Englanding #11 : Birmingham

Waiting for the last train home.


I got drunk, kinda, and fell asleep on the previous train, missing my stop so that I had to jump off and dash around to catch a train going in the opposite direction. As a side note, I still love the Selfridges building.

Drawing not writing contd.

After that Eurovision bonanza last week I found myself completely (and, in my opinion, understandably) unable to post on this blog. I'll fill in the blanks now (from the throne of Monday) but those were positively treatises on Eurovision, so it wasn't like I didn't put in the hours last week.

Saturday night I got drunk and drew some pictures of people on the board where I post. Like this one:


Considering I was pretty trolleyed when I got home and I was drawing with a brushtip marker, freehand with no correction, I'm pretty happy how they turned out. I should probably drink and draw more often.

Two Notable Public Appearances by Japanese Public Figures

This was world news, I even found an ITN piece about it on youtube, the Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa was pretty clearly trolleyed on something at a G7 meeting in Rome, here some of the highlights:

And here's where he falls asleep:

So apparently Aso's approval rating is below 10% and people are wondering if he'll quit. Jesus, please not another Prime Minister quitting - just call an election already.

So, while Nakagawa was making a tit of himself, under the influence of fatigue, jetlag and cold medication or whatever, Murakami Haruki made a fantastic speech collection the Jerusalem prize in Israel:

That's like, balance or something, right?

aka I Got Drunk

From the top once more - this Saturday post comes courtesy of Monday, because you can't stay out all night and become quite ludicrously drunk and keep your blog posts punctual at the same time. One precludes the other.

Some notes: pan-asian cuisine tastes the same in Japan as it does in England. Stanley Market is a really popular restaurant in Sapporo but it didn't blow me away.

The last few minutes killing time until the first train was spent in a convenience store (it's pretty standard practice) but this time I was still drunk at 6am so I came away with the most ludicrously macho magazine in the world, chocolate biscuits with Disney characters on them and a sweet potato, sugar and sesame flavoured Kit Kat. Mmmm.