Friday 13th December, 2013

I sent you a fairly cursory email last Friday from Tokyo largely focussed on a gastronomic experience and then on Monday you got a few comments from me on the marche’ ( see below ) so I don’t want to overdo it as far as my Japan trip goes.  But it has been a relatively quiet week and I’m strapped for things to tell you.  All relatively quiet on the home front.  Truth is we have suffered a succession of domestic disasters so the fact that the muncher cruncher has gone on the blink today is something I can just about cope with though it would normally send me into a spiral even if hardly worth the relating.   

Back to Japan and whilst you would expect me to subscribe to the well written rule that that what goes on in Ginza stays in Ginza, I have to tell you there are a few disturbing photos doing the rounds.  One of them I found on my own phone and shows me posing with a complete stranger, a comatose gentleman, lying on a sofa in a bar at some time after three in the morning last Thursday.  Fair enough.  From the look on my face I seemed to be having quite a good time.  But the others are more worrying.  Why was I carrying a pink handbag?  And who is that??  

Ah…it was all tame innocent stuff.  I think we were so relieved to have made it out of “Andy’s” alive for the moment at least and able to rinse the taste of a shoulder of tuna, aged for 150 days on the deck of a rusty Pacific fishing boat, out of mouths with a succession of bottles of Cloudy Bay that two of our number decided to make friends with a party of Swiss travel agents in Tokyo on a reconnaissance trip.  That’s all there was to it.  Reminds me of long ago when I was at Bernstein and the story I told you about my journey back to Cambridge on the late night train, a girl and a bottle of whisky.  You may remember that one.  If you don’t let me know and I’ll sift about and see if I can find it.

Been a long tiring week.  I’ve a busy weekend ahead and, brace yourself, I had lunch at my desk today – ON A FRIDAY?! – so I might be heading off a wee bit early today.

PS.  As you are probably in the wind-down to Christmas you might like to take the Telegraph Latin test via the link below.  One of my colleagues ( actually the guy who discovered the girls were Swiss ) tells me he got 85%, but he’s half-Sicilian and anyway I don’t believe him.  I got 60%.  See what you can do and maybe let me know if you are as sad as me!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/10511235/Take-the-test-how-well-do-you-know-your-Latin.html