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CoMooting Cows

July 13, 2010 By danyul Leave a Comment

moooooooooo

Riding cattle class on the London underground every day makes you feel like you are part of the herd but today my usual jaunt along the Central Line was livened by some amusing fake cows. Charity activists were out in force and dressed as cows in a bid to raise awareness of rainforest-free food as organised by Friends of the Earth. I did not really notice the cows in my carriage until I was getting ready to depart at Bank and I noticed what looked like a guy wearing a comedy cow hat further down the carriage. It wasn’t until I removed my headphones that I heard a low “mooooooooooooo” from all around me and realised that there were several people dressed in body size cow outfits. I thought the cow standing still reading the Mootro, with headlines and text consisting of “mooooooooo”, was a very nice touch. Thankfully the cows were very well behaved and were just holding out small business card sized information text for those that wanted to find out more.

Subsequent articles then appeared online thanks to the Farmers Guardian, the Docklands 24, and Left Foot Forward. Various pictures are available on all three sites and it proves I must invest in an ever so slightly more modern phone so I can take pictures of cows on the underground if they ever appear again.

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A Room with a View

April 17, 2010 By danyul Leave a Comment

A Room with a View

Sitting back in the study admiring the clear blue skies with the cool breeze blowing through all the open windows. The neighbours tree is now in full bloom and looks fantastic framed against the cloudless sky. The petals will soon start to make the downward journey into our front garden and I will grumble each week as I sweep them into the garden waste bag but for the moment I’ll just enjoy the free show.

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JKAE All Grades Kata Course

January 31, 2010 By danyul Leave a Comment

JKA

Saturday the 30th January 2010 saw us driving to Wellingborough for the first JKAE course of the year, a JKAE All Grades Kata Course. The courses were formerly for brown and black belts but now open for all grades and for £10 you receive 3 hours of tiring excellent training so it is well worth attending no matter what grade you are.

We had been warned in advance that the Wellingborough training location can be a bit cold, especially the floor, so we had added some extra layers just in case but thankfully the venue was perfectly climate controlled so we were soon changed into our gi’s and ready for action. The warm-up was conducted by one of the local sensei’s (apologies for not knowing the name) and we were quickly into a series of basics led by Ohta Sensei.We were eased through the basics but as combinations were added and effort increased, we were soon very hot and ready for training.

We have not been to a kata only course before so were looking forward to the unknown format as we were not sure what to expect. Following basics the groups were split by grade (kyu grades, brown belts, and dan grades) with each group being led through various kata. First up was Adel Ismail Sensei who put us all through Bassai Dai, which is a kata commonly taught to brown belts and is a requirement of grading for 3rd kyu, 2nd kyu, 1st kyu and is this most popular kata chosen for those progressing to their first dan grading. I am sure that most karateka would agree that the individual sensei personality can be just as important as the technical knowledge they are trying to impart and I always enjoy the relentless nature of training given by Adel Ismail Sensei. We were put through our paces performing segments of the kata, with the familiar cry of “one more time” from sensei, before moving onto the application of certain key sequences.

The hour seemed to be up very quickly but after a quick drinks break we were back under the tutelage of Roy Tomlin Sesei who took us through the kata Empi. Although we had performed this kata a few times previously in training, it was not a kata that we had spent any great deal of time performing. We both really enjoyed the time devoted to this kata and it was also the first time that we had spent under the instruction of Roy Tomlin Sesei. Again, the personality of the sensei goes a long way in the enjoyment of any particular training and we had a really enjoyable time under the instruction of Roy Tomlin Sesei.

We were then into the final hour where Gary Stewart Sensei led us through the kata Jion, which is a kata neither of us have attempted before so were looking forward to learning something new even though we were starting to feel very worn out at this point. Our final hour of kata was soon up, far too quickly for my liking, but I felt we had both really benefited from the course. We had both spent a good hour on the finer points of Bassai Dai, which will serve us well for future grading, and we had both enjoyed the time spent on Empi. MiniMe in particular enjoyed the challenge of learning and practicing Empi and really seemed to enjoy this segment of the course.

We both enjoyed the kata course and had both taken some key knowledge from the training. Thanks to the local hosts for their hospitality and to all the instructors who gave us their time and knowledge.

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Pacific Plaza

January 26, 2010 By danyul 1 Comment

Oriental City was a shopping centre in London that began by specialising in Japanese goods along with an Asian based food court and widened to providing a wide range of Asian goods and services. We would often make a trek from Kent to Colindale so we could stock up on rice and food, Mrs danyul would raid the Japanese book shop, and we would eat from the fantastic food court. We continued to make the trek from Docklands before we then moved across to West London where a 20 minute car journey meant we would spend most Saturdays eating lunch at Oriental City. Unfortunately the site was closed in 2008, despite a very large scale protest to keep the centre open for the benefit of the Asian community, and the owners began to proceed with a plan to redevelop the site for housing and a chain store. The building remains boarded up and empty to this day while no further work on the site appears possible due to the downturn of the economy.

