James Went To Kyoto & Hiroshima, Japan

After the chaos, the noise, the lights, the intensity of Tokyo – it was time to go for a chill out in Hakone. You can do Hakone in a day tip from Tokyo, but we thought it would be nice to spend more time than that in the Japanese countryside. Hakone is part of the Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park, and yes that means that we were close to Mount Fuji. What a stunning mountain. We got the curiously-named Romancecar from the maze of Shinjuku to Hakone – not a Shinkansen train but impressive in that after the passengers get off at …

I don’t especially like turning on managers unless they are clueless – Tuchel clearly ain’t clueless. But the more I think about our World Cup Surrender, the more furious I become. Maybe let’s start with some positives. We got to another World Cup semi-final. Though I never believed we’d win the tournament, and thought we might struggle in the heat, we actually got quite far. The win against Mexico was a tactical masterclass from Tuchel, proper League 1 team beating a Premier League team in the FA Cup backs-to-the-wall football at the end. Bellingham showed multiple times how fantastic a …

Ohhhhh Tokyo. Where do I start? Should anyone that knows me be reading, then you’ll know I booked flights with my sister to go in 2020. Two days after booking them, I read a small news article about a mystery virus in China. Then they carried on with mask-wearing for a good year or two after we discarded them, so I decided to wait a bit longer before re-booking. Then my sister was diagnosed with heart failure. I wasn’t going without her. And around last July, on bonus day at work, I checked the flight prices – just £850 return …

From Rabat in Morocco, I went onto Granada. I had decided to book a couple of days in Spain after going to Morocco, in case I hadn’t been able to have a beer in the sun. Yes, a beer in the sun is that important to me. Especially during February when booking such holidays after months of incessant cloud in the UK. And Granada had been on my list for a while, so the plan was fly to Malaga, get a train to Granada. Simple. Except…there was no flight from Rabat to Malaga, so I had to book a train …

Although I felt at home in Tangier by the end, especially in my rather nice hotel, it was time to move on to Rabat, the capital city of Morocco. Plus I’d get to go on a faster train that I’d even been on in the UK. Yep, high speed rail in Africa. Maybe we’ll one day have high speed rail in the UK. I didn’t take to Rabat at first. Arriving at my hotel, my room had around 20 or so flies circling which was pretty grim. They changed my room to one that smelled of newly-sprayed cleaning spray with …

I had never been to Morocco. I had never even been to Africa. And with sunshine required following yet another long, cloudy winter in London, and cheap flights to Tangier at the end of March, I set off for my first trip of 2026. Why Tangier? Well it wasn’t on my list of places to visit, but very much Morocco was. Chefchaouen was on my wishlist of places to visit, and a day trip was viable from Tangier so that was one reason. Flights were cheap. 4 star hotels (the perils of being used to living a nice flat) were …

So I asked Claude to plan my next 20 years of holidays. I’m not bothered about visiting every country in the world – no offence to the Taliban or Kim Yong Un, but I can cope without visiting places with a fair chance of imprisonment/death. But I’d like to get to at least 100 countries. Plus I love my weekends away in Europe. I enlisted Claude to create me a plan for the next 20 years. All reasonably safe countries, and all European Capitals of Culture. Not including places I’d already visited, and trying to not use more than 20 …

I don’t blog about politics any more. Well, not like I used to anyway – I explained my decision in 2024 as to why I was voting Labour, but otherwise I’ve gradually given up on blogging about politics. To be fair, I struggle to get around to blogging much, apart from my roast dinner reviews, of course – which still feature the latest from the morons (and paedophiles) in charge, mostly over the pond. I quite often have blog posts in my head that I could write…but don’t. Even this blog post about not writing blog posts about politics has …

Favourite Restaurant Meal This is bloody depressing but my favourite meal in a restaurant, not a roast dinner, in 2025 was a vegan dish at Mildreds. From memory, I think it was beans, potato in a fake chorizo sauce (it did taste like chorizo too) with crispy onions – and other stuff going on. It was very impressive. Great texture too with the crispy onions. Favourite Restaurant Meal on Holiday I feel like I had a lot of average food on holidays this year – especially in places like Santorini. One dish really stands out though, and it was just …

