Bang Bang Chicken

OK, so picture this. You walk into a hall full of children dressed in dark blue robes with metal grills on their faces and hoods on their heads and they are hitting each other. With sticks. Have I walked into a horror movie? No, it's my new hobby- Kendo. Only I wasn't expecting it to be full of pre teens with a blood lust and a list of questions for the foriegner. The best question was "are you a man?" OK, so I was wearing black and white Kendo robes (everyone else had navy blue, even the girls) and had beautiful hair, but clearly I was a male of the species. In body if not in spirit at least. I also wasn't expecting to spend over half an hour putting on robes and costume and while doing so managing to do it ridiculously wrong and insult every Kendo player there has ever been (but really, if you have so many rules for tying a bow in a piece of string, a stupid foriegner is going to get it wrong, right?) Anyway, it was fun. Until it got bizarre and I had to hit my supervisor over the head. I'm not used to such violence. Although by Wednesday night I was perfectly well accustomed to it, and was proper battering him with my stick. I shall demonstrate on drunken victims when I return to England. Broken noses ahoy!

Thursday night was a bit of an accident. I'd bumped into Christine on Wednesday and she seemed to quite keen to get together and go for dinner so she could show off her boyfriend who'd just flown in from the States. Well, we met on Thursday and ate a feast of sashimi, tofu, salad and they ate meaty stuff. And we had a quiet couple of drinks. On to Ai chan's bar where we continued to drink, although we had a time limit. Johanna was going to get the last train home (8:30- this isn't London). Only she decided to enjoy her kast drink and get a cab instead. And then some locals came and joined us. And started buying us drinks. Christine was already smashed and wanted to go home. Jeremy (her boyfriend) didn't want to drink anymore 'I'm drinking whisky!' I replied, 'so? I'm drinking gin and tonic', to which he said, 'yeah, but I'm drinking straight whiskey'. The conversation ended with, 'yeah, well I'm not stopping and I have school tomorrow'. It was one of those statements that sounds vaguely cool but moreso just stupid. And with Christine and Jeremy gone, we drank into the night. And boy did we drink. We went to sit with the locals, who kept buying us drinks, and then they announced that they owned a bar next to the karaoke parlour and that we should go. So we did. We drank till midnight. Six hours of drinking on a school night. Ooh we are naughty...

So I woke up on Friday still drunk, and I had to teach at school and the I had to rush home and pack for Osaka. It was a bit of a mess really. Johanna and I promised each other we'd sleep on the bus, but that was never going to happen, so we gabbed all the way, and met RayVon and Fiona, and eventually Saddam (Sarah) in Okayama. Johanna and Saddam were going on an organised trip to climb Fuji which involved overnight travelling on a coach, no reasonable amounts of sleep and having to be tired with people you don't know. Fiona and RayVon and I were going on a trip to Osaka which involved eating, shopping, sleeping in a nice air conditioned hotel room and not having to talk to anyone but each other. It was cool. We took the bullet train and I remembered my way round from last time. We were very excited about how cheap the bullet train was until it turned out we'd only bought half the ticket and it was twice the price. Hot damn! But it was worth it- £25 each way. We wandered round Shitennoji temple- the oldest government built temple in Japan (or something) which was really nice, and then wandered round the grounds of Osaka castle and then checked in. The nightime involved shopping and eating Italian food (Japanese would have been too dificult as Fiona hates fish and I hate meat). Only, the Italian was almost too difficult as the katakana menu made me cross eyed and I lost the ability to function. The restaurant staff were so nice though and when we asked where a nearby cinema was, they spent 10 minutes drawing us a map. And then we didn't go anyway. Oops.

On Sunday the ladies went to Universal Studios Osaka, and I wandered round the town on my own. Osaka is a cool city, but so busy. People are crammed everywhere. It's not for the claustrophobe. Or for the homosexual it would seem. Osaka has supposedly the second biggest gay scene in Japan, outside of Tokyo. You wouldn't tell. I spent ages wandering round what appeared to be a red light district trying to find it and then realised it was mingled in among the stripper joints and hostess bars. Nice. So I went back to the shops and continued my Japanese cultural experience by going to Starbucks. The taste of home. Indeed, the taste of nowhere in particular because they're flaming everywhere. I half expected Johanna and Saddam to report that Starbucks were on top of Mount Fuji...

By 6:15 my feet had decided they'd had enough, and I sat down in the street and took off my shoes only to find my feet bleeding and blistered. Purdy. So I ventured back to the hotel and when the girls returned we went for dinner. Pizza, again. But we were delirious by the time we got to eat, so the conversation was bizarre and vulgar, and a whole lot more. And we found a shop that consisted of vending machines that sold hard-core adult movies and literature. Unstaffed of course, and open for anyone of any age to enter. Except that at this is Japan, only people of appropriate age and foriegners will go in. So we went in and took photos with our camera phones.

Today was good. We finished out Osaka trip by shopping. Fiona bought some books and tried on boots that didn't fit. RayVon bought some books and saw a gorgeous coat to buy, but it was equivalent to £250, so she said no. I bought grey and purple trainers. They're ace.

We got the bullet train, having bought our tickets from a person and not a machine this time, and arrived back in Okayama in time for me to get the early bus and get home by 6. So now I'm off to bed to prepare for another week.

Spare a thought for poor Sparky, my psycho dog, who was put to sleep this week. Bye bye Sparky. I hope you can read weblogs wherever you are.