Going in blind

If I still have a weblog in 20 minutes I'll be rather amazed 'cause I'm doing this at school and all the on-screen options are all in kanji. I wouldn't mind if they were colour coded, but only 1 seems to be a different colour. Guess I'll find out which one it is fairly soon...

Anyway, as you could probably tell from the end the the last "me" entry (ie, not the one about Jordan and Javine) I was a bit bored after my return from holiday. Not for long though. This week's going at breakneck speed (though the only real injury is one of my teachers with a broken arm thanks to a cycling incident- I see myself in the not too far future...).

On monday I decided to cycle to Yubara, half an hour's drive away. I'd been told it takes an hour there and forty minutes to get back. In retrospect, I suspect that to make it in this time you need a) a good bike, b) general/ good levels of fitness and c) experience. So I really stood no chance. It's about 18kms which, I thought "oh, it's only about 12 miles" (!!?!) Have I suddenly gone mad? I cycled on the main road, through roadworks stretching along the mountainside where signs warned of falling rocks. I admired the beautiful scenery. I breathed in the fresh air (and some car fumes). And finally I decided I needed a drink. So I stopped at a shop which had the kanji for Yubara on the front. And I asked the lady inside how far it was from the shop to Yubara. I expected her to say, "5 minutes away", or, "you're here" and I would smile and tell her it was my first time and we'd share a perfect moment (but not in a Martine McCutcheon fashion). "Hmm," she said, "to Yubara it's 10km". Oh. "Thank you," I said, "and goodbye". And I turned the bike round and pissed off back home. I'm not that bloody mental.

On tuesday I broke the school laminator, when a laminating sheet folded back on itself and I lost the ability to do anything but watch it melt itself into the machine. When the machine jammed, I started tugging and pulling wildly at the bit of plastic hanging out, pressing all the buttons on the machine and tugging some more, only to be met with a chorus of "Chris! Stop" from about 3 teachers, all of whom were laughing. They were still laughing two hours later after taking the thing apart, washing it with alcohol and running card through it. If it were up to me we'd have just drunk the alcohol and gone out to buy a new one. Ah well. very good of them to fix it for me.

Wednesday, thursday and today have been crazy days at school with lovely screaming 5-10 year olds, and it been more than a little tiring. Add to that preparing for saturday's party, having Japanese class, prearing to produce the next edition of Okayama's AJET magazine (basically sending out 300,000,000 emails) and planning next week's trip home, I have been slightly run off my feet. It's just like the old days. But without the (actually) mental people or whinging scroungers. Yay! And I'm getting more and more excited!

Iceland had better bloody win though.