Cold comforts

With no small amount of relish, I picked one of the low hanging fruits of working in an office on Thursday, by deciding that I wanted Friday off and a couple of approvals later, it was so. Teachers generally can't do this - they don't get leave outside of school holidays and that annoying classroom bit of the job tends to get in the way of duvet days. So while I'm working longer hours and getting less official holidays, being able to kill a not-so-busy working week with laser-guided application of leave is delicious. As is haggis, incidentally.

Look at your man. Now back to me. The office chair is now a hog.

And so I abruptly started my weekend on Thursday night and we started discussing how we'd spend it. In lieu of a plan, we ended up at "Kawasaki Good Times World" in Harbourland, which is like a maritime and auto museum except fun. Here, you can walk through the carriage of Japan's first shinkansen, try a simulation of landing a plane at Kobe airport (which I suspect you have no control over, after my fruitless attempt to crash) and learn about how Kawasaki pretty much rules the world. I thought they just made motorbikes, but it turns out they make everything else ever - planes, trains, cruise ships and rockets, according to a hilariously 80s-style introduction video (complete with face-shredding guitar solo). Speaking of trains, we both had a go at a game where you drive one between a couple of stops along our line. In both cases, we entirely missed the brake and as the camera zoomed in close to see how precisely we pulled up to the platform, the train roared past at full speed. The Kawasaki guy thought this was hilarious.

There's no part of this picture I don't like

Once we had had our fun, we started out on our journey to Himeji, where the catchily-named "Haggis and Christmas pudding night" was set to start at Adam's house to give Winter the official send-off. To this day I'm hugely impressed by his effort; after weeks of sourcing all the bits and bobs he needed for it, he managed to successfully cook two haggi from scratch. The second of these was saved especially for us and I felt our shop-bought Christmas pudding wasn't an even trade. To be fair, we did make the custard from scratch, but the man bought and boiled organs in a huge pot - cutting open a packet of custard powder and giving it a decorative stir hardly compares. After some lovely fish fillets for entree, out came the haggis escorted by bowls of mashed potato and turnips. The latter were particularly hard won; Mel told us an old woman had made two attempts to steal them straight out of her shopping basket for reasons unknown. Lisa's first haggis experience seemed very positive - she agreed it's just like a very meaty sausage - and we finished off the whole lot quite happily.

Hurts so good

Thus started the dessert marathon, kicking off with bowls of cranican (cream, whisky, raspberries and oats) with enough cream to put down a small elephant. Somehow we could still face the idea of more after this, so the pudding and custard were heated up and then it seemed a shame to leave "only" half of it. Long after our 3 desserts and once we could move again, we bid our farewells and got the last bus home. I remember thinking I didn't want any more dessert ever, which seems kind of funny when I think about what we did on Sunday.

What has science done

We met up in Osaka with Abel and Sinead (from Nara) in the afternoon, heading back to one of our old favourite stomping grounds. It's a parfait restaurant that's perpetually packed with people who want to do themselves significant damage, offering truly colossal sundaes for knock-down prices. We decided to go for a healthy option and went for a fruit sundae, which sits about two feet high from foot to cherry and makes four people feel sick. Four kinds of fruit sauce cascaded over what had to be 20 scoops of ice cream and by the time we were finished, we could fully understand why everybody seemed to be tottering out bow-legged when they left. It took me almost an entire afternoon and evening of walking to start feeling normal again. I'm not going to say I don't want any more dessert ever though; at this rate I'll be eating a sticky date pudding the size of a circus tent by September.

It probably goes without saying given the normalcy of this post, but we survived the earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear explosions and Biblical plagues unscathed. We appreciate everyone's concern and well-wishing, but the brunt of it was hundreds of kilometres away so for the most part, the panicked emails from home were the first we'd heard of anything. If things take a huge turn for the worse, we'll probably be pulled out and sent home but that seems unlikely at this stage. So unless you hear otherwise, expect the usual tales of us eating our way across Japan as if it were a huge gingerbread house.