Sunburn, wonky legs and 1000 foreigners

Ooh, another packed few days- late nights working on the Fuzzy Peach (Okayama AJET magazine of which I am now the editor), a birthday, a conference for JETs who are staying another year in Kobe, socialising- I REALLY need a break now. I am almost out of steam.

I didn't have time to rest after the cycling incident on Friday as it was RayVon's birthday-seaside-picnic on Saturday and I had to bake the cake. And thanks to the substitution of cooking margarine for butter, there appeared to be almost twice as much cake mix and during cooking waves of cake oozed over the sides of the tin to resemble pus flowing from a boil. Only this pus was tasty. In such situations it seems the best plan of action is to turn the road-accident-alike cake upside down as the baking tin's shape covers all mis-haps.

The beach day was the most fun I've ever had at the seaside. Despite the fact that my neck had now become stiff and sore from bouncing down the road the previous day, I had a good time, as did the gang. RayVon, Saddam and AbSlance had a particularly good time having started to drink at 11am, although sun + booze + Saddam do not make a good combination. Also enjoying himself was a strange stalker type who stood against a wall and watched us for approximately 5 hours (no exaggeration) until he finally came over and asked for a drink (!?). Buy your own you freak- there's a shop down the road. And as we left he proceeded to follow our cars, so much so that we started to plan evasive action in order to stop him finding out where RayVon lives. Fortunately he gave up and drove off, leaving us to enjoy the rest of the night pigging out on western style food and booze and dodgy films. Yay!

I woke up very early on Sunday, and then kept dozing off, finding it very hard to actually get up and piss off to Kobe like I was supposed to. Maybe this was because I hated Kobe last time I visited. So after watching numerous episodes of ER (RayVon rents it from the video rental store), I finally mustered the strength to go. And when I arrived in Kobe from sunny Okayama, it was dark and pouring down with rain. GAH! And when I tried to find anything, I couldn't. GAH! I HATE KOBE! After 20 minutes of walking I found the information centre where I was given the English guide I asked for. This was rubbish compared to Nagoya's. So I found my way to the bus stop for the hotel, met some other Jets (Sierra and Catherine) and made my way to the super-posh Portopia hotel. Life in the lap of luxury. I could get used to it. There weren't many of us around on Sunday, so we got together and went for dinner in Chinatown (having failed to locate an Indian restaurant), followed by a trip to a cool bar with a great cocktail menu.

On Monday, feeling much less sore, I went to have the Fuzzy Peach printed, headed to UniQlo (which I will now declare is OK- I have claimed to hate it for years, but they do have some good bits in there) via Starbucks for breakfast (my memory is ace- I remembered where it was from my trip in November 2003) and then back to the hotel for the start of the conference. Which was dire. Opening speeches are always bad here. But I did sit with Betsy (Busty), Fiona and Saddam and we basically laughed our way through the whole thing, and afterwards went to Starbucks then spent two hours trying to find a particular restaurant before ending up in an excellent Balinese and Indonesian place. Where we gorged ourslelves. Mmm. Real Balinese cuisine by real Balinese people. And then we went to Chinatown which was closed. Oops.

Tuesday was full to the brim with interesting lectures, offered a tasty lunch where the vegetarians were segregated for serving purposes (I wanted to ask if we were allowed to use the same buses as the carnivores) and proffered me the opportunity to catch up with people I had met and lost touch with from Tokyo, including my plane-pal Laura. Yay! And the evening was also a treat. Again, Saddam, Busty, Fiona and I went to eat and found a great Nepalese place, before going for pudding at a cafe that served great cheesecake. And then we met Amy and other JETs and went for booze at an Irish bar which had a Killarney license plate hanging on the the wall. Ah! My heritage is alive and well in Kobe (!?!). As we met other Okayama ALTs our party got bigger and bigger and we headed to Bar SoulBlood (I was thinking of Rastafarian curses when I heard this name) and had a good dance to some hip-hop and R'n'B. And things were going great until they played Faith Evans at which point I reinjured my leg and spent wednesday limping.

Wednesday was one of those days where you do a lot but it amounts to nothing- basically the end of the conference and then getting back from Kobe to Katsuyama- trains and buses for 4 and a half hours. Overall the conference was really good, and thanks to this, the company and the socialising, I have decided that Kobe is actually a really cool town. I shall return.