Current read: P. D. James’s The Lighthouse. Typical James thriller. Tight-knit closed community, bleak British coast. Illicit sexual relationships. Class differences. Just setting up the victim as a nasty person hated by everyone, giving plenty of suspects. Nicely paced page-turner.

Bought a PD James to read over the holidays with a glass of port - Death in Holy Orders. Another wind-swept English coastal location beloved of James. Up the A12 too - familiar old ground, at least as far as Woodbridge. (Never been all the way up to Lowestoft but used to love Suffolk/Norfolk.)

On the “Mizuho” service from Hakata to Kobe this morning. Reclining seats are nice and wide, braille seat numbers on the grab handle, stowable cup holder, wooden trim. Nice touches.

On the single-track branch between Kashii and Saitozaki, Fukuoka. Only partial electrification but they replaced the old DMU with an EMU that uses battery on the sections without power - smoother and quieter. Each station has a cute mascot. Even branch lines get some love.

Early for the meeting near Azabu-Juban so a slower, civilised start to the day. Cup of tea and an apple pie at a local (non-chain) cafe while finishing a chapter of my current read.

Started the revised edition of Robert Tombs’s ‘The English and their History’. Over 900 pages not including notes, but has to be limited in depth if not breadth. Up-to-date with findings from recent scholarship. Enjoyable so far. Wonder how it compares with Peter Ackroyd’s work?

A comparison of train driver seats - Osaka Monorail and on the JR Fukuchiyama line. Monorail
uses a single T-handle controller and applicable speed limit on each track section lights up and annunciated by a bell. JR train uses power and brake handles, and has ATS (automatic train stop).

Tactile/braille panel on lavatory door of Shinkansen showing the layout of the room and explanation of facilities, including sink, toilet/washlet, washlet controls/paper/seat cleaner/dustbin and folding baby seat. #accessibility

Good morning from Tokyo station. Domestic trip for a change - getting the Nozomi Shinkansen down to Osaka.

NHK Great Nature - tectonics and volcanism in Anatolia and their associated landforms. Hadn’t realised association with the Afar plume, linking volcanism in Ethiopia via Arabia lava fields with Anatolia. Based on lead isotope ratio analysis. agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

Morning virtual flight Seoul Gimpo to Shanghai Pudong as KAL1893, an A300-600 (JAS paint job though). VATSIM ATC from Shanghai Center. Have to be aware of available levels on the old Akara Corridor, and China uses metric altitudes. FIR boundary dispute between Korea and China has settled down.

Finished the last of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series. A sort of anti-C. S. Lewis. While both have children coming of age battling dark forces in parallel universes, Narnia is a Christian allegory while Pullman’s work is anti-religion. Both deserve to be considered as classics.