A small town lad

You'll be pleased to know that the blog bus didn't go down in fiery ruin as expected, leaving me tapping out my last few pithy jokes at the bottom of a gorge in Nishiwaki. I lived on for at least another prosperous few days of travel, beer and in time, a desperate need to not do anything any more.

Tokyo, I'm sorry - we're just not right for one another.

No rest for the wicked

Due to some no doubt ominous aligning of the planets this morning, I had to wake up about 5 hours earlier than I’m used to and saw the sun rise as I walked down to the station. This was not the kind of thing you’d see on a Nike/Sports by Brooks/Boost Juice ad – there was no triumphant fist pumping or spinning around with arms skyward in a gesture of how much of a free spirit I was. It was bleary eyes, bed head and generally lots of things that said I don’t want to get up at 5am again. That said, I am now on a bus – blogging on one should be an interesting experience. I apologise in advance for any surreal images that my omelette-ised brain may conjure.

...BLOG BUS!

Back o' my neck gettin' burned and gritty

It officially feels like summer now, which seems extraordinarily late given that I've been on summer holidays, being repeatedly sunburned, for the better part of a month. Still, I consider these incidents minor hiccups in an otherwise gloriously uninterrupted chorus of air conditioning; my brief trips out of our wintery apartment have been mostly to collect money, baby seals and puppy dogs to tip into its gnashing steel maw. For that reason I guess the heat hasn't affected us as much as usual.

What's really clued us in is the spate of very summery things we've been doing over the past few days, the highlight of which was a fireworks display where you could actually see fireworks. Are you listening, Osaka?

The dumpling king, a tale in 2 parts (Part 2)

We left off our tale "last week" with Dave having just arrived, me wondering how I was going to last the week without squeaking to a halt like an unoiled tin-man and you unsure as to what "the dumpling king" refers to. Now that the lads have finished their whirlwind trip (Dave having bid farewell and left for Tokyo this morning), I'm sitting in what now seems to be a very empty, lonely apartment; it seems like a good time to conclude the tale. Theirs weren't the only goodbyes this week, as you will see.