Lenin wants your lovin

lenin wants your lovin
Originally uploaded by moorethanthis.

Walking around Leeds campus, you'll always be sure to find posters for various left-wing groups and events. This one caught my attention because it was the first I'd ever seen to use humour. Of course, being an Alabama 3 fan makes the joke so much richer (but not in the financial sense, capitalist pig-dogs).

Science building

IMG_0571
Originally uploaded by moorethanthis.

Taken while wandering around campus on Sunday. I guess this is what people thought the future would look like in the 1970s.

A trip round the neighbourhood

What's this? Another Moore Than This Photo Special to fill up space while Jim thinks of something to write about? Indeed it is!

While posting here has been very light as of late, I've been settling back into life at Leeds. My new housemates are a nice bunch, which is rather lucky considering I met them through a notice on a student housing website. I count myself lucky at having ended up in a big, comfortable room in a house with some fun people which is very close to campus. Anyway, settling in is all well and good, but it didn't give me many entertaining things to write about, and my work schedule means I can't comment on every bit of news I find interesting. Still, this weekend I had a bit of free time and managed to take my camera for a walk round Hyde Park (where I live) and the university area. Click each photo for full-size version.


My house, aka the Lair of Moore. A place where anything can happen, and probably already has.


The view down Royal Park Road, looking toward the local mosque.


Hyde park, in all its glory.


The statue of Robert Peel, temporarily vandalised turned into a memorial for John Peel when he died during my first year.


A bit of philosophical graffitti, found on a park bench.


And finally, the Parkinson Building, main entrance to Leeds University.

Back in the game

trinity library
Originally uploaded by moorethanthis.

My trusty old Fuji Finepix F410, which I used to snap a near-obsessive amount of photos in Japan, stopped working the day I returned to the U.K. Sad as this was, it was the perfect excuse to get a new camera. So I picked up a Canon EOS 350D, with some money from my first paycheck. I'd seen it in Japan and liked the look of it, but over there it was called the Digital Kiss - a rather naff-sounding name for what is a fine bit of kit. Although I'm new to SLR photography, it's been very cool playing with all the new features. And of course, Cambridge in the summer just begs to be photographed. Taking pictures of the college buildings, from a punt, on a warm sunny evening, is one of life's finer pleasures.

Other people's photos

I've been in the middle of a photo drought for some time - I just don't have the inclination to take pictures at the moment. It could be because I'm preparing to buy a whizzy new digitial camera. Anyway, in the meantime you can see these pictures from Of Rice and Zen. In fact, take a look at the whole blog - the guy is a damn good photographer, and a hilarious writer. See this caption on his picture of Japanese toilet instructions:

Do you realise what it looks like when you go into a toilet stall, turn on a digital camera and start flashing away in the middle of tourist season in the WORLD FAMOUS Sanjusangendo Temple? Yes, you're right. It does look like taking pictures of your cock at home like a normal bloke is not enough for you, and that you need the extra thrill of travelling around the world to do it in crowded tourist locations.

Ladies and gentlemen, a big hand. This man has done much to entertain us.

A watch blog?

Amazingly enough, I was actually up early the day after the graduation ceremony, to go to Kyoto with some friends. There's a flea market held in the grounds of Toji temple on the 21st of every month, which I'd assiduoudly failed to go to for several months running. Last Sunday I broke the habit and went. In between hunting for presents for people back home, I managed to pick up a new watch.


As if anyone ever doubted how much I love Boss coffee.

Long weekend post

Went on a trip to Kyoto on Sunday with the Kansai Gaidai Photography Club. If you know the scene in Help! where the Beatles get off the plane with cameras and snap pictures of each other non-stop, it was like that at times as we turned our cameras on each other. Most of the time though we had nice scenery around Higashiyama to shoot. We wandered through the old streets and ended up at Kiyomizu-dera temple. It was odd to think that the last time I'd been up there was in my first week here. Things seemed to have gone full-circle.

Going out with the Photography Club gave me an insight into a bit of Japanese culture that I've (sadly) not experienced much of - socialising in organised groups. In the evening we headed back to Hirakata for a big welcome party (The Japanese students' academic year started recently). After lots of organised toasts, we sat down and proceeded to eat and drink a lot. A lot. I was not the freshest person when I left Sem House 4 the following morning to join a field trip to the Osaka courthouse.

What could make my hangover worse, you could well ask. How about one of those ultra-nationalist sound trucks that scream far-right rants through their loudspeakers at amazingly loud volumes? Coming right up! This one was quite small by their usual standards (manned by one man with a microphone and a big grudge), but easily the loudest one I've encountered so far.

Court proceedings were very hard to understand - I only got a few words here and there, and probably wouldn't have done any better if I'd been running at full (non-hungover) power. Fortunately, someone with us was very good at Japanese and managed to give us a precis of the case. The Japanese court system is inquisitorial rather than adverserial as in Britain and the U.S., so the judges take a more active role in the case.

