On Thursday I went to Durham for a Blackboard conference. It is the UK Blackboard Users' Conference that happens every year in Durham. I was the only one from Sheffield Hallam that went. The theme of the conference was web 2.0, which ties in well to trying to transform education at higher education in general, as it is all about involving internet users rather than just having them look at information.

The keynote was by a guy from the Open University, though it seemed like he plagiarized half his keynote address. I read an article on the web before the conference that he quoted word for word without citing them. I led a discussion about how the web 2.0 trend might affect e-learning. I think my session went well, as it was very interactive, and many people told me they enjoyed it afterwards. I was hoping for about 20 people so we could have a good discussion. As it was, the room had about 55 people in it, and there weren't even that many chairs. There were people sitting on the floor and standing in the hallway looking through the doorway. I enjoyed the rest of the conference sessions that day too.

The weather was pretty horrible in Durham: cold and rainy. The conference was about a mile or two out of the town center (not too far really). But for some reason, the taxis wouldn't come out to the business school to get us. I called several taxi companies at 6:30 and they all said they were fully booked. So I walked the 20 minutes back into town to my hotel. When I got there, there were three taxis from one of the companies I called sitting there waiting in a taxi stand. Seems strange they didn't want the business.

As a presenter, they gave me a complementary wireless powerpoint thing with laser pointer. Mine seems to be broken though. I'll have to send them an email about it.

At night, there was a conference dinner in one of the colleges. It was in a converted chapel. It has been turned into a dinner and dance venue, with the altar as a bar. It still has an organ too. Definitely not your usual dinner venue. The dinner was pretty good, and I had an interesting conversation with several other delegates.

The second day of the conference was good. I made friends with two guys from the Netherlands, and I had lunch with the Vice President of Customer Services for Blackboard, Craig Chanoff. It's always good to have the ear of someone high up in Blackboard to help get SHU needs across, but Craig was also a nice guy and I enjoyed talking with him.

After the conference, I talked a lot with another delegate who was going back to Sheffield. His name was Guy, and his brother is at the University of Sheffield. Once we arrived back in Sheffield, Victoria was at a pub, so I went with Guy and his brother Lance to the Blue Moon Cafe, a vegetarian restaurant. Guy works at the University of Reading, and does a similar job to mine. I gather they are a much smaller e-learning team there.

All in all, the conference was good fun. The only bad thing is that the LTI Christmas party was Thursday night, so I had to miss that. Last year I missed it for the same conference too.

This past week I went to a conference in Birmingham. It was the annual SEDA (Staff and Educational Developer's Conference). I submitted a workshop for it and was accepted, so I did that during the first session on Tuesday morning. The session was pretty well attended (18) compared to some I went to (one had 4) later. The workshop was all about trying to think outside of the box and come up with new ways to reach staff with new educational development opportunities. The problem was that several of the groups I dividied them into had real trouble coming up with any new ideas, and kept getting distracted by other things. That's educational developers for you.

I went to the conference last year but came home between days (it's a two day conference). This year I stayed over at the conference hotel. It was a nice hotel, 3 stars. However, it cost an insane amount (155 pounds for a single/300 dollars!). It is in the center of Birmingham, so that helps explain it, and hotels are generally overpriced in England from what I can tell. The room was nice though, and there were speakers in the bathroom, which was nice for taking a bath and watching TV.

The food was really good last year at the conference, and it didn't disappoint this year. The lunches were amazing in the variety of foods you could choose from. However, the conference dinner was pretty bad for some reason. Everyone commented on it.

I got some good stuff out of the conference, but two of the 5 sessions I went to were advertised as one thing, but turned out to be something different. One of them was about e-learning and was the sort of thing Sheffield Hallam was doing 3 years ago. It didn't have any interactive elements to it, which is one of the things SEDA sessions are supposed to have. By contrast, mine was entirely interactive.

I went to a Tesco supermarket on Tuesday night because I needed a pumpkin for Thanksgiving. The pumpkin I had bought awhile ago had started going bad, so I was only able to use half of it. Luckily there was a Tesco down the road from the hotel in Birmingham, so I got the pumpkin there. They don't sell canned pumpkin, so you have to make the pie from fresh pumpkin, which isn't that hard actually.

The other food related item of my trip was a visit to Krispy Kreme donuts. There are only Krispy Kreme stores in Birmingham and London, so it was my only chance to get some before Christmas. I took my co-worker Sally there after the conference and we split a dozen. They are much more expensive in the UK too, at around 14 dollars a dozen.

