Tower Bridge - my favourite London Landmark

I know it's been a bit of a while since I updated (although clearly not as long as some people- hurumph!!) For a while after coming back from Aomori I felt like I had nothing to say but actually things are quite different this year, so I thought I'd just write a bit about that and if you get really bored you can just skip to the pretty pictures at the end...

Work has been pretty manic overall - being January we've been having our accounts audited, all slightly complicated by the fact that we're changing accountants this year; luckily they finished their fieldwork last week so things should hopefully calm down a bit until HQ get their hands on the final version and then the real questions will come rolling in! With that and all the other New Year random stuff, I've been unable to really get my teeth into my translation assignments but I'm hoping to put some time aside for that this week.

My translation class started on Wednesday - which was really cool. It's mostly Japanese people (turns out we are translating both ways -eek!) but everyone seemed pretty relaxed and open to discussion - and the teacher was pretty cool. I was expecting it to be very rule-bound, you know, must stick to all the precise vocab and grammar requirements and all that (which of course form the basis) but once we got past that, she seemed to be giving the message that, as translator, you control what is conveyed and can employ all kinds of strategies to get it across as accurately as possible - which I found very empowering. Often when translating I feel cornered, between understanding what is said in the source text and knowing what can be said in the target language, so it will be great if I can pick up lots of ideas for getting around those restraints from this course.

Have also started German classes with Tess - mostly just for fun but also so that I can speak to Hardy (I'm lucky that all three of my Directors at work are from different countries!) without anyone else being able to understand! I have totally forgotten everything we did for GCSE so it's a really weird feeling to kind of get the gist of what's going on without being able to understand all the individual words!

In other news, people keep having babies - Joy last week and Daizo the week before (congratulations guys!) which is all very exciting and cute (awww).

Went out today and had a wander around London - took a walk along the Thames from London Bridge to Westminster, taking cheesy photos along the way...

For those who wondered.... this is the actual London Bridge... boring huh?

Tower Bridge and HMS wotsit

City of London Indeed

Bit of random cityscape

Pillars

Tate Modern - you have no idea how long I had to wait for that bird to be just there!!

Houses of Parliament, from the South Bank

St. Paul's and the Millenium Bridge

Millenium Bridge from the North Bank

Sunset behind the something-bridge

The Big Ben tower in all its winter glory

Happy New Year!

On the way to Iwaki, New Year's Morning

People making their way to hatsumode

Iwaki from the car park at Iwaki-so

With my old Eikaiwa

A spark of Aomori genius: trucks come to drop Ajigasawa's snow in a car park, then two ploughs blow it into the sea. Clever!

Sad and Angry

Yay! We've come a long way since Tokyo!

Dam! That is so not how it goes!

Aomori Revisited

Well as you may be able to tell I had a stunning holiday in Aomori - thanks to everyone who came out and put me up and made it such a fun time! It was great to realise that my links with the place hadn't disintegrated completely after I moved back, and it was really great to have the opportunity to catch up with friends and soak in various onsen around the ken. Sorry to people I missed, but I'm hoping to be back again before too long!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! Am having a great time relaxing in the snow in Aomori - went to Iwaki shrine and Iwaki-so onsen on New Year's Day; it was the most gorgeous day, they were pounding mochi in the genkan, and I had the rotenburo all to myself! Looking forward to moving on to Fukaura tomorrow and on to Gosh on the 6th - hope to catch up with lots of you on my way!! Big Happy New Year to everyone at home, am looking forward to seeing you once I get back next week. I love the way that New Year is so... new... and that feeling of starting afresh. Hope everyone's made their resolutions and that 2006 holds good things for all.