My New Japanese Blog; Windy Experiences; Diarrhoea Stopped; Itchy Exhausted

BABY ITCHY is so exhausted after "partying" with those wild mice behind the cupboard for 24 hours. No wonder such a lot of squaking occurred. Quite probably it was poor Itchy being terrorized by those squealy worm-tailed long-lost cousins...

At least now when I say "Come out you pink noses! Come out you tubby gremlins" three twitching sets of whiskers appear. It was mighty depressing with just two.

Baby was so exhausted last night that when I lent over and said hello hello she stuck her head out of the teabox only to fall right back to sleep. She looked so amusing dozing away like that.

I have a new Japanese blog!
グレドヲードの日本のブログ
"Guredowodo-no Nihon-no burogu"
Yes my name in Japanese is "Guredowodo"!
They have a certain way of pronouncing syllables quite unlike western speach. There are no consonant clusters. So that a Japanese person saying "string" would say something more like "suturingu". Four syllables to them, but to our ears so rapidly elided together it's not rendered as clumpily as first sight might suggest. Did you notice that "blog" turns into "burogu"~?!?
It's at http://gledwoodnihon.blogspot.com ... "Nihon" means "Nippon" by the way. An expression I'm sure more westerners are familiar with (though over here, for some reason it's a make of highly effective ant- and cocroach-killing powder! With the Japanese colours all over the bottle!!)

Really I put this new blog there to improve my own Japanese but it's open to all. It's Youtube screens, like all my other blogs, but will by no means consist of only language lessons. Anything Japanese (like documentaries) go there too.

If you watch Let's Learn Japanese: Basic 1 Part A (Mishaps at the Airport) as posted up tonight I wonder if you'll marvel like me how, during the series of mishaps at Tokyo International Airport the other man didn't pick a fight when trolleys clashed. And that the young woman picking up the camcorder said "is this yours?" rather than making off with it quick-style in modern British fashion!

The Japanese are so polite. All that bowing? Do you think they get bad backs? Did you know several people are killed each year on the Tokyo metro from bowing on the edge of platforms as trains come rushing in ...

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was on horseback in Windsor Great Park with the then King of Arabia when her horse thunderously "passed gas" as they say in America. "Oh I do beg your pardon!" exclaimed the Queen. "That is quite all right your majesty," replied the King, not realizing quite who had in fact let rip. "It happens to us all on some occasion!"

Did you hear about the story from the reign of Elizabeth I when one of her nobles, (the 17th Earl of Oxford), obsequiously bowing lost control of his bowels and quacked out a resounding emission of wind right before the royal throne? So mortified was he that he fled for some years to France only to return when he was sure the embarrassing consequences of his gaseous outburst had died down. And dear Queen Elizabeth, ever the wit; the first thing she said was, "It's all right. We've all forgotten the fart"!

Well my own injurious bad health is in recovery enough that I'm risking my own cooking yet again. If I'm dead by the morrow someone else will have to post for me....

... and then I'll never finish those lumpen memoirs. Or learn Japanese!


Videos of the Day:
Sushibar Conveyorbelt Scenes
Tokyo Airport Mishaps