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?

I won't go too much into the early part of last week, suffice to say that Dave very kindly left me some Spiderman undies that have been getting a lot of use and that having a lot of things to do on your days off and refusing to do any of them is great. I finally managed to put a shirt on by Thursday night and we headed into Sannomiya for the summer festival at the big shrine there. Dave and I stumbled across this on its first night and having both forgotten our cameras, I promised to go back and get some pictures which turned out much less exciting than I imagined them. There was a very loud karaoke contest going on and people were revving the engines of vintage race cars on one side for some reason - typical "meanwhile, in Japan" fare. Apart from that, it was a fairly standard festival with the typical grilled squid on sticks, giant/super/mega/big/giga/etc frankfurts and games. That was, until a bunch of yukata dancing girls came out and lined up for their big number in the temple square; I wanted some pictures for my blog so I found myself having to jostle several men with neckbeards and blocked noses. I suddenly wished I had some of that alcohol hand wash.

We moved on shortly afterwards and caught up with Andy who was playing slot machines with his better half. After watching them spend an excruciating amount of money on UFO catchers (and I have very loose standards of how much is "excruciating"), we found the best game in the world. It's essentially a coffee table attached to a screen - the game presents you with a choice of 4 irritating scenarios during which you can spend 60 seconds banging the table angrily, before completely losing the plot and flipping it over. The results are hilarious - two animated office ladies stared at me in shock as I flipped my desk, sending thousands of dollars of computer equipment and several staff members crashing through the window. Soothing music plays as you watch one slow motion replay after another, then get a total damage bill for your actions. I think it's supposed to relieve stress - I do have to admit that seeing my fax machine explode against the opposite wall made me feel pretty mellow.

On Saturday night we went to Port Island just off Kobe to watch a big fireworks display which, given our recent luck with fireworks, we were hoping would be good. Despite just rocking up on the night, we got a fantastic seat that looked over the entire harbour and glorious skyline. We were then treated to nearly an hour of fireworks that would normally be reserved for the finale of the Sky Show. The actual finale wouldn't even fit in a single frame - I had to simply put my camera down and enjoy. You can do the same on Flickr, hopefully. This is what happens in Kobe - you go to things and have fun. In Osaka, they'd make you pay $50 to sit on a sharpened stick, the US basketball team would be standing in front of you and a single firework would be shot off, which would explode just as a very big man slapped you as hard as he could. Then people would glare at you on the train home.

Finally, on Sunday night we went out to a local temple to watch the "Bon dance", which you'll no doubt be sick of hearing about in a couple of weeks. Very briefly, Obon is a holiday season in Japan to honour dead family members - I'm not exactly sure where the dance fits into this yet, but it's kind of nice to watch anyway. They had strung up lanterns throughout the temple square and a big square stage had been placed in the middle where a few old ladies danced away. Over time, people started to join in and before long, lots of them were joining the procession around the stage like a big folk dance. The food there was delicious and very cheap, as were the blow up swords that kids were abusing their long-suffering parents with. We also managed to find an even more local bar near the station which officially means we have no excuse to be sober for the rest of the year. They did awful nice wasabi octopus too.

Mum and dad arrive on Saturday so we're off on the tour guide trail again next week. Until then, I'm going to repair the figurative and literal hole in my wallet and lie very still.

Under the air conditioner.