Goodbye-onara

That's all folks!

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".

And straight on till morning

We had the first of our farewells late last week, kicking off yet another long weekend and marking the official beginning of the end. Not a moment too soon, either - we've got two weeks left and still have an almost absurd number of things to think about. With most of the major stuff organised though, we're now down to the "using up stuff in the fridge" level of detail which is slightly more terrifying than it should be.

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.

Melloween

After last year's costumed antics there were some robust discussions about what we would do this Halloween; because of all the American influence it seems to be a massive thing here and there's no shortage of events going on. We could have dressed up as Power Rangers and run around Himeji, for example, or done the Harry Potter thing again and club-hopped in Osaka while shrieking women chased us around camera-first. The enthusiasm was fairly short-lived though - going out to get radioactively drunk didn't particularly appeal and neither did the idea of having to pack up yet more costume stuff. So we kind of just sat around and ate instead and Lord help me I think we made the right decision.

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.

Grindstone cowboy

I was expecting some kind of explosion when I got back to work, or at least opening the office door to find myself washed away by a comical tide of paper. Things were suspiciously quiet though - Monday passed without so much as a rumble and then I went on a brief business trip to Tokyo and came back similarly unaccosted. I can hear the beast lurking in the shadows though, paper skin all a-crinkle. He watches me through hole-punched eyes and gnashes his paperclip teeth, waiting for the moment I drop my guard and say wow, not long till holidays.

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.

Kicking and screaming

No doubt the worst bit about holidays is the horrendous comedown - the first few days of being back in the grind that really hits home how far from more holidays you are. I made my inglorious return to the workplace on Thursday and for the most part felt like a plump Christmas turkey dreading the sound of knives on sharpeners; I'm a captive audience for the next year and at some point I'm going to have to perform. It's reverse (reverse?) culture shock, I keep telling myself, but that isn't helping me feel any less hunted - my head is full of the faces of disappointed coworkers and empty blog posts. Time to do something about the latter, I think.

Back in black (and white)

And with that, a month at home passes in about as long as it takes your eyes to move from the last post of 2010 to the first of 2011. Welcome back, I suppose, although I don't really feel qualified to be a host at the moment. We've been back in Japan for a week now trying to recalibrate the instruments, mostly shambling around Osaka and Kobe as we used to. The faces, places and bases haven't changed but it doesn't feel entirely natural again yet; I think we've spent enough time in Australia and Japan respectively to defamiliarise us with both. Our first trip to the supermarket was particularly strange - a mundane task in a fantastical world, like taking Gandalf's robe to the drycleaner. There be magic here, just not as you imagined.

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.

Boys and their toys, girls and their pearls

It's hardly even a question any more what we're going to do on a public holiday. Like wolves anticipating a clear night we can feel the need building up in us; the wild impulse to go crashing through the undergrowth, leap out into the moonlight, throw our heads back and bay:
God, that's cheap. Do you reckon it'd go with my shoes?
It's hardly surprising, then, that we spent our Tuesday public holiday in the dark forests of Kobe, snuffling around at bargain tables. Mel and Lisa spent a lot of their time in shoe shops being extremely girly; Adam and I looked at shamelessly masculine things like portable hard drives and bean bags. The giant robot though, that was something everybody could enjoy.

Romance ensues

"You're definitely management material," Lisa said, her tone suggesting this wasn't a good thing at all. By this stage I'm sure she was sick to death of hearing about the mid-year seminar by this stage, but politely listened until the end anyway. The short version is that everything went extremely well and that I'm well cut out for shameless self-promotion and withering flattery of my "underlings". Nevertheless, I was quite happy to spend the weekend doing things as far from work as possible, specifically on a river and with several cheeky monkeys. My brain still feels like an overworked muscle (to say the least); it's obviously not used to hard work.

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.

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.

Ships passing in the night

Birthdays are a bit of a blessing I think - they hold some currency in people's increasingly crowded social lives and book you a spot to catch up with them properly. Like mine a couple of months ago (has it been that long?) and Lisa's on Friday, people seem to make room in their calendar and awfully nice nights come together. We're stuck on the wrong side of the summer holidays and kind of lost in the work wilderness now; it's starting to feel like December is hurtling towards us faster than we can finish the things we want to do. In what sounds like the plot of a very depressing movie, I'm finding myself heading out to work before Lis is up and coming home as she's leaving. It was nice to have an excuse to get dressed up and go out for a proper meal.

The plastic tablecloths, not so much.

A small town lad

You'll be pleased to know that the blog bus didn't go down in fiery ruin as expected, leaving me tapping out my last few pithy jokes at the bottom of a gorge in Nishiwaki. I lived on for at least another prosperous few days of travel, beer and in time, a desperate need to not do anything any more.

Tokyo, I'm sorry - we're just not right for one another.

The dumpling king, a tale in 2 parts (Part 2)

We left off our tale "last week" with Dave having just arrived, me wondering how I was going to last the week without squeaking to a halt like an unoiled tin-man and you unsure as to what "the dumpling king" refers to. Now that the lads have finished their whirlwind trip (Dave having bid farewell and left for Tokyo this morning), I'm sitting in what now seems to be a very empty, lonely apartment; it seems like a good time to conclude the tale. Theirs weren't the only goodbyes this week, as you will see.