Tetote Factory at Pacific Plaza

Thanks to a tip off from Route 79 I was made aware of a blog entry from Will Eat for Money that a possible replacement for Oriental City had opened under the shadow or Wembley Stadium and was now open for business. We were visiting Japan at the time but quickly penciled in a visit for our return to the UK. Pacific Plaza opened in December 2009 and is located in a very unassuming location, somewhat sandwiched between a sofa store and a discount electrical store. In fact we had eaten at the wonderful Alisan Chinese restaurant in December so had parked in the same outlet car park without even noticing Oriental City. So we headed back and were immediately hit but the smells emanating from Tetote factory, which is a Japanese bakery located next to the building entrance. MiniMe was straight into the bakery picking out melon buns, cream buns, curry buns, and a tuna / cheese / corn bun concoction that we took home to share for dinner.

Doki Ltd at Pacific Plaza

Doki Ltd have setup a tableware shop downstairs, much like the small store that used to be located at Oriental City, and sells large range of bowls, plates, cups, and other Japanese and Oriental style kitchenware. We had a look round but did not buy anything since we are fully stocked in our kitchen although we will probably be back when Christmas time approaches again since my family would appreciate some of the items on sale. All the bowls and plates we previously purchased from the store at Oriental City are in good condition, which gives an indication of the quality of the goods they sell, and I am sure that we will be back whenever we need to replenish our stock.

Food Court at Pacific Plaza

The main draw for us was the food court where we hoped to see a return to the quality of food and the atmosphere of Oriental City. The seating area is smaller than Oriental City and a number of stores are either still vacant or have ‘coming soon’ signs but new tenants have been appearing every few weeks and there is a well rounded selection of food on offer. ‘China House’ dominates the far wall of the court and serves a wide range of dim sum and other Chinese food and there are stores providing Japanese, Thai, Korean,  and Malaysian food. We have sampled all the different stores and now have our own favourites that we veer towards on our weekly visit although we are always keen to try something new and so enjoy whenever a new little restaurant opens.

I am not going to go into a review on the food on offer but I heartily recommend a visit and taking a look for yourselves. The atmosphere or general mayhem of a packed Oriental City is not there yet but the foundations are in place and reviews and starting to pop up online:

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Telehouse West

January 18, 2010 By danyul Leave a Comment

Telehouse West (February 2009)

When I first started my career in the Internet Service Provider (ISP) industry, I worked for a fledgling business ISP who had 2 racks of core equipment located in the Telehouse data centre in London Docklands. At the time Telehouse consisted of a single building, now known as Telehouse North, and although a prestigous location it was also slightly chaotic inside. These were days well before DSL, before all companies had a presence on the web, and back into the days when you needed a modem to connect to the Internet along with a dialup account that you had to pay for. The ISP Freeserve then came along and provided free dial-up access accounts and then it was not long before British Telecom started to roll out ADSL to the masses.

During these heady days of the Internet and the dot-com era we maintained 2 racks in Telehouse with various IT equipment and I would often be called upon to travel across London and install new equipment or connect new customer leased lines following a BT installation. Telehouse was much more informal during this time and, although security was still tight, you could pretty much run your own cables within your racks, between racks in the same suite, and between suites in the building. From a tenant perspective this was wonderful since you had the flexibility to install and connect when and where you wanted but in the long run this was a very bad thing indeed. In fact there are the ghosts of poor cabling practice still preserved around Telehouse North to this day. Huge over-tight cable looms still exist running through suites with large Telehouse warning signs on warning of a near death experience should you try and sneak anymore cables in; while some floor tiles have a disturbing wobble as they balance on packed cable runs under the floor. I would hate to think what would happen should your connection develop a fault but rely on something in that mess because you have no chance of tracing your specific cable.

Telehouse West (April 2009)

Thankfully Telehouse brought everyone into line with strict cable policies and then made headway into power usage since there was either no restriction on how much power you took per rack or Telehouse had no methodology on policing the power draw. Many of our customers were drawn to hosting in Telehouse because they knew that their power usage was not an issue, compared to the new breed of data centres that were very strict on power use and charged heavily, but there was a flip side to this: From time to time there will be outages in a data centre and those abusing the power policies would suffer the most. When your rack of 42 servers experiences a power related outage then it can be hard work getting all those servers back online since you cannot just power them all on at once. Conversely these were the very same customers who would bleat the loudest when their faulty server blew the power to the rack and then could not be powered on for a length of time because they had some much over use in the rack. I used to shrug my shoulders and say the same thing: We warned you that your rack usage and density was dangerous from a service perspective but you did nothing about it because you were happy to cram as much into the rack as humanly possible just to increase your profit margin.


Telehouse West (August 2009)

Telehouse completed the East building in 1999, which embraced controls over working practices and power management, and the demand for data centre space continued at break neck pace. The Docklands area is now littered with data centres; such as Global Switch, Sunguard, Telecity, and Redbus. Providing power to these facilities and providing premier hosting environments has become very costly and there is now a demand for slightly cheaper hosting space outside London (coupled with a need for disaster recovery space far from their primary hosting locations). We are now moving into the virtualised data centre arena as being pushed by BT but now I have digressed from talking about the new Telehouse building.

