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".

Duff Gardens, hoorah

We had lots planned for this weekend but life had other ideas; after what turned out to be an overzealous start, we tripped over the first hurdle and spent most of Saturday lying in a heap of meat-and-booze-induced pain. We were putting on brave faces but I think by 11am everyone realised it was an Xbox-and-aspirin kind of day. I apologise... for nothing!

Something something festival

Silver Week has arrived, little brother to the (in)famous Golden Week - a pair of long weekends with 3 work days dangling in between them ripe for annual leave. Given that we're going to be spending most of next week at K-Mart though, I've diligently decided to come in and try to get at least some work done during September.

Obi-Wan Shinobi

As promised, we spent this weekend enjoying our seemingly neverending adolescence - dressing up as ninja and running around making sword noises much as we might have done 20 years ago. We were far from being the only adults in costume and I'm not sure if that's astonishing or completely normal for this country. Once we had dressed up, bought our plastic swords and set out on our ninja scavenger hunt, the answer seemed to come to Sifton in a flash. "Why isn't everyone in Japan doing this right now?"

Hanami and you

As promised, it was an eventful weekend and for the first time in several weeks, we actually felt like there was some space between Friday and Monday. The weather can't decide weather it's chilly or warm but the cherry blossoms have put their collective foot down and declared Spring officially here. After all the work parties, the last thing I probably needed was more rich food and drink, but that didn't stop us heading to Shukugawa with our little picnic swag. Tarp below, trees above and good times in between.

Gong xi fa cai!

By the time the weekend came around last week, we considered ourselves settled in and nested enough to give ourselves a break from flat-packed furniture (I drew the line when I realised we now have a tea towel drawer) and went out to Chinatown for Chinese New Year. During this pageant of the bizarre, I met my new best friend from Kawanishi (where is that? I don't even know) and we ended up spending a lot of the day with a bearded lady and two self-walking corgis. We don't go out looking for strange, it's just very good at finding us.

Out with a whimper, in with a bang

Well, here we are - my last blog post for the year and not a moment too soon. The time for goodbyes is upon us and with each farewell party that comes by, I can feel my engine lugging more and more. I have no real reason to be exhausted because all in all it's a very gentle end to the year; having said that, I think you always end up with exactly the right amount of physical and mental energy to crawl over the finish line and not a drop more. That must be it - the endless parties, schizophrenic sleeping patterns and late night coffee binges have nothing to do with it, I'm sure.

Too much is never enough

I feel like a neverending font at the moment - those that thirst for plausible-sounding nonsense need only twist my handle and loose a cascading torrent of it, enough to fill any container they have. Five such vessels have overflowed in the past couple of weeks, four of which were the workshops for the mid-year seminar coming up this week; the fifth, my plenary session, took gallons. They're all officially done and ready to be uncorked.

Those in the front rows may get wet.

What is this I don't even

There's been a cool change this week, both in the weather and our level of activity, which is probably for the best in both cases. "Silver Week" has just wrapped up, a dual-public-holiday week that was spent gloriously far away from Tokyo and its wallet incinerators. Most notably, Friday was the Sports Festival at one of my schools, which in short is an insane version of the sports carnivals we have at home, featuring tricycles and cardboard box tank treads.

You probably still won't understand when I explain it.

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.

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?

And then I ate a whole sheep

Having just finished a long weekend and my last official day of work, I find myself reflecting. It's a time of old ends and new beginnings; as the sun sets on my working life and rises over the holidays, I find myself turning my measured gaze to what the future holds. Should I put some pants on? Should I have another almond chocolate thing?

No. Yes.

Like the Beatles but hairier

The "big weekend" has come and gone, a true salute to the phrase "when it rains, it pours". I've been trying to work out how to put it into words for a good couple of days now; I'm not entirely sure I've got it right but I'll give it a shot anyway. Needless to say, this is going to be a long post.

The story begins somewhat uninterestingly early last week where one of my Deputy Principals asks if I can shift my working schedule around a bit and come to their Culture Festival. It ends somewhat ridiculously in Kobe with handstands, fake moustaches and beer through a straw. Like a hamburger with too many patties, it's the bit in between that might make things a bit unwieldy.

Growing old disgracefully

Beer garden season seems to have officially opened in Japan now, which means the fake palm tree and spring roll industries are booming. Buildings across the metropolitan area are unfurling their spiky green astroturf, Hawaiian shirts are being reluctantly buttoned up and everyone, including us, is rushing toward the beer machines. Saturday night was one such example, where we headed to Himeji for Andy's 27th birthday. The sensible had to end eventually, I suppose.

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.

Golden!

Golden Week is, as I'm sure I've said, a string of almost uninterrupted public holidays that sits astride a weekend in early May. I used it as an excuse to not think about blogging for quite a while, which is why it's been ages since my last post. It was an action packed week in the end, and even though we didn't take any huge trips, we managed to fill up the time nicely with a bunch of excursions as my photos will attest. Results were varied. Good varied though, between "incredibly awesome" and "mildly annoying", the latter because of the heaving crowds that Golden Week is infamous for. We cancelled our car hire and big trip because of the expected traffic, which I think was a very good idea. In a parallel universe, I imagine there's a Mazda 2 embedded in the side of Kobe's Port Tower, where I sit amongst the chaos with a satisfied smile on my face.

Himeji hanami hangover hilarity

"We'll need to get the train at about 10 to get to Himeji on time", Lisa's message ominously warned in the wee hours of Saturday morning. This would probably have been a good time to go pay up and go home, but having another whiskey and bellowing out "Pretty Woman" seemed like a much better idea.

It wasn't. Or was it? By this stage, not even my hindsight could see straight.

Osaka and okonomi and otaku, oh my!

The long weekend that wasn't has just passed by and I think I enjoyed it more than I would have if we had gone away. Quite content not to turn out for a big trip, we settled for a nice quiet weekend with a couple of excursions out to rediscover our local area. Of particular note was a "street festa" in Osaka that happened on Sunday in dotonbori. This is the home of "Den Den Town", which is Osaka's answer to Tokyo's electronics district Akihabara. It's chockers with every kind of game shop, hobby store and arcade you can imagine and not surprisingly, it's where all the "otaku" (worryingly intense game/anime geeks) hang out. The festa was a big cosplay ("costume play" - dress up) event. A lot of these people pretty much live their lives in costume - when they actually make the effort to get dressed up, it's a bit of a bloody sight to behold.

Pestilence (but not much famine)

I've been laid out flat with my face buried in vitamin C drink for the better part of a week now, which explains the lack of updates. Even the word "blog" was enough to set my hands into an involuntary twitch, clawing for unseen blankets and cups of coffee. I realised that going into work was probably a dumb idea last Wednesday, then just about killed myself walking down towards the train station on Thursday morning. Sore throats and very cold air make a yucky cocktail that you wish you hadn't wasted your money on.

Play that funky music, wasshoi

There's a poetic simplicity to the Naked Man Festival - it doesn't try to be anything other than thousands of men dressed in loincloths beating each other to a pulp to try and get a stick the size of a Coke can. It must be very liberating to stamp on someone's face for that silly a reason. Given the choice between “participant” and “spectator” however, I soundly ticked the latter. The world really doesn’t need to see me in a loincloth.