I probably would have enjoyed it if I hadn't been a) hungover, and b) trapped with some of the most annoying students ever. The "I don't care" girl was in my group, and was whining about how we couldn't get into the big murder trial downstairs, because it was full and they were issuing tickets to allow people in. Apparently it hadn't crossed her mind that you don't have consumer rights when you're watching a trial.

The trip was organised by the professor who teaches our International Negotiation class, and afterwards he took us to an underground food court in one of the big department stores. I love these places, because they have lovely-looking food, but everything's far too expensive for me. Our professor then took us to a couple of bars, fetching up in a nice establishment with a good atmosphere and a selection of beers from all over the world. By that time there was only a small group, and we got talking to two Japanese girls and a fellow Brit who was travelling around the world. We also ended up doing purikura. These are photobooths where you take photos of you and your friends, customise them and print them out on little strips, a very popular pastime for teenage girls in Japan. We look slightly the worse for wear in all our pictures, and my cheeky grin is definitely cause for concern.

It was a fun night - just like the photography club social the night before, I met some cool people, and did more chatting in Japanese than I have for a long time. It comes back to something I wrote back in September (full-circle again, see?) about language for me being worth it when I get to use it outside the classroom. I will honestly say that the Japanese conversations I've had over the past couple of days have been more useful for me than learning about the Accusative-Passive in our duller-than-dull Spoken Japanese lesson today. Having been out drinking two nights in a row, I was too tired to seem interested. From here on out, a relaxed Golden Week looks more and more appealing.

Four Seasons of Japan

Thought I'd share this montage with you, created using fd's Flickr Toys. Allowing for some artistic licence - "Winter" (mountain in Nagano) and "Spring" (plum blossom at Osaka castle) were actually taken in March within a week of each other - it's a pretty good indication of why the Japanese are so proud of their seasons.

Messing about in boats/language update

On the weekend I went on a boat trip on the Hozu River with some friends. We were taken from Kameoka to Arashiyama, just outide Kyoto, by a group of (very tough) boatmen who rowed our wide wooden boat downstream through occasional rapids:


Cue lots of screaming from impressionable girls every time we got splashed. It was good fun, and to do it at this time of year with the sakura in bloom along the banks was very beautiful.


Currently writing some begging letters aimed at securing both my research project and my place in Japan once term ends. The fact that I have to make up an original composition in Japanese that says what I want it to say is doing wonders for my language skills. In Level 4, there are so many tests, homework assignments and the like that you have no time to actually do anything with the language beyond the class schedule. Make of that what you will.

I have a rare week where the workload has slackened, so I'm going home to try and read a Japanese magazine article. I used to do it with French magazines all the time, so getting through an article (however laboriously) will be a milestone of sorts.

UPDATE: I found the IMDB entry for the sumo film I mentioned at the end of an earlier post. It's actually rather good, in a laid-back, droll, charming kind of way. It was done by the same guy who did "Shall We Dance?" which was a huge hit in Japan and eventually got its own American remake. And the strange dance of Japan-U.S. relations goes round and round, oblivious to cack-handed attempts to write it off...

Body Bag Redux

Moore Than This - last with the news that matters!

Some of this blog's adoring readership, on hearing of my epic adventures in the mountains of Nagano, wondered if there were any pictures of me in the "rescue boat" that took me down the mountain after I knackered my ankle. I'm pleased to say that Josh finally has his Nagano pictures up, and you can now see the battered but unbowed adventurer tasting sweet fresh air after his ride back to civilisation.


Props to the Mountain Rescue girl on the right, by the way. As you can see, the thing is shaped like a boat, but with runners. You're strapped in, zipped up and from there it's downhill all the way. Something I'll probably avoid trying again next time I hit the slopes.

Sushi and sake, beer and burgers

As per regulations, Japan blogs are now filled with pictures of cherry blossom (or sakura). Now Moore Than This gets in on the action, following a hanami (flower-viewing trip) to Osaka castle yesterday with some friends. Before setting off from Hirakata on the train, we grabbed some sushi from a supermarket and I bought some beer and sake at a liquor store (with the splendid name "Liquor Mountain"). When we all met up in Osaka, one guy got a load of food from Wendy's as his contribution to the picnic - East met West in a delicious fashion.


Looking through the photos of our day out, it seems like the weather was horrible and overcast, when really it was very nice, milder than it has been for a long time. It only started getting overcast towards the end of the afternoon, when we decided to leave. I was slightly the worse for wear, but hey, I was engaging in Japanese culture - everyone gets plastered on sake at hanami. Not sure if that engagement extends to standing on a crowded platform on the Osaka Loop Line swigging from a bottle of sake. Oh well. You're only young and stupid once.