In March 2009 Telehouse announced that a new data centre facility was to be built on the existing side, to be named Telehouse West, and since I walk past the site each day on the way to work, I decided to take some photographs of the site as the building progressed. The first months went by with very little visible progress although work was very much underway on the foundations and across the whole site. I still pop into Telehouse occasionally so I would also check out the view from the bridge that connects the reception building to the North building. The building work put more restraints on the available parking at the facility but once the framework started to go up then the building progressed at a very fast pace.

Telehouse West (April 2010)

As a ‘key decision maker’ within our hosting business I was then invited over to Telehouse West for a tour as the first data suite was being primed for live active service. The site was still very much a construction site so boots and a hard hat were supplied and we started our tour by viewing the generator room, which is the smaller squat building on the above picture. The room was much like a large cavern at the time with generators primed along one side and a large empty space where more equipment was due to be installed at a later date. The lifts were not yet if full service and nor was the walkway from the reception building, so we joined the builders in using the stairways to make our way up to the first data suite floor. Unfortunately it’s very difficult to glamorise a data centre and if you have seen one room full of racking equipment then you have pretty much seen them all; everything tends to be grey, there are various power distribution units scattered around, and you have the gentle hum of the cooling in the background (plus the not so gentle sound of running IT equipment if the racks are populated).

The new building conformed to everything I would expect from a data centre although the unique selling point of this particular new building, which has been latched onto by the IT media such as Data Center Knowledge and Slashdot, is that excess heat generated by all the IT equipment will be used in a district heat network for the local Docklands community. That is not so much of a draw for people wanting to host their servers but it’s an interesting idea and good use of excess heat in a time when data centres are under even more scrutiny to do their part for the environment given the amount of power they use.

My only minor observations from the tour of Telehouse West:

1. Telehouse will allow tenants to select their own racks and install them based on a footprint and power cost. My experience is that you have to be very patient to operate this type of service model and you have to police installation closely. My personal preference is to provide a standard rack only, which is based on a healthy size to accomodate most IT equipment, and everyone has to have the same rack. From an aesthetic view this is much nicer since the suite becomes uniform and there are no odd shape racks nor different coloured racks splattered around the room. Again, this is just my personal preference where I am sure potential customers would much prefer the luxury to install their own purple racks as recommended by their equipment vendor.

2. Car parking at Telehouse has become very tricky in recent years and the new building has seen a temporary reduction is space, which has been negated by a temporary car park being setup on adjacent land, but once everything is complete then the overall car parking will be reduced from previous levels. I hope that something more permanent can be setup with the current vacant land adjacent to the facility otherwise I am sure there will be queues of traffic outside the entrance gates based on a 1-out-1-in policy.

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Back in Training

January 16, 2010 By danyul 2 Comments
JKA

JKA

Following our recent break to Japan we are now back in karate training and gearing up for a year in which we potentially take our shodan grading. It is always a little strange getting back into the karate groove after an extended break, especially since my plans to continue my weekly runs in Japan failed miserably thanks to some niggling toe injuries, but we both seem to be back on track and not forgetting any kata. I had hoped that we could squeeze in a visit to the JKA HQ dojo based in Tokyo during our trip but after contacting JKA prior to our trip, I found that the dojo would be closed on the days that we would be in Tokyo.

Our training plan for the year will change in the very near future since MiniMe will be leaving his current school (The Japanese School, London) and attending a local English primary school. At the moment we train with Kilburn SKC on a Tuesday evening, Saturday morning, and Sunday morning. However, once MiniMe changes school then he will attend the Japanese School for Saturday morning classes and his after school schedule in the week will also change due to various clubs at his new school (including a Japanese homework club).

There is also the small matter of Kilburn SKC looking to split from their affiliation with JKA England, which has been hinted at via a notice on the JKAE web site stating that the only JKA England qualified grading examiners are Ohta Yoshinobu Sensei and Adel Ismail Sensei. This means that the grading to 1st kyu that we completed in December 2009 is not recognised by JKA England. Whether this influences our future karate training I do not yet know so it is a case of waiting to see what happens with Kilburn SKC.

[Updated April 2010]

Kilburn SKC did indeed split from JKAE late 2009 / early 2010, along with a few other former JKAE affiliated clubs, as was publically announced on the forums of The Shotokan Way and Karate Underground (registration required for both). Kilburn SKC is now part of Shotokan Karate Centres England where the new squad has achieved notable success in competition and a new SKC grading system has been put in place. Through December and into early 2010 I saw a reasonably large surge in traffic hitting my little blog through people searching for information on the potential / eventual split from JKAE and I suspect this post might attract people looking for further information as well.

