The sweet taste of victory

As far as the weekend goes, this post is exactly what it says on the tin. We won a pub quiz. We ate a lot of desserty things the next day. This is about as clever as I can be on a Tuesday morning. I may still be suffering from the aftershock of my sugar crash.

Having finally finished my epic translation at work, on Friday another even weightier tome appeared on my desk and spent the morning glaring at me. I'm fairly sure the "2010" on the cover was the only thing that wasn't in the most vexing Japanese they could muster and totally sure that I wouldn't be finished in time for the 2011 one if I attempted it. Luckily I didn't have to, so I placed it in the "drawer of forgetting" and headed off to spend the brain cells I now had spare.

We headed out to a pub quiz that night and spent 14 rounds not quite winning, before pipping everyone by one point in the last round. I claim full credit for this for getting Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in the movie round. I guess the others might have had something to do with the other 62 points, particularly in the geography round. We had someone good at geography, someone up there on history, a lateral thinker or two and several folk who just knew random bits and bobs - unstoppable. It was nice that everyone chipped in too - normally I sort of sit there and nod approvingly while the brains trust answers everything, but it was definitely a team effort in this case. The prize was cash which you really can't argue with. I spent some of mine winning what turned out to be an extremely cheap Hello Kitty purse. I bet your addiction doesn't help you accessorise.

The next day we had a slightly aimless trip walking around Osaka, taking a very long time to decide on what we wanted to do. Eventually we found ourselves out the front of "Sweets Paradise" which is an all you can eat restaurant that just does millions of different kinds of cake. I'm pretty sure I was the only (bearded) man who has ever gone in there. Photos of my shame (and a few from the pub quiz) here.

There are lots of different kinds of cheesecake, it seems, and strawberry shortcake actually exists. The French seem to have a different word for "mousse" and don't mess around when it comes to eclairs (I'm pretty sure this one started out as a footlong before it was cut). They also had curry, pasta and stuff thankfully, because I'm not exactly sure what would happen if I went from empty to full on ice cream and heart-shaped waffles. Once we had had enough, we had a bit more, then we had two coffees, and then we staggered out. I felt like a cake fridge, and I had eaten so much sugar I was convinced I could bend my vision to see around corners.

Sunday we did absolutely nothing and I stayed in my pajamas until bath time, after which I put on my pajamas again. It was the best way to spend the day before term 1 I can possibly think of. Unfortunately my lethargy has carried over into the working week and I've found myself attached to the coffee vending machine. Hopefully this will change very shortly and I'll become a whirling dervish of achievement. There's a bit of a hard ceiling on how long I can space out for too, which is good - I actually start classes quite soon.

Two weeks to Golden Week, woo hoo! It's basically a bunch of public holidays stuck together which means that with a couple of well-placed leave days, you can have a whole week off. I don't imagine we'll be heading too far for it though, it's a great time to not actually go anywhere, because everyone is doing everything else and the prices for travel "adjust" accordingly. We might just keep thrashing out our local area and try to do fun things that don't involve getting on a bullet train or plane with 150 million other people.

The cherry blossoms are starting to fall, leaving a carpet of pink petals covering everything as the green shoots come through. It would be pretty if it wasn't bucketing down with rain, turning everything into a pink slushy mess. Nevertheless, this weekend we have another work party so for those who're counting, in the past few weeks we have now had an end of year party, a farewell and welcome party and now a start of year party. That's at one workplace, and I have 3. There just isn't enough coffee in the world. I'm sure the cake can make up the difference though.