Friday 14th March

Now well into the North Pacific Ocean and closing in on Kagoshima (300 Nautical Miles remaining), temperature still slowly falling towards the high teens, weather blustery, sea state lumpy (I know that is not a technical term but it adequately describes it). Wind has backed round to port which means that the veranda door now yanks open when the handle is pressed, as opposed to having both of us lean against it to force it open, as happened a couple of days back when the wind was on our starboard beam.

There was a basic Japanese language class today to help enhance our experience whilst visiting Japan, which I did not attend on the grounds that by approaching a local and reciting in perfect Japanese your well-rehearsed phrase “excuse me could you tell where the train station is?” you are merely inviting the individual to assume you are fluent in their language and will understand perfectly the voluble flood of Japanese you get in return. As you haven’t a clue what they have just said, you then recite your second well-rehearsed phrase in perfect Japanese “I am sorry I do not speak your language” at this stage you can no doubt begin to understand why the British have acquired a reputation for a strange sense of humour, and you have merely served to irritate the local who then storms off muttering blurry inglish, which does not exactly serve to enhance your experience (or theirs). Judging by the large number of ‘students’ in the class, there are going to a heck of a lot of irritated Japanese around by the time we leave their country.

Talks today were World challenges in 2014 Michael Howard, which was very good and he handled the questions extremely professionally, as he should do being a barrister. John Penycate’s was OK but he reads his talks and they sound like an episode of Panorama, when he switches to personal anecdotes his style changes so much it could be two people delivering the talk. He also made a laboured joke about Michael Howard which many people (myself included) felt was in poor taste and unnecessary.

The weather got progressively worse during the evening and walking down the main drag to dinner I noticed that all that was missing was line dancing music, as everyone moved in unison first to the left and then to the right. I was tempted to clap on each change of direction but didn’t think Carol would be amused. The battle with Anna goes on, as tonight I ordered my pudding in French and without batting an eyelid she replied in Polish.

Clocks go back an hour tonight which puts us nine hours ahead of you. Oh and if you want to reply to anything without logging in to the blog and filling in that little box (which incidentally is posted for everyone to view) you can just hit reply to the alert email you get when a new item is added and the reply comes direct to me as a private email and is not posted on the blog.