Over the worst of it

The conference has now wrapped up, taking with it the last of my workload for the year (touch wood). This seems to have ushered in a weird twilight at work, where half of the office just seem to not show up and those who do consider me part of the furniture. I'm half expecting to discover I was actually crushed under a pile of participant booklets on Wednesday and have since been haunting the office in an exceptionally uninteresting way. I've requested the last of my leave now so we'll see whether they approve it or just shiver and close the windows.

The conference seemed to go without a hitch, despite the nagging feeling that I had completely forgotten about some huge bit of it. While I don't think I changed anyone's life, noone chased me out of the building with pitchforks at the end which is always a good sign. The kitchen went neglected for about 3 days; I counted 2 lunches and 3 dinners out to finish the week. The first day we went to a little Nepalese curry restaurant for lunch and got our strength up for the afternoon session with naan the size of laptop bags. That evening we had a gathering for the volunteers aptly labelled the "Helpers' Drinking Party"; we went to an Okinawan place and had an eclectic mix of caesar salad, sashimi and something with a whole lot of spam in it. It was all you can drink, which is just as bad an idea on a Wednesday as you imagine, but the food was delicious and the beer was very welcome after a long day.

The second day we were a bit more pushed for time so I grabbed a "mixed bento" from the toothless 350 yen lunch man who seems to show up at every event. I was expecting it to be fairly horrid but it turned out to be delicious; I'm not sure how you make a fried chicken, prawn cutlet and eggroll bento with rice for $4 but I have a feeling the 350 yen lunch man was concealing a wand somewhere. The afternoon session went by fairly smoothly and before I knew it it was time to pack up and lock the hall. I met Lisa at Mr Donut for a post-conference coffee and then we wandered over to Sky Buffet for the next course of our eatstravaganza. By this stage the exhaustion had caught up with me so after the 2nd trip to the beer machine I was just about falling asleep on the table. We had a final chat with a few of the JETs there then excused ourselves from karaoke to go home and fall headlong into bed.

Friday I don't really remember at all apart from a series of bleary-eyed looks at the clock, then having a beer after work before what was known as "man night" - a male-only pub quiz. Our team was known as "The Penis Mightier" which was actually one of the tamer names; another was charmingly called "Fuck Off, Eat My Hairy Balls You Cunt" (made doubly amusing when it was introduced in the plummiest English accent I've ever heard). Needless to say it wasn't a particularly sophisticated evening - we spent most of it drinking, farting, belching and laughing at the quizmaster's purple pants. An odd dinner arrived in bains halfway through and the din stopped for long enough for 45 men to eat a plate of ravioli, chicken and chips (about 2 minutes), then it was on to more rounds. We lurched up to 3rd place after my muscular performance in the Japan and video game rounds, then we disintegrated in the music round and ended up in 7th place. Lisa had an equally girly night in the meantime, eating fondue for dinner and trying on absurdly over the top wedding dresses. The results were fairly spectacular.

I spent most of the weekend trying to wind up the little key in my back, eventually building up enough energy for a jaunt out to the outlet park in Tarumi for our very last bit of Christmas shopping. The icy weather followed us back from the sea and now it seems winter has arrived; we've taken that as our cue and finished organising all our last-minute trips and catchups with people. Not a moment too soon either - after today I've got 11 days of work left which is simultaneously too much and far too little. In some ways we'd just like to be done with all the chaos but I have a feeling we won't feel that way in a couple of months; the key is working out what we'll regret leaving undone.