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".

Boar 'n' beans

Chaos and disorder now officially reign, like that bit in the movie where gravity fails and everything in the spaceship floats up and off in random directions. After a very odd two days at work on Monday and Tuesday which toggled between boredom and blind panic that I wasn't going to get everything done, the week gave out and I started an impromptu 7 day holiday that I'm now through 5 and a bit days of. In that time we managed to get out to Himeji, Sasayama and anywhere else that least reminded us of job applications and looming deadlines. The gravity kicks back in on Wednesday which I'm not at all upset about; at the moment I'm struggling to focus on anything until it crashes down on me in a heap.

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.

Fruit flies like a banana

We seem to have finally "found the floor" as Lisa put it, having tired of the endless piles of stuff and heaved it all into seamail boxes. Our last effort was a 20kg reminder of why cars are awesome, which the post office fortunately agreed to pick up for us. There are probably two more boxes to send and a bit of slash and burn to be done to the wardrobe, then I can almost imagine getting the remainder into a suitcase. This is a Very Good Thing, because it's just over a month until check-in and that Mario "running out of time" sound is on the edge of my hearing.

On a silver platter

There seem to be weeks when all my frugal urges go out the window and I find myself with an insatiable urge to buy every single meal. This was only partially one of those weeks - I would have been quite happy to cook and eat at home as usual but the wheel of fortune had other ideas. By and large, eating out here is very reasonable but unfortunately 10 times very reasonable is still quite a large number. It does save on washing up though.

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!

José, can you see

We have officially returned and I've spent the better part of today trying to get my head to stop rattling around in its socket - unfortunately taking 10 days off on the trot doesn't mean the work will do the same. Nevertheless, between bouts of fevered activity my coworkers were interested in how Guam went; they were the ones who put the idea in my head to start with. The recommendation came with an asterisk - Guam apparently isn't a place you go if you want a super sightseeing holiday. However, it is a place you go if you want to eat, shop and read your book until people aren't sure where you end and the deckchair begins. They seemed pleased we had a great time and wanted to know all about it - maybe you do too.

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.

Mount Fluji

The past 2 weeks are almost entirely a blur, but what I can tell you is that both Lisa and I have contracted what I've christened "Fuji Flu" which causes coughing, sneezing and an intense desire to never climb a mountain again ever. The symptoms are probably to be expected, considering we spent most of the climb being buffeted by torrents of wind and rain; these dropped the temperature to a level you'd normally associate with being inside eating marshmallows, rather than scrabbling over slippery rocks 3km above the earth's surface. Once we had collapsed in ruin into our seats on the bus, we flicked through the photos we'd taken from our holiday and found it hard to imagine that it had all taken place in the same 5 day period. Lots and lots of things happened - let's see if I can't start from the beginning.

Scene missing

It's now officially the last week of work before more holidays, which I suppose makes this "week 10". There's no outward sign of this other than me loudly slurping on a carton of iced coffee, which in your average week 10 would be the only thing stopping me from smashing like a dropped Ming vase. But no, apart from last week lasting about 3 months, things have been almost (but not entirely) unremarkable.

Putting the "grace" back in "disgraceful"

It was one of those weeks that seemed like 3, possibly due to a huge "business trip" I had to do on Friday; it was a school visit out to the guts of the prefecture and took 2 hours on the train each way. Being a sensible 28 year old now I shouldn't even dream of drunken silliness but when I crash landed on the couch that evening, the clock struck beer o'clock and the hands didn't move again until Sunday.

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.

Feast or famine

By some miracle of nature I managed to survive the financial fallout of our holiday and made it bowleggedly to the weekend, which was supposed to make up for the largesse of the trip. I can go an entire week here on $10 or I can spend $500 in 3 hours, there really doesn't seem to be much in the middle. This weekend was one of the rare examples though - an unusual sensation of having fun out somewhere without pelting $100 notes at people.

Getting away from it all

After what seemed like far too long, we finally managed to leave our warren for more than a day and spent the better part of Golden Week eating, drinking and photographing our way across Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I thought it was going to be ghastly to be honest - no matter how expensive or obscure something is, at this time of year it will be booked out and crowded to the point of ruination; you really wonder where all these people come from. However, we bucked the trend - despite almost a complete lack of planning on our part, everything fell into place and we ended up scarcely putting a foot wrong.

Nagasicki

Through no fault of my own, I've made it through the short working week and hit the shore of holidays on the other side. Like clockwork, my immune system switched off as soon as the Friday public holiday hit, leaving me with a gnarly cough and runny nose just in time for our trip away. I'm sure I won't be alone when I say bloody arsing shit.

On the cusp of brilliance

It seems Newton was right - for every meal we've diligently cooked recently, there was an equal and opposite blowout this week. I counted four dinners and five lunches out out of seven and I'm not in the least bit remorseful about any of them (although my wallet seems to be losing as much weight as I'm gaining). At least now when someone asks what I did in Japan, I'll be able to give them a genuine account of all the amazing food and drink, rather than mumbling something about tupperware and leftovers.

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.

Cold comforts

With no small amount of relish, I picked one of the low hanging fruits of working in an office on Thursday, by deciding that I wanted Friday off and a couple of approvals later, it was so. Teachers generally can't do this - they don't get leave outside of school holidays and that annoying classroom bit of the job tends to get in the way of duvet days. So while I'm working longer hours and getting less official holidays, being able to kill a not-so-busy working week with laser-guided application of leave is delicious. As is haggis, incidentally.

Poison... poison... tasty fish

I don't think I've ever eaten out as many times as we did this weekend, but to our credit we generally got out of our comfort zone a little and tried some new places. One of these in particular was lovely and we'd definitely consider making it a new stomping ground. The other was perhaps the most traumatic dining experience I've ever been through; I think I can fairly safely say that I'm happy to tick fugu (blowfish) off my list and never eat it again.

Ever.

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.