby town smell like (they smell like piss). I don`t know what the email equivalent of having it lost in the post might be, just completely ignored and hated, I guess. I wonder if it`s got something to do with the lack of travel content within my writings. I sometimes try to get serious and recommend good places to go but it seems like people are more interested in wierd stuff. Wierd stuff is good, but I don`t think I`m gonna win the New York best seller prize with a whole book on nob temples.
It was New Year recently. Yoko and I went to a temple to be one of the 108 people who washes away their worldly desires. I was number 89, but there`s no indication on the card you are given which desire you might be getting rid of. I certainly still fully intend to bone as many ladies as I can, meet Hayao Miyazaki, and create great music on my computer, even after going there. I used to want to put my foot into the toilet just to see peoples reaction when I told them. More recently I wondered what it would be like to be swallowed whole by a whale or something. I don`t desire it, but it must be kind of like going to Butlins water slides with all of the tubes you`d go through.
On a day to day basis I desire not to be woken at 3 o`clock by my cat crawling under my covers and biting me, I desire socks that can stand being worn more than a week without forming holes where my wolverine-like toe-claws have ripped through them ...and probably world peace after that. 

Recently my face has been really blotchy. I think what may have happened is that when I moved house I took all of my beauty products, peeled off their labels and mixed them around in a big bag, so what I think is shaving gel is actually hair gel. The hair gel is hardening my chin hairs, bluntening my shaver and making this polka dot effect on my skin. My chin is harder than it used to be and facial expressions can only be used sparingly. I won`t change to another shaving gel because I`m a cheapskate.

Last weekend Yoko and I went into the forest and cooked a chicken. It was an event to advertise lodgings deep within Ishizuchi mountain. We were the only group to turn up to it. A forest woman gave us a barbeque set and a large piece of bamboo, which we were then asked to saw into a working rice cooking pot. Bamboo is a tough little critter. It took three women and me to hacking it into shape, all the while bikers dressed in pokemon and one piece costumes huddled around our fire. It was a fairly surreal situation. Apparently about 500 bikers in total had agreed to meet at that location, on that particular day to discuss their bikes and half of them had come in silly costumes. The wierdest one was this one guy who was dressed as a reindeer, but he also had sunglasses and he never said a word. He just stood really close and stared blankly at me and the women I was with and then followed us to our cars, again staring blankly and saying nothing, while his friends all laughed histerically.
The accomodation is amazing actually. Its 1300 a night, which is about the same as 13 pounds and they have some cool facilities. You can pay an additional 20 pounds and get a long piece of bamboo and noodles so you can set up your own "nagashi soumen". It`s a water slide for noodles that you then wait with chopsticks to catch somewhere near the other end. My dad is crap with chopsticks. I can`t wait to bring him there and watch him struggle to get anything

I`d love to know. The guy was like a megastar. I don`t know if he could`ve filled Wembley stadium with that party trick he does with the fish and the bread but i recon if I had some of Jesus` original hymn lyrics, that he scrawled on a rock while he was in a cafe with a mate, I could make a mint with it at an auction! It worked for John Lennons ones.

The original unfinished and unreleased Away in a Manger

Away in a manger, no crib for a bed,
The little Lord Jesus laid down His sweet head.
The stars in the bright sky were looked down where he lay,
The little Lord Jesus was hunting down all gays.

It`s amazing to see how it evolved into the song that we know and love today and its interesting that gay people must have still existed even before the village people made it popular.

I went to a robotics high school open day last weekend. They had made a "takochu". Its a robotic octopus that forcibly ejects big white balls from its tubelike mouth at any underprepared targets. Presumably that would include all england goalkeepers. Again it was the attention to detail that impressed me most. It had been painted pink, with giant anime eyes and eyelashes, and it had apparently won the robots beauty contest in Tokyo. It was certainly a looker, though a little lipstick wouldnt have hurt

I just can`t stop churning out hit after hit. This ones hot from the press, full of teenage angst and ready for your listening pleasure. They don`t write them like this anymore. That`s why I had to.

