Christmas!!

well, just back in the land of the rising sun, from the land of the...well, never rising sun it seems. had 10 lovely days in the uk. saw many many friends, and had a lovely time. ate lots, drank lots and all the usual christmas stuff. landed on the 23rd, spent the night in london with tam, went to a lovely pub and had a great dinner (no fish or rice in sight!). spent the 24th pottering around london/clapham. to be honest, ive never really liked london, (being a yorkshireman, its engrained in us to hate london), but i actually like it now, quite a cool place really. christmas eve, we drove up north, dropped tam off at her bro's in nottingham, and drove up to sheffield and spent 3 days with my mum. got fed, watered and totally spoiled rotten, wasnt allowed to lift a finger, and was thoroughly lovely. my mum lives in the countryside just outside of sheffield, and its lovely there, she took me for a long walk to a proper old style english pub on boxing day (why its called boxing day...no one knows). left sheffield on the 28th very relaxed and went to nottingham. stayed at my house in notts with my lodger and my best mucka ryan and his girlfriend lucy. spent the next few days catching up with mates and going out. played a gig with my band, the mighty weeble, which was well cool..('well cool..'??? when did i start talking like a 15 year old??) anyway, loved the gig, was great to play again. went to watch sheffield united on tv in a pub with my bro, managed to beat arsenal 1-0 for the first time in 33 years, which was ace (arsenal were in the final of the european cup last year!) apart from that, spent my time chilling out with mates and trying to sort my house out and doing grown up stuff like buying windows, kitchens, carpets etc...saw people i hadnt seen since my leaving party in 2004, who are great great friends of mine, saw my surrogate nottingham family, the bett's which was lovely, again, got watered and fed and spoiled!

new years eve was cool, went to a bar called junktion 7 which is owned by tami's sister. went out with neil, my older brother and his girlfriend and a load of his mates. im never a huge fan of new years eve, too much pressure and stress etc... but i always manage to have a good time. anyway, again, i had a good time, got predictably drunk, and even danced a little (a little badly no doubt) but was much fun. staggered into a taxi at a relatively reasonable hour of 2am.

and thats about it really, nothing staggeringly interesting to report. was nice to see people, but i cant say that i want to move back to the uk just yet, nice for a holiday, but wouldnt want to live there. funny, but most of the time i walked around with my ipod on, and it was more like some nostalgic cinema trailer than reality most of the time, guess thats what music can do for you. and to be honest, its nice to be back in japan...