We took the train to Shinsaibashi, central Osaka's shopping district, and wandered down the big covered arcade there. We saw some pretty odd things, like a pick-up game in an arcade where the prize was a load of creepy pod-babies. We finished off in an izakaya in Namba, the main nightlife place of Osaka, which is dominated by huge neon displays.


From viewing cherry blossom in the grounds of a castle to this in one day. After a rough week or so, getting out with some friends and enjoying myself has really given me a boost. My first sakura season has been brilliant. Here's to spending many more of them in Japan.

Photography madness

I had the opportunity to play with an SLR film camera this week, thanks to a Japanese student who knows a bit about photography and would like to teach others. It was a very cool bit of kit, and just makes me want to storm Yodobashi Camera and buy a digital SLR. Unfortunately, not knowing the film in the camera was black and white, I took a load of photos of the sakura (cherry blossom) around Hirakata, as well as some arty scenes and candid shots of people. I'll scan the good ones and post them on Flickr when I get them developed. Speaking of which, out of my Flickr pictures the ones that are getting all the comments and views are the photos of silly Engrish signs that I take from time to time. If I wanted to turn this blog into a half-arsed version of Engrish.com I could well do so.

I plan to go to Osaka on the weekend with some friends for an overdue look at the sakura there. I'll be sure to take some photos with my digital camera. The ease of use, and the fact that a picture I take can be on the Internet by the end of the day is to me one of the best arguments for digital (MF may beg to differ though).

Solar flare

solar flare
Originally uploaded by moorethanthis.

Took this photo today on campus. Sitting down on a row of steps, organised into stairs for a kind of colloseum effect around a circular stage. The huge disc acts as a shade over it, to keep the sun and rain off. I think it's a nice effect when the sun shines through the panels and dapples the stairs. I never usually bother to take photos of the things I see everyday, but I think photography is starting to turn into a hobby for me, with Flickr as an impetus. I'd like a better-quality camera in future, but for now it's good to know I can take decent "arty" photos with an average point-and-shoot digital number.

A room with a view

sunrise over toba bay
Originally uploaded by moorethanthis.

This was the view from our hotel room this morning. Pretty nice, n'est-ce pas? We took the train down to Toba, a seaside town on the Ise Penisula a few stops along from Ise Shrine, which we visited last semester. The hotel was a big Western-style construction overlooking the sea, but with Japanese rooms, complete with tatami mats, futons on the floors and sliding screens dividing rooms. You put on a yukata (light summer kimono) to walk around the hotel, and set off to the baths for a long relaxing soak. As I've written before, any embarrassment about the general nudity quickly wears off and you enjoy the lovely warm water. Well, lovely for the most part - one bath was so hot I could only sit in it halfway, leaving my legs boiled-lobster pink and my top half pasty white when I got out. Back in our room, we drank it up and watched Winter Olympics coverage - non-stop replays of Arakawa-san's figure skating victory, of course, but also the curling, where I watched the British team get trounced by a bunch of camp-looking Americans in tight T-shirts. In the presence of six American students. Not the proudest I've ever been of my country.

We woke up early to catch the sunrise (see photo above) and get some more bathing in, before we set off for breakfast at the hotel's buffet, which is known in Japanese as a baikingu ('viking'). I thought this odd name was because both the smorgasbord and Vikings originated in Scandinavia, but I recently found a blog post with a (bizarrely) different explanation...

The train carried us back through the mountains at a pretty leisurely pace (see left). By the time we were back in the urban jungle of Osaka, our time at the seaside seemed just a distant memory. One of the better ways to spend an early weekend.

Tsuruhashi

Some comments on a recent post of mine made me realise that I've spent a lot of words being cynical and superior about the people I meet here. Which really wasn't my intention at all. For the most part, I have a great time hanging around with Kansai Gaidai students, Japanese and gaijin alike. The reason I post stories about meeting stupid and prejudiced people is a) because it's out of the ordinary and b) because I think it's funnier than the average details of my day. But from now on I think I'll throttle back on the cynicism and talk about some good things that have happened.

Like yesterday, when I went out to Tsuruhashi, the mainly Korean district of Osaka. Chae, a Korean guy from Seminar House 4, was taking a bunch of people out to dinner at a Korean restaurant. I arrived late, as I had to buy some stuff in Den-Den Town, the part of Osaka famous for electronics, and spent a few minutes waiting to meet up with Chae. Walking out of Tsuruhashi station, you run into a cramped warren of alleyways with train lines running overhead and lanterns strung between buildings, filled with stalls selling Korean food. It had a kind of Blade Runner look to it, only less menacing.

A random guy stopped me on the street to practice his English. I kept answering him in Japanese, only to be reminded that he was Korean. An important distinction, and one that I hadn't had to grapple with before then. Yet another thing I'm grateful for learning.

