Blank Doll arrives.

Hello hello! It's been terribly long since I last blogged here and it is entirely my fault. I know. I should have blogged more often, especially upon returning from Japan.

A week has passed since my trip to Japan but I suppose the obligatory post about my trip is, well, obligatory so there.

Kyoto, Osaka and Tokyo. I set out to Japan wanting to see the older, softer side of the country and I did in Kyoto and Osaka. Tokyo was not as pretty as I thought it would be and it was a veritable behemoth of a city. It reminded me of Heart of Darkness for it was truly an overheated (trust me, the Japanese make the best central heating systems in the world) catacomb. Who could fathom the existence of 12 endless floors of shops? Who could upend and fold an entire avenue into a building? They are not tall, mind you, these monuments of Tokyoite progress. Yet, next to them, Man seems so tiny, so much less than the things that he has made.

I think it is the service that I miss the most along with the fact that most people have a sense of fashion, no matter how strange.

Interestingly, I thought the food was rather cheap. We ate well enough I suppose. The required wagyu beef, toro, sashimi, all the little snacks along the way (fishcake on a stick!), ice cream, crepe cones, chilled udon and more (basically, what we did was to comb the entire restaurant floor of one of the departmental stores and then enter random restaurants). I got to eat my macarons from Pierre Herme which made me very happy.

Coming back was a little bit of a shock. You never realise how ugly your own country can be until you compare it with another. Or rather, how ugly we as a race can be. I've spoken about that before so I shan't talk about it again.

Returning, I found myself best soldier for the month of November. Who would have thought, a clerk!

Then there is the issue of cab fare hikes. This is a little absurd I think. It seems to me illogical for taxi rates to be regulated by the government even as it refuses to classify cabs as public transport and so subsidise it.

Christmas eve approaches. Gosh, a year gone.

C'est tout.