Wed 9th August, 2006 I've abandoned beginning these entries with "dear Jenny", after she told me that it looked ridiculous. The original idea was that I'd keep her updated with goings on via the blog, but in the event we've spoken to each other any day in any case. I'm sure my own domestic squabbles are of little interest to anyone, so I'll just get on with it.

We flew from Edinburgh to London, which took 50 minutes, and I'm writing this while en route to Japan, which takes eleven and a half hours. Fairly simple to deduce, therefore, that Japan is further away from London than Edinburgh, then. We're skirting Northern Siberia at the moment, with daylight clearly visible off to the left towards the Arctic, and darkness on the other side, towards the, uh, Antarctic. The plane is gigantic, but we're somewhere right at the very back in the deckchair section. The most alarming thing from my point of view – a bad flyer – is that a typhoon is about to hit Tokyo, and we've been advised that we'll be flying into it, with "bad turbulence" predicted. I'd rather fly into a some other kind of weather, to be honest – perhaps hazy sunshine, or light drizzle at a push. But a typhoon? I'm likely to be adopting the "brace, brace" position for the last two hours of the journey, regardless of any instruction to "brace, brace." Interesting, isn't it, that the instruction to brace needs to be delivered twice. I won't need much prompting.

*

Well, that was one of the smoothest plane landings I can remember. So much for the typhoon. Right up until the last minute the pilot was predicting almighty juddering of the plane, and it never happened. So here I am in a luxurious hotel room. Been out for sushi, now it's time for bed. Just got time to gaze longingly out of my hotel room window.