Ditto marks

Nothing particularly new this week, and sitting here in soaking pants and shoes that go "slosh slosh" has limited my desire to write (and live) so we'll see how this goes. I saw 3 umbrellas turned inside out this morning and I literally wrung my socks out into the sink when I got to school. Rainy season manages to combine tropical heat with driving rain, which turns the entire country into a concrete rainforest. School is even cancelled this morning due to flood warnings. It's apparently not cancelled for teachers though, who by their very nature are immune to storms and hypothermia.

Ditto marks indeed, apart from that. Had a weekend of glorious, beautiful nothing which, if you'll take my unwritten word for it, was excellent. We joined a gym to atone for it though. While the gyms here seem pretty expensive, you can knock the price down an amazing amount by just accepting hilariously not-at-all-inconvenient conditions on your membership. For example, we cut our price in half by agreeing to a 90min limit to each visit. Considering how wrecked I am by about the 45 minute mark, I don't think that's going to be much of an issue. No idea how it actually saves them money for me to be out within an hour and a half, but there you go. I then went to buy a gym bag, saw the 3300 yen pricetag ($40ish), guffawed and won one out of a UFO catcher for $10. There may be problems that cannot be solved with a claw, but I'm yet to find one.

Wednesday night was yet another work party, continuing Japan's proud tradition of heavy drinking on a weeknight, and once again I was determined to go home but was talked into karaoke. I'm still receiving congratulations on my excruciating attempt at Love Shack, probably because they didn't know the song well enough to mourn its passing.

We also seem to have cable TV now (or at least the wiring for it), courtesy of some workmen who showed up to plug it in for us. One of them pulled out a catalogue and showed it to me hopefully, full of glossy pictures of CNN and Lost and History Channel, but his heart didn't seem into convincing me to buy a subscription. I did offer up coffee and chocolate during the installation (which may as well have been nectar and ambrosia), so by this point he probably liked me too much to try the hard sell.

In some ways I feel like I should be enjoying Japan to its fullest at every opportunity. June is about to arrive wearing rocket boots (halfway through? Good Lord) and I should be careful not to leave anything undone before it's suddenly December. On the other hand, I don't want to run out of petrol (and money) before I get to the end so I shouldn't feel guilty about the occasional weekend o' normal. The exchange rate is suddenly atrocious as well, so now the simple act of not going out saves me a godzillion dollars. Best to save up for the really good stuff and not fritter away my money on hamburgers and crane games (and waste the rest).

Tokyo Game Show September. It's happening.