Before visiting our local cinema tonight to see Inglourious Basterds (which was great) we decided to grab a big bowl of udon at our favourite udon place around here, 十萬石 (Juumangoku). They have three restaurants (that we know about) in Nagano prefecture, with our favourite being out in 戸倉 (Togura) - a little too far to go in the time we had. So we settled for the second-best alternative closer by.

I went for my usual-for-winter hot and slightly spicy 肉味噌うどん (miso-flavoured soup with pork and vegetables) and it was delicious, with the udon being chewy as they should be. Comparing it to the udon we've eaten recently, it's quite different, being much more rough and obviously hand-made. I really like this quality though, the unevenness of the noodles makes it delicious.

The important thing -- other than the quality of the wheat-flour -- when it comes to making udon is コシ (koshi). Literally meaning "one's back" (as in putting one's back into it) its true meaning is the firm texture of the udon, coming from the power and effort the maker puts into kneading the udon mixture while creating the noodles. Thus you can tell a bad udon if it becomes soft too quickly after being in the soup a short while.

At 十萬石 with your meal they allow you to help yourself to as much salad (well, cabbage) and tea as you like. (As a side note you'll notice that in the second photo the restaurant's name is written on the side of their mugs.) Our bill for the meal was 1995 yen (about £13).

Last night upon arriving at the restaurant we were met with the very strange sight of dozens of daikon lined up outside. Inside we were then met with boxes upon boxes of daikon. So strange! When we sat down I noticed that on top of the boxes was a written notice to customers (photo four) asking to please freely take as many daikon as you'd like, and they provided plastic carrier bags to take them away in. I guess there is a lot of spare daikon available this year; just a shame I'm not too keen on it myself.

The final photo shows the restaurant from the outside as we were leaving to drive home. One thing I unfortunately wasn't able to take photos of is the interior of the restaurant. All of the branches of 十萬石 are really old traditional Japanese-style buildings, and inside they have vaulted ceilings and are decorated with display cases containing lots of samurai memorabilia such as suits of armour and weaponry. Almost museum-like, and very very interesting.

When I came to Japan, because I have the privilege of coming from England, I was able to just exchange my UK UK driving licence into a Japanese driving licence without taking any sort of proficiency test. At first I thought this was because Japan drive on the left side of the road like the UK. But that's not the case, as there are a number of right-hand-side-of-the-road countries (e.g. most of Europe) which also have reciprocal agreements with Japan for licence exchange.

However despite having been a driver in the UK for 13 years and having a clean record, when I received my Japanese licence I was designated a 'new driver'. This is indicated on the top-most licence below by the green strip across the middle. Within this green strip is the expiry date of the licence. (The year is written in the standard Japanese era format.)

The problem is that my licence was due to expire in March 2011 (three years after having received it), but having contacted the driving licence centre a week or two ago, I was told that I could go along to the centre before leaving Japan and pay 4250 yen (about 30 pounds) to extend my licence for an extra year. This gives me enough breathing space.

As an aside it's a real pain in the arse that in Japan everybody has to renew their licence every few years (up to five). In the UK once you have your licence you keep it (providing you commit no driving offences) until you reach old age, no renewals necessary. One would think with such a strict renewal system here it would breed better drivers, but, well that's a whole other subject I could write about, suffice to say that it definitely doesn't seem that way to me having driven here now for two years.

Back to the story, so I went along to the centre this morning and went through the application process (forms, eye test, new photo) in about half an hour, and was then told to go upstairs to 'watch a video'. I was expecting this to take about 30 minutes or so, but oh no. First we had a lecture for 1.5 hours(!) on driving and road safety by some guy with a droning voice. Why is it always the case that they make the presenters of such lectures have boring voices? Imagine if they actually made it entertaining, they might not get a quarter of the class of 50 people sleeping, as was the case this morning.

