Latest Posts:
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Zombie News: ‘Facebook Causes Divorce’ just will not die
Pic: The Telegraph covers the original press release Back in March 2011 I wrote about a sudden flood of news articles claiming that Facebook was being cited in 20% of US divorce cases. After doing a little digging it transpired that the whole thing had sprung from the continual re-hashing, muddling and alteration of a…
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Japan on a budget, 1: Planes, Trains and Hotels
I’ve now been learning Japanese for about three years – long enough to get a decent grip on everyday verbs, adjectives and nouns, and to start wrestling with kanji (80ish, so far). But there’s only so far you can get by speaking for 90 minutes per week in classes. So, I hatched a plan: to…
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Japan on a budget, 2: Tokyo
(This is part of a guide to travelling Honshu on a moderate budget and in limited time. Click here for the whole series). Arriving International flights arrive at Narita, outside Tokyo. It’s worth claiming your Japan Rail Pass in the large JR office here (follow signs to the trains, and it’s before the ticket gates)…
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Japan on a budget, 3: Kyoto
(This is part of a guide to travelling Honshu on a moderate budget and in limited time. Click here for the whole series). I arrived in Kyoto on my second day, via Shinkansen from Tokyo. You arrive at the huge JR Kyoto station, from which you can link to the local JR lines, the private…
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Japan on a budget, 4: Northern Kansai
(This is part of a guide to travelling Honshu on a moderate budget and in limited time. Click here for the whole series). I didn’t really mean to go to the North coast of Kansai, but managed it anyhow. A national holiday fell on the Monday of my trip, and on the Saturday before every…
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Japan on a budget, 5: Hiroshima and MiyaJima
(This is part of a guide to travelling Honshu on a moderate budget and in limited time. Click here for the whole series). From Fukuchiyama I headed across to Hiroshima. If you’re heading out this way, be sure to reserve a seat on the Sakura Shinkansen from Shin-Osaka; I can only assume they put too…
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Japan on a budget, 6: Nara and Yokohama
(This is part of a guide to travelling Honshu on a moderate budget and in limited time. Click here for the whole series). Nara, the capital of Japan before even Kyoto, is all about the parkland, deer and temples. It’s a short train ride from Kyoto, so I rolled up early in the morning. If…
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The Lewisham Riot
So, about the riot: I saw tweets suggesting it at 8am. I saw the BBM messages encouraging it at 4pm. By the time I got home, there was a police cordon around most of Lewisham. Shops in Hither Green were shut. On Manor Park, a group of kids (really, kids) swaggered with a huge bottle…
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“Uninhabitable” Japan? No, unchecked sources
Saw this on the front page of Twitter today. Sounds awful, obviously. The source? This article, from, ahem, ‘Natural News’ (which carries on the same page an advert promising to ‘cure almost cancer for $5.15 a day’). It says: …And senior political official Ichiro Ozawa suggested in an interview with The Wall Street Journal (WSJ)…