I returned from the conference Wednesday night and spent most of the night making dinner and then pumpkin pie. I wanted to bring one pie into work on Thanksgiving, and have another for the dinner Thursday night. That night we had four of Victoria's friends from the teacher training course over for dinner. I made sweet potato casserole, green beans, rolls, yorkshire puddings, pie, and we had cranberry sauce and one of those turkey breasts with stuffing in it. I haven't gotten up the courage to bake a real turkey yet. It takes too long probably, since I don't have the day off work.

The one hitch was that there was a vegetarian (we had some veggie burgers handy) and one girl was allergic to gluten. So I ended up making mini-crustless pies in muffin wrappers for her. It all worked out in the end, but just took some extra work. Everyone had a good time. The only trouble that arose was when they arrived. Victoria has asked everyone to bring wine, but it seems they all brought flowers instead. I had to sneak outside and run to the 24-hour supermarket to get some more wine. I did suggest making wine out of the flowers, but Victoria thought that might not go down well. I got to webcam with my family after dinner, which was nice. There were a lot of new people at my parents' house for Thanksgiving, including Howard and Pam, an uncle and aunt from California. All and all I had a very good Thanksgiving.

I thought you might find this news story about Sheffield Hallam interesting. It would seem the national ratings system is a bit faulty in its methodology. Not sure we should be number one, but it has to do with teaching quality compared to objectives, rather than academic performance of the students. We do put a lot of effort into improving teaching at the university, so it does make some sense.

Sorry I haven't written much recently. I will try to put up some more photos soon. Victoria's teacher training course is in full swing, and she is always working hard. Soon she'll be on placement in schools, plus have homework for the university. It is definitely a lot of work. The one good thing is that, unlike in the US, you don't have to pay to take the course. In fact, they pay you a bursary depending on the subject you are teaching, and how many teachers are needed in that subject. There's also no commitment to teaching after you finish, which is nice.

My role at work is changing a bit too. We've hired a company called Presidium to offer 24 hour, 7 day a week Blackboard support for our staff. There are some teething problems, but hopefully those will be ironed out soon. It should give me flexibility to be able to work on new projects, instead of having to support simple queries from staff members.

We've had a nice long summer here in England, the warmest and longest on public record apparently. However, in the last two weeks it has come to an abrupt end, and the temperatures have dropped quickly, along with daylight. It's amazing the difference it makes being farther north than I have before. It gets dark very early now, and I think after daylight savings time ends, it will be even worse. You pretty much come home in darkness from work.

Some good news is that Paul and Keiko are going to have a baby. However, this has been overshadowed by concern that my dad may have bile duct cancer. We're still waiting for the results from specific tests to determine if he actually does have cancer or something that tests similar to it. The waiting game is nerve-wracking though.

Japan continued - After the Wedding


After the wedding, there was a reception for family members and work bosses at a "European-style" venue, which looked a bit like an Italian villa.


There was a lovely dessert buffet in place of a wedding cake. It looked very nice, and they kept it hidden on the patio until then. Luckily the weather was nice the day of the wedding.


At the end of the reception, each of the parents made a speech about their child, and Paul and Keiko each read a letter they had written to their parents. It was very emotional.

There was also a party for the younger friends who didn't come to the wedding. After a dinner, we went out to a bar where we did karaoke into the night. I don't have any photos though.


On Sunday we took a long series of trains back to Tokyo. We arrived in the afternoon and met Chris, Victoria's friend who lives in London. We took him to Shibuya to the famous intersection there.


We also went and did karaoke, which he loved. I think after we left Japan, he went several more times.


He and I did a good Meatloaf rendition during karaoke. We couldn't stay with him all night though, because we had to take a train for an hour to Narita, which is the town next to the airport.


Our flight was Monday morning, so we took a free shuttle to the airport and flew back to Manchester. After a long train ride with jet lag, we made it home and had a sleep.

Japan continued - Wedding pictures


During the ceremony, everyone had to drink ceremonial sake. First Paul and Keiko did it, then the rest of us.


Here are the bride and groom posing after the ceremony. Behind them you can see the shrine (Izumo Taisha) where the ceremony was held. The shrine is very famous throughout Japan. Every October all of the Shinto gods are supposed to go there to visit it for a month.


After the ceremony was over, we gathered outside and had both families pose together. I love this picture because the photographer's assistant was running around like crazy adjusting everything, and she is caught mid-stride running out of the picture.


Here's a nice picture of Miles, Paul, Keiko, and Chihiro (Keiko's cousin).


Keiko and Paul under giant ropes that you are supposed to try to stick coins into by throwing them upwards.