I hit a period of writers block in 2010 due to not knowing how to address the change on my blog; should I ignore it completely or write about it in some way? I have eventually settled on making an update on this post to cover the subject, mainly because of the public SKC announcements on the before-mentioned karate forums, and also because I choose to write about our karate progress online and since I put this part of our life online then I should be consistent and post about the tricky subjects as well. My focus is to maintain the high quality of karate training we have both received so far and both Kilburn SKC and JKAE have contributed to that over the past 3 years. As to the reasons for the split? I have zero information on the subject – we’re here for the training and not the politics.

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Japan (part ni)

January 14, 2010 By danyul Leave a Comment

Japanese Kite Flying

The Japanese New Year period usually sees a return to the more traditional Japanese games including the flying of traditional Japanese kites. This year we headed down to the nearby Ube beach armed with several paper kites to join small groups of other kite flyer’s. This year we also had the somewhat odd site of a group teenagers holding a barbecue while they all lounged in a heated inflatable pool. It was a bizarre site since early January is not a warm or sunny time in this part of Japan plus it was quite a cold breezy day: great for flying kites but not good for running your own portable hot tub on a public beach. Maybe I am not ‘down with the kids’ these days because it looked far from a fun activity to me but the group of teenagers looked like they were having a great time.

Japan has gone through a noticeable period of change in the 12 plus years that we have been making regular visits. I remember the first time that we saw homeless people asking for money or food in a train terminal based in one of the largest cities. It stood out for me since I had never seen any sign of homeless people at any point previously, although of course that did not meant that people were not homeless before, but seeing such an overt example of begging in a high profile location shocked Mrs danyul.

During our latest visit we saw real signs of the economic downturn in Japan;. Firstly, the number of people attending the shrines in a bid to win favour and blessing was astronomical compared to our previous visits. The area where we stay is quite rural and we would normally visit the local shrine on New Years Day and we might have seen 5-10 other people paying their respects. However, on this visit there was a long queue of families waiting to pay their respect at the shrine and additionally a large number of families donating extra to the shrine so that they could receive individual blessings.

During this visit we also attended second hand and antique fair for the first time, which very much resembled an English car boot sale but with the goods on sale from little stalls setup either by small businesses or families selling off unwanted goods. Again, this was not previously a common occurrence in the area of Japan where we stayed and it was a reflection of the economic situation in the country.

Japanese Second Hand Good Fair

Our final family trip this time around was to spend 1 night in Shimonoseki, which like Ube is also based in Yamaguchi Prefecture. We drove across to Shimonoseki with a brief stop at a motorway style service station / dining location for lunch. I had never stopped at any Japanese motorway style services before and it made a distinct change to the expensive food provided in British motorway stops. The food area was run as a small local business and provided excellent Japanese food at very affordable prices. MiniMe tucked into his favourite Japanese curry while I had some fantastic pork ramen that would put any English motorway food to shame. We were soon in Shimonoseki and settled into our hotel ready to spend some relaxing time in the hotel onsen (hot spring baths). Visiting onsen is big business in Japan and there are travel style TV shows that just show various bath locations around Japan with reviews of the facilities and the food on offer.

The hotel is located on the hillside overlooking the Kanmon Straits, which forms an important shipping line that runs between the main Japanese islands of Honshū and Kyūshū. The hotel makes good use of the outstanding view with the baths, with baths both inside and outside, looking directly over the river and the city while the hotel restaurant also utilises full window style walls looking over the city. The city itself is very well known for its fugu (puffer-fish) haul, which is the largest yearly haul in Japan, and all the restaurants specialise in fugu dishes. On this visit we took a local taxi to the Sea Mall Shimonoseki (largest shopping center in West Japan when it was built) and the driver told us that the visitor numbers were substantially down over the past year, especially during the fugu season when people traditionally flock to Shimonoseki, so much so that all the taxi drivers are now all members of the ‘silver fox’ generation. The younger taxi drivers are no longer able to make a full-time wage from their fares so only those that are retired and have other incomes available (i.e. a pension of some sort) can afford to remain as taxi drivers.

Shimonoseki: Hotel Balcony View

I enjoyed wandering around the shopping mall and trying to pick out some gifts for my family while Mrs danyul raided the huge book shop. We are fortunate to live in an age where Mrs danyul can order Japanese books from Amazon and get them delivered to the UK but it is much cheaper to haul some back in our suitcases compared to the shipping charges. I picked out the latest Pokemon movie DVD for MiniMe so he could have something to watch back in the UK when he would no doubt be wide awake with jet lag at an unreasonable hour. I found some nice gifts for my family and made good use of the gift wrapping services from all the shops, which put the UK firmly in the shade. All Japanese department stores will gift wrap something to a ‘basic level’ for free and their definition of a ‘basic level’ is what a UK based store would charge for as their ‘premium service’. Although Japanese stores do offer a chargeable gift wrapping service, I have never had to take up the additional services although I have wondered just how much better they could actually be compared to the fantastic free service.

