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If the death of Gary Speed can be said to have led to anything positive whatsoever, it’s that it has dragged depression back out into the open. Admittedly, early responses from family and friends suggest Speed was not known to be a man troubled by depression, and it may yet come to light that his apparent suicide had nothing to do with the illness at all. However, it would be entirely in keeping with my own experience, as someone who has lived with clinical depression for a decade, for his friends to have been as in the dark as he may have been.

I was inspired to write this blogpost for two reasons. Firstly, James Olley’s piece in yesterday’s Evening Standard, which highlights the problem of depression still going unnoticed in communities where it might be viewed as a weakness, and secondly, an apology I recently received from a GP – an apology made “on behalf of the medical profession” for the six-or-more years I’ve spent taking the notoriously addictive antidepressant, Paroxetine. Having spent a little over 10 years visiting more mental health specialists than I can honestly remember (certainly more than this post will detail), I continue to be amazed by how little people seem to know.

A bank of pee-powered games machines in Balham, South London

I spent this morning reviewing the world’s first pee-powered games machine, a hands-free device launched at The Exhibit bar, Balham, South London. Sent by Time Out to blog the experience, my word count limit meant that I didn’t have the opportunity to report on some of the more geeky aspects of the launch. So, for the really interested urine-driven gamers out there, here’s the full transcript of my interview with developers Gordon MacSween and Mark Melford, dealing with questions like, “Wasn’t the world’s first pee-powered games machine released in Japan in January?” and “What’s in it for the women?” For the complete lowdown, read on.

Tenniscoats in Tokyo

It’s a late night on Hannana Dori in Tokyo’s Meguro Ward. From a window above the P-Koen atelier and shop comes the sound of a couple arguing. But listen carefully and you’ll realize that it’s not a domestic row; rather, the pair are in heated debate over what their “sound” might be. It dawns on you that it’s a band in distress; that what you’ve happened upon are those dreaded “musical differences.”

Back in my days as an angel: Pic by Mio Kobayashi

Fake priesting seems to be getting some attention again, thanks largely to On the Virgin Road, or iamafakepriestinjapan, as its URL prefers it. What interests me most about this is that it hasn’t been picked up as a decent blog topic before – I certainly wish I’d thought of it back in my stole-wearing days.

Yes, that’s right. I was a fake priest in Japan. Not that it’s much of a secret; I must’ve told the stories more times than I actually performed weddings – 1,092 weddings all told, between the years of 2003 and 2009. I got pretty good at it, too; so good in fact that there was a point during my peak years (yes, I had peak years) that a “chapel” in Kitakyushu secured my services long-term, as newly-weds-to-be were apparently asking specifically for me. I’d like to humbly admit that I have no idea how they’d even heard of me, but that wouldn’t be true. 2005 was the year, after all, that I began appearing in fake priest commercials. 

Kamikochi - Not what Michael Palin saw

During a brief stopover in Kyushu in the early 1990s, British broadcaster and former Monty Python Michael Palin stopped in at Huis Ten Bosch, a faithful recreation of a Dutch town, replete with gouda, tulips, windmills and a clock tower built out of bricks shipped from Holland. Not sure what to make of it all, he dubbed it ’cultural karaoke’ and quickly moved on. It’s a phrase that I’ve had reason to recall many times, albeit never before when discussing a mountain range.