He covered such subjects as:
- use of seatbelts
- numbers of deaths and accidents
- recent changes to the law
- stopping distances
- drinking and driving, and using mobile phones

I did pick up a couple of interesting pieces of information actually. We heard that although there are more traffic accidents during the day than at night (which makes sense as most people are awake and out then) the percentage of deaths occurring in traffic accidents is actually greater at night.

Then he, using an overhead projector (something I haven't seen used since my school days), showed us some statistics that indicated that in Japan as a whole only 30% of back-seat passengers wear seat belts when travelling on normal roads. This percentage increases to just 60% when travelling on the motorways. That's actually quite scarily low from my point of view! For the passenger seat the percentage is only in the 80s. I guess the one positive was that we were also shown percentages for just Nagano prefecture, and these were all slightly higher than the overall figures.

After the lecture was over, we were then shown a 30-minute video which was basically just showing real-life examples of the different kinds of car accidents that happen. I guess it was partly shock tactics, but it was more interesting than the lecture.

When we finally left the lecture room we were all given our new licences, and I noticed immediately that I now had a blue strip instead of green. I found this information online about the different coloured strips:

"Japanese driver's licenses have 3 colors - green, blue and gold - for the term of validity. Green is for the new driver who gets their license for the first time, blue is for drivers who have renewed, and gold is for the excellent drivers who have had no accidents/violation of traffic rules in the past 5 years. It is valid for 5 years."

(I resisted the urge to change the noun 'license' in the above quoted text to the British spelling 'licence' - not to mention the atrocious grammar.)

Unfortunately because of the timing of this renewal, when I renew this new licence in 2012 I will have only had a licence in Japan for four years. So I'll be given another blue licence, and then only on the next renewal three years later (2015) finally get my gold card (assuming I don't flagrantly violate the law in the meantime). Bummer!

Finally I've highlighted a couple of changes on the new licence below:

(1) - They no longer declare me to be British (イギリス). I'm told this is because the new licences have an IC chip inside that stores this information, so my nationality is removed for privacy reasons. The new licence is certainly thicker than the old one, I guess due to the embedding of the chip.

(2) - Interestingly enough on my eye test this time they told me that in fact my eyesight is borderline okay, meaning that I'm no longer legally obligated to wear glasses when I drive. So they removed this restriction from my licence.

Well okay, I exaggerated a bit. But today I went to my eye doctor for my forth visit about my always-dry left eye, and again like the first time I went he gave me the dreaded 'dry eye' test. It's so uncomfortable! They start by telling you they're going to put drops in your eyes that will make your eyes hurt, and thus make you cry. And then if that's not bad enough they get paper strips and hang them over your bottom eyelids. Not pleasant.

If you look closely you can see that my left eye has released 16mm of tears, whereas my right eye is at 34mm; more than double! But on my first visit a few months ago my left eye produced even less, so at least it seems slightly better than it was. And certainly my left eye hasn't been quite so dry throughout the day recently.

It has been a long time - nine or ten months - since I last visited the house of my friend Esdras, out in the sticks of central Nagano-ken. (Thankfully I could keep myself occupied on the 50-minute train ride thanks to the ability to tether my iPhone to my MacBook Air.)

Historically we've always eaten home-made cheese wraps for lunch at his house, using tortilla wraps and cheese he and his wife acquired through a food supplier, but this will be the last time to eat them for quite a while. Luckily he had just four tortillas left, enough for a couple each. Their flavour belies their plainness it has to be said, and with chai tea to accompany them they were very satisfying.

We spent a good couple of hours chatting about OS X and the ways we felt it could be improved for the next version, and then the remaining time was expended, well, expending zombies in Resistance 2 on his PS3. Thanks Esdras!

Yours for just 5.6 million yen (about 4000 pounds) at K's Denki (ケーズデンキ). I love the way they put a bench in front of it so people can just space out and watch film trailers (and probably commercials).