Our last activity in Shimonoseki was to visit one of the large shrines based in the city. Again, the shrine was full of people and had some fantastic food stalls at the entrance to help warm everyone up in the cold weather. On this visit we decided to ‘donate’ an extra amount of money and receive a blessing from the priest. Neither of us has any strong religious views but we were interested in what happens so after making our donations we were shown into a private room within the temple where the priest discussed our goals and aspirations with the coming year (well… he discussed with Mrs danyul anyway) and then he began to recite various Japanese chants before waving a staff adorned with what looked like white paper chains above our heads. We both thought the blessing was over but were told to stay while the priest then started to play on a flute like instrument while a girl dressed in traditional robes performed a dance around the room. We did not (and still do not) understand whether the dance had any significance but it was certainly an interesting experience and a small view of traditional Japanese activities.

Shimonoseki Shrine

Our latest visit to Japan soon drew to an end  as the remaining time flew by with various family visits and MiniMe playing with his grandparents. We all had a fantastic time, as always, and I had a relaxing time of catching up on some reading while not being drawn into any work. As usual our family were extremely hospitable to us and I am sure MiniMe will have some more treasured memories of spending time in Japan.

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Japan (part ichi)

January 3, 2010 By danyul Leave a Comment

Hinomaru ("sun circle")

We usually schedule a visit to Japan at the end of each year to stay with Mrs danyul’s parents and to visit other family in Japan. Unfortunately we were unable to make it in 2008/09 but this year we were able to fly out to Japan just before Christmas. Our normal schedule would be to spend Christmas in the UK with my family and then New Year in Japan with Mrs danyul’s family. This time around we faced restrictions with time off from work so had to leave earlier so no Christmas with my family this time around. They more than made up for it though by throwing a Christmas lunch for everyone before we left, where MiniMe could open all his presents as though it was Christmas Day.

We headed to Heathrow on the 23rd December with a hope to avoid long queues by going through the Virgin online check-in process beforehand. This seems to be a pretty standard procedure these days so we were straight into the queue for checking in our baggage and then straight through security to wait for our flight. Mrs danyul had some time for some last minute gift buying, which is very much a necessity if you are visiting Japan since it is customary to buy close family a friends a gift. I wandered around with MiniMe in tow and bought myself some JVC noise cancelling earphones for the flight. These were the cheapest on sale within the shops area and they turned out to be a reasonable purchase since they cut out a lot of the flight noise and I might consider an upgrade next time we fly.

Our flight was delayed by an hour since the plane had arrived later than schedule and then once everyone boarded, one of the passengers was taken ill and had to be taken from the plane so another hour was gone while their luggage was located and removed from the hold. Thankfully we were soon up in the air and MiniMe could sit watching some kids movies / TV while I watched some movies at well. Nothing of note occurred on the flight, which is always a good thing, and we were soon touching down at Narita International just an hour later than scheduled. I usually have to spend an hour queueing for passport control along with all the other Gaijin but for once everything was clear so I quickly had my body scanned for heat signatures via a camera checking for people with flu, I had my finger prints taken, and finally a digital photograph taken before my passport was stamped and I was free to go join MiniMe and Mrs danyul to collect our luggage.

We used to stay one night in Tokyo before MiniMe was born but then found out looking after a jet lagged child is not the easiest thing to do at 3am, even in a city like Tokyo, so we now catch a limousine bus across to Heneda Airport to take an internal ANA flight down to Ube, which is located in Yamaguchi Prefecture. The parents-in-law were waiting for us at the airport and thankfully it is only short drive back to their house. They were happy to see the three of us, especially MiniMe, and we were thankful to be able to visit them again.

Giraffe Riding, MiniMe Style

Christmas is not a public holiday in Japan and nor is there much evidence that it is celebrated although I must admit over the years I have seen more and more Christmas decorations dotted around whenever we visit. Mrs danyul’s parents bought a small Christmas tree this year so that MiniMe would have somewhere to put his Christmas stocking all ready for Santa san to visit. They also helped join in the fun by buying a carrot for the reindeer plus some cookies and milk for Santa san. MiniMe had a great time opening his presents with his grandparents and I think they had a nice time being part of MiniMe’s Christmas for the first time.

New Year is a public holiday in Japan and it is a time of wide celebration and also a time for families to get together once more. It is traditional for the ‘oldest son’ to host a dinner on New Years Day, which all the family are invited to. On our early visits to Japan this would mean a lot of visitors since Mrs danyul’s father is the oldest son in a large family so there would be a lot of people arriving at the house for lunch. It is also traditional to give gifts of cash to all the children so it is a very lucrative time to be a child in Japan! As the years have passed we have found that our New Year celebration has diminished each year, mostly because of older relatives sadly passing aways, but also from family members gradually moving to different parts of Japan. On our last visit we moved from a very large gathering at Mrs danyul’s parents house to a more smaller lunch (approximately 20 people) at a local hotel, although again it was hosted by the ‘oldest son’ within the family. This year we just had a visit from Mrs danyul’s brother and his son so we had a small family lunch at home although we did join the crowds at the local shopping mall and also at the local shrine.

