From one extreme to the other

Sure as night follows day we always seem to see-saw our way between opposites as the weeks go by - slackness to busyness, healthy eating to double cheeseburgers and spending to... ludicrous spending. Shortly after returning from Fuji, we went to a Kabuki performance in Kobe which was the last aftershock in our short series of intensely Japanese tremors. A huge correction is now underway that started with a grand Italian dinner for Lisa's birthday and may end up in a K-Mart somewhere in the Western Pacific Ocean.

Red undies, as far as the eye can see

Needless to say, the most sophisticated bit of all this was heading to Kobe Culture Hall for what was ominously touted as "very cheap" kabuki. It's my understanding that it's usually done way further afield and costs an absolute arm and a leg, but this is one exception we managed to spot a couple of months ago and got in early enough to get good tickets. Feeling approximately 20 years below the median age, we wriggled past a series of hunched figures dumped in the concert hall chairs and found our spot on the upper level. It certainly didn't look cheap, with a big gold-painted shutter over the curtain and big glossy pamphlets being handed out - when it got started, it was pretty clear we were getting the real thing.

100% manly

My very limited understanding of kabuki is that it's an all-male form of theatre that revolves around hugely exaggerated costume, make-up, movements and delivery. The lines are delivered in almost a sing-song fashion and the more dramatic moments always involve an over-the-top pose, a quick frenzy of activity from the musicians and bellows of approval from the audience. We had two performances in this case - the first one was a very cool "dance" in 9 short parts complete with on-the-spot costume changes and stylised sword fights. After a brief intermission, the curtain opened again to reveal a completely different set and a full play in two parts. It had all the elements of a good story - war, betrayal, love and some poor samurai's head in a rice jar. It took about 4 hours from woe to go and I didn't find myself bored once - I'm not entirely sure how that happened.

But I have a few theories

We used our bare cupboards as an excuse for misbehaviour for most of the week, going out for yakiniku on Wednesday night and sneaking into town again on Friday for beers and what was supposed to be an early birthday dinner. Lisa produced fistfuls of restaurant business cards and after poking around a bit, we decided on a heavily recommended pizzeria. Unfortunately there was a huge line, so we made a reservation for Saturday night and then settled on cheap and cheerful in the meantime. The booking barely helped the next night - we ended up having to sit for 40 minutes before they could prise our table out of someone's cold dead hands and we weren't eating until about 9. Fortunately it was worth the wait - it was quite possibly the best pizza I've ever eaten and the memory of the lamb chops is going to keep me warm at night for the rest of the year. The owner lavished us in stereotypically accented apologies and shouted us a couple of glasses of wine as well, so it was hard to think of it as anything but a lovely evening.

We need to leave the country one more time to extend Lisa's visa to the end of the year, so holidays have been a topic of discussion over the past couple of weeks. Silver week starts this Saturday, which is essentially two back-to-back long weekends where every travel agent dusts off some extra zeroes for their signs - it didn't take too long to decide it wasn't a good time. The week after, however, is ripe for bargains and after fluttering my eyelashes at work, I've managed to get the time off (I love office work sometimes). After a bit of research, we found that Guam is about the cheapest place to go - by all accounts Hawaii-ish America in miniature. If all goes to plan, it'll be 4 days of gaudy steak restaurants, reading by the pool, tax-free shopping and what Wikipedia assures me is "the world's largest K-Mart". There really is no part of that sentence I don't like.