Life is like a can of spaghetti. The tomato sauce is the blood running through our veins. The can surrounds us like the ever encompassing universe and the hoops themselves are delicious!! Thats what I`m having for dinner tonight.
Talking of life, I met a new one during the week. One of my friends recently gave birth to a baby girl. She`s really cute, and she vomits if you hold her hand. It`s interesting how the body changes at times. After giving birth my friends feet have ballooned out massively so that she is actually now swimming in her own skin. Apparently theyll be back to normal within a couple of days. Anyway the baby is the cutest little thing. She has a head the size of a tennis ball. It`s like comparing the sun to the moon. I could fit her head 20 million times into my own. I sometimes try to put my fist into my mouth. If I had her fists I could probably keep them both in my cheeks like a squirrel and continue conversation. That is the naivety of youth I suppose. She`ll never know how good she`s got it till its gone.
I quite like sticking some kind of morale to my ramblings right at the end of the paragraph recently. It`s a trick I picked up when I was writing articles for local magazines. I have no idea where I`m heading to when I start writing these things but if I write some kind of final thought it makes people think that I had that in mind from the start. But I guess when you ramble through life, eventually you`re gonna hit a main road. I just made that up!! It`s bloody brilliant!!

Like Smiley from the 80`s BBC series that makes no sense, I have many guises. Some people when they meet me, they would say I`m a tinker. I don`t know if that cockney rhyming slang for something? I don`t know what they`re talking about. Some people say I`m a tailor, but I`m not so I politely show them the way to a nearby Army and Navy. Some people say that I look like I`ve taken a whole load of drugs because one of my eyes is a little bit more closed than the other one. That one annoys me a little bit. They don`t say I`m a soldier. But none of them are correct. I am in fact an all conquering mountain climber. With the help of a student or two and my housemate I defeated the almighty Mt. Ishizuchi. No longer does it tower over me. No longer does it look down on me. The tides have changed my earthy friend. Only one of us has scaled your rocky surfaces. Only one of us was brave enough to risk life and death to reach the top of some pretty perilous cliffs, where you literally have to pull yourself up chains to proceed. Only one of us has eaten a curry on top of the other one. That one is me!! (By the way, when I say that I mean just out of me and Mt. Ishizuchi. Loads of people have climbed that mountain before I have)
We picked the perfect day for it. Completely overcast. We never saw the famous protector gods nose that the peak is supposed to resemble. I won`t be climbing again in a hurry though. When I mentioned risking life and death before I wasn`t exaggerating. That thing is a death trap. There are 3 chain climbing parts and for the most of them, there are no crevasses for feet to find purchase. They are 40m vertical wet surface rocks with a metal chain that cuts into your hands as you climb it. Mental!!

Last month was really busy at work, with people being absent with Obon holidays and Summer holidays then coming to different classes, so to relieve my coworkers of stress I have been making noises with my throat and nose like sounds from the uterus. I heard it works for babies, but it seems to have kind of the opposite effect on adults.

On the other hand, I have been received recognition for my ability to flob. I had a wild time at a festival at Yamasa farm in Saijyo. There was a treasure hunt in the fig plantation, some bands - one of which was playing guitar with a glove puppet on, which sounds impressive if i put it like that but he was tuneless and drunk, as he repeated told me, and also there was the sour plum spitting event. At these kinds of events being a foreigner can work to your advantage and you can get extra chances, or the pressure is magnified. The TV crew were there this time. I was interviewed rather suddenly. A lady thrust a microphone in my face and said how far will you spit yours. I discussed with Yoko. She said 8 metres, I plumped for 15. In the final cut they edited Yoko right out and just left the foreigner. Then when I did my spit the whole of the festival went silent and the act of gobbing became less like just good clean hygienic fun, and more like I was just about to dive from a 100 metre high spring board into a bucket. Anyway I got 6 metres, 2 place for which I received a cup of delicious seedless grapes.