It was my first time to see a wooden-cased air conditioner this afternoon while clearing out an old apartment. As you can see in the photos it's a Mitsubishi unit, and according to a PDF I found online (you can see a segment of it as the last photo) it was made in 1982. I love the wired "micro computer" remote control.

A favourite of Esdras and mine, Cafe Montmartre (カフェ・モンマルトル), was today's lunch destination. It's a great place decorated in a nostalgic American/European style (and playing Tom and Jerry on their many small TV screens!) with a Nepalese chef who always does such tasty cheese naans.

Esdras and I went for the cheese naan and a variety of curries. The deal is basically as much naan and curry as you like for 840 yen (about 5 pounds) in a lunch set which includes a salad and a drink. Once you've finished you can ask for more of both the curry and the naan.

They have six curry options on offer including mutton, vegetable, seafood and chicken, from which one can choose two. For the naan one can choose from about four varieties including plain and of course cheese. Yuzo, not being a fan of curry, went for the beef stroganoff, but it was a bit too sweet(!) for my taste.

A great quote from Shunryu Suzuki, a Japanese Zen master, from his book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind:

After you have practiced for a while, you will realize that it is not possible to make rapid, extraordinary progress. Even though you try very hard, the progress you make is always little by little. It is not like going out in a shower in which you know when you get wet. In a fog, you do not know you are getting wet, but as you keep walking you get wet little by little. If your mind has ideas of progress, you may say, "Oh, this pace is terrible!" But actually it is not. When you get wet in a fog it is very difficult to dry yourself. So there is no need to worry about progress.

It is like studying a foreign language; you cannot do it all of a sudden, but by repeating it over and over you will master it.

Thanks to BurritoLingus for blogging it, and Steve Kaufmann for bringing it to my attention.

On the 487.5km journey home from Osaka today, we stopped at the newly-opened Suwa (諏訪) branch of Ippudo (一風堂), the ramen restaurant we ate at the other day in Kyoto, for lunch.

I chose the spicy miso option (一風堂からか麺 - photo one) and opted for the 'normal' spiciness level, and she went for the tonkotsu soup with added flavour (赤丸かさね味 - photo two). Along with my ramen came a bowl with half an egg, some pork meat and some rice flavoured with a similar taste to my soup.

After we had finished our noodles, we both asked for more noodles (替え玉), at which point we swapped soups so we could try each others'. I actually really liked both, although the winner for me was the ramen with separate noodles (つけ麺) I ate the last time, but unfortunately it seems like that choice is only available in the Kyoto branch.

The final photo is of the outside of the shop, painted bright red with small slices of windows. Very easy to spot!

Despite feeling rather worse for wear with a cold, I dosed myself up and went out in Osaka for a few hours this evening. Earlier in the day I'd dropped my brother at Osaka Itami airport for his internal flight up to Tokyo, ready for his flight home tomorrow morning, and arranged to meet Han-san. Han-san was a student in my class at my Japanese language school, and since graduating alongside me in March he moved to Osaka to continue his education. He's Korean, but moved with his mum to Nagano a couple of years back, and his Japanese is great. Especially now, since he has part-time jobs in a couple of hotels in Osaka - hence the good room rates for staying.

Our first stop was Ichiran, his favourite ramen restaurant. It's a chain restaurant, and its ramen was very tasty. However due to my cold unfortunately my taste buds weren't in optimum condition, so I will have to have another visit to confirm this verdict 100%. (Oh what a hardship.) It somehow felt like it had been a while (久し振り) since I had eaten a ramen, and indeed it had - five days since the last one. Ha!

