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It's now officially the last week of work before more holidays, which I suppose makes this "week 10". There's no outward sign of this other than me loudly slurping on a carton of iced coffee, which in your average week 10 would be the only thing stopping me from smashing like a dropped Ming vase. But no, apart from last week lasting about 3 months, things have been almost (but not entirely) unremarkable.

I spent most of last week getting ready for the conference that starts this Wednesday, the last hurdle standing between me and 16 days of freedom. As with all the big events of the year, the office has been stirring excitedly about it, ever nervous that something will go spectacularly wrong. One year someone set off a fire extinguisher in the hallway apparently, which is something I hope they'll do again if I burst into flame during one of my presentations. Fortunately I'm there for the whole time this year which should limit my chances of combustion; unlike the 1 day marathon of 2010, my workload is spread over 2 nights and 3 days. It means early starts, late finishes and cold breakfasts but hopefully I'll feel I've earned my break by Friday.

I felt much the same last week, when I Fred Flintstoned out of the office at 5 o'clock and met Lisa for an extremely welcome beer at our favourite yakitori place. Astonishingly, the snacky things we had with it didn't turn into dinner and we piously went home to make ourselves a salad. All the virtue was undone the next day thankfully, when we met Andy out for dinner at a shabu-shabu (hotpot) place in Sannomiya. It's been a while since I've dined so romantically with a man; it featured beaded curtains, soft red lighting and a "collagen" hotpot for those days where you want to feel beautiful while you shovel a whole pig into your mouth. True to form, we got all you can eat and drink, keeping the waitress busy bringing endless beers, wooden racks of pork, vegetables and jars of sesame dipping sauce. I wasn't convinced that the collagen would make a difference but by the time we were done I have to say my skin felt fuller and all my wrinkles were gone, particularly around my stomach.

We spent the next hour wandering the bars, eventually settling for the "Hobgoblin", a British pub near the station. We grabbed some impressively warm ales and sat people watching for a while, discussing some of Kobe's newest celebrities like the buff bartender who always takes his shirt off and acts like a cockhead (he totally does) and that guy who looks like Quentin Tarantino (he totally does). We had one last drink at a bar on the other side of the railway line then called it a night, declaring the evening an impromptu but hilarious success. We've got a welcome beer garden coming up on Saturday night, but until then I'm happy to never drink again ever. After that it's two weeks of rainbows, sunshine, Tokyo theme parks and if we're lucky(?), the looming Fuji climb while we're there. I may live to regret this.