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.

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.

Pissup in a brewery

It's been a very boozy few days which I hope excuses my tardiness and the even-more-laboured-than-usual tone today. Work finished up on Friday and as I keep reminding people with relish, that kicked off a 16 day break that we've now eaten, drank and spent our way through the first 3 days of. We started at the cinema on Friday and ended up at a karaoke bar on Monday night so now it's just a matter of working out what happened in between. A typhoon is rattling the window panes at the moment so it seems as good a moment as any to sit down with a cup of coffee and untangle everything.

Showers everywhere but the bathroom

Last week was what you would call a slow week, with four days taking a record-breaking 12 days to pass. The bathroom waterproofing men arrived on Tuesday and declared that part of the house off limits while they counted down the top ten stinkiest chemicals of all time; to try to stop the house smelling like a fibreglass boat factory, we had to leave all the windows open. And so, with the bathtub sitting in the middle of the kitchen and a precariously balanced pedestal fan drying the concrete, we dined with every insect in the world.

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.

Washed out

The weather didn't mesh very well with our plans this weekend, in the same way that salt doesn't mesh very well with slugs. Originally we were supposed to join 200 JETs at a Hanshin Tigers baseball game, followed by celebratory or commiseratory drinks. Fate had other ideas, however - the heavens opened early in the morning and didn't let up until even the most optimistic people had given up hope of the game progressing as planned. Before the cancellation was officially announced, we asked our cab driver what he thought our chances were.
"Mate, you've got Buckley's," was the gist of it. Unfortunately he was spot on.

Fear and loathing

It's been a trying week-and-a-bit, all things considered - despite being hundreds of kilometres from the badness, the constant uncertainty and doom and gloom eventually started to get the better of us to some extent. Would you call it fear? Probably. People were packing up and leaving Kobe, they were telling us to plan for it too. We got a bit scared, despite the seeming okayness of everything around us. I don't think we were alone.

And four beers, thanks

I don't know if it was the daily beers, the constant meals out, no-money poisoning or all of the above, but I am mentally all over the road at the moment; I find my mind drifting constantly. Japan is well and truly Narnia-like, I said to myself as I drifted off last night. The only problem is that rather than grand adventuring with Aslan, I seem content to sit on the couch and drink cups of tea - I tut and draw the curtains on all the centaurs and magic. Is this amazing world behind the wardrobe that few people ever discover wasted on me? Probably. Now get out of the way, I can't see the TV.

Celebrating 27 years of not dying

Exams have officially started now, which means a whole lot of not much for a couple of weeks until we break up for summer holidays. This can only be a blessing because I seem to have become a crotchety old loafer since my birthday on Sunday. I'm sitting in the staffroom nodding off in the cool of the air conditioner, grumbling at the thought of having to do anything and frowning at everyone that walks past.

My pants? Up to my sternum.

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.