The last voyage of the Thunder-child

Phew, it's been a busy old week bat-fans!

I've had dinner at a Professor's house, eaten blowfish (fugu) been to Nara and said good-byes to several students. Tonight, I'm saying my final farewells before I go to Sendai tomorrow.

Welcome to cool Japan, indeed!

Last Saturday night I had a bit of a get together for some of my students. We went to one of the local British pubs, the Pig and Whistle, then went onto a small izakaya (Japanese style pub) for food and a few drinks. Oh, so drunk....

Keiichi, Sanae and me, Megan is in the background.

Tom and Chie

Tomoko and I

So, on Thursday I went to Nara. Despite having lived in Osaka for a year it was my first time to go. The top picture was taken in Nara. I love the sign in the window - "welcome to cool Japan".
Nara has a very different feel to Kyoto, although I was only there for a short time.

Shika.
Cannibalistic deer like these two are especially rare.

Todai-tera (temple)
Not Tokyo University.

Bhudda.
His constant chargrin whilst buying sneakers made him very philosophical.

Nara is, like Kyoto, also a former capital of Japan. Indeed, Nara was the first permanent capital. However, it retained this status for only 75 years. After one of the clergy seduced a member of the royal court the Emperor wisely decided to move the capital to Kyoto. Probably, he did some rather nasty things to the clergy-man too, although I don't quite know what...

Zou Lei and some random guy

Part of my blog has to be dedicated to my friend Zou Lei. Lei and I used to work on night shift at Nova together. Strangely, we never really got to know each other then, but only latterly whilst working at new Nova. Indeed, this blog owes its name to Zou Lei. It was her who translated my name, Louis, phonetically into Chinese (lu-i-su), complete with Kanji. The kanji for my name basically mean "The easy road" "The easy way" or "The easy path". I rather liked this. My kanji in Japanese can mean "Shiny blue thing" or "Long stay in a bird house"!!