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.

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?"

Cha-ching

The showpiece of last week had to be Culture Day, a glorious midweek public holiday that I'm not entirely sure of the purpose of; it's probably another one of Japan's many examples of "let's think of a provocative name for a day off". Being the refined creatures we are, we decided to focus our attention on Osaka shopping culture and had what I think was my 3rd successful trip out there in a row. At this rate I might actually start liking the place.

Wit beyond measure

The Harry Potter costume reached its cymbal-crashing climax on Friday night, helped along in no small part by the enthusiasm arms race of the previous few days. It went from "sorting out our costumes" to "dinner and sorting out our costumes" and then kind of escalated from there.
"You have an oven?" said Len. "I'll bring cake." I can't think of too many things he didn't bring.

It's nothing to you, but it keeps me alive

I've recently found myself suddenly struck down by term 4-itis, leaving me stranded in the middle of last week with an urgent need to not be at work. I've wondered about the cause - the weather, things currently being in a state of flux, costume anxiety... but perhaps the best explanation is that I've been at work without a break since August and still have 8 uninterrupted weeks to go. 8 weeks is both a crushingly long time and a mere blink before we head home - I'm Shröedinger's exchange teacher, simultaneously wishing it away and cherishing every minute. Until you open my box, at least.

...BRILLIANT!

It's been quite an odd week, at least compared to the others of our extremely average existence - a variety of things seem to have stirred up the nest a bit. I don't know how I feel about this - on one level the ants in my pants seem to be enjoying the routine change but on another I just really want to be wasting time on my own terms. I should probably stop thinking every idea is a really good one.

...anybody got a Gryffindor tie I can borrow?

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?

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.

Universally Studious

Kicking off (and probably causing) our attempt at a "no spendy weekendy" this weekend was a cheeky trip out to Universal Studios Japan. Our last attempt ended in 2 hours of rain, queues and tears, but luckily this time we nailed it. It's not the most traditional Japanese experience you can have, but it's something you can do here easily that you can't do at home so it still counts. I have no excuse for the caramel popcorn, though.

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.