I sifted through my vacation photo’s just now and have taken the most of the unclear shots out. I’ve used Picasa to create an online public gallery you can visit here once it’s done synchronising.

It contains about 1100 photo’s so there’s lots you have not seen.

I’m still planning to tag them and order them by date, but for now it’ll do. I noticed my camera date was completely off, hmm.

Things I notice now that I’m home:
~ The trees lined up on the country road look twice as pretty.
~ I loooooooooooooove driving.
~ I miss a bidet, but they can keep the heated toilet seat.
~ I miss wet napkins. I feel utterly disgusted having a meal someplace without wet napkins. Iew.
~ I forgot what an ASS-HUGE computer monitor I have and how friggin great my stereo system is :D

It was truly an aweful ride back home I can tell you that much. I escaped by a hair’s width EFYALOFYOU’s flaming ash wrath. If I understood correctly, Schiphol airport was closed this morning from around 06:00 until 13:00 hours, with a definite effect on international flights. Meanwhile while I was at the gate, they placed a sign there that said “Due to the volcanic eruption in Iceland, the following flights might return to Narita or divert to Dusseldorf, Paris, etc…. “ I asked a Dutch gentlemen who spoke to the JAL staff earlier. They said “they didn’t know”. And here’s a Dutch article run through google translate.

We boarded 20 minutes late which is unusual for JAL anyways, priding to be the most punctual airline. I guess they were still flipping a coin on whether to go or not. I saw one of the staff head over to the sign to write down what appears to have been the exact same English message to be called over the gate intercom a while later. This is how that went:

“Due to the…. volcanic-u… erup … eruption in Iceland, the following-u …. flights might-oh return to Narita ….. or *($&*#$&#$ LUKE I AM YOUR FATHER &#*($&# ….
Staff now looks really confused at the other staff member that wrote down the message from the sign. Engrish man, what can you do! I’ve never understood one full sentence on one of these flights so… if we had actually diverted I’d probably only have known once we’ve landed.

Through the eye of the needle, once again. It seems to be my middle name.

It appears I’ve completely missed “the other side” of Ueno park, while there certainly were some interesting things to see.

Meanwhile I took the opportunity to go into the National Museum of Western Art. They also had a special exhibition of Frank Brangwyn, which seems to have been a Belgian. Never heard of em. Didn’t see much I liked in that collection. The colors were “too dark”. Considering the time period most of the paintings were made, I’m not surprised.

When I went to the museum’s permanent collection I found an awesome painting. It’s by Evert Collier, Vanitas.

I know, MABUSHI~. The detail is just incredible and the glass is painted so realistically. I had to look it up when I returned. Dutch painter :D

I’m not much a fan of the religious artwork, see one, you’ve seen them all. That kind of goes for paintings featuring Roman gods, but less so.