Yankee doodle

It's been a patriotic few days, with the celebrations of Canada Day (which exists, it turns out) on July 1st leading into American Independence Day and (far more importantly) my birthday on the 4th. The "Summer Timetable" has kicked off at work meaning that my day starts and finishes half an hour earlier now, so we had a nice early start to the weekend's festivities. A nice late end, too - I took a day off yesterday for birthday eats and shopping, but I spelled it wrong and accidentally wrote "personal business" instead.

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.

Cake bus, cat bus, silver robot hat bus

Our Tokyo long weekend had several essential components. There were to be new experiences like the Ghibli Museum and the Tokyo Game Show. Eggs Benedict had to be involved somehow. Most important of all, we needed rice cooker banana cake for what became known as "cake bus".

The rice cooker beeped, cake was wrapped in foil, the stage was set. We grabbed our bags and headed out the door on the most successful Tokyo trip I've ever been on.

I think I might have just spoiled the ending.

No rest for the wicked

Due to some no doubt ominous aligning of the planets this morning, I had to wake up about 5 hours earlier than I’m used to and saw the sun rise as I walked down to the station. This was not the kind of thing you’d see on a Nike/Sports by Brooks/Boost Juice ad – there was no triumphant fist pumping or spinning around with arms skyward in a gesture of how much of a free spirit I was. It was bleary eyes, bed head and generally lots of things that said I don’t want to get up at 5am again. That said, I am now on a bus – blogging on one should be an interesting experience. I apologise in advance for any surreal images that my omelette-ised brain may conjure.

...BLOG BUS!

Back o' my neck gettin' burned and gritty

It officially feels like summer now, which seems extraordinarily late given that I've been on summer holidays, being repeatedly sunburned, for the better part of a month. Still, I consider these incidents minor hiccups in an otherwise gloriously uninterrupted chorus of air conditioning; my brief trips out of our wintery apartment have been mostly to collect money, baby seals and puppy dogs to tip into its gnashing steel maw. For that reason I guess the heat hasn't affected us as much as usual.

What's really clued us in is the spate of very summery things we've been doing over the past few days, the highlight of which was a fireworks display where you could actually see fireworks. Are you listening, Osaka?

Shopping, damned shopping and outlet parks

Our shopping tour of the greater Kobe area continued this week with a junket out to "Sanda Premium Outlet Park", a surprisingly far away shopping centre that felt like the equivalent of getting public transport from Morley to Mandurah. It's also the first time I've seen the word "premium" properly used in Japan, given that everything there was mind bogglingly posh. The word typically means "10 yen more and with a gold wrapper".

60% off and still $2000? Now we're talkin' premium.

Ditto marks

Nothing particularly new this week, and sitting here in soaking pants and shoes that go "slosh slosh" has limited my desire to write (and live) so we'll see how this goes. I saw 3 umbrellas turned inside out this morning and I literally wrung my socks out into the sink when I got to school. Rainy season manages to combine tropical heat with driving rain, which turns the entire country into a concrete rainforest. School is even cancelled this morning due to flood warnings. It's apparently not cancelled for teachers though, who by their very nature are immune to storms and hypothermia.

Taste handbag, fiend!

This weekend was the Kobe Festival, a big parade and a bunch of stalls which closed off the whole of Sannomiya's Flower Road (which is a very big deal). I really enjoy having "things" happening all the time - people bellowing about the latest sale or "campaign", buskers and street music, huge events and festivals like this one. Unfortunately, so do the pushy old ladies and woe betide anyone who gets between them and a good view. When all you have is an elbow, every problem starts to look like someone's ribs.

For Queen and Country

I hadn't heard too much of Saint George to be honest, much less the day named after him, beyond the little picture of him on the side of my beer bottle. I still don't really, aside from the fact that he makes for a mean excuse to run around Kobe with a camera looking for creative interpretations of the word "corgi".

The sweet taste of victory

As far as the weekend goes, this post is exactly what it says on the tin. We won a pub quiz. We ate a lot of desserty things the next day. This is about as clever as I can be on a Tuesday morning. I may still be suffering from the aftershock of my sugar crash.

A snapshot of our torrid lives

If you ever find yourself thinking "What are Mike and Lisa doing in Kobe right this second?", wonder no more. We're probably eating something like this or this, or winning any one of these things. I'm awfully proud of the hat.

Proper update tomorrow!

Another year over, 35 days after it started

Exam time has now officially started in chilly Kobe (and the rest of Japan, for that matter), which means it's a month of no classes followed by end-of-year holidays. I've just had Aussie summer holidays and my natural rhythm had me primed and prepped for another full year, which makes things very confusing. I started the marathon 200m from the finish line and now I'm staring at my winner's trophy with a very strange expression on my face.