Whiteout!

Dig in kids ‘cause the snow’s coming thick and fast and I don’t have enough choc to get me through. It’s gonna get rough, it’s gonna get nasty, but these are the days we’re livin’ in. Or something. Yeah, it’s been snowing for 12 hours, and we have about 15 centimetres of snow. Might sound like a lot, but it’s half of what was expected. Although at one point this morning you couldn’t see out of the window for snow falling and it’s still going, so who knows what we’ll end up with. As long as Lawson’s stays open I really don’t care.

The weather has been quite random all week. Tuesday night was cold as usual, and when you go into the room for English Conversation class and someone whacks up the aircon to the highest setting you wonder why you haven’t got flu. Again. Wednesday was similar as we consoled ourselves from missing the second part of the most enjoyable dance classes yet, and Johanna made me tea.

Thursday was also a cold day, but the evening hotted up as Kathleen came to Katsuyama for tea with Christine, Johanna and I and we stuffed ourselves with whatever we could recognise off the menu, and with some stuff we couldn’t. And then we went to the Katsuyama shanty town style karaoke salon (where the walls are held together with gaffer tape and the roof is carefully balanced so as not to fall on passers by). The booze continued to flow, except for Kathleen who was driving, and we extended from our initial one hour slot to 2 (oops), but had a great time scaring the locals and shouting inappropriate phrases into the microphones, thinking that no-one outside of the paper and lint walls would hear us. Double oops.

On Friday I started collecting sponsorship money for the big bowling event on Saturday in aid of the Tsunami. My junior high school teachers were so generous, I was really impressed. And after school, Kathleen drove Christine and me to Okayama, from which point onwards I may as well have just handed out my pin number to all comers and said, “help yourselves” while leaving my card in the cash machine. I’m not quite sure where the money went, but it went… OK. I do have a vague notion. It went on food and lots of drink. Chad and I hit Kurashiki, but after we drank two bottles of potato sho-chu (Japanese vodka type drink) between us and about 6 gins each, we were a bit the worse for wear. So much so that I had no recollection of anything Chad said to me when he woke me at 9 am on Saturday, and when I went to read my emails at 10am, I found I’d lost the ability to read. And for some reason I was spinning and- oh dear, I have to get to the toilet…. You can imagine what followed. I went to bed and stayed till 1, at which time I began to feel almost alive. Almost. With my liver providing much needed central heating, I made my way to bowling wearing only a short sleeved polo-shirt. And once there I demonstrated my complete lack of ability to bowl. No change there then. But Abby and I won 3rd and 2nd prizes respectively for fund raising and then we all went for a curry and laughed a lot like they do at the end of old He-Man cartoons.

And we laughed even more when we realised we’d done it again. Our group has a slight reputation for not doing what all the other ALTs are doing, and not going to all the organised functions. So we decided we would. And we made up our minds to go to Club Jam. Only at 3000yen entry, LeeJay, RayVon, AbSlance and I wanted to get our money’s worth and rolled in at 10pm. And, oops, we rolled into the wrong club. Club Actron is next door to Club Jam (literally in the same basement) so we thought we could cross over (like the girl in the telly in Poltergeist). But they said no. And then we realised the music was probably better and that it was ironic in an Alanis Morissette way (ie not actually ironic, just unfortunate) that we’d missed everyone else again, but we laughed anyway like they do at the end of old Thundercats cartoons.

We met some very friendly Japanese gentlemen who told me I looked like “Tom Cruise” (not the first time this has happened, although this time it was a very dark club) and his friend tried to pull RayVon by typing a message on his mobile phone that said, “I am a big penis. You are my angel. Let’s make fun tonight.” RayVon didn’t make fun with him, although we applauded them for being brave enough to try and chat up western girls and then laughed a lot like they do at the end of old Scooby-Doo cartoons.

Sunday was another day spent half in bed, and then with a subdued journey home where tiredness caused us to laugh like they do at the end of EastEnders episodes (ie not at all, because they’re all miserable in EastEnders) we went our separate ways, to mentally prepare for school.

Monday was OK at school, three lessons, and then jazz dance in the evening. Which was better this week, because the soundtrack was Paula Abdul. Although I don’t think it will be again after the noise we made. But like the kids from Fame (ie badly dressed and lacking style) we tried. And we will try again tomorrow. Brave soldiers looking on. Or something…