Why does Japan's Prime Minister keep going to the infamous Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo? Andy and Dave certainly have no idea, but that's not going to stop them blathering on about it...

In Part 3 of the "Kansai Diary" Andy visits the ancient capital Nara and regales us with tales of deer poo, enormous gilded boots, ornate gardens with nasty secrets and strange ceremonies conducted in mossy shrines.

STAVKA plays "Asleep on Wake Island", an ode to those miserable gits who constantly complain in this land of plenty. More info on STAVKA can be found at http://www.ardle.net/stavkahome.htm.

Next Dave reads an anti-Zen poem in the 'tanka' style sent in by Arthur Moss, before drawing once again on a 17th century account of Japan in the second part of John Saris' diary.

We round out with 'Dave's an Idiom', in which we talk of huge numbers and repentance, in another snippet of the Japanese language you will never need to use...

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Andy's new hard rocking theme tune is subverted by some God-awful sentimental Japanese ballad which would have us all going off to the country to get a whiff of skunk cabbage.

Next comes Part Two of the Kansai Diary, an audio record of Andy's recent trip to that region: today he focusses on the ephemeral bridges of Uji town and a fat sweaty monk in Daigo-ji.

A brief chat about how one can become enlightened by being whacked on the bonce leads us to the melancholic reggae of the STAVKA song 'First Order Flesh Requisition', after which a literary bent is revealed.

Dave reads again from Edmund Blunden's "A Wanderer in Japan", before we hear the first extract from the diary of John Saris, an Englishman who visited Japan in the early 17th century.

We wrap up with the strange Japanese idiom which, taken literally, means to smell like water...

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The drink flows, nore talk of eels, then we hear Part One of Andy's 'Kansai Diary', documenting his recent trip to the cultural heart of Japan in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek fashion. This week  centers on the truth about Kyoto's Geisha, and a visit to Uji to visit some alleged UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

STAVKA sing 'Lo-fi Gods', an ode to all things badly recorded, before talk turns to the poets of World War One, including one Edmund Blunden who subsequently visited Japan and wrote of his experiences in post-A-Bomb Nagasaki.

Dave rounds out with another Japanese idiom, this time concerning 'evaporation', which considering our talk of Nagasaki, is somewhat tasteless. Oh well...

We kick off with confusing talk of Cow Day, seasonal interregna, Chinese cosmology and eel-eating - all of which are somehow connected.

Next we reveal what Dave's Dad was doing in Malaya in the 1950's and explore the end of empire in that region before opening our ears to another STAVKA track, "Felled in Ginza."

Andy then tackles the slightly dodgy subject of Asian bloodlust - have wartime barbarities merely been transformed into violent manga, sadistic porn and extreme schadenfreude?

Controversy then continues with Dave reviewing Kishore Mahbubani's book "Can Asians Think?", which leads to a discussion of whether or not Japan is different from other Asian countries, as exemplified by its economic success.