Buta wrote the first version of these pages to share some of the things and places he likes with others, not really to talk about himself.   Since he put the pages out on the net he has received many queries and requests for personal information and so this page is to answer what have become, quite literally, frequently asked questions.

Buta was born in Lancashire four years after the end of the Second World War, but soon saw the error of his ways, and made for Yorkshire.  The good people of Yorkshire were understandably unsure whether or not they wanted him around, and there followed some years of shuttling backwards and forwards over the border until he was granted permanent residency on the East of the Pennines at the age of eleven.  He stayed in God's own county for most of the rest of his life in Britain before on a wing, a prayer, and Barclaycard he exported himself the Orient at the age of thirty-five.

Prior to riding the Big White Bird to the Far East Buta did spend six months in Nairn, Northern Scotland, a Wild and Windy Place, and three fairly dreadful years in South Essex, a part of England to which Buta would not readily condemn his worst enemy.  He also visited Israel in his late teens and made an overland trek to India in his late twenties.

Buta had a chequered early educational career that passed through eleven plus failure to culminate in an undeserved degree from a reasonably good university, and he put this to bad use by teaching whenever he couldn't get honest work.  In his time he has pumped petrol, sold cars and suits, driven for his living, waited tables, inspected and collected taxes, and been a leech on society, but has always resorted to teaching when all else failed.   For too long now he has taught English in a very small school which he and his long-suffering business partner set up in Tokyo more than a decade ago.   Buta still really enjoys being in the classroom with his students and they seem to enjoy him being there, too, and even, despite Buta's worst efforts, seem to learn something.

Buta is a single person.  He did marry the beautiful Helen in his hippie youth when he was twenty-two and she was too young to know any better.  It was wonderful, but of course it was too soon and the inevitable and fairly painful parting followed before he was out of his twenties.  Since then Buta has not yet again committed matrimony.  The aftermath of marriage left Buta something of an emotional wreck, and he sought solace on the road to India and in the cold North of Scotland, but he found it in the most unexpected place, a dreary Technical College in South Essex.   Both the school and the area were totally dreadful, without any saving graces … except one, a music department with an extremely elegant lady musician teaching there.  Buta does not understand why she took to him, but she did and made him a very happy person for a couple of years … and sowed the seeds of his move to Japan.  She had a strong interest in things Nipponese and passed this on to Buta.  Coming to Japan changed things for Buta … the start of a New Era in which romance blossomed.  Buta does have to admit a partiality for female persons of the Japanese persuasion, and has enjoyed more than a decade and a half in Japan a great deal, not least because of the ministrations of the totally wonderful women.  Some endings:  the Beautiful Helen is remarried to someone more suitable for her and the happy mother of two now almost grown-up persons.  The last Buta heard she was a teacher in a progressive school for children.  The Elegant Musician is also married to a Brit who runs an antique business in California, and she and her spouse commute between there and their country house in France. 
Buta welcomes proposals of matrimony from extremely tolerant and affluent women, preferably of the Japanese persuasion.

Towards the middle of the 'nineties, after he had been in Japan for getting on for a decade,  Buta bought a small house in Haworth and has since acquired an interest in the adjoining property.   This was the start of a major change in life-style.  Before this Buta had visited Britain just once every two years for a couple of weeks in the summer, but concerned about his ageing parents, and with his house available, Buta started to make more frequent visits to his native sward.  Buta now returns to Yorkshire three or more times each year, but still spends the bulk of his time in Japan.  He is working towards a life-style split more evenly between Haworth and Machiya, but at present he just can't afford it.   

Buta enjoys his hobbies.  He enjoys driving his Mitsubishi four wheel drive van in Japan and his Land-Rover in England.   He enjoys outdoors generally, especially walking in the hills in both Yorkshire and Japan, autocamping, picnics, and visiting  hot springs in Japan, taking a special delight in visiting the remoter variety.  He loves steam trains, and visiting steam railways, his favourite being the Keighley and Worth Valley line which runs through Haworth.  He likes visiting museums, some of his favourites are the National Railway Museum in York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the amazing Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle, the beautiful little Asakura Sculpture Museum in Tokyo, and the National Museum of Japanese History in Sakura-shi.

Buta is entirely unmusical in that he sings flat and cannot play any instrument.  He does enjoy listening to music, though, with eclectic tastes that range from Sixties Pops to Mozart Operas, and on the way include such diverse things as Traditional New Orleans Jazz, Twenties, Thirties and Forties Pops, especially Blues and Swing, Early Rock, all sorts of Classical Music, Folk, and, of course, On Ilkla Moor Bah't At.   

Neither is Buta totally opposed to the Grape and the Grain.  He enjoys drinking warm sake in Japan and beer in England, Pernod, Zubrowka, and more or less anything else. 
How to make friends with Buta:
1. Buy him a drink.
2. Buy him another drink.
Beer is a matter of taste, and Buta would argue that his tastes are no better than anyone else's.  It's just that if you don't happen to agree with Buta that Timothy Taylor's is the Nectar of the Gods, then you are wrong.  Entirely and utterly mistaken.  In the absence of a real brew, Japanese beer is drinkable with practice, of which Buta takes care to have plenty, but it is after all of the lager genre, which is all right if you like that sort of thing.  Buta suffers it between proper pints in Yorkshire.

Buta has always liked reading, and sadly doesn't read as much as before, spending too much time watching movies on video and junk on late night Japanese TV.  Talking of videos, Buta really did enjoy the Blues Brothers 2000, for the amazing music.  For those who do like to read, the Gutenberg Project site has lots of worthy tomes to download.

A vegetarian in his youth, Buta has degenerated into an omnivore, and enjoys eating foods of all kinds.  Of course, he really likes most Japanese and British food (the latter is often seriously under-rated) but he also likes other styles, especially Indian (that is to say both Indian and Pakistani) and Chinese.  Malaysian food is a particular favourite, not least because it combines both Indian and Chinese tastes.   Although a fairly terrible cook, Buta does enjoy pottering in the kitchen.  Breakfast favourites are poached eggs on toast and kippers.  Poached egg on kipper is especially delicious…
Japanese favourites naturally include sushi, noodles, and almost everything on the menu of Buta's favourite local establishment, Izakaya Ma-chan.
The fish and chips at Mill Hey fisheries in Haworth are worth the six thousand or so miles Buta travels to eat them, and the Weavers Restaurant on Haworth Main Street is rather wonderful.  For curry there are so many excellent places to eat, but the Silver Jubilee on Oak Lane, Bradford is Buta's curry shop of choice.