For some reason I like to make my life more complicated, and after complaining about having to write about 46 goals last year, I now have 55 for my 2026 goals. It might feel like micro-managing but there are broader goals – to lose weight, be healthier, expand my knowledge and earnings – and to bloody well enjoy the year ahead. Setting goals does seem to work. And this year I’m attaching them to an actual target, so the percentage achieved will determine where I go for my first solo-holiday of 2027. Only 50%, then northern Europe. But if I …

Time for my review of 2025 Goals. Hang on…I made how many goals? 46? And I need to write something about each of them? Jeez. Get Fit, Feel Fab Lose 11kg. Well I started well on this, lost around 8kg by the end of my detox. Then I put quite a few kg back on when I did my 3 holidays in 5/6 weeks thing. Then December I just gave up. Overall, I gained 1.5kg, which is pretty fucking depressing. Score of 0%.Do 3 forms of exercise that are not walking. Possibly this is cheating, but I decided that doing …

It’s time for a round-up of my moments of 2025. As always, most of these relate to my life, most of these are positive, joyous, fun moments – but a few are darker too. Starting with… 25. Millwall Away I hadn’t been to a Hull game all season, we seem to be in a groove where we are never playing at home when I visit Hull, even on Boxing Day. Then my sister suggested that we go to Millwall away, and go around the Millwall pubs with a friend of hers. Millwall? Anyway, he was a proper Millwall geezer, supporting …

Gosh not another holiday. But also, gosh not another post to write that nobody will read anyway – this is about my little adventure to Santorini. Well, it was more my sister’s adventure for her birthday, and I tagged along. Santorini is not cheap. Which isn’t what my bank balance needed two weeks after going to Helsinki and Stockholm. But it is sunny. Quite hot and sunny. Which is what I needed after a mostly cloudy and cool holiday – though of course it was also very warm in the UK the weekend I flew out. Why Santorini? I guess …

Too many holidays. This isn’t even a first world problem, is it? It’s something I would have loved to have been able to worry about during the pandemic, or all of those years doing brainless repetitive jobs whilst I worked out what to do with my life. Yet it is something I’ve just experienced. I actually feel done with holidays…granted this feeling won’t last too long. What Happened So I had a great time. 3 great times. Firstly was my holiday to Tallinn, Helsinki and Stockholm at the end of August. Then in the middle of September I went to …

Stockholm was the final part of my road trip without using roads (except Bolts) via Tallinn and then Helsinki. It’s another city that I didn’t do justice to in the two nights that I stayed there, though we had a little more time there in total than we had in Helsinki. Yet unlike Helsinki, I feel like I may need to go back here – there was far too much to cover in just a day and a half. Plus it was coming to the end of an expensive trip, and Sweden is hardly know for being affordable, so I …

So Helsinki was the next stop on the trip after falling in love with Tallinn. We caught the ferry across which took 2.5 hours and was actually rather fun – it had a very 80’s old people kind of vibe, shit decor, country and western bands, loads of pensioners. I was quite amused, especially by being able to watch the sea whilst I pee’d. Though upon arrival at our Airbnb, when we eventually found out which door it was, they had only made one bed out of 3 beds, one bed was also broken – which he told me that …

I’m tallinn you, I had a good time in Tallinn. It was the first stop on my next three city/country tour of Europe, Estonia was a completely new country to me – having never visited a Baltic country. Plus I had an accomplice this time too. I had a feeling that Tallinn would be my favourite city of the trip – spoiler (because nobody is going to read all 3 reviews anyway), it was my favourite city of the trip. I loved how Tallinn mixed modernity, art deco cool with medieval history too. Just how stunning is this building? Yet …

I’ve now had three multi-city holidays. First up was Basel, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Strasbourg and Metz. This year I did one trip to Trieste and Ljubljana, and I’ve just come back from a trip to Tallinn, Helsinki and Stockholm – still to write about any of those. I still feel like I’m perfecting the art of the multi-city trip – I haven’t come back completely satisfied once yet. Don’t Travel Back On A Sunday 10 days after my flight back from Stockholm, I’m still knackered. Yes, holidays are supposed to be for relaxing and recovering from a busy life. I’m not …

So one of the reasons why I’m still single at 45 years old is that I’ve never really been able to deal with rejection. Probably part of the reason I’m still at M&S after 6+ years, is that I don’t feel like handling the rejection of not being successful in an interview. Also why unemployment was utterly miserable – the constant rejection and all those times I (allegedly) finished runner-up in the interview process. And, of course, all that swiping for nothing other than the pleasure of seeing pictures of occasionally hot women. Enter my new teeth. Having Another Go …