I'm really running out of decent titles, but never mind

Dear UK Electorate: You let Cameron in. Shame on you. Very disappointed.

And now over to that other rather insular island-nation with dodgy politics.

Turns out Meisa Kuroki is half-Brazillian. Sometimes it seems the only thing you need to be famous in Japan is a foreign parent...

Ryota said this is due to the Japanese finding "halfs" (mixed race) people novel and cool (Though at the same time, "not too foreign"). He then went on to claim he was half Himeji-an and half Okayaman... bit like claiming yourself to be mixed-race Glaswegian/Edinburgher...

Failing that either Osakan or Okinawan will do it seems.

I learned a random Japanese expression a while back, ケイワイ、 or KY. Now forgive me, but I was a little bit shocked to learn this was sort of every-day Japanese kid's slang, until I learned it actually means "空気読めない", or "Kuuki Yomenai", which means "Cannot read the situation" as opposed to Jelly...

Oh, and I beat a Japanese person on a Kanji reading :-) Granted, it was "Undersea Mountain Range" which is a tad specialised and doesn't turn up very often, but I was still pretty chuffed. Incidentally, that's 海嶺.

So yea, I'm off to Tokyo this weekend it seems... I say it seems because it still strikes me as a little bit odd that it seems that all I have to do is shimmy over to Shin-Osaka station, buy a ticket (for an exorbitant number of Yen I add) and jump on the Shinkansen (bullet train)... seems oddly straight-forward for Japan..

Speaking of Osaka, Dad's going to give a presentation over at 阪大(Handai, Osaka University. Incidentally, I just noticed that's actually Osaka (大阪) with the Kanji reversed... ) when he comes over here next week. The person from Osaka gave us the helpful directions of "meet in front of Osaka station.", which helpfully narrows down the location to about 4 square kilometres of one of the most densely packed bits of the planet... I don't think Osaka station (which is not anywhere near Shin-Osaka station by the way) even has an identifiable "front"... look at it!