Also I have stepped it up a gear and fused hip hop with my own unique genre and sound. It sounds like Justin Timberlake, but done by someone who really cant fake an american accent. I hope you enjoy!!

I was asked today what the weather was like in Niihama right now so I thought I`d share the Niihama experience in song format. I`ll write the lyrics underneath.

You know when you live in Niihama yo, Niihama yo,
Spiders crawl when you sleep,
Niihamas sweaty summer,
Insects fall from ceilings,
Niihamas sweaty summer,
Potato smell in the breeze,
Niihamas sweaty summer,
Mosquitoes biting your knees,
Niihamas sweaty summer,
My tomatoes won`t grow, but tall weeds will grow,
They only cost 105, I know,
The thought of tomatoes keeps me alive,
Living in Ehime countryside, You wouldn`t see anything without a ride,
Living in Ehime countryside, You wouldn`t see anything without a ride,
Niihamas sweaty summer,Niihamas sweaty summer,Niihamas sweaty summer,Niihamas sweaty summer,
Living in Ehime countryside, You wouldn`t see anything without a ride,
Living in Ehime countryside, You wouldn`t see anything without a ride,
Living in Ehime countryside, You wouldn`t see anything without a ride,
Living in Ehime countryside, You wouldn`t see anything without a ride,
Close the window or the mosquitoes will come, they bite you in the strangest place, I got bit on my thumb.

 In all of the excitement of working my ass off, I have neglected my blog and a vast number of my friends, while at the same time developing stress related red blobs on my stomach. It`s kind of like my stomachs been bitten by aggressive ants, possibly caught up in the web of wirey hairs that surround it. It would be a good place to bite. If I were an insect, the stomach would be my first port of call. It always confuses me that when I get bitten by mosquitoes they lap up places like my elbows or groin like its caviar but leave larger, more succulent meats such as my belly or thighs untouched. I heard that mosquitoes are able to sense food by detecting carbon dioxide in the air. If I inhale helium, would that make me invisible?
In reply to dadios question the mountain I still haven`t climbed yet but I will do is called Mt. Ishizuchi. Its 1,982 metres (6,503 ft) high according to wikipedia, but it doesnt mention anything about frogs. Its certainly been wet enough for them lately. 200000 people were evacuated from their homes in kyushu with the flooding there. It hasn`t has much effect on Shikoku, except that my tomato plants are actually  doing really well as a result of the extra water. Anyway we`re gonna wait until the weather improves before we go up ishizuchi.
I have been thinking about facebook and how recently it is only used to show photos of babies wearing different clothes or drooling down their faces for the first time, or sneezing a little bit or laying down with the same expression as in the last picture again. Surely this is the untapped market. Create a parents social media site where people can post pictures of their babies, safe in the knowledge that it doesn`t mean people who don`t have a child of their own have to keep scrolling down to get to the photos where people are actually doing things. They can call it smallpotatolikefacebook.com

So I`m gonna be 30 tomorrow. I wonder at what age your bowels become dysfuntional? Hopefully not too soon anyway. Yoko has been out to find some strawberries for my cake. Apparently its not a good season to be buying strawberries, and she said she went to a "fruit-meister" to get that information so guess I can believe her, but I`ll definately keep searching. My 30th birthday is not going to be the only year in my life where I miss out on strawberries for my birthday.
I have just made plans to climb the highest mountain in west Japan with a couple of students. I find it stage that I too actually enjoy exhausting myself on my weekend for the sake of arriving at the top of a mound of mud, but then I heard there is a vending machine at the top, where you can buy a hot chocolate for twice the price of what it would cost at ground level, so now I can`t wait. There are points on the mountain where you have to hoist yourself up a chain to continue. It`s going to be amazing watching Yoko attempting those. She has trouble hoisting herself up the step in the front of our house sometimes.