Upon entering the restaurant (we had to queue outside for 10 minutes) there was a machine with just a single button labelled ラーメン (ramen) which made me laugh. Underneath that were more buttons for extras like an egg (which I chose) and beer (which of course I also chose). We inserted our money and it spat out our meal tickets. The seats inside were arranged in a single line, and on the wall of the waiting area was a panel with flashing LEDs showing the empty seats. When a row of three became empty we were told to file in and find our seats. Once sat down we were greeted with effectively a questionnaire of how we wanted our ramen to taste. The questions/options were:

- soup flavour strength (味の濃さ)
- soup thickness/oiliness (こってり度)
- amount of garlic (にんにく)
- onions (ねぎ) - either white (normal) or green
- noodle hardness (面のかたさ)
- spiciness / mystery sauce (秘伝のたれ)

I went for normal (基本) for everything except for noodle hardness, as I like my noodles slightly harder than normal. For spiciness I opted for 1/2 - the recommendation for newbies - whereas Han-san chose 2x, and you could soon tell as the sweat started pouring off his face!

I'll definitely be back to try their ramen again, probably next month at one of their many branches in Tokyo.

Yes, you read that right. Wouldn't you love to bury your head in this cushion? Stimulating (according to the label) and yours for just 998 yen (about £6.50). Just one of the many thousands of (seeminly random) products for sale in Don Quijote (ドンキホーテ) stores across the country. We were in the centre of Kobe at the time.

On our way out of the hotel this morning I took this photo, so you can see exactly what my brother and I were sitting with our feet in yesterday. As you can see they provide the towels too. A great form of relaxation after a day's walking!

As part of the reduced-food course we had booked at the ryokan in Kotohira, we were only expecting something like a single croissant and coffee for breakfast this morning. Instead we were presented with this - a tray including some orange segments, a salad, juice and two warm croissants. Butter and jam were also provided of course. Lovely!

I don't have anything but good things to say about this ryokan. We'd definitely love to go back at some point, and also take the opportunity of having more free time in which to climb the 1,368 steps up to Kompira shrine.

My brother didn't want to leave the breakfast table without leaving behind a present, and in his inimitable style this was an origami chicken made from his napkin. I'm sure the waiter appreciated it and had a laugh (assuming he could figure out what it was).

After enjoying our earlier pre-dinner udon, we returned to the hotel for our "reduced-food" dinner course. We were certainly not expecting what we ended up with! The five courses we were given were:

- Appetisers (including jellyfish - in the tiny flower-shaped bowl on the right)
- Sashimi (including sea urchin, raw prawn, turban shell [栄螺／サザエ], flounder, scallops, yellowtail, sea bream)
- Beef and Matsutake mushroom (cooked ourselves over a flame)
- Miso soup
- Swiss roll and kiwi fruit

We were completely stuffed after this. All we could do was have a quick rest, and then go for a long soak in the ryokan's onsen. This was so clean and the indoor and outdoor baths were an absolutely perfect temperature (my guess 41 degrees).

The part of the Japanese road trip with my brother I was most looking forward to was the two-day drive through Shikoku, well known for its udon. I love udon and for the last couple of years - I think since watching the Japanese film 'Udon' - I've wanted to visit Shikoku and eat Sanuki udon.

We'd booked to stay in the well-known (and expensive) Kotohira Kadan, a top-class ryokan, and one of the ways of reducing the price (as you pay per person, not per room), and at the same time experiencing some of the local udon, was to take a "reduced-food" course. In addition to this reduced dinner at the ryokan, we were also each given a ticket (photo two) which could be exchanged for a bowl of udon at one of a couple of the local udon restaurants.

We went for 山下うどん (Yamashita Udon), which was about a ten-minute drive from the ryokan. And it was fantastic. The udon were quite chewy and obviously home-made (in a good way). Unlike our lunch earlier they aren't going for completely-smooth seemingly Sanuki-style udon, but instead the taste was much more preferable to me; I do like firm noodles!

The first photo shows my choice of the きつね (named for the sweetened fried tofu served on top of the udon) ready to eat once the sauce was poured on. The third photo shows the bottles of cold and hot sauce the staff brought to our table, along with the stub of fresh ginger they provided for us to grate for ourselves. Finally the last photo shows my brother's (meat topping) udon. Yum!

