Back in the house now, after spending the last week in the wet and grey depths of South West Wales… yep, the annual trip to my folks for Xmas has returned now that we are in this part of the world. Most relaxing, shame the weather is not so great at the moment.

We were pretty much cut off from the world there… well relatively speaking. My parents live in a rather nasty blackspot when it comes to mobile phone reception, and they aren’t connected to the Net (luckily the sister is)… and then we had more problems with our phones. Turned out that Vodafone had suspended our accounts on Boxing Day. Reason was that we had run up a huge phone bill. Actually, lets correct that… Yuko had run up a huge phone bill gossiping with her mum one day. Wrist has now been slapped and Skype WILL be used from now on! :)

New Year is going to be pretty quiet, chilling out. Having said that, we’ll be off to the nice Portugese restaurant again next Tuesday, to say goodbye to our friend Sachiko (who returns to Japan after spending some time here in Cardiff and Bath studying).
Tonight night, we’ll be eating Japanese food… Soba noodles to be precise. This is traditionally, the long length of the noodles representing the coming year.