Lucky Balls

If you wonder around our part of Kyoto you might well presume that we have a higher than average number of testicle doctors. Almost every house has a fox with huge dangly balls between his legs outside their front door. They tell me he is a spirit who catches bad things and stores them in his balls! I suppose it makes as much sense as lucky horseshoes. Once I work out how to do it I'll put a picture of him on the blog so you can all see.

I am currently suffering from a very very severe hangover the result of our now weekly poker game. I managed to clean up! Impressive until you consider that we each started with 100 yen and I won about 400 which is still only 2 pounds! I was drinking a Japanese grain spirit called Sochou its a bit like vodka except my stomach really disagrees with it.

Although Kyoto like any city is noisy and smelly it has the redeeming feature of very musical traffic crossings, instead of bing bing (noise foe blind people) we get a rather cheerfully little dity. At the school as well the end and start of lessons is not indicated with the traditional bell rather an electronic version of the Big Ben chimes, I think I might go into work on New Years eve just for the nostalgia.

Cheers
Roger