Photographs from my trip

It was good to see everyone again in England, and I really enjoyed Japan, as well as Paris and Lisbon. So here are some randomly selected photographs from the hundreds Phuong and I took.

Dinner at the New Gulshan.

Dinner at the New Gulshan again. You can see Andrew better on this one, Lijun worse, and Stephen's expression is all the more Gumby-like.

Rothschild museum at Tring. When I say that I think that zebras look good on shelves, I do really mean it.

Shira and me in Kensington Gardens.

In the pub in St Albans. Richard tries to work out whether John really turned up, or whether it is just a very well constructed waxwork.

Andrew Kanaber and I somewhere. Might be Hemel Hempsted.

Zack talks to the boxes, cause the face ain't listening.

Lisbon

I'd never been to Portugal before, and it was much sunnier than anywhere else... so happy smiling faces all round.

Phuong took this picture of the new bridge in Newcastle/Gateshead. He's very proud of it (and they're very proud of the bridge).

Insert your own caption.

Phuong tries to feed a picture of a donkey...

Lisbon is topographically splendid.

Paris

Paris over New Year was fun. The Parigianians eat an awful lot of foie gras over the festive period. They must almost run out of floorboards to nail the ducks to.

Phuong and I just before the accident.

(I'm only joking...)

Illuminations and funfair in the Grand Palais.

The window theme at Printemps was an English Christmas. As you can see...

...note flower-pattern everything.

Obligatory shrine picture. I took a lot of these, but I won't bore you.

TOKYO

Tokyo was an amazing experience. It is such an intense and exhilhirating place, and completely different to anywhere else I've ever been. And the trains. Let me tell you about the trains.
You see, there are the Shinkansen, but there are also the plethora of different private railway companies, as
well of course as the vast JR East network, of which the hub is the Yamanote line. And then there are the two different metro companies,
which interwork extensively onto both the JR and private lines. There are even services that go from Narita airport, on the Keisei line, onto the metro, and then onto another private company line to Haneda. Shinjuku station is the busiest, yet has no Shinkansen services at all
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Mt Fuji at sunset, from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building

Nikko is a beautiful shrine town up in the hills above Tokyo. This is the sacred bridge. Depending on how you look at it, it is either four hundred years old, or three years old (it has been regularly rebuilt).

In Japan, you can buy trains from vending machines. How cool is that?

In Japan, we also bought a train set. But only a small one.

The Tobu railway is the private railway that runs to Nikko. This is a Spacia express train.

We stayed in a traditional Japanese-style inn. Do we look silly enough yet?

Market selling, umm, something.

Only in Japan can you buy the apotheosis of Kit-Kat kulture: the Kit-Kat Chocolatier Wine. They really do taste of wine.

This is why we were delayed 30 hours on the way back: it had snowed heavily in Tokyo. Plus Narita airport is crap... think the rice farmers had the right idea after all.

Just to prove it does snow in Australia sometimes. This is Phuong and me at Perisher, a ski resort (though not in the ski season) in the Australian Alps (like the European Alps, only flatter. So not very like them at all).