Both of the fathers


Victoria and Me in front of the shrine



















Victoria and Keiko





























Chihiro's kimono

Japan continued - Izumo part of the trip

On Thursday, Paul and Keiko were busy with last minute wedding preparations, so Miles, Victoria, and I took a train to Matsue to see the castle there. Dad came along also, but went to see samurai houses instead, so we didn't see him much except on the trains there and back. Unfortunately, it was raining on and off much of the time. Once we arrived at the castle, we were cold and hungry, so we tried to find some food, but there were no restaurants nearby. We did manage to find a cosy little ramen restaurant with amazing presentation of the noodles.


After a delicious meal, we headed into the castle complex. It is one of Japan's original wooden castles, so it was lucky to have avoided most of the fires and bombings that destroyed many of the other original castles.


The view from the top was nice, but I liked the view down into the courtyard especially.


Once we got back to Paul and Keiko's place, we found out they had bought us the cutest muffin ever. You'd hardly think a muffin could be cute, but this one definitely was.


It also had an interesting bag which I took a picture of.


Friday was the day of the wedding. We were picked up by a taxi and taken to the waiting room for the shrine. Here's Victoria, Mom, and Dad.


And here's Miles, Keith, and Anna.

Paul and Keiko arrived in traditional Japanese attire. Keiko's kimono was very pretty.

Japan trip continued - Kyoto

Our first night in Kyoto, we relaxed and did a little karaoke.


On Monday we took a trip to Nara from Kyoto, because Victoria had never been. They have hundreds of deer that are protected as a national treasure which roam around and get fed.


In Nara there is a giant bronze Buddha statue, which we went inside this temple to visit.


Inside the temple there is a hole in one of the support columns. Supposedly if you can squeeze through the hole you will have a place reserved for you in paradise. Both of us managed to squeeze through, though I had some difficulty.

Unfortunately we both ate some bad food and Victoria was very sick, so we ended up going back to Kyoto after Nara.


Tuesday we went to the Golden Temple, Kinkaku-ji in the morning.


Here's me in front of the Golden Temple.


Wednesday, before heading to Izumo to Paul's house, we made a trip to Fushimi Inari Taisha, a shrine next to a mountain with tons of orange torii gates on it.

While we were walking through the gates, a million schoolkids ran by excitedly.


On the train ride to Paul's place, we passed by a really neat mountain/volcano. Everyone met us at the train station that evening and we crammed into Paul and Keiko's tiny flat along with Miles, Paul's friend from Davidson.

April 2006 Japan trip continued...

On the Thursday we spent much of the day on trains going to Toyama. When we arrived, we were met at the station by Amir's girlfriend Vita. She is Russian and was very nice, but she didn't really speak English. We had to remember all our Japanese.

We spent several days in Toyama, seeing old friends like Amir, and viewing the cherry blossoms. We were very lucky in our timing, because the cherry blossoms were in full bloom in Toyama when we were there.







We got to meet everyone from the Toyama Cosmopolitan Association who we knew before. Here they are in a picture. Miyuki organised a lunch for us, and she took us to see the cherry blossoms at night at the botanical gardens.

On Friday we went to Wago, Victoria's old junior high, and I went to Horikawa by myself, because Victoria was exhausted. Our time in Toyama was a whirlwind of meeting friends and seeing the city. On Sunday morning we had to move on to Kyoto.

I'm back at work after a week in Norwich. We had a nice and relaxing time, though the weather could've been better.

Now the weather has turned mysteriously sunny and warmer, after being rainy and cool for the past few weeks. It's welcome, but a bit late.

At work, things have really gotten busy. I am hiring a new student assistant at work, and we have just shortlisted 5 candidates. The interview is Friday. We are also in the middle of upgrading our student portal. The new look should be live now. It is exciting, but means lots of work for me.

Today I got on a bus to get from the other campus to my flat, and I was shocked by another bus fare raise. When I first came to Sheffield last year, the bus price to go about 2 miles was 80 pence, or about $1.60. Part was through the year it was raised to a pound. Today it was 1 pound 50 pence! It's nearly doubled in one year, which seems ridiculous. The main cause is that several years ago they privatized the bus system, whereas it was city-owned before. However, they didn't bother to create real competition in the buses. 95% of the buses were owned by one company, First. This meant they could basically charge whatever they wanted. Luckily, there is some hope on the horizon. The company that owns the tram, Stagecoach, has recently bought a small bus carrier and started building a fleet of buses. They are offering a weekly joint bus-tram pass at a lower cost than the weekly bus pass from First. Hopefully First will respond with some better prices.

