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.

Who could ask for anything more

Another week has barrelled past but this time I noticed; I've actually started saying the date out loud every day to make sure December doesn't club me over the back of the head. Not that there's much danger of forgetting how late in the year it is - walking through the house is now more like spelunking, having to weave our way through stalagmites of clothes, books and lord knows what else. It's all immensely distracting and being able to get out of the house and think about other things for a while is probably a blessing, which is why we went out for a bit of rhythm and music this week.

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.

Much and more

Rather than spending the long weekend indoors as planned, we've just spent 3 days wandering the suburbs of Kobe and enjoying some of the seasonal events. Autumn is fairly frenzied here - I suppose everyone realises there's a fairly small window between the extremes and struggles to fit everything into the Goldilocks band between baking and freezing. Like most things that draw us from the nest, these particular events were for foodin' and boozin' - a tour of our local sake breweries on Saturday and an outdoor food festival on Sunday.

Leaving, on a jet plane

Silver week is now over but our holidays are just beginning - I was considering just making this post a big picture of K-Mart but that wouldn't make it past my exacting editorial standards. Besides, we did actually do something interesting this weekend, in between the usual pre-trip bouts of worrying about rubbish and using up tomatoes. In Nishinomiya there's what's known as the Fukuchiyama abandoned railway, a trail along what used to be scenic rail tracks. Nature has reclaimed a lot of it and the tunnels are uneven and unlit but despite big warning signs everywhere telling people to piss off, it's one of the area's more popular hiking trails.

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.

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.

The calm before the storm

As you may have guessed, it's been a relatively sensible few weeks; Lisa hasn't written to her grandma in about a month because there's only so much space on a page that Mister Donut can take up. The social winds dropped away to nothing this weekend, heralding a 2 month-long gale that's about to blow us all the way to August. It seems that weird things start happening in these kinds of conditions.

First there was nothing

There really is very little separating relative calm from infernos of spending in this country and I've felt the kindling building up for a while now. Having two instant gratification-type personalities in a place full of temptations and endless monopoly money is what people in the metaphor business would call "bushfire conditions". As always, the spark ignited just as we had declared we were going to be sensible; I think I'm finally starting to understand why we love it here.

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.

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.

They call me Dr Fish

In case there was any doubt, I think I'm officially old now; not necessarily because I bought a bottle of red wine on the way home on Friday night but because I was quite happy to have a glass of it and then stop (although that may have been because it was $6). "We'll keep the rest for tomorrow night," we said, then spent a hangover-free morning cleaning and dusting. The last bit of the bloody thing's still sitting there ready for the weekend; I'm starting to wonder if we should start enjoying our moderation in moderation, because I can see where this slow-moving rollercoaster ends up. "Was Japan good or bad?" the kids will ask. Lisa will close her Sudoku book and I'll glance up from the Financial Review.
"Yes."

We are on the cruise (we are)

Last week ended almost without incident and contrary to my usual last lurch to the finish line, I found myself at home time with nothing but soft, pillowy long weekend ahead of me. The weather obviously heard me commenting on the seemingly mild Winter and Kobe is now covered in a thick layer of snow; I can't even see out of the windows. The flurry started on the morning of the Friday holiday, when I awoke to Lisa squealing about the snow outside. Sure enough, the cars downstairs all looked like iced cupcakes and a particularly thrilled kid was building a little snowman on one of the soakwells. We didn't let that stop us though - we were going make the most of the break rain, hail or flake.

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.

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.

Harder than it looks

It's been an interesting week, although not really in a good way. As expected, I passed my doom plague on to Lisa and while it didn't have quite as spectacular an effect on her, it did mean a swift trip out to the hospital (given that there are no GPs here). This turned out to be far less swift than imagined.

Like the back of the Batmobile

After all my posturing, I actually managed to last an entire week of not eating or spending outrageously. Granted, I was helped along a bit by a bout of what I'm convinced was cholera and spending the better part of a week with literally 40 yen to my name, but credit where credit is due. Some would consider this a terrible way to spend the last days of your summer holiday but after the past few weeks, limitless guilt-free vegetation is just what the doctor ordered.

Well, that and some antibiotics maybe.

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?