Happy New Year to all my readers, though it's not such a happy occasion for my Japanese friends.  The picture is of me looking at a map of the Noto peninsula.  There was a small earthquake offshore there a few days after I left in April but now it’s the epicentre of a humdinger of an earthquake with effects being felt along the western coast of the country as far north as Hokkaido and as far south as Kyoto.

The peninsula is a short drive out of Kanazawa where I spent April.  It’s where my Air B&B host comes from and on that day he’d taken me on a little sightseeing jaunt with cherry blossom viewing as the main objective.

I've been following the earthquake news on Japanese television and seen pictures of damage in many places including Kanazawa.  A tsunami is likely to follow and in Kanazawa port within a few hours of the quake waves 90 cm high were already arriving.  It puts the recent bad weather and travel problems here into perspective.

Despite not having been at many band sessions this term I took part in our Christmas concert.  Friends who attended reckoned it was pretty good and an improvement on previous occasions.  I'm not much given to New Year resolutions but I'll try to pay more attention to the band for the next two terms and see if that makes our June concert even better.

This having been the festive season I've been wining and dining thanks mainly to Claire who amongst arranging other festive events insisted that having missed my 80th that my 81st should be celebrated in its stead.  So she organised and cooked a birthday meal.  It was a jolly little party and was crowned by a birthday cake made by Siobhan.  I blew out all the candles with one blow.  Mind you there weren't actually 81 of them.

Hogmanay was similarly jolly though I overindulged a bit and suffered from a gippy tummy today that kept me indoors away from the treats on offer from Edinburgh's winter festival.

About five years ago I decided that being a member of both The Cameo and Filmhouse was more of an overlap than need be so I cancelled my Cameo membership.  But Filmhouse has been out of action for a while now and although steps are underway to bring it back to life films do crop up that I'd like to see and which don't get a screening in the big multiplexes.  So I rejoined The Cameo, finding to my surprise that my account still existed.  I've seen three films there so far.  Anatomy of a Fall, which has screened elsewhere but which I missed.  Its reviews were relatively enthusiastic.  Mine would be more tempered although I enjoyed it.  

The other two were Japanese, animation to boot.  I really prefer live action but I'm opening up to animation and those two films helped.  Part of my reluctance to animation is that the films are generally for children.  Tokyo Godfathers was not and I thought it was great.  It's a story of three homeless people; an alcoholic, a transvestite and a teenage runaway who find a baby abandonned with the garbage on Christmas Eve and set out to find its mother.  Based says The New York Times* on a maudlin western it's more on the gritty realism side despite being unreal.  It has become something of a Christmas classic in Japan and the current screenings outside of Japan are in celebration of its 20th anniversary.  The Guardian, Wikipedia and The Japan Times all have interesting things to say about the film and its director Satoshi Kon who died at the age of 46 leaving only a handful of films behind.  

The Boy and the Heron is more obviously a chidren's fantasy adventure film which I must say I enjoyed very much but places like Wikipedia find a lot more in it in the way of messages and moral lessons.  Don't let that put you off.

The Royal Institution Christmas lectures are also aimed at children with the admirable aim of both arousing curiosity and interest in science and of explaining it.  I tuned in to BBC4 to watch this year's series on AI with the latter aim very much in mind.  I found things to wonder at and enjoy but I'm not sure that I understand much more from the first two of the three lectures.  In particular the mechanics of Large Language Models escape me.  But the Royal Institutions explanations are more fun than the likes of this.

I had a splendid visit to the zoo with Claire and Ross.  Since I was last there they've amassed a grand collection of this sort of thing --

Zoos are keen to flourish their conservation credentials but I think it's a bit late to get into the dinosaur conservation business.  

Of the real animals we saw I was particularly taken by the giant anteater. He (she?) put on a great display, running about, rearing up on its hind legs, scraping bark off trees and so on.  It was most interesting but it operated so fast that every picture I took is blurred and doesn't merit reproduction here.

With the pandas having gone back to China old favourites like the penguins will keep the crowds coming and I got quite a nice snap of what I believe they call a "keeper experience".

Here's a young girl doing a keeper's job for a bit and loving it.

 *  Linking to the article here doesn't allow access but if you do a Google search for "Tokyo Godfathers reviews" and find The New York Times in the results list you can get access.