To put it in perspective, in London it costs less (about 1.20) to ride a bus from one end of the city to the other, considerably longer than 2 miles.

I have to think about getting a new passport in the next 6 months because mine is going to expire. It turns out they just started making the new e-passports, which have data chips in them with copies of your image and data to avoid tampering. It's the whole biometric passport thing people have been talking about. All that is ok and everything, but what's really cool is they redesigned the way the passports look so they are much more interesting (and hard to forge I imagine). Check out a little slideshow of what the new passports look like.

I don't know if I'll be able to get the new one though, as they have only started releasing them in the Colorado facility. The State Dept. says they will be making them everywhere by the end of 2006, but I don't know if I should wait that long.

Well, we've made it back from America safely. Back to freezing cold weather. Apparently there was a heat wave while we were in the US, but today I had to wear a sweater and a raincoat to work because of the weather. Hopefully it will improve before we go to visit Victoria's parents at the end of the week.

I have finally recovered from jet lag, and we are both thankful we got into the country right before the terror alert which has made flying in the UK a real pain.

Our only problem on the flight back was a thunderstorm that hovered above RDU for 3.5 hours. This meant we would've missed our Boston-Manchester flight, so the kind ladies at American switched us to the Raleigh-London flight, and we got a British Air flight from London to Manchester. Unfortunately, this meant we got home much later than expected, but it would've been even later if we had ended up stuck in Boston. Amazingly our luggage arrived with us in Manchester. The one positive thing is that the BA flight was economy-plus, and this meant a pre-flight visit to the executive lounge, where we had free breakfast foods and free drinks. It was a very comfortable way to spend the hours before our connecting flight.

Going back to work has left me in a bit of a daze. I got a round of applause from the people who have been covering my job for the last month. Then everyone else promptly went on holiday for the rest of August.

On Saturday I went to Alton Towers with Robin. We went on lots of roller coasters, so it was a great time. There was only one ride we wanted to go on but couldn't: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. There was a limitation that only people with kids could go on it until after 3pm. We tried after 3, but there was a huge line, about an hour plus for it. We did manage to go on all the roller coasters though. The fastest start was Rita Queen of Speed with 0-62mph in 2.5 seconds. That's pretty fast. It did a cable launch to start the cars. The only faster launch coaster I have been on is the Hypersonic XLC, which is a compressed air coaster. It did 0-80 in 1.8 seconds. I actually could tell the difference, because in the Hypersonic one it pressed my arms backwards with such force. Rita was perhaps a more interesting coaster though as it kept going for awhile after the launch. Alton Towers is also neat because there is a historic castle in the middle, though it seemed to be in desperate need of renovation.

Apologies for not having posted sooner. Things have been very hectic at work. I spent three days in Newcastle at a conference on plagiarism. It was an interesting conference, and I made a lot of good contacts. I was part of a symposium at the end of the conference, but many people had left by then. Still, I suppose it went fine from my point of view.

Victoria and I went to Salzburg and a tiny town near Salzburg called St. Gilgen. The trip was a 5-year reunion for Victoria's friends from when she was studying abroad in Salzburg, so about 9 people were there. St. Gilgen is really pretty and the weather was perfect while we were there. We are still awaiting summer in England. I had to wear a sweater the other day. Originally we had the Salzburg trip figured as our only non-wedding trip so far. However, Chris proposed to Gisella during the trip so it had a weddingish theme too. Guess that means there will be another wedding sometime next year.

Tomorrow we are heading to the U.S. for my cousin Edward's wedding. We are heading to D.C. for several days, and to the mountains. Then we will be in Raleigh the week of the wedding (the 29th). Finally we will go to the beach for a week to rest before coming back.

The World Cup has started, and everyone seems swept up by the mania of it. Every ad on TV is World Cup-themed and tons of people are walking around wearing England football (soccer) jerseys. Things have started off well for England, because they won their first game, and the other two teams tied, so they are ahead of everyone in the group. If they win the second game, they will be guaranteed to advance. Hopefully Trinidad and Tobego won't prove to be too much of an obstacle.

The lecturer's pay dispute has finally been resolved, paving the way for exams to be finished, and grading of coursework to be done. It's a good thing it has ended, because I think the students were going to start really suffering in some cases. They wanted a 23% pay rise over three years (typically it has been 3% each year to counter inflation). They ended up settling for much less than they wanted, 13.1% over three years, with 3% a year each fall as usual, plus 1% in February, and 2.5% in fall 2008. So I will have to wait a long time to feel any added benefit from it.

Bill and Strange Panda's blog has been updated from December 2005. It's gotten more up to date than mine, so you may want to look at it. Those nanimals are so good at keeping their blog up to date!