Feeding The Lions

The shrine visit is a fundamental part of Japanese culture and a lot of people will celebrate the New Year by being at a shrine as the clock hits midnight; some of the large city shrines heave with crowds at midnight and form the location for live television across the entire New Year period. We went to visit the local shrine on New Year’s day and this time around it was packed with people and for the first time ever we had to queue to pay our respects. It seems that during a time of economic decline more and more people are returning to their local shrine to ask for good luck through the coming year.

We then took a day trip to the Yamaguchi Safari Land, which is just over an hours drive away. MiniMe loves to visit Safari Land every time we come to Japan and I must admit that I really enjoy visiting as well. Safari Land consists of a small theme park area that is free to enter, although you have to pay for tokens that are then valid across the rides, and the Safari Part itself where you could either pay to drive through in your own car or take a guided tour through on a bus. We always go for the guided bus since you also get to feed the various animals on the route through the use of some metal tongs that can be pushed through grills along the side of the bus.

Safari Bus

We arrived at the park to find the first available bus tour was already full so we signed up for the second bus and then took a walk around the theme park section. MiniMe went straight to the go-kart track where he was now tall enough to drive one of the ‘skid karts’ around the track provided that he had an adult sitting next to him. I drew the short straw and had several scary laps of the track with MiniMe at the helm while Japanese pop music blasted from speakers dotted around the course. MiniMe loved it although I hope his driving skills improve as he gets older.

We’ve been visiting the Safari Land for quite a few years now and it was strange to see MiniMe aiming for all the older kid rides this time when previously he would just want to sit on the little kid cars, which do not move anywhere and just resemble the small kid rides you find outside supermarkets in the UK. He did insist on riding the giraffe around, which has a small motor and wheels on the legs, but I suspect that will not be repeated on our next visit since he’ll deem it a ride “for babies”.

It was soon time for our bus tour so we grabbed some drinks from the plentiful vending machines (there are vending machines everywhere in Japan) before taking our bench seat on the bus ready for the tour to begin. This time we had the lion bus and we were soon being driven around the park. Our first stop was to feed some zebra and a camel by holding out some small pieces of bread with the tongs but on a first attempt one of the circling hawks dive bombed the side of the bus and helped itself to MiniMe’s bread. He was not happy with the birds so I had to let MiniMe use my bread while I kept a lookout for more cheeky winged beasts.

Japanese Shrine

The bus then moved through various security gates as we headed into the more dangerous animal sections; first stop was the cheetah enclosure where we have the opportunity to hold out pieces of meat from the side of the bus. Next we moved through the tiger enclosure and the lion enclosure where again small pieces of meat were dangled out of the side of the bus ready for the growling large cats to take their feed. I was once again on hawk duty since the somewhat suicidal birds would swoop down across the side of the bus trying to grab the meat before the tigers or lions could snap their jaws shut. It would not surprise me to find that the lions get an accidental bird lunch on occasion.

The tour pulls to a stop in a ‘petting zoo’ style section where the small goats, llama, and kangaroos seem even more aggressive in their pursuit of people to feed them. There is even a small enclosure where there seems to be hundreds of guinea pigs hopping about but the small furry fiends give Mrs danyul the heebie jeebies so we stayed away this time.

The final stop on the way back to the car park was at the elephant house where MiniMe had great fun holding out carrots and other vegetables for the baby elephant to snack on. Again, Mrs danyul keeps a distance from the elephant since it’s trunk sways around sniffing for food and it does not seem to discriminate between food and scarves if you get too close. This ended our visit to Yamaguchi Safari Land and we headed home with a very content MiniMe snoring in the back of the car.

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2009 – danyul.net in review

January 1, 2010 By danyul Leave a Comment

danyul.net

My very first post on danyul.net was published on the 28th May 2008 , which means that 2009 was my first complete blog calendar year. I am a sucker for any type of top 10 /100 list that reviews a year (or decade) or a review of the year type article so here is my guide to danyul.net through 2010.

I changed my WordPress theme in 2009 to the Streamline theme from StudioPress and I have been making various little tweaks all through the year. Our spring flowers started to appear in February 2010 and we visited Stanton House in the snow in the same month with some friends. The weather may have been cold and but with great company we had a really good time while enjoying the Japanese second hand goods sale. March 2009 saw us take our first karate grading of the year and we both took a fairly substantial step forward as we both successfully succeeded in gaining our brown belts (3rd kyu).

April was a lean month in terms of blog posting although it did see the post that generated the most search traffic to the site as I solved a technical problem with the FTP service on my server (more on that subject later). May 2009 saw myself and MiniMe continue our karate training by attending the JKAE Spring Course, where we really enjoyed the training led by Osaka Sensei. I can well believe that people travel long distances to have the pleasure of training alongside Osaka Sensei and his joy of karate and teaching shone through the whole course. I would love to see Osaka Sensei return to either the JKAE Spring or Summer course in 2010, where I would try to persuade Mrs danyul that attending all the course days does not make her a lonely karate widow.

