Showers everywhere but the bathroom

Last week was what you would call a slow week, with four days taking a record-breaking 12 days to pass. The bathroom waterproofing men arrived on Tuesday and declared that part of the house off limits while they counted down the top ten stinkiest chemicals of all time; to try to stop the house smelling like a fibreglass boat factory, we had to leave all the windows open. And so, with the bathtub sitting in the middle of the kitchen and a precariously balanced pedestal fan drying the concrete, we dined with every insect in the world.

Ticket to ride

"I want to do something fun this weekend," Lisa announced on Friday night, with the outrageous implication that we don't lead lives of constant excitement. We cooked and watched a movie, then stood in the kitchen drying dishes and musing that we could go out somewhere but probably shouldn't - it was approximately the most tragic scene that "married" life has to offer. Fortunately, the predictable didn't last too much longer - I've found a new friend in the automatic ticket machine and we're now booked in for every sporting and cultural event in Japan ever.

Feast or famine

By some miracle of nature I managed to survive the financial fallout of our holiday and made it bowleggedly to the weekend, which was supposed to make up for the largesse of the trip. I can go an entire week here on $10 or I can spend $500 in 3 hours, there really doesn't seem to be much in the middle. This weekend was one of the rare examples though - an unusual sensation of having fun out somewhere without pelting $100 notes at people.

Getting away from it all

After what seemed like far too long, we finally managed to leave our warren for more than a day and spent the better part of Golden Week eating, drinking and photographing our way across Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I thought it was going to be ghastly to be honest - no matter how expensive or obscure something is, at this time of year it will be booked out and crowded to the point of ruination; you really wonder where all these people come from. However, we bucked the trend - despite almost a complete lack of planning on our part, everything fell into place and we ended up scarcely putting a foot wrong.

Nagasicki

Through no fault of my own, I've made it through the short working week and hit the shore of holidays on the other side. Like clockwork, my immune system switched off as soon as the Friday public holiday hit, leaving me with a gnarly cough and runny nose just in time for our trip away. I'm sure I won't be alone when I say bloody arsing shit.