Last night we had a bit of unwelcome excitement. Victoria heard someone sawing something outside. She looked out the window and saw a man next to our fire escape door sawing at it. She showed me than went and called the police. They arrived pretty quickly, but the guy ran off before they could come. He disappeared while we were calling the police and we didn't have a very good description of him, mostly since we were staring straight down at him from four stories up. We could describe the top of his head mostly.

In the end, he never got into the building, but he did seem to cut about 3 feet of metal off the bottom of our lightning rod. We had about three police cars, including police dogs on the scene. I imagine the guy was looking for an office building to break into after hours, and didn't realize that people lived in our building. In the end, nothing really happened, but it was a bit scary for a moment or two.

Wednesday

Wednesday we took a series of trains up to Nikko, a small town with a series of famous temples and shrines nearby.


We stayed at the Narusawa Lodge, which is run by a really nice woman who came to the station to pick us up. After dropping off our bags, we headed to the temple complex, because we only had one day in Nikko.


There are about five major temples in Nikko, and they are the most ornate that I have ever seen in Japan.


This is the walkway between two of the temples.


Here is Victoria leaving one of the shrines.


Here we are in front of a shrine.


The best thing about Narusawa Lodge was the dog there, Beata.


However, Beata came with a warning which seemed to be mostly true.


Even the toilet came with instructions in the Narusawa Lodge.


Nikko was great, and the Narusawa Lodge was nice, but we could only stay one day. We went for a walk in the woods near the lodge after seeing the temples. It was very beautiful.

The next morning we started a long train journey to Toyama, and our host kindly gave us sandwiches for the train.

Here's some comments from the Japan trip:

Our trip officially started with going to Manchester on the Saturday night, because there are no trains to Manchester on early Sunday morning. We spend the night in a town not too far from Manchester, where Jane lives. Jane is Victoria's friend from university, and she lived in Sendai in Japan while we were there. Jane's boyfriend John was really nice, and he took us to a curry restaurant. We went to bed early because we had to wake up early, but they stayed out later.

Sunday morning we flew out from Manchester airport on Air France, via Paris. Charles de Gaulle has to be one of the worst laid out airports I have ever seen. In order to change between the five terminals, you need to take a shuttle bus, which seem to run every 10-20 minutes. Then you have to reenter security in order to enter the new terminal, for seemingly no reason at all. This process took over an hour in total, meaning we just made it to our connecting flight to Tokyo. The flight to Tokyo was not too bad, but both of our video consoles were not working, which meant it was a little boring. Neither of us could sleep much on the plane. When we arrived in Tokyo, there was another surprise: my bag was still in Paris. This turned out to be a bit of a blessing, as it was sent directly to the hotel rather than me having to lug it around or store it in a locker.

Being in Japan seemed great, but the problem was that it was early Monday morning and we were exhausted. We couldn't check into the hotel until about 3. We traded in our rail pass vouchers for the actual passes, then took the first train into Tokyo.


In Tokyo we found a nearby Wendy's where we got some food. Then we wandered around Ginza area, looking at the department stores. (pictured here)

After awhile we took a train to Ikebukuro, where our ryokan (traditional Japanese inn) was. Unfortunately we could not check in for a couple hours, so we ended up in a Starbucks nearby. We pretty much fell asleep there waiting. Eventually we could check in, so we went back to Kimi Ryokan. It was a really nice traditional ryokan in the middle of Tokyo. It was a good deal too. We really liked it. We just took a nap so as to not get totally off track. We got up for dinner, and found out my bag was going to arrive late at night rather than early as expected. For dinner we found a nice place to eat nearby. Unfortunately I misinterpreted a picture and ordered fried chicken cartiledge instead of fried chicken strips. We also had some ramen, so it wasn't a total loss. After dinner we went to bed pretty early, but I still didn't have any clothes or toiletries.


By Tuesday morning my bag had arrived, thankfully. After breakfast at Denny's (during which Victoria ate natto bravely), we took a train to Nippori station on the circle Yamanote line. From Nippori, we walked through a pretty graveyard (pictured here) and older part of Tokyo.


It started raining a lot during our walk and we had to buy some umbrellas. We decided not to go to Tokyo University which was the original plan. Instead we walked through Ueno park. In Ueno park we found some late blooming cherry blossoms, so we stopped to take this picture under them.


I was exhausted, so I sat in a phone booth, and Victoria took pictures of me.


