Normal Service Is Resumed...

Due to entirely unforseen circumstances - namely the explosion of my appendix - this blog has been completely neglected of late. Gomenasai. But my fortnight's incarceration in a high-tech Kobe hospital did give me the opportunity for reflection...

• It doesn't matter how bored you get, or how many drugs they give you, sudoku is lamer than Shergar.
• Emperor Hirohito may have been divine, but he was a very dull bloke. Herbert P. Bix's Pulitzer Prize-winning Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan is almost as mind-numbingly boring as sudoku. I'd read all the other English books I own - I bought this in a moment of craven fecklessness.
• Sudoku isn't even bloody Japanese - it was invented in 1979 by an American architect.
• Old men snore. Horribly. It's like sleeping in a cave full of raptors.
• I heartily recommend the Kaisei Hospital Diet: removal of vestigial organ followed by a week of intravenous fluids prior to as much chopped carrots, seaweed and glutinous rice as you can eat, or keep down.
• Minimally invasive surgery has some way to go in Japan - they made an incision you could post letters through.

But my recuperation is now complete, the weather is improving and we'll have this blog back on its feet in no time...