Louistrations

Finally, after weeks of rampant speculation, scandals and supposed 'leaked' charts; The fourth annual chart of Louis' favourite teas has been made public. I would like to thank the many companies that have supplied me with tea over the past year, as well as the throngs of website visitors that have stayed up all night especially to see the results.

1. Sencha, Ujinotsuyu Co. Ltd. (New Entry)
2. Make Mine a Builders (New Entry)
3. Ceylon, J. Atkinson and Co. (-2)
4. Ringtons (-1)
5. Yorkshire Tea (-3)
6. White Tea, Clipper (New Entry)
7. Darjeeling, Whittard
8. PG Tips (-4)

Now here's something completely unexpected. A new comic page has been uploaded to naut-cotic. This is the first new page in, what? 16 months?

naut-cotic obviously hasn't been the centre of my attention for the past few months, although I have occasionally worked on it. Most of my time has been spent rewriting the dialogue in its entirety. Something that really needed to be done.

I also built a new website that was a mere lick away from being finished. Unfortunately, I lost the site when a hard drive died on me last month. So unless I find a DVD-R with a backup of the site on it, all I'm left with is a backup from last year; which isn't much use.

Anyway its left me with the opportunity to begin a new wave, there are a lot of changes to character designs and the overall style that I've been wanting to make. My plan is to finish off the chapter on the existing website as it stands. There's only 4 pages to the end of the chapter and these were already drawn some time ago. I'll be uploading these over a non-defined timescale, but I'll go out on a limb and say that it'll probably be less than 16 months.

Hashizumemon Tsuzuki Yagura Turret, Kanazawa Castle. Like the majority of historical buildings in Japan, Kanazawa Castle has a long history of repeatedly burning down. Matsumoto Castle was the only exception that I noticed for not burning down. What you see here is a faithful reconstruction that was completed in 2001.

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Torii gate and red maple leaves.

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Lake Kawaguchi next to Fujiyama.

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In total I took over 800 photographs - far less than Peter and Barry - but a large amount nonetheless. To spare you all, I have siphoned my photographs down to my favourite 60. I won't be reposting any of the photographs that have appeared previously on the website, but if you go back to the original posts you'll find that you are now able to click the images to view a larger size.

Peter took some really incredible photographs, they really put mine to shame! If you get the chance you should go visit his deviantART page where he has started posting some of his best ones.

Some of the text accompanying the photographs was written on location which didn't get the opportunity to be posted, so apologies if the tense jumps around a bit.

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Tea is everywhere in Japan. From the many teas houses and shops to the vending machines, tea plays a big part in Japanese culture.

I read in a guide book that green tea is customary provided free of charge in restaurants. I thought this was too good to be true, but in my experience it appears to be accurate! I've even managed to order green tea even though it wasn't on the menu.

Even though green tea is the most common, it's still very easy to find black (or red) tea in cafes and restaurants. The most prominent blends seem to be English Breakfast, Earl Grey and Darjeeling. Great as this is, finding milk proves to be a lot more difficult. You usually end up having to use cream which is just plain wrong. Also, beware of Chiffon or Royal Milk Tea. Usually if the name has 'milk' in it, it also contains about ten spoons of sugar.

While we were in Kanazawa we visited a Gold-leaf store, Kanazawa is famous for it's Gold-leaf crafts. Upon entering we were handed cups of tea with bits of Gold-leaf floating in it. Now, drinking tea with gold in it seems a little too eccentric to even me. That doesn't mean that I didn't drink it. Even Barry who hates teas somehow managed to drink it.

So far I've had the following green tea flavoured confectionery: Ice-cream, cheesecake, KitKat, cake, Pocky, candy and bread. I'm sure there's a lot more out there, but you get the idea.

Greetings from Kyoto, the temple capital of the world. There seems to be a shrine for every street, and at least half a dozen vending machines dispensing iced tea for every shrine.

Kyoto is a beautiful city. A really beautiful city, and very different to Tokyo. While here we've visited the Kyoto Imperial Palace and Nijo Castle. Sadly photographs weren't allowed so I can't show you any. Nijo Castle even went a step further and prohibited sketching as well.

I was in a music store looking for a couple of music CDs I've been looking for, and I was surprised to see two women dressed to full geisha attire (except without painted faces) browsing the J-pop section. Nothing's quite how you'll expect it. Except for tea flavoured ice-cream, I expected that to be awesome and it totally was.

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The Studio Ghibli Museum. This place was fantastic, it was the one place that I really wanted to visit while here. It was a shame that I couldn't read the majority of the writings on the walls, but seeing the original storyboards and concept artwork for the movies was fascinating.

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