Boys and their toys, girls and their pearls

It's hardly even a question any more what we're going to do on a public holiday. Like wolves anticipating a clear night we can feel the need building up in us; the wild impulse to go crashing through the undergrowth, leap out into the moonlight, throw our heads back and bay:
God, that's cheap. Do you reckon it'd go with my shoes?
It's hardly surprising, then, that we spent our Tuesday public holiday in the dark forests of Kobe, snuffling around at bargain tables. Mel and Lisa spent a lot of their time in shoe shops being extremely girly; Adam and I looked at shamelessly masculine things like portable hard drives and bean bags. The giant robot though, that was something everybody could enjoy.

We headed out Tuesday morning to Nagata, a small area along the Kobe subway line that is fairly forgettable apart from what's known as the "Tetsujin" (iron man), an 18m tall statue of a rather cross looking, pot bellied robot from some old cartoon or other. He stands outside the subway station in a fighting pose which everyone (including us) tries to imitate for photos. He features fairly heavily in advertising around Kobe - there are Tetsujin vending machines and huge posters all over the place; he even has his own brand of curry (in a can, no less). I realised after the fact that I was wearing my "Fe" ("iron") t-shirt while standing in front of him, adding a whole new dimension to the photos we took. "He's got an arse," I pointed out as we started walking away - a small drainage hole drilled in a very unfortunate place, presumably so that any rainwater dribbles out of him - something that's probably quite hilarious to watch. Then I realised that the only people pointing at the hole and laughing were me and a few 3 year olds; it was definitely time to move on.

Having crossed the Tetsujin off our bucket list (having threatened to do so for weeks but putting it off constantly), we went back into Sannomiya and officially started our shopping trip. It was a day of firsts really - we introduced Mel and Adam to the miracle of recycled clothes shops (where Lisa continued her string of good luck, picking up a perfectly fitting winter coat for $30) discount ticket shops (which turned out to have some amazing bargains, after me spending ages on a disclaimer that they weren't worth visiting) and Mister Donut (I consider the first stop for anyone visiting Japan, so I tut-tutted them for not having been once in their 4 months). Adam was looking for a satchel that wasn't too expensive, but we were obviously going around the circuit backwards - at each new shop, the prices would go up until they had a hilarious number of zeroes on the end. Mel and Lis were looking for shoes as always, which in Kobe is seldom something you go home from empty handed. I wasn't looking for anything in particular - I spent most of my time lusting after beds and furniture, promising at some stage to own a place good enough to justify buying them.

We made another bucket list stop at "Currywurst", which as the name suggests sells German sausage curry - my 3 favourite words in one phrase. 4 "beer sets" later, we were sitting upstairs on tottery wooden stools with several different kids of sausage, massive thick cut chips with mayonnaise and frosty mugs of beer - I can quite comfortably say that it's the best 1000 yen I've ever spent. We made one final pass, the girls going into the 100 yen shop and the boys to an electronics department store to pine for cameras, TVs and hard drives. "That's cheap," I said, looking at the price tag of a TV.
"You just bought one," said Adam patiently - he did have a point. It's probably not time to upgrade just yet.

The next day I had my farewell party with the PTA ladies at one of my schools, who have been spoiling me rotten all year with food, drinks and knick knacks in return for my endless rambling at their English classes. After the final class finished up, they all leapt up and produced bags and bags of food from nowhere - lashings of sandwiches, samosas and pudding to finish off with. They then pulled out a beautiful red lacquerware plate as a farewell present. They wouldn't even take it back when I told them it wasn't actually a farewell - spoiled, as I say. Once we had cleaned up and said our thank-yous and goodbyes (for now), I went back up to the staffroom with my loot and Mel and I tried to work out what shape it was. Rhombus? Trapezium? Parallelogram, that's the one - you can't have a decent dinner party without a good parallelogram.

Speaking of dinner parties, we were invited to a party to celebrate the release of the "Beaujolais nouveau", which I'd never heard of before. Apparently there's a wine that's released every year from the Beaujolais region of France, which seems to be a non-event everywhere except Beaujolais and Japan. A third of it ends up shipped over here, they say, with parties like the one we went to happening all over the country. We made a curry, grabbed some extraordinarily sweet sparkling wine and headed out the door. We missed the bus, missed the train, got the slow train, missed the fast train, got back on the slow train and eventually made it to the party about 20 minutes late, frazzled and stressed but fortunately not the last to arrive. These dinner parties don't disappoint - we seem to have broken into an elite cabal of gourmet food lovers that spurn the "heat in the packet" culture of Japan; homemade pizzas and guacamole, salami and fresh salads and gallons of good wine filled the table, along with our humble curry. We had a red and a white Beaujolais which were quite nice, but seemed a strange excuse for such a grand party (not that we were complaining), although to be fair one of the guests had a birthday too. A nice cake came out last (which was nearly set on fire by one of the candles), along with a beautiful but very odd rendition of "Amazing Grace" by one of the guests ("That's not usually a birthday song," we said cautiously afterwards, prompting disbelief), then we staggered out of the apartment flushed with wine, all talked out and stuffed with goodies. I've decided I quite like Beaujolais nouveau and am hoping for an invite next year (I meant "non-event" in the best possible way, really).

That's just the start of the parties, of course - we have two (un)farewell parties to go to next week and then the week after that is our last. I didn't really believe I'd be starting the "has it really been that long" thing again after repeating the same mistake over so many trips, but there you have it. So much to do, so little time and my head's still back in July somewhere; maybe some Christmas shopping will help it catch up a bit.