Next we went to the famous crossing at Shibuya, the Times Square of Tokyo. It was raining, so we tried to get a seat in Starbucks to watch people cross. It was really crowded though, and we had to stand instead. Next door we found a live J-pop band playing in the middle of a record store. However, the security guards didn't seem to want people to stay and watch them and kept asking everyone to move away. It was a bit weird.

We went shopping in Shibuya and found a Uniqlo to buy some clothes at. I think Victoria bought two shirts there. For dinner, we went to a chain restaurant called Italian Saizeriya, which we used to go to a lot in Toyama. I think we had an early night because we were still exhausted.

The next morning we left Tokyo for Nikko, which I will write about in another post.

One interesting piece of trivia about Sheffield is that the world's oldest football (soccer) club was started here. Sheffield FC turns 150 next year, so there will be big celebrations in the city. Vernon tells us the chamber of commerce is also turning 150 next year, so they will try to do some joint celebrations. Sheffield FC is a very small football club, not one of the major professional ones here now. Vernon hopes to bring Barcelona's football team here to play Sheffield United in celebration of the 150 year anniversary. Should be interesting. Strangely, the world's oldest football pitch is at the rival of Sheffield FC, the Hallam FC. I wonder where the Sheffield FC club practiced originally...

Winter seems to be here in Sheffield again. It has been 10-15 degrees celsius and rainy almost every day since we got back from Spain. It's a bit depressing really.

Today there was a big celebration in the center of town. Last week all the hype was around the World Snooker Championship, which is always hosted in Sheffield. It attracts a lot of people from out of town, and there was also a continential European fair, with various things for sale.

Today's celebration was all about football (soccer of course). Sheffield has two teams, and one of them, Sheffield United, has been promoted to the premier league, Britain's top league for football teams. The system for football is different than any system we have in the U.S., so I'll explain it as best I can. There are about 3 or 4 football leagues, with the premier league being the highest, and the championship league being the second highest. Each year the worst 3 teams in a league drops to the league below the one they are currently in. The top three teams from each league get promoted to the next higher league, and the bottom three demoted to the league below. It would be as if minor league baseball teams could become major league teams if they did well enough.

It's big news for Sheffield as it means ticket sales will go up, and the team gets a large pool of money as well (76 million pounds) to buy players with. Hopefully it means I can go see a great team like Arsenal, Chelsea, or Manchester United play in Sheffield next year.

We are back in England now. The wedding was really nice, and we had a great time in Japan. I think we were both a little sorry we couldn't stay longer. However, with so many other weddings this year, there's only so much vacation time to go around.

I'll try to post pictures soon.

We're in Japan now. It is just as if I had never left in some ways. Prices are still pretty much the same, and the weather is rainy as always. All our old friends were still in Toyama, though some of my old teachers have been moved to new schools now. One of my teachers, Mrs. Akeno, is 5 months pregnant, so that is exciting.

We had the best weather of our trip in Kyoto, and now we are in Izumo, at my brother's apartment. We tried to go to the nearby city of Matsue today, but there were strong winds and rain, so our trip was a bit miserable. We did manage to find a nice little ramen place in the middle of nowhere, which was out bright spot in a rainy day. Matsue castle is nice. It looks small from afar, but is 6 stories high inside. It is one of only 12 remaining original castles in Japan. The rest were damaged in the war, torn down in the late 19th century, or burnt down in accidents. Many of the town castles, including Toyama's, are concrete reconstructions, which isn't so nice.

Tomorrow is my brother's wedding day. It sounds like it will be a busy day. Today seems to have been very stressful for Paul and Keiko, as there are many last minute things they have to do. Hopefully they will get everything done and still get a good night's rest. The rest of the family is cooking dinner tonight so they don't have to worry about food.

Unfortunately, the two weeks seem to be flying by, and we will be leaving Monday morning. It's a shame we have so many other wedding this year, because that meant we couldn't stay longer. At least we get to do a lot of world travel, though.

Our biggest news is that we are going to Japan this week! Much of the last couple weeks have been trying to save up money for all our trips, so we haven't done anything particularly exciting. Our flight is Sunday morning, and there don't seem to be an early trains on Sunday morning, so we have to go to Manchester the night before. We are staying with Jane, Victoria's friend who was also in Japan at the same time as us. It's a shame the train isn't running though, because it goes directly to Manchester airport from Sheffield. Our flight is with Air France, which means we change at Paris. I think the flight is about 14 hours total.

In Japan we are going to Tokyo, Nikko, Toyama, Kyoto, Nara, and then to Izumo for Paul's wedding. It looks like Chris, Victoria's friend who lives in London, will be in Tokyo when we are leaving, so we are going to meet him for drinks the last night of our trip. I'll write more about it after the trip obviously.

