Much time last week was spent pondering a) what to do today, b) what to do in life and c) what to do to survive the positively boiling weather. In an effort to find solutions to "a" and "b" I ended up instead subjecting myself to the ridiculous weather and wondering round the streets of Shinjuku (which are possibly like the streets of Philadelphia, but without Bruce Springsteen's low growl for accompaniment). On the way I stopped to look at estate agents and flowers, and wondered what many strange buildings were. One of them turned out to be the ministry of defence. It's a good job I wasn't too nosey or I could have ended up in Guantanamo bay. But it was have been the Japanese version with nice toilets.

Anyway, the quiet days were balanced by 2 more nights at karaoke. I feel 3 times shows true commitment, especially as 90 percent of the songs we sang were in Japanese. Yuko and I managed a rather splendid (as in scary) performance of TRF's "Boy Meets Girl", the song that first turned me onto J-pop. It's amazing how you can read Japanese when you put yourself under pressure...