Sayonara cherry blossoms! Inokashira Koen was just beautiful last week all covered in a blanket of cherry blossoms.... it was really cool to see the boats floating in pure pink. So sad I didn't really get to enjoy a drunken hanami party this year. Too busy, too much rain and unfortunate clashing schedules....

The good thing is that now the park is back to normal. The crowds have settled down, and it's fairly safe to resume riding through again. It kinda sucks having to share it with a couple of million people and their sake and stinky piles of rubbish for hanami. It was great last week, with all the falling blossoms and low-level crowds.

Been spending the weekend getting together a hard copy photo portfolio, something I've been meaning to do for a long time now but am now being pressed into for an interview I'm having tomorrow. Some mysterious photo project. Can't wait to hear the pitch. Hope it's cool.

Special thanks to Ms T and the Ashman for the risotto - couch - CSI session on Friday. Good food, fine company and ABC cable TV. It was weird to watch ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corp) news broadcasts sitting in a Tokyo loungeroom.

It was amusingly shocking to hear how striney the pert and pretty blonde newsreader was... I enjoyed imitating her accent. Niket (Isreali fella) didn't know I was Australian until then. We've known each other for at least 18 months.... The longer you stay away the more neutral the accent becomes I guess. My teaching colleague tells me I have a "mid-atlantic" accent, meaning neither British-English nor American-English - first time I've ever really hard of this concept.

My language is definitely changing. It's becoming an eclectic hybrid of Australian, Japanese and American. Key Japanese words pepper sentences, and the American influence shows with words like trash (actually, I use the Japanese word gomi more than any English word) and store and "take" a shower and recently (just suddenly) started writing my dates month first and think in 24:00 time and roll my R's especially if they come at the end of the word - i.e. "have a show-AH" has become "take a show-errrrr". I even sometimes drop the U in words like colour and spell centre center when I'm in a class (so they don't get confused) or emailing an American-English speaker... and the funny part is - it hardly registers with me. I notice it after the fact! My patriotic antipodean ancestors must be kicking in their graves.