Last weekend I trekked out to the heady, paper-lantern-lit heights of the Mt Takao Beer Garden for 2 hours of all you can eat and drink mayhem with Pinku, Darin, Tyler, Clair and Jess. Photo op's abounded as the amber fluid flowed, this pic is a result of trying to capture Pinku's red-flushed booze face and not having much luck...

Thanks to all those lovely emails from unexpected people and the usual divine suspects regarding my most recent kinda depressing post. I feel all loved and stuff again (ha, I do love being the centre of attention sometimes). The cycle of gloom was on its outward flow when I wrote and also, sometimes posting negative stuff likes that kinda embarrasses you into inspiration. It worked. A bit, anyway. I actually opened photoshop today and played and it was fun, first time in a while. Also Mr Opinios's mention of the latest version of Gallery being out got my eyebrows all jumpity. (Thanks McG)

I finally made it down to visit Josh at Bondi Books in Kichijoji and was really excited by the collection of books on sale - he has worked hard to get a good quality collection of used books. Seriously tasty stuff, and cheap cheap cheap. Loads of cool paperbacks for less than ¥1000, and some great condition hard covers too. If you need some new (used) English books, do yourself a favour and go visit Josh down at Bondi Books. It'll be well worth your time. He's probably appreciate you selling your old good stuff to him if you're on your way out of town....

I'm getting really excited that I'm going to have a big burst of music action at the end of the month. My old friends, Australian Indie band Screamfeeder are coming to stay while they play some shows around town, and fabulous Tokyo slow-core-instrumental-emo-whatever-the-fuck-kinda-music-it-is band, Miaou have released their new full length album, Make These Things Alright and are touring the country with Canadian band Below the Sea. I'm going to make a special post to advertise these shows so the details will be up a bit later. I love having friends from home come and stay, it's always such a breath of fresh air to see Tokyo with new eyes.