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.

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.

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.

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.

Snowboarding or something quite like it

I came to Japan promising myself that I would do things I couldn't do at home. So, in one weekend I smashed my shoulder into dust on a mountain, secured my safe passage to the Buddhist afterlife and stood in the snow stark naked and pouring with steam. Achievement unlocked.

Sports Day

This is a bit overdue (4th of Feb?), but I finally got around to uploading the photos from Kobe High School's sports day. It was basically a big hike up the nearest mountain and then a marathon.

We'd probably call this strange creature "cross country" back home, except that this one was about 689m taller and had blue lips.