Our oven is officially broken. It is supposed to be fan-assisted, but the fan seems to have seized up, so it now takes about 3 hours to bake a potato. For once our landlord has been responsive and gotten someone in to look at it quickly. Many other maintenance tasks have lasted for months before being fixed. It looks like he will have to order a new fan, so we will have to wait for that.

We are gearing up for our trip to Japan. It is very exciting. We have the hotels booked now, so we are pretty much all set. We have been exchanging some money beforehand since the cash machines in Japan are not connected well internationally.

We will visit Tokyo, Nikko, Toyama, Kyoto, and Izumo. We are planning on seeing some new places in Kyoto. There is so much interesting stuff to see near Kyoto that it shouldn't be hard.

Snow and cold weather are the predominant themes in Sheffield right now. This weekend it snowed most of the day on Sunday, but it didn't stick much. Tonight it seems to be hailing, after a day of bitter cold. Yikes! Seems like winter has finally arrived, after much delay. The meteorologists thought it would be the coldest winter in recent years, but it hasn't really snowed or been all that cold. Hopefully the cold streak will end quickly and the warm(er) weather will arrive.

Tonight it started snowing when I was coming home from work. There was a lot of snow, coming down fast. Within one hour it was sticking to the roads. However, it just stopped after that hour, and nothing is left now. I think it is the first time it has really snowed since we had flurries in November.

Yesterday was Shrove Tuesday, or as they call it in England, Pancake Day. Someone asked me if we celebrated Pancake Day in the U.S. I told them every Sunday was pancake day in my mind.

For Shrove Tuesday there are sometimes pancake flipping races and such, but I don't know of anything like that in Sheffield. Victoria and I did make pancakes last night to eat. The British style pancake is a bit more like crepes than the U.S. style pancake. We had ours with M&Ms, ice cream, and syrup. They were yummy.

We almost didn't have enough ingredients for pancakes, but the day before, the neighbors who live above us brought us a bunch of food. They have their groceries delivered, and there was a mix-up. Somehow they ended up with a lot of food they didn't order. The supermarket gave it to them free, so that was nice. It was too much for them, so they gave some to us, including eggs. Also, Victoria remembered we needed more milk on the way back from Japanese class, so we were able to pick some up at the convenience store.

I thought all the issues with my payroll had been resolved, but I found out on Friday that none of them have been. At the start of February I was paid the difference between what I was owed in backpay and what I owed in pension contributions from since September. However, on the most recent payday, that "correction" money was taken out of my pay as a salary advance, rather than a correction. I called up the company who has taken over doing our payroll (because the guy doing it before is obviously incompetent). They said that this guy who I talked to had never put the corrections into the computer or informed them about them, so it was just treated like a pay advance.

In addition extra tax was withheld from my account this month for unknown reasons. At the beginning of February I got a note from the Inland Revenue saying they had changed my tax code to a flat 22% withdrawal rate, meaning they thought I wasn't entitled to the standard deduction. When I called them up about it, they said somehow my job at Sheffield Hallam became set as my second job. When I asked what was down as my first job, they said there wasn't one. This confused me a bit as how can you have a second job without a first one? Normally the first one is the one they allow you to take deductions from, so they had switched me to a flat rate since in my non-existent first job I was supposed to get the deductions. Anyway, they switched me back, but not before the payroll had been already processed. They should credit me the tax money in the March payroll.

The tax system is set up a little differently than in the U.S. Normally in the U.S. you can say what you think your exemptions should be, and then they withhold an amount of money from your account based on that. However, the U.S. system has a hard time coping with you changing salaries. In a new job they never take any notice of how much tax you have previously paid, resulting in many people underpaying or overpaying.

In the U.K., the system is designed better, but implemented poorly. In the U.K., when you leave an employer, they fill out a form saying how much tax has been paid for you so far, to allow the new employer to adjust your tax withholding rate. However, instead of giving that information to the Inland Revenue, they are supposed to give it to the employee, who has responsibility for turning it in with the new employer (who never seems to ask for it). If you don't turn one in when you start a new job, the Inland Revenue automatically assumes this is a new second job, and starts taxing you at the top rate. It seems like the best solution would be for the Inland Revenue to just be notified by employers when people terminate work at their companies. Then they could keep track of how much money they have received from each employee and tell any new employers what to take out.

Anyway, the result of all of these mishaps is that I have gotten much less pay than expected in February. Luckily they have given me the salary advance on the correction to push me forward to next month. I am hoping to sort out all the pension and tax before April, which is the start of the new tax year. (U.K. tax years run April 1 to March 31). Not getting it sorted by then will doubtless mean many more forms to fill out.

