And then I ate a whole sheep

Having just finished a long weekend and my last official day of work, I find myself reflecting. It's a time of old ends and new beginnings; as the sun sets on my working life and rises over the holidays, I find myself turning my measured gaze to what the future holds. Should I put some pants on? Should I have another almond chocolate thing?

No. Yes.

The rainy season has well and truly ended now - the clouds blew away overnight and opened up to blue skies and withering sunshine. You always know it's properly summer here when the cicadas wake up and start their dirge - I don't know how something that small can make so much noise. Word obviously travels fast in the cicada world - somehow the Kobe ones let their friends Kyoto know it was time, so we were treated to an almost uninterrupted chorus of chittering when we headed out there on Saturday. Apart from just wanting to enjoy the weather for a while, we were headed for the "Gion Festival", one of the big three in Japan as I'm told.

Kyoto was my home base for a good couple of months of my time as a scummy backpacker, so I always enjoy heading out there. It feels a bit like Kobe and Nara really - cities for people who don't like cities. The basic idea of the festival is a parade of two kinds of shrines - big ones and really big ones. The big ones are carried around by stern looking men in hats and the ones we saw had mannequins on top dressed in armour and kimono. A couple were on swivelling poles and had katanas and halberds to create the image of them fighting like stiff, elbowless samurai. The really big shrines apparently weigh twelve tonnes and sit on huge wagon wheels, rope-pulled by even sterner looking men in hats. People sit on all levels of the shrine including the roof, which they must have decided wasn't high enough because there's a full sized tree on top of it. Apparently these things caused such havoc with their clearance that they had to relocate the power lines on the parade route. This is the Tim the Tool Man Taylor approach to festivals.

Before long, we had had enough of the sun and crowds, so we decided to duck into a department store for a bit of a blast from the air conditioning. We ended up staying longer than expected when we found the yukata (informal kimono/dressing gown) section, culminating in Lisa buying me a short sleeved, short legged version called a "jimbei". It will make its first appearance at the fireworks on the weekend, so I apologise in advance for photos of my chicken legs. We spent the rest of the afternoon being uncharacteristically relaxed and just enjoyed walking in and out of stores in the shopping plaza instead of worrying about what to do next. Sunday was much the same - we headed into Harborland, had a wander and ended up having green tea ice creams and watching boats on the breezy pier. The navy band was playing away in the background as well - I can't think of any word for it except "pleasant". This is definitely how long weekends are supposed to be.

Tuesday was another work party given that it was a day ending in "Y". We went to a Mongolian lamb buffet, which the Japanese amusingly call "Genghis Khan". We had what I was sure was the main course about 3 times before dessert finally came out and the poor grill finally got a break from all the meat and arguing about whether it was the shape of a shield or a helmet. In hindsight I think it looked more like a lemon juicer. Like most good nights, it ended on a high note at karaoke. Unfortunately, I now feel exactly as you'd expect someone who spent the whole night eating meat, drinking beer and shrieking into a microphone to feel. But hey, it wouldn't be summer holidays any other way.