My next-door-neighbour-from-hell has resubmitted the appalling planning application to which I objected 6 months ago and which was rejected out of hand by the planning officer without it even going to the committee. He probably thinks that I can't object from here. Ha!Jobsworth: had to laugh when I turned up at the Nippon Express warehouse at Tokyo docks. There was the usual uniformed jobsworth waving a magic wand, who was positively shrilling incomprehensibly at me to park over there and no way was I riding the bike into his warehouse. Sorry, pal, and I'm bigger than you. He was positively incandescent.

Left turns: big intersections are generally no left turn (driving is allegedly on the right here), but there's a neat exception for the hundreds of thousands of scooters. They sit at the lights well to the right, and when they (the lights, that is) go green they veer to the right and turn so they're at the front of the traffic waiting in the other direction; there's even a painted box on the road for them. Both sides of absolutely every street are lined with scooters, all parked on the pavement in neat rows.

Handlebar muffs: OK, it's November, but the temperature is in the high 80s and 90s, and the humdity's pretty high too. I can't believe the number of scooters wearing handlebar muffs, never mind people walking around in woollies. How on earth do they manage if the temperature gets as low as, say 70?