July was a busy month for karate as we attempted to grade to 2nd kyu on the 3rd July, where MiniMe picked up a temporary pass instead of a full pass, and then two days later we were both competing at the JKAE National Champioship. I had no issues with MiniMe not passing his grading completely since his karate mojo had started to wane through 2009 and this was very much reflected in the quality of his karate both in training, in grading, and in competition. When we first started our karate training, our goal was not to race to a specific belt or win medals, but rather to train alongside each other in a martial art that MiniMe would find beneficial immediately (physical fitness, discipline etc) and also in the future (self defence). We had a great time competing at the Nationals and I am sure we learnt a lot more about our karate through the act of just being there rather than winning any medals.

August was a busy month as we took a family holiday to Cornwall where me and MiniMe developed a love for surfing and body boarding while Mrs danyul took to exploring the Cornwall coast and enjoying the hotel spa facilities. The JKAE Summer Course rounded off the end of the month as we returned to Guildford again to train alongside visiting Sensei’s from Japan and familiar friendly faces. In September 2009 we descended on Spitalfields market in London along with 30,000 other people for the first Japanese Matsuri. The 2010 event is already scheduled and firmly in our diary to attend once more, where we hope to see the stalls branched out even further across the market to accommodate all the visitors. The end of the month saw another karate grading although this time it was just MiniMe by himself to successfully clear the previous temporary pass gained at the 2nd kyu grading. I did not grade since it was never my intention to race ahead of MiniMe and it is fair to say that the colour of your belt does not necessarily reflect a persons dedication or skill in karate.

October saw me and MiniMe both get a year older although it’s not something that I blogged about (no idea why!) so instead we had to settle for attending the JKAE All Grades Course and for me fixing a technical problem with the VoIP system used at work. I have strong hopes that our office BroadWorks platform will be replaced in 2010 with the company standard platform and I can finally lose responsibility for our office phone system.

November saw a family outing to Brighton as I competed in the Brooks Brighton 10k and I hope to run the same event in 2010 as well as some other 10k and half-marathon events. Finally we reach December, which was another busy karate month as we attended a fun Brown & Black Belt Course and then both successfully graded to 1st kyu before heading off to Japan for a much needed family holiday. We are still visiting family in Japan as I type this and I haven’t made any Japan posts yet but so that will have to wait until early January 2010.

The most significant personal event of 2009 for me, the unexpected death of a friend and business associate, did not get a post but like a boulder dropped into a pond, the ripples are still fanning out into 2010. Our karate progress is also getting snagged onto some political maneuvering so it looks like changes are afoot in the year of the tiger.

So as a final look back at 2009 let’s have a look at the most popular parts of danyul.net. I use AWStats and a WordPress Stats plugin to analyse the logs of who visits my site although unfortunately the WordPress Stats plugin is only something I have recently installed so I will have to just rely on the AWStats report for the 2009 review. Here we go…

There were approximately 3,950 unique visitors to danyul.net in 2009 which was made up of 6,347 visits (1.6 visits per visitor). This equates to 23,988 pages visited (3.77 pages per visit) with a total of 74,550 ‘hits’ (11.74 hits per visit). A total of 1.37GB of data was transferred (226.17 KB per visit). July recorded the highest amount of unique visitors (401) and the highest number of visits (805) and the highest amount of pages (4,273). The highest amount of hits were recorded in March (10,752) as was the largest amount of bandwidth used in a month (166.30 MB).

The 10 top level visitors were:

  1. Unknown (IP address only)
  2. Commercial (.com)
  3. Network (.net)
  4. United Kingdom (.uk)
  5. Non-Profit Organizations (.org)
  6. Japan (.jp)
  7. USA Educational (.edu)
  8. Poland (.pl)
  9. Israel (.il)
  10. Germany (.de)
It is worth noting at this point that I exclude my home, work, and ‘other’ personal IP addresses from my stats package so everything recorded reflects actual visitors rather than me updating or checking the site.

The top 10 visiting browsers were:

  1. MS Internet Explorer
  2. Firefox
  3. Mozilla
  4. Safari
  5. Opera
  6. Unknown
  7. Google Chrome
  8. Netscape
  9. Curl
  10. LibWWW

The top visiting operating systems were:

  1. Windows
  2. Macintosh
  3. Unknown
  4. Linux
  5. Symbian OS
  6. RISC OS
  7. Unknown Unix System

Finally, the most interesting stats of 2009 (to me anyway!) were the top 10 search keyphrases used by visitors to find the site via a search engine. I have tinkered with the list a little from its original listing since a few in the top 10 were identical topic searchs but the keyphrases were slightly different:

  1. proftpd fatal socket operation on non-socket
  2. spring flowers
  3. san agostino beach resort
  4. hot 3ex
  5. danyul.net
  6. sensei eric pich
  7. kumite
  8. gary stewart karate
  9. minime
  10. sensei
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1st Kyu

December 21, 2009 By danyul Leave a Comment

MiniMe performing basics

With an end of year trip to Japan looming we just had time to fit a final grading in before we headed off on holiday. In what should in theory be our last kyu grading before we go for our black belts late in 2010, we once again headed to Vale Farm Sports Centre ready for a tough examination of our karate.

