Go easy on the caffeine, love

Yukie Nakama as Alice in Wonderland, with the "Drink Me" super-size can of Wonda coffee.

Don't have a cow

A woodcut print of a Cornish cow I found by chance in the Kanda area. What on earth the cow was doing in the secondhand bookshop mecca in central Tokyo is anyone's guess.

Feminine sweat

On sale to the discerning customer in downtown Ginza.

Push bike

Walking out of a coffee shop yesterday I nearly got run down by a policeman on a bike weaving his way through the salarymen on the sidewalk.

Tweaked

The picture taken in the snow last Saturday (see below) on my keitai camera was looking a bit dull. So, I got my box of tricks out and tweaked the image. Here is the result. Supposed to be a vaguely Impressionistic oil on canvas look. Marks out of ten for effort?

Playing in the snow

It snowed heavily last Saturday here in Tokyo. After attending a white wedding in Aoyama, I returned home, changed out of my glad rags, then decided to head straight back out into the wintry weather to capture the scene with my keitai camera.

And just what are the dogs in Toyama wearing this year, George?

The body-conscious look is definitely making a comeback. That figure-hugging fashion is fast becoming a staple on every dog's body. And as for colours, well, think yellow, think black, think bee-autiful.

Snow country like Japan

Those of us lucky enough to live on the Pacific coast of Japan rarely have to shovel snow. In areas like Toyama and Niigata, it is just another job to get on with. And for some reason, it always seems to be women and old men who do it. Every winter there are a number of deaths as 80-year-old guys slip and fall from roofs they are trying to clear of snow.

I'm a crab, get me out of here!

At about 3pm on December 31st I was walking past a fishmonger's run by an elderly couple. They were apologising to a customer that all they had left was crab. Trays of them. Later I walked by again and heard the old woman berating her husband. Maybe it was all his fault that they were left with all that unsold stock. And with the shop not due to open for another two days . . .

What has 2006 in store for you?

A traditional part of the Japanese New Year is a visit to the local shrine where you pray for a healthy happy year. Then, if you want to know a bit more about what lies ahead, you splash out 100 yen on a piece of paper which will predict what sort of year you will have. Here the woman in red is reading what she can expect in the months to come. Once she's read it, she adds her paper to all the others tied up nearby.

Happy New Year

To see in the new year Kyoko and I went to her mum's in Toyama prefecture. Where she lives used to be called Shin Minato until a few months ago, but now it's merged with a few of its neighbours and is called Imizu. It's a port on the Sea of Japan, and as you can see from the photo, it gets a bit chilly in winter. Being something of a 'hare-otoko' (someone who takes good weather wherever they go), we had sunshine for two days on the trot, which is almost unheard of in these parts.