Sumo is awesome.

I love the stadium…

…I love the build-up rituals…

…and of course – though they’re not easy to photograph! – I love watching the bouts.

See the black-clad umpires all around the ring? They’re called in whenever it’s hard to decide the winner. Laura and I have made a hard decision too.

Japan is wonderful in all sorts of ways, but we’ve now admitted to ourselves that for us it’s never going to be home. We’ve had a lot of fun imagining it could be, though. And we’re going to do our damnedest to squeeze everything we can out of the rest of our time here. 😀

In Tokyo everyone stays late at the office, even Darth Vader.

Hello Kitty London Olympics kimchi. It’s delicious.

I’m not quite sure what’s going on here…

…But I suspect I would probably make the same face.

Since I first got here my tastes in Japanglish have developed a bit. I still enjoy it when it’s direct and to the point…

…but I’ve also learned to appreciate its tendency towards convolutedness…

…its capacity for strange and delicate beauty…

…and, sometimes, its sense of mystery.

It’s cherry blossom season here in Japan.

I’ve been having my first experiences of hanami.

The blossoms themselves are pretty spectacular. But I’m more impressed by the effect they seem to have.

It’s like a national party. Parks are stuffed full of people picnicking and boozing. Not just young people either: I keep seeing otherwise quite conventional-looking grown-ups – old folks, too – all grinning, giggling, playing silly b&ggers and occasionally falling over and passing out.

It’s catching. 😀

London has pigeons. Tokyo has crows.

They seem supremely relaxed. Unlike British crows, whose asthmatic GRAAK! makes them sound like bad tempered old men, Japanese crows make a sound like a posh English person casually referring to the author of Brideshead Revisited: WAUGH, they say. WAUGH.

I’ve heard people here say they bring bad luck. One young woman who lives near Yoyogi Park, where I took the first pic above, told me she lives in fear that one day a crow will peck her eyes out. Famous carrion eaters that they are, it’s easy to speculate that the crows’ prevalence here is a reflection of Japan’s impressively horrifying history of death, destruction and disaster, both man-made and natural.

I’ve only been watching the crows here for three seasons now, but I have a different theory…

I think they watch over Japan – and their intelligence, stylishness and resilience are reflections of their kingdom.

This week on Trapped By Monsters – now, apparently, one of Tesco Magazine’s Top 10 Kids’ Book Blogs – your fearless correspondent uncovers an elaborate hoax on humans by Tokyo’s monster population.