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Spending the night drinking in Aoyama and dancing in Shibuya until morning with Deny and friends, 6 hours after landing in Narita.

Yoshida-san at Albatross, casually wishing me a welcome back, asking how I’m doing, as if it had not been two years since the last time I sat there ordering a drink.

Soon-to-be-official-geisha Hako-chan, demonstrating her shamisen skills at a tiny Shibuya izakaia, before going on a drunken quest for some old Pink Floyd albums at nearby Tower records.

Sheer serendipity and Saeko’s MBA program being located 6 floors down from my lab in the same Jimbocho building.

Drinking our asses off with Yi, Jun & co., enjoying Kaikan Hotel’s Beer Garden‘s “All you can drink” formula until the very last minute (and the last dozen hastily ordered pints).

Tokyo clubbing. Receiving a freshly removed pair of lacy underwear adorned with the wearer’s phone number. Having never asked for it in the first place.

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Hello, I am back within reach of Interweb technologies.

As it turned out, a silly software glitch made my parting promise of auto-posted goodness a complete lie. Actually, all for the best, since honestly, they weren’t the most mesmerizing pieces of writing…

After a short stop at an undisclosed south-east Asia location where I was to acquire some new secret power after undergoing mysterious ritual ceremonies, I am now in Tokyo. Currently working as a visiting researcher for a government-funded organization until late September, devising new and better ways to enslave the human race and take over the world.

I am not quite sure what’s in store for this blog over the Summer, seeing how I resumed my Japanese blog (no point clicking if you do not read Japanese, also even less point clicking if you are learning Japanese, given the appalling level of grammar on display there). Keeping one blog updated is hard enough as it is, let alone two of these things. I might keep this one at a casual pace for the Summer, with mostly photographic updates (as soon as I’ll have set the keitai blog back up again).

If you happen to live in Tokyo and feel like getting together for a glass of shochu or twenty, by all mean get in touch: anything that’ll give me an excuse to slack on my work duties these days…

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I’m off to greener shores for the Summer.

Funnily enough, update frequency will be the best it has been in a while, since I am leaving behind a couple inconsequential pre-posted entries to fill space at regular intervals until I regain full access to 21st century technologies.

Estimated resurfacing time (in a different location, but with the same standard of sharp, yet insightful, educational writing that you have come to expect from this blog) in a couple days or weeks. Possibly more, if some loose rooftop tile prompts me to embark on a spiritual quest to discover my totem animal by moving to a Nepalese buddhist temple.

Meanwhile, have a picnic or two on île Saint-Louis on my behalf.