After finishing, I had enjoyed my udon so much that I ordered another きつね. It should be pointed out that these bowls of udon were considered their 'small' size (they also had 'large'), and cost just 350 yen each (about £2.30). Amazingly cheap and so very delicious!

Feet in a hot foot bath. So very relaxing!

On our way to Takamatsu, the largest city on the island of Shikoku, a quick check online (using my iPhone) and we had our lunch destination in 鶴丸 (pronounced 'tsurumaru'), a small restaurant in the centre of town near the station.

The owner was really friendly and recommended a few things to us, as I guess it was obvious we weren't local and didn't know our udon. First on the list was 'sashimi udon', served cold over rice with some onions and ginger. It's eaten sashimi-style, in that you eat it by first dipping it in soy sauce. This cost just 100 yen (65p), and I ordered seconds.

The udon was really smooth and surprisingly soft. It almost melts in the mouth! I somehow remembered that in the film 'Udon' it was said that you shouldn't chew Sanuki udon, but instead let it just slide down. Not sure how true that is, and I didn't fancy trying it in case I choked, but I can see how it could be feasible as the noodles certainly don't require much chewing at all.

Shown next below is my hot ぶっかけうどん (served in slightly-watered-down sauce with meat, ginger and onions) which was very tasty, and after that my brother's かけうどん (served with meat in a thinner broth).

As we paid and left, the owner asked us if we'd had a good experience of udon, which was really nice. Definitely a good first experience.

Tonight we are fortunate enough to be able to stay right in the centre of the south part of Osaka (Namba). A friend of ours works at a hotel literally right off Dōtonbori so not only did we get a great room on the 14th floor for next to nothing, but this evening we were able to sample the food of a fantastic curry restaurant nearby.

The place is called Puru Nima, and to cut a long story short we all left there very full and very happy. The service was great; the guy (of Indian descent who spoke very capable Japanese) politely and patiently answered all of our million-and-one questions about the different types of curry on offer and the spiciness and contents of their menu. I enjoyed a Kingfisher beer - a lager which, despite being offered as an Indian beer, is in fact bottled in the UK - and we gobbled down our curries and naans with tremendous gusto.

Between us we had a prawn curry, a potato and aubergine curry and a minced chicken curry, accompanied with garlic, cheese and plain naans. Superb!

Our journey today took us from Kyoto to Osaka, and for lunch we decided to visit my favourite okonomiyaki restaurant chain, 風月 (pronounced 'fugetsu'), for lunch. The photos show the stages of the cooking process, all done by the staff on the large heated pan embedded in the table in front of us. The items we chose were (left to right):

1) 風月焼き (pork, beef, squid, prawns)
2) 牛すじねぎモダーン (beef and onions with noodles)
3) とんぺい焼き (omelette with pork)

Photo 1: placing the mix of the pancakes on the pan (the omelette was brought to us)
Photo 2: adding fish flakes to both, and noodles on the middle one (half the omelette, gone!)
Photo 3: after flipping them over (and finishing consuming the omelette)
Photo 4: adding the final mayonnaise, sauce, and onions. Ready to eat! Go!

Not very traditionally Japanese, but lets face it who really wants grilled fish and rice for breakfast. This was courtesy of Shinshindo, a place tucked down a side street off the main Shijō street thoroughfare and dating back to 1913!

The buttered bread in particular was so soft, and they gave us a pot of jam to spread on it. I want another one now just thinking about it.

Before coming to Japan, I think my brother wanted to try his hand at Japanese archery (弓道) more than anything else; so that he could see just how it compares to his regular archery back in the UK.

I had searched on the internet and found 園山大弓場 (pronounced 'enzandaikyuujou') in Kyoto, next to the Yasaka Shrine in Gion, where one can go and just fire off a few arrows without going through all of the training required when one usually undertakes Japanese archery.

Upon arriving, we were confused to find that it looked just like a regular house. After getting closer we noticed that Monday was their day off; they were closed! Needless to say, my brother was crestfallen; he'd been looking forward to it for the entire trip. So we stood outside and pondered what we should do for a 'plan b'.

