Paul

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It doesn’t matter whether “Matz is nice”

I’ve met Matz once, I think, at EuRuKo in Krakow in 2010. We chatted briefly in Japanese. He seemed nice, but also quiet and reserved. At the time, he didn’t speak much English; perhaps he could speak more and just wasn’t particularly confident, but he didn’t.

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You don’t just have to give in

I didn’t have to spend five days cycling across the country to and from a festival. I could just have taken the train. There wouldn’t even have been any moral failing in doing so. Instead, I did it the hard way. In exchange I saw a slice across England in great detail – birds, animals, plants, architecture – and felt the satisfaction of having achieved something.

SoNoMu

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Week 274: London to Athens via Rome (and a few other places)

The London Okinawa Sanshinkai was invited to perform at Japan Festival Greece in Athens on the Easter weekend – our Easter, that is; Orthodox Easter as celebrated in Greece falls a week later this year – and I decided to take part. L— and I chose to make a proper holiday of it: rather than flying to Athens, we’d take the long route by train and ferry, and stop off at some other places along the way. The itinerary, travel, and hotels were all organised by Byway, who we used to arrange our trip to

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Week 268: Suspension of disbelief

The week started badly: I opened my laptop for a 9am meeting only for it to run out of battery and die seconds later, before it even had time to tell me it was running low.

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Week 273: Ill communication

I spent the whole week with a horrible cold. My nose kept running. My throat hurt. But the worst part was the lack of sleep: I slept fitfully and not very much. Four hours on Wednesday night felt like a luxury by comparison to the preceding days, and it wasn’t until about Friday that I felt actually rested.