For my birthday, we went out to eat with some friends. Vernon came, along with Susannah and Helen from work, and Helen's boyfriend, Neil. We went to Iguana's, which has Brazilian-style cuisine. Victoria and I had been there before, so we knew it was a good place to go. I think everyone was happy with the meal. On the whole it was a good birthday, but nothing really big happened. I was planning on taking the day off work, but there was a meeting I really needed to attend that day, so I wasn't able to. I'm still a bit unclear about how many vacation days I have left, as a result of the change in my job. So it is probably best not to use up too many before knowing a specific number. After all, I have three international trips planned before September when I get my new holiday allowance.

Today we went to Japan Day, which was actually at the same place the concert was at the other day, the Octagon Centre at Sheffield University. Japan Day was basically a cultural showcase put on by the Japan Society in Sheffield. They had karate and aikido demonstrations on a stage, taiko drumming, and a guest speaker, Ayumi Takahashi, from Japan.

We arrived hungry, so we went to the food section. Unfortunately, the lines were long, and we had to wait almost an hour to get any food. We had traditional Japanese foods though, which was nice since we haven't had them in awhile. Since we're going to Japan for Paul's wedding in April, we will be able to get lots of Japanese food then. There were also some booths around on kimonos, origami, calligraphy, etc. After lunch, we saw the end of the taiko performance, visited some of the booths and listened to the speaker from Japan. The guy from Japan seemed nice and had an interesting story. Unfortunately, the guy "interviewing" him didn't seem to have prepared at all or know what he was doing. This detracted from the "talkshow," and made it a bit boring. We left right before the end.

We were both surprised about how many people were at Japan Day. I think about 500-1000 people were probably there, and many of them were actually Japanese. I wonder if some people travelled from other cities to come.

Yesterday we went to a Belle and Sebastian concert with Orla and Niamh, twins who are Victoria's friends. The concert was at Sheffield University, so it was not too far away. The concert was really good. I have only heard some of Belle and Sebastian's songs, mostly the older ones. But I enjoyed hearing the new ones too. The band utilised a bunch of different instruments for different songs. For instance, they had a cello, four violins, and a xylophone, in addition to the typical rock instruments. They also used a mouth organ, woodblocks, and a cow bell for some songs.

One nice thing about the concert was that the music was set at the perfect volume. I could hear everything well, but I didn't leave completely deaf. The next day there was no ringing sensation.

The band themselves were good entertainers, even telling jokes to the audience.

Victoria has asked me to pass on this message from her friend in the hopes that more people will vote for her charity:

"As you may know, my father has MS. If you don't have another favourite charity, then please be wonderful and vote for The MS Resource Centre (under m in the list).
http://www.howtogivetocharity.org/ The lady who write this book is giving the royalties to charity - this decides which one."

Today I saw my brother Keith walking around Sheffield. This is a bit strange, as he is in North Carolina now. As it turned out, it wasn't really Keith, but it looked a lot like him. Keith is 6'3" and has hair past his shoulders, so it's not often you see someone who looks that similar. However, this guy was about the same height, with identical hair and similar facial hair. It was a bit freaky, and he was probably wondering why I was staring at him while walking down the street. Keith, if you came to visit today and missed me, then let me know.

Yesterday there was a really big lottery jackpot, so I played the lottery. I won, but not the jackpot or anything big. Just 8 pounds 90, but I am happy. But I still made a profit, since my two tickets cost 3 pounds. In the end no one won the jackpot, so it will be even larger next week. As Victoria said though, why does having such a large jackpot make more people want to play? After all, for most people 1 million and 10 million would have the same effect on their lives. I suppose some of it is just hype and excitement. After all, I wouldn't normally play the lottery.

It seems like Britain is in love with privatization. I gather there used to be huge state monopolies that didn't offer good value to consumers (the trains, British telecom, and British gas for example). However, I think the privatization has been successful only in some areas. Mostly, those where there is direct competition. For instance, the phones, internet, and utilities have lots of competition, and the prices seem reasonable. Other things, such as the trains, are not. There are some 20 train companies throughout the country, but they each seem to have one area that they cover. This means there is little competition about who you can take to get to the same place. In fact, if there are two companies that run between the same two cities, the standard fare is the same regardless of which company you travel with. Sometimes you can get discount tickets, but that is mostly for long haul trains. Somehow the benefits of privatization got lost in the transition from public to private.

Oink-choo, our new leather pig, with Sarah Toney