Was back in the UK last year after being away for 5 years. T'was a time to reflect on the past while looking at how London has changed over time. This photo taken at St Pancras where we used the Eurostar to travel between Paris and London - we ended up taking the Eurostar 4 times due to the volcano.
Picking up some tickets to get a bus back to mums place in Hackney.
Before I continue to babble, folks who have not done so already may want to read the "How Discovering Japan Changed My Life" post to understand and relate to photos and stuff in this post.
They didn't have these Oyster card thingies when I was living in the UK. The naming "Oyster" kinds sounded strange as I've heard "Oyster" being used to describe other things ^^; The Oyster is a card which you can charge with money that enables you to use the transport system. Cant remember if you can use it to buy other stuff like Suica or Pasmo in Japan.
The lady here is trying to convince the man that she lost her oyster and wants another one.
Never in my life have I seen a sight like this at Dalston Junction - bicycles instead of cars. Since I left London, they introduced a congestion charge which means that folks who want to travel into central London need to pay extra. Over time, many folks started to bike it to work like these folks.
I only learned how to ride a bicycle after I got to Japan - would love to cycle the streets of London one day.
Been mostly living with mum after I got out of those foster homes and usually stay with her when we go back to London.
This is the computer that we bought while I was a student - bought it with a loan and was the best investment we've ever made that helped me pick up computing skills which I needed to built my career which you recently read about.
This machine had a 4GB drive and was on dailup at 56 or 256k ^^; What was the spec of your first ever PC or Mac?
I did have a Commodore 64 before this but didn't do much on it apart from play games like The Last Ninja - we loaded games via a cassette tape back then!
The quickest way to digitize old photos was to take a photo of them - stuck a bit of blu-tac at the back and stuck them on the wall to take photos - had been preparing that post since last year.
I love that beer mug tea cup which I forgot to bring back with me ToT
I was brought up on Argos and remember always looking forward to looking at the toys section when a new catalog came out. I see that its now tripled in size over the past 10 years!
Was out n about London in armor and you can see photos taken on the day in the Tokyo Trooper in London post.
I never carry the blaster around anymore as police have asked about it in the past before.
I love British Food! Unfortunately there aren't that many places in Tokyo (not that I know of anyway) that do decent UK food. All the food photos are in the British Food post.
Friends who I used to work with part time at the Benihana restaurant went on to set up their own Asian ethnic restaurant called MoMo Cafe.
Had the pleasure of paying a visit to the university that I graduated from - SOAS where I also gave a talk. More photos from the day in the SOAS post.
A last named after Chun. Me in the middle of designing the Black Rock Shoe.
...of the Volcano that erupted which stranded most flights around Europe. We were in France at the time and just before we got on the plane, they told us that the flight was cancelled.
We were needlessly paying to live in a hotel near Paris having absolutely no idea when we were going to go home. Decided to head back London to stay at Mums.
At Oxford street with Mirai-chan.
Found something for the girls to wear at home.