Chop socky

Based on the assumption that our final few days here are going to be fairly subdued, this weekend was the last shot out of the cannon - two farewells followed by a big day trip out to the country to continue our love affair with dressing up as historical figures and playing silly buggers. With one week to go and counting, it's good to have things organised - we can officially tick off "send boxes", "tidy up" and "walk around a supermarket in a samurai costume".

On Friday night I headed out to a hotel in Harbourland for my last work farewell - an annual dinner known amusingly as the "bounenkai" or "year forgetting party". Generally these are just big pissups at swanky restaurants with beautiful food and staggering amounts of alcohol, but usually there are performances by the staff as well as games and prizes. We had a round of bingo about halfway through and I won a "prize for Lisa" which turned out to be a pink face/eyebrow trimmer thing. "She'll understand when you show her," they said, but I don't think she did. At some point during course after course of Chinese food the "entertainment" began, which was a surprisingly impressive magic show from the Division Chief. Once he had packed up his balloons, curtains, newspapers and handcuffs (I'm not joking), the Deputy Superintendent stood up and started bellowing out "Michael Row the Boat Ashore", which was my cue to stand up and give a self-conscious farewell speech. The eating and drinking continued unabated until about 9, then we wandered out into the street and met Lisa at a very posh bar (that we went for our welcome party 2 years ago) for wine, cheese and a very butlerish man in a waistcoat. It was a nice way to close things off - for better or worse, apart from a short speech on Friday that's the end of my work commitments.

We'll miss you so much... woodfired pizza

The next night we went out for woodfired pizza to farewell Andy, Colm, Sinead, Abel and our favourite Italian restaurant in the world. We barrelled into a hole in the wall Irish pub afterwards which was so full we had to rest our beers on the foosball table, then bid our final farewells to Abel and Sinead (only for a while, I hope). In order to get from Kobe to the samurai festival in Ako the next morning we would have had to get up before 5; this was definitely not happening so we headed back with Colm to his neck of the woods in nearby Aioi. We were treated to some Irish hospitality (offers of whiskey, cake, coffee and pizza at 1 in the morning), then hit the bedrolls and got up at a very civilised hour for a spot of brekkie and a breezy 20 minute drive to the festival.

Colm and Mike, gentlemen samurai

It bore more than a passing resemblance to the ninja festival for more reasons than one; when we got there we were greeted with floor tarps, plastic bags with each of our costumes in them and busy old ladies who scurried around making sure everyone knew where all the fiddly bits and pieces went. Before long we were dressed up and presented with our swords, then they had a quick run-through of the day's programme. The event was to commemorate the "47 loyal samurai" (or 47 ronin, as they're known outside of Japan), meaning that each of the 47 foreigners involved was "playing" one of the named heroes. The Commissioner of the Japan Tourism Agency was recruited to play the "boss" and by the time they'd fitted him out with his special helmet and little drum to bang, he was easily the noisiest and most outrageous of any of us. Once everyone was organised, each of us were given a stack of flyers advertising the main event and our odd procession marched out into the town proper.

Take this flyer... or DIE

This kicked off a very odd hour of wandering in and out of shops and chatting to the locals, who were quite friendly once they realised we weren't salesmen or murderers. Before long, word seemed to have gotten around and people were running up to ask if we had any more to give out. We found out why when we got to the main street - the flyers turned out to be raffle tickets and the line to redeem them stretched all the way to the next intersection.

Yes that's it, make war with the camera

Apparently it was the first time the reenactment had been done with foreigners and the photographers and TV crews were out in force. After presenting our good sides to the camera, we got to the food strip just in time for lunch and were given an hour to walk around and spend our meal tickets. We were given far too many - between Lisa and I we had enough to stuff ourselves and buy enough noodles for 2 days' worth of meals (the old men seemed particularly amused when they saw Lisa walking around with 4 boxes of udon to take home). Apart from that it was an easy gig - we were told to keep an eye out for "Kira", the antagonist of the story, and to arrest him if we saw him. To throw us off, there were two fake Kiras walking around - I caught both before I finally found the real one sneaking off to the main stage and grabbed him, netting myself a box of souvenirs and a self-satisfied expression.

Raah take that hiyaaa

The afternoon was a bit busier, taking us to several tourist spots around the town to watch mock battles, pray at altars and pose for group shots. We went to the castle and did a very subdued, camera-friendly reenactment of the story's siege, then headed to the shrine dedicated to the 47 to receive a blessing from the Shinto priests. Outside, statues of each lined the approach to the main hall; to my delight, my particular samurai had two swords AND a hammer, which clearly makes me the winner of everything. After one final group shot, we wandered over to the grounds of another festival and were beckoned up to the main stage for some quick interviews and shouts of approval from the crowd, then we pulled the swords off our aching hips and jumped on a bus back to base.

But not before a bit of this

All up it was a fun but exhausting day and another proud addition to my puzzling album of pictures from Japan. Once we had changed back into sensible clothes, Lisa and I decided to forego the final hot spring leg and jumped on a train back home before it got too dark. I think that was the right decision; we both slept nearly the whole way and probably wouldn't have woken up before Kyoto if we had been out any longer.

I'll miss you... fancy pants

We've now eaten our 150 serves of noodles, sent off the last of our boxes and made a bucket list of places we need to eat once we close the kitchen for good. With a bit of luck we'll have the worst of the packing and cleaning behind us by the weekend, then we're two more farewells away from check-in. As I said to Lisa this afternoon, I think we're in quite a good mental place at the moment - we'll be sad to leave but happy to be home. We've achieved everything we wanted to without feeling like we've overstayed our welcome and although we're closing this particular book of Japan, that doesn't mean we can't write another one. The next one's going to have even more swords in it.