Chae led me down the street to the restaurant, accessible through a tiny door that I had to bend double to get through. The place served yaki-niku, a type of dish where you get a selection of meat and vegetables and cook them yourself on a hot plate. I sat cross-legged around a big table with 10 other people, almost all of whom I didn't know before. It was a fun night. Some people were new, some had been here last semester, but everyone was out to learn, not to prove what they already knew. In that kind of relaxed atmosphere, you can't help but have a good time.

The View From the Afternoon

Today I am too hungover for words. Went out to an izakaya last night with a few friends from Gaidai. Walking home, we ran into a pair of absolutely charmless foreign students, one American and the other Australian - the kind of people that give rise to the negative stereotypes of their countries. The American in particular was a real idiot, who talked about nothing but how much he hated Japan, and started play-fighting with me and James. To think I almost ruined my nicest pair of trousers grappling with some drunken oaf on a bridge. This is the kind of dissolute debauchery that would seem fun back in Leeds, but in Japan it is quite beyond the pale.

I woke up late. Staggered downstairs to the kitchen. On TV they were showing the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Torino. To my impeded brain, the costumed antics appeared strange and disturbing, and I escaped to the shops. On my way back to the dorms, I found someone's bike parked right in of the single ramp leading up to the bike racks, blocking anyone else from getting their bike in or out. Who could be so inconsiderate, I thought. A clue was provided by the clog keyring dangling from his bike lock...



The pernicious Dutch were to blame, of course. The tenor of international interaction round here has suddenly sunk. And those bizarre Olympic celebrations didn't help much, either.

A Virtual Tour of Seminar House 4

Come, gentle reader, let me take you by the hand and conduct you on a Photo Special of Moore Than This, as I show you around Kansai Gaidai's newest accommodation block, Seminar House 4.


My room, tatami mat and unamde bed as standard. My roommate's bed is just out of shot on the left. Always neatly made, it would have been an interesting contrast.


The dining room downstairs. The modern design I mentioned is on show here. It lets you see right through to the lounge and computer room, revealing far expanses filled with students doing as little as possible.


The communal kitchen. Everything has its place here...


...Except for English spelling and grammar.

This, then, is Seminar House 4. Where I sleep, eat, cook, wash, read, listen to music, watch TV, write pointless blog entries, and maybe occasionally do some work. In short, my home until the end of May.

Lonely shoes

A pair of shoes on the ground, seen as I wheeled my bike up to the bike racks outside Seminar House 4. Of the owner there was no sign. I suppose events like this are par for the course in foreign students' dorms.

Tokyo memories

Yasukuni-dori, Shinjuku
Originally uploaded by moorethanthis.

As I said in my last post, it seems like I've been back a lot longer than I have, and now I'm getting ready to head back again. Just a small matter of booking my return ticket, and sorting out where to stay for the few days before Seminar House re-opens, and I'll be gone. The contrast between where I've been and where I am now is just so large that even now I can't really get my head around it. This street scene from Shinjuku, for example, is unlikely to be found replicated in the centre of Cambridge.

Fun for all the university

Last week was Kansai Gaidai's Cultural Festival. There were no lessons Thursday (so I went out to do some karaoke on Wednesday night with my much-loved Japanese class, and had a great time too), but the international part of the festival is on Sunday, so there's one less day off. Actually, I was on campus every day except Friday, as without the university there is nowt to do in Hirakata. It was pretty fun. The student clubs and circles put up stalls selling food to raise money, do performances, that kind of thing. I saw some amateur rock bands, a terrifyingly well-organised cheerleading display, and more hip-hop dancing than I could ever want or need. Walking around campus, I saw groups of dancers in different costumes practicing in their carefully defined bits of territory. To my sleep-deprived brain, it looked like a Run DMC music video, or possibly some East Asian remake of The Warriors.

Saturday I went to Osaka with some friends to see the castle. It was a lovely warm evening, and we walked around it as the sun set and bathed the walls in soft light. I hadn't brought my camera, so only have a few pictures on my mobile phone as souvenirs of that beautiful evening. Sunday was pretty fun, as I went to the CIE to see the international students' country booths. I volunteered to help out at the UK stall, and spent an hour or so talking to Japanese visitors about where to go in Britain (Cambridge, of course. When you live in a tourist destination, you gots to represent - although Leeds isn't half bad either). Sitting across from the amazingly well-equipped Colombia booth put me in the mood to go there. Ah well, there's always next year.

I met up with Yukari, the Kansai Gaidai graduate who did her year abroad at Leeds who I met helping out at the British Council Education Fair a month or so ago. She's very nice, friendly and mature, but she works long hours at a hotel so she doesn't have a lot of free time. At the moment, I'm trying to make plans for the winter holiday. As this is only the second time I've travelled outside Europe, and I don't know when I'll be back in this part of the world, it makes sense to see as much as I can.