So much has happened in the time I've been back that I haven't written about, partly because it feels to me like the adventure is over and so should my travelog be too, but in many ways the re-assimilation into English life is proving as difficult and as interesting as entering Japanese society did so many years ago. Despite this, I find it hard to write about my life in England because it seems like the majority of readers won't understand it. Crazy events and unusual happenings in Japan are noteworthy and, in some way, understandably strange for most of my readers because Japan is, for them, a strange and noteworthy place. I suppose it's natural then that since I've been back, the refrain I've heard most often is, "But Tokyo is way stranger than London - it must be a relief to be back!" Sadly I've heard this so often it sometimes causes me to lose my temper, which nowadays (thanks, Japan) is demonstrated by little more than a twitch of the eyebrows and pursed lips.

In fact Tokyo is no stranger than London. It's a different city at the other end of a different continent, but to say one city is stranger than another requires a naive cultural viewpoint, which I (if I ever had) I no longer have after 2+ years of living away from my home culture. I know my way around Tokyo way better than I do London. I understand the rules of street behaviour in Tokyo much more clearly than I do here. Things have become second nature to me in Japan which I need to question now because they seem often inappropriate now. I often feel baffled and confused, and when someone says, "You must feel relaxed now you're back," it feels to me more like a blank, unthinking negation of my difficulties, and gets me quite riled. I suspect getting riled is also a side-effect of the disorientation, so I try to stay on top of it. I suppose the preachy message here is don't underestimate other people's confusion if you haven't had their experiences.

Enough of my weirdness. Apart from an amazing trip to Amsterdam with Anri, I've been pretty busy. The ever-generous Mat and Charlotte have let me stay on their couch for the last 7 weeks, which seems like a long time in print, but in fact I haven't felt confined, exposed or without privacy at any point. This is probably due to Charlotte having been a PPS to a minister and therefore tremendously busy with her work for 60% of the day as well as buying a chalet with her stepdad for most of the remaining 40%, while Mat's been spending time up country seeing to *his* new purchase, a narrowboat currently moored at a marina somewhere in Oxfordshire. This coupled with my not having a job has given me all the spare and private time I could have needed. I went to a family wedding last weekend, between Stuart Aylward and Victoria. I hadn't seen Stuart or his brother for about 18 years and it was great to meet up with them and their mother Lyn. James had changed quite conserably, but his mother and brother looked almost exactly as I remembered them. After the wedding my parents and I fought through the muggy atmosphere to Harrods and ate quite ridiculously large, sweet and expensive ice-creams in order, I suspect, to satisfy some fantasy of my mother's. Fantasy or not, I was never going to turn down a free ice cream on a day like that.

I went clubbing on Saturday night, which was an interesting experience. I had no one to go with, due to not having many friends in London, of which very few indeed are into clubs. So I went on my own, but hit a brick wall when I got there. It seemed that everyone I talked to was utterly uninterested in talking to someone outside the immediate group of friends. This is in stark contrast to Bristol and Tokyo, where you can pretty much build a group of people up from scratch just by talking to a few random guys and comparing notes. Once again I was confused. Why did no one want to talk? Eventually I met up with some friendly people. It turned out they were from Bristol! Just down for one night, they invited me back to their hotel for a private mini after-party. Sadly for me the circuitry in my brain was so thoroughly fried by that point I couldn't remember anything about the name of the hotel or the room number apart from that the sound "ma" made a strong impression on me.

So I guessed Marriot, in Maida Vale and got a taxi there. I bribed the night desk man to tell me about the guests and if any of them matched the people I met. Maybe my bribe was too big because he immediately gave me a room number but when I went up the guys were totally different and really quite angry to have a strange dude with very wide eyes at the door at 5:30am!

What else? I have spent a fair bit of time in West London with Iain and his friends. I met Iain in Tokyo when he came to stay with his grandparents for a while. He was friends with Stephen Russell, whom I lived beneath and conspired with at the time. Since I've been back it's been cool hanging out with him and meeting friends of his and Stephen's. Every time I go to Ealing I meet someone else who was at school with Stephen and I'm just like an instant friend because I knew him well in Tokyo. It's going to be funny when he gets back and these people start telling him the stories I've been telling them! One of the really fun things we did the other day was go to the Ealing Jazz Festival. Highlight of the show on the day I went was Ray Gelato, a cross between Dean Martin and Michael Caine, whose sense of swing was second to none.

Yesterday I moved into a room in Pimlico. Welcome parcels should be sent to: Nik Makepeace, Flat 2, 2 Lupus Street, London SW1V 3DY and should contain gifts of not less than 100 pounds value, or 50 pounds in cash, or a stolen credit card less than one day old. The room is a pretty medium sized double on the 2nd floor of an old 4 storey house. The landlord lives on the bottom 2 floors, while the floor above is taken by 2 guys. The other flatmates in my flat are Soraya, a highly bossy French girl and Carole, another French girl who seems to be a calm foil for Soraya's more fanciful flights of behaviour. The house is typically old - wonky floors, old carpets, skew walls etc but I have always like old houses more than modern ones, despite the extra work they entail. And in terms of location my room doesn't leave much to be desired: it's 5 minutes walk from Mat and Charlotte and directly opposite Pimlico tube station. It takes 0:16:40 to get from my bedroom door to my desk.

This weekend I'm off to Lyme with Charlotte and Mat to celebrate mine and Charlotte's new jobs, and next weekend it's back to Bristol to collect my bike and the rest of my stuff. This is just the start of another new journey, so I may yet still use this old site.