The grading took place on Sunday 20th December 2009 and would include grading for all levels so no training session beforehand for those that are purple & white belt or higher. I always find these gradings harder  since you never know what time your respective grade will be called and going for 1st kyu meant that we would be in the very last group. In theory we should have been grading around 4.30pm with a Sensei driven warm-up / practice starting at 4pm. However, as usual the grading was running very late, this time because of a late finishing Taekwondo that took place at the same venue earlier in the day.

Thankfully I had let MiniMe bring his Nintendo DS so he settled down for some Mario Kart fun while I stood and watched some mixed grades being put through their paces by various black belts, below us in the squash courts. Kilburn SKC operates a quite a few sites so there were lots of unknown faces practising but I did recognise the senior black belts who were putting them through their paces. I had long ago learnt that there is little point wearing yourself out before a grading and with some an unknown wait ahead of us I politely declined the offers to go down and join in the practice.

This seemed to be a very good decision as it was just before 6pm before Sensei Natalie started the warm-up for those going for 1st kyu or those attempting to clear a temporary. MiniMe was flagging a little by this time but I persuaded him to join in the practice, although I told him not to go full on at this point, and he looked very sharp to me through basics and kata. The dojo was already very hot at this point thanks to the all day use so I made sure that both of us practiced our technique but held back enough to make sure we were not worn out before the grading started. Our group was called upstairs quite quickly so we did not have enough time to run through kumite as a group and this left MiniMe a little worried since he was worried about forgetting the order of the required attacks.

We were soon upstairs and for the first time the juniors of the grade were called up first, which meant that MiniMe was in the very first group. I watched him go through his basics under the direction of Sensei Eric and Sensei Darren without any comment and it was soon time for me to be called up for the same basics and again no specific comments aimed at me. I was able to sit and watch MiniMe perform both kata and kumite while I was waiting and MiniMe sailed through Bassai Dai but had a few problems performing kumite. His blocks and counter attacks went very well, as did his first few sets of attacks, but for some reason he was putting no power into any of his kicks. I have noticed MiniMe do this before at previous gradings although it is not something that he does with me when we practice. I get the feeling that he is hesitant to kick someone with real intent just in case he actually makes contact; why this would make a difference to kicks rather than punches I do not know. Sensei Peter made several comments to MiniMe, urging him to put more effort into the kicks, but there was only a marginal improvement each time.

MiniMe had now completed his grading to he headed downstairs while I moved on to complete kata (Bassai Dai); not more most accomplished kata performance ever, which is probably try for all my gradings, but I did keep my composure and did not rush through as some tend to do. Next up was kumite and I was partnered with someone that I did not recognise. If I am partnered with someone who I train alongside then it can sometimes be a bit easier in kumite since we have practiced together before and know our normal pacing. In this case I had to keep all my wits about me and I decided that all my attacks had to have power as well as technique and at this level my opponent should know how to block properly. We sailed through my attacks and his counter attacks but when it came to his attacks I found that I barely had to block since just the backward movement was taking me beyond each attack. Sensei pulled my opponent up for not showing enough commitment and told him to attack with purpose.

The syllabus for the grading:

  • Basics (Chudan Jun-zuki->Sambon Renzuki+Sambon Renzuki<-Jodan Age-uke+Gyaku-tsuki->Chudan Soto0uke+Yoko Empi+Yoko Uraken+Chudan Gyaku-tsuki [Zenkutsu-dachi to Kiba-dachi to Zenkutsu-dachi]<-Chudan Uchi-uke+Gyaku-tsuki->Shuto-uke+Nukite [Kokutsu-dachi to Zenkutsu-dachi]->Mae-geri->Rengeri [Chudan/Jodan]->Mawashi-geri->Yoko Ke-age [Kibadachi] left/right->Yoko Ke-Komi [Zenkutsu-dachi] left/right->Yoko Ke-komi [Zenkutsu-dachi]
  • Kata (Bassaidai)
  • Kumite (Jiyu Ippon Kumite – Jodan/Chudan/Maegeri/Yoko Ke-komi/Mawashi-geri one side)

That was the end of our final 2009 grading and I went downstairs to catch up with MiniMe to find out that he had already received his results and was very pleased with himself since he had achieved a straight pass. I followed shortly after and just like MiniMe I had also achieved a straight pass so there was just time to buy a new belt for MimiMe (brown with two white stripes), says our goodbyes to a few people, and then make our way home.

With no more training planned in 2009 this would be our last karate activity for the year and also for sometime into January 2010 thanks to our holiday to Japan (sadly the JKA Honbu would be closed for training on the days we have scheduled in Tokyo) so thanks to everyone associated to Kilburn for their support through 2009 and a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone.

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