Neil Hopcroft

Bleurgh, its 6pm saturday, and I’ve just woken up. How did that happen? There was so much I had to do today.

Arrived. I’m now in my new flat. Theres a 24 hour supermarket around the corner, with the best meat counter I’ve seen since I arrived here, perfect for those 4am steak cravings. Now all I gotta do is figure out how to microwave it. Mobile coverage here (or Foma coverage at least) is poor, so […]

The London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company “In 1849, Sir Richard Broun proposed buying a huge tract of land at what is now the Surrey village of Brookwood to build a vast new cemetery for London’s dead. The 2,000-acre plot he had in mind – soon dubbed “London’s Necropolis” – was about 25 miles (40km) […]

Oh, and apparently Japanese people do get dyslexia, the kanji all come out in the wrong order….I find this strangely reassuring.

I picked up the keys for my new flat today – I’m only there for one month but that is now all paid for, leaving me with three grand to live on until my transfer comes from the UK (about 15 quid). I’ve not seen the place yet, but I’m sure there’ll be no problems. […]

Met up with jamese and Damian last night for Mirage at Head Power – but we went for some food first at a ‘private dining restaurant’, chosen by Tomako, Damians girlfriend. We wandered apparently lost through Kabukicho until suddenly we arrived at a big steel door, which opened to let us into a basement where […]

Back at work, now, and its almost like I never went away. Back into the fights about whos responsibility this thing is, why that thing hasn’t happened yet, who should make the next move on the other thing. The jetlag is catching up with me now, though. Only two hours sleep last night, then a […]

This has made me speechless…I can’t believe I inhabit the same internet as these people. (though, it’ll probably be appreciated more by those who understand Japanese – turning on the subtitles helps but for me that is only enough to tell me there are more jokes in there that, right now, there is no way […]

Another first – this time reading a real book in less than 24 hours. I’ve never been a particularly prolific reader, given the way the words don’t really make much sense and swim around on the page, and that by the time I’ve got to the end of a sentence I’ve forgotten where it started. […]

With my usual exquisite planning skills I landed in Tokyo on the hottest day since records began – it is traditionally the hottest day of the year, complete with a ceremony involving burning herbs in a pot on your head. Fortunately they didn’t require that as part of the entry conditions. Indeed, there weren’t even […]