All Mod Cons

The weather here is still swelteringly hot. Normally it would have abated weeks ago, but the temperature is still hovering around 30 degrees Celsius (and that's nearly 90 degrees in old money) and we're almost in October. Last year the switch from sub-tropical to temperate was almost digital - a 5-degree drop almost overnight and bang! We were in autumn.

In vain we trawl internet weather forecasts in search of some respite. The Daily Yomiuri offers no encouragement, but Weatherbug reckons it might be a more palatable 24 degrees by the weekend, so we'll choose to believe that one then (although it's based in Maryland, so there's no reason why we should).

In Year Two we've set our sights on visiting places further afield than Kobe. Osaka is further afield than Kobe (although as it's actually conjoined in the great conurbation that is Kansai, only just), and we thought we'd take a look around Osaka Castle. Not only is it one of the most picturesque of Japan's fortresses, but it's got air conditioning and an elevator.

Unlike Himeji, which never actually saw battle, Osaka jo (castle) was in the thick of it practically from the start. Built by local-farmer's-lad-done-good (he rose to become the most powerful daimyo in all Japan), Hideyoshi Toyotomi, in 1583, it only lasted 31 years before the second-most powerful daimyo, and Tokyo-based chancer, Ieyasu Tokugawa, laid siege to it in 1614. The Siege of Osaka was a pivotal point in Japanese history - the Toyotomi clan lost and Tokugawa's Edo dynasty was to remain in power for over 250 years.

The Tokugawas went about redecorating their new pad, only to have it struck by lightning three times in the next 39 years. On the face of it, that sounds like bad luck, but if you build a castle in a place called 'Large Hill ' (O-saka), pre-Franklin, then maybe you've got it coming. Although improvements were made to the castle grounds in general over the years, it wasn't until 1931 that the main tower was renovated. But then World War II and a few typhoons clobbered it again and, finally, in 1997, it was restored to its four-hundred-year-old glory.

So, I've done the maths, and it would appear that we just visited a 10-year-old castle, with maybe another 90 years on the clock. But it was a small price to pay for the air conditioning and the elevator.

How To Get Ahead In Advertising

Now that Blogger has made it possible to upload movies, we can share the many strange audio-visual experiences that make purchasing such a pleasure in Japan. This one is a particular favourite of mine.

Activated by motion sensor, this advert for Malt's beer just repeats the name over and over, culminating in a satisfying fizz (or is it a toilet flushing?). Now what could be simpler than that? I guess the advertising industry in Japan doesn't pay so well.

Compelling though this message is, I still buy Kirin, or whatever the promotions lady is pushing in the store, frankly. Sometimes it's a raffle type of thing, sometime it's a free glass, but mostly it just turns out to be a pack of tissues. You can never have too many tissues in Japan it would seem.

An Age To Get A Bronze

While the Great Britain and NI squad set themselves the paltry target of three medals for the 11th IAAF World Championships, spare a thought for the host nation. Bigged up massively by a partisan media, by the eighth and penultimate day of the competition, they had won not a sausage.

Hammer-throwing pin-up boy and medal favourite Koji Murofushi can deliver FedEx parcels to China in double-quick time (according to his oft-played commercial at any rate), but he just couldn't bring home the bacon, finishing a lowly sixth.

There was the hugely likable long-distance runner Kayoko Fukushi (pictured below) who contested the 3,000m steeplechase and 5,000m and got pasted in both, but whose post-race jollity in the face of defeat was the very epitome of the Olympian ideal.

Come Saturday, the pressure was on the 100m relay team. Could veteran Nobuharu Asahara, now 35, shepherd a bunch of rookies, one looking like a Japanese George Michael, another a spindly youth with hair worse than Paul Weller's, to the nation's first medal? Evidently the CG department didn't think so. They'd taken the evening off and left it to the local manga guy to graphically depict the fact that the Japanese quartet had posted the third fastest qualifying time. Maybe the presenter on the left did it - he looks pretty proud of himself.

Game though Asahara-san was, his relay squad finished fifth. But they got heroes' receptions anyway.

So, to Sunday morning and the last event in which Japan could possibly win anything (because they were not contesting any of the other finals), the womens marathon. And they turned up mob-handed, with five athletes. The marathon is an excruciating event, not made any easier by 30-degree heat and Japan's punishing humidity. One by one the Japanese competitors reluctantly dropped off the leading peloton, leaving Reika Tosa grimly hanging on, with the weight of a nation on her shoulders and a camera shoved up her nose, for the last 5km.

Although she dropped back to fourth a few kilometres out, just before they hit the stadium she clawed her way past the Chinese athlete to occupy the precious medal position. The crowd went wild, the presenters went bonkers and the cameraman on the motorbike bike wasn't allowed in the stadium. Ms Tosa got her adulation and her dignity restored too. Ganbatte all round!