…and it really does feel like home at the moment. After three weeks away, I finally got back to Japan on Sunday morning.
I left India on Saturday morning (local time), and was happy to get out that hell hole of an airport. No duty free shopping was done (for gifts to bring home) because there were no places to do duty free shopping!
I finally got to Singapore that evening (19:20 Singapore time) after a rather nasty flight. Singapore Airlines, who are normally reasonable or very good. However, the staff were very gumpy, probably caused by a few extremely rude passengers (mainly Indian). Bastard next to me get shoving his elbow into me, and was being particulary nasty to the stewardesses.
Singapore was great though, that airport kicks arse! First thing was off to the duty free wine shop to get Yuko a bottle of Wolfblass Grey Label and a Black Label. Those lovely people then decided to give me some free wine glasses. Excellent, gifts for Yuko’s parents, and I didn’t need to buy anything ;)
Next up was an hour in the massage parlour, and a shower. Helped me feel a bit better, ready for the flight from Singapore to Tokyo.
Before heading off, I went over to the bookshop to buy Private Dancer. My line manager had already brought this book and recommended. It’s a pretty interesting read, and I can’t believe the stupidity of these foreign guys who fall for the Thai dancers/hookers, and get completely screwed-over (thats, screwed-over, not screwed….. well, that happens to, but hey) by them.
Finally, at 23:30, that night, I finally headed for Japan, getting there at 07:30 on the Sunday morning.
Yuko, silly girl, decided she was going to meet me there, so she ended up getting up early on Sunday morning too. As soon as we got home, we both fell asleep. A truely lazy day… though we did venture out in the evening for some food.
Boy was it great to eat Japanese food again, suprised I missed it that much actually. Washed down with a Guiness (in a 75% scale Guiness pint glass :) ).

This was the longest I’ve ever been away from Japan. 11 months ago, I was in Singapore for two weeks, but I came home for the weekend that time. One of the things I noticed was that I could smell that distinctive ‘Japan’ smell. I noticed it when I first came here on holiday. Again, I noticed it when I moved out here. But after a month or so, I couldn’t detect it anymore more. A strange feeling, and the smell seemed to evoke a lot of memories (clever how smell does that ehh!).
During the 3 weeks away, Japan has slowly progressed into Autumn. How do I know this? Is it the change of colours in the leaves? Is it the cool, crisp wind? Nahhh. You can tell Autumn has started because all the pretty young ladies have started wearing skirts, with knee length, figure hugging boots (a.k.a FMB’s or ‘F**k Me Boots). They’ll still be wearing them in the winter when it starts to get cold, but they just HAVE to show off their slim fligures (the slim ones that is)… so they put up with it. I guess the idea is the boots are an attempt to keep warm and stay sexy looking at the same time.

Seriously though, we are moving into Autumn now. The leaves are slowly changing colour on some of the trees. So far though, looks like the really vivid change to red and yellow hasn’t happened yet. I’m hoping it will be like last year, and the best ‘viewing’ time for this will be the last week of November, beginning of December. Then my family and friends get to see it, when they arrive here.
The temperatures are still pretty high during the day (compared to the UK), at around about 22 degrees C. But the nights are getting a little chilly, and the wind has a cold edge to it. Having been here a year now, I would have to say that Autumn, through to Spring is my favourite time of year.