Does Toyota car company have a slogan?

Because they have a city.

Last Monday I headed to Toyota to meet Eugene and Yuko and relax for a few days. I had heard that Toyota wasn't actually named Toyota until the car manufacturers moved in and became the single biggest employer in the town. Thus they changed the name. It's quite leafy and looks almost like countryside, but has some good facilities which match it's population size (ie large karaoke parlours). Toyota turned out to be a nice city, although a fairly standard Japanese one.

Our relaxing started straight away, when after a quick catch up over coffee we headed to a restaurant and had a very long lunch (3 hours maybe?) sitting in the sun and chatting. I don't get to see Eugene and Yuko often. They live in Tokyo, but Yuko comes from Toyota, so this rare chance to meet was not to be missed and it was good to talk about friends from home and discuss life here. And it was also a nice time to wind down and do things I haven't done for a while like bake a cake. Kind of a sudden decision, but Eugene wanted to make something, so I showed him how to make cake and he showed me how to make pastry. We both made it look very easy, though I'm not sure I won't be having more pastry-like-rock incidents again in the future. It was a quiet night of talking and listening to music and was greatly enjoyed.

Tuesday was another hot sunny day, so we walked Yuko's dog and then when to the Toyota recreation facility with Masa, Chinaka, Hiroshi and Mina to play putting golf. I of course was rubbish, a fact Chinaka declared after I took my first shot. I didn't let her down. Sometimes (well, rarely) putting the ball on par, and sometimes taking 14 shots to do it (instead of 4), I proved myself to have the hand-eye co-ordination of a dead person. I'd say a blind person, but they can see with their ears or something, I don't understand... Afterwards we returned to the house and after dinner, we played card games. We drank, we played cheat (or "liar" as it became in Japanese), we played shithead (with aerobic demonstration as a forfeit), and then we played Indian poker (where as a forfeit the winner of the round drew on the loser's face). We all looked rather alarming by the end of it. I looked like the village idiot, Yuko looked like a man, Chinaka just looked scary and words cannot describe how Eugene looked. Moments of panic followed later that night when it initially appeared the ink would not come off. Argh!

Wednesday was exercise day as we decided to climb a mountain. Lord it was hard! Half way up, while we were puffing and panting in a rest stop, a 73 year old man came over to show us the weights he had around his ankles while he was climbing. "1 kilo" he said pointing to them. "73 years old" he said, pointing to himself. "3 kilos" said Eugene, pointing to his own stomach, #34 years old" he continued, pointing to himself. I don't think the old guy got it, and pretty soon he was shuffling back up the mountain. As were we, and we finally go to one of the peaks with a feeling that Yuko wanted to go further. No! So after eating cakes (well, cakes for me, sandwiches for everyone else) that we had purchased earlier, we headed back to the car via a path that showed us a view over Toyota city. And I met a racist dog. It was quite happy till it looked at me. I was minding my own business, looked down at it, it sized me up and then let loose. Dogs here say wan wan apparently, so it wan wan-ed like never before and got dragged away by it's owner, before returning the favour by bolting at high speed down the path dragging his owner with him.

After a gourmet meal cooked by Yuko's Mum and Dad of tempura and sashimi we headed over to Karaoke and tried our best to have some sort of competition, but the machine started to forget to score our turns. Of those with scores, I just pulled first position with 93%, Yuko was a very close second with 91%. I'll have to prepare hard for next time... And after absorbing whatever I could from the neon of the night city, it was time to go home to bed, and then on thursday back to Katsuyama. Boo!

Only slept 2 hours on Thursday night making the return to work on Friday torturous, but on Saturday LeeJay returned, so we hung out, went to dinner with Christine and Jeremy and then did karaoke again. Yay! And then on Sunday we met up with AbSlance, Phil and ChoLyn for lunch and then just blobbed at LeeJay's for the rest of the day. And here I am again at school, haphazardly preparing lessons, wondering how to teach the kids to read, and whether tube is pronounced chube, ti-ube or toob...