After a minute or so a woman in her 60s opened the door, and we apologised and explained that we'd come to shoot a few arrows. I'm not sure why, other than pure kindness, but she then invited us in to 'just look around'. No sooner were we inside than she laid a bow down and got some arrows out, explaining that she works the range with her son, who speaks English, and he takes Mondays off.

She spoke in a thick Kyoto dialect; so much so that I couldn't really understand a lot of what she said.

As you can see from the photos, there is a long bench seat inside, on which we were told to sit facing sideways (at 90˚ to the target) with our right leg curled up underneath us, and our left leg on the floor. The lady explained that arrows are shot in the posture of 'sitting on a horse' - a technique that dates back to bygone days when people shot their arrows from horseback. Once seated, we held our bow and faced left down the 14-metre range (which sloped slightly downwards, under the house) toward the targets.

The bows were very simple, consisting of just a single length of wood and a cord permanently attached to one end. In preparing them for our use she pulled the cord, bent the wood, and attached the cord to the opposite end of the bow, thus creating the bowed shape. She asked us to try out a couple of different strengths of bow, so that we could work out which suited us best. I think it was at that moment that we realised just how much effort and thought is involved in ensuring good technique and posture for Japanese archery. We were told to:

1. Hold the bow with our left hand and bend the wrist;
2. Place the arrow on top of finger and thumb of the left hand;
3. Pinch the arrow onto the cord using two fingers and thumb of the right hand;
4. Pull our right hand back all the way past our right ear;
5. Move the bow up or down to line up with the target;
6. Release and not move our arm or body afterwards;
7. Watch... as our arrow skewed off and hit the wrong target (in my case at least).

Whilst we fired off our 10 arrows, one at a time (and mostly laughed at the results), the lady explained to us that the place has been there over 150 years, since 1843 (the Edo period). She has apparently been running it herself for the last 30 years. She also pointed out the lists of peoples' names covering most of the wall space. They are the names of those who have managed to shoot three arrows (from ten provided) into the centre of the target; older names carved into wood, more recent names written on pieces of paper.

With all arrows shot, we inspected the targets. As I feared, I had fared the worst, managing only to hit a target that was not my own. My brother had fared better, managing to get one arrow in his target. Overall it was an amazing experience, and well worth the 800 yen (£5) each that it had cost.

Tonight on the way back to our hotel after our evening meal, we passed Ippudo (一風堂) again and this time I couldn't resist. So I rather meanly sent my brother into Starbucks with his laptop to wait (as he very sensibly didn't want more food) while I popped in for a ramen fix. I went for the つけ麺 (cold noodles served separately from the hot soup). I really loved it, as the soup was so meaty and delicious. Afterwards the staff topped my soup up with thinner bonito soup (to water it down) so I could then drink the remainder of it.

I had the chance to order 1.5x more noodles for the same price (850 yen; about £5.50) but I couldn't manage that this time, having already eaten a meal; next time I will for sure. I've been told there are other branches of Ippudo in among other places Osaka and Kobe, both of which we're due to go in the next couple of days, so it could be sooner rather than later.

I took my brother to the Kyoto branch of one of our regularly-visited chain restaurants, Din Tai Fong, this evening to let him try some of the delicious Taiwanese soup dumplings (小龍包). Shown here are the steamed prawn gyoza (海老蒸し餃子 ) and a couple of the larger pork meat buns (肉まん) which we also ordered.

No, I'm not being rude. It's the name of a vegetable (and also in fact a fruit), which the owners of Poco-a-Poco have grown themselves over more than a year, then hollowed out and painted, and have sitting in their restaurant in three different colours and sizes (representing a family). What a fun idea, I bet the kids who come love them!

In Japanese the vegetable is called ヒョウタン (pronounced 'hyoutan'), and in English it's a calabash or gourd. I've heard the word 'calabash' somewhere before but never really knew what it was.