The last days of Disco

Or rather, the last days of LeeJay. She doesn't leave till tomorrow morning, but it's necessary for me to document the past 4 days together now so I don't get all maudlin writing it out tomorrow, breaking my computer by weeping over the keyboard.

Our week of dining experiences continued on Wednesday with a barbecue at Nao chan's where she prepared an absolute ton of food while Papa san prepared the barbecue and Oji san collected his Karaoke machine from home. Nao chan was very worried that there wasn't enough food despite the fact that LeeJay ate three cows and a pumpkin and I ate one month's supply of vegetables. It was deee-licious. With beer and chu-hai and some bizarre songs on Oji-san's Karaoke machine (including a Japanese version of YMCA- we were very confused) it was a great evening.

Thursday was a constructive day as I managed to spend a fair bit of time talking to teachers at school, was allowed to leave early, ran errands and then went to dinner with Johanna, Christine, Jeremy and Kapo. It was Johanna's first and last time at Shirakabe (Katsuyama's Chinese restaurant) and you could easily say we made the most of that fact, ordering lots of dishes to share and then a big plate of noodles each. Mmm.

On Friday LeeJay and I headed to Kasaoka for LeeJay's first and last visit to Saddam's house. Saddam lives the furthest away from us of all our close friends, so we usually met at Fiona or RayVon's. Well, we got there, and in true Saddam style she got delayed (not her fault- it usually isn't) so she recommended a karoake place to us. We were so surprised as it had a far bigger list of English songs than we're used to. And we were even more surprised when we put in the numbers and random Japanese songs came up instead. Maybe one song in five was the one we wanted, and often we didn't really want that one, we'd just become desperate and were putting in anything we could. I ended the hour with the Destiny's Child ode to commercialism at Christmas ("The 8 Days Of Christmas"- they were too lazy to write another verse and finish all 12). Back to Saddam' s where we drank more, chatted and caught up and then it was Saturday.

Leaving the others in bed I headed to the city to run more "errands" (the new term for shopping) and did my best to meet Betsy, but she was unexpectedly busy helping out the new JETs who arrived on Thursday (more coming this week) and we met in the afternoon. From there it was lunch with the girls at the CRED curry house (more mmm), then 2 hours with Busty, followed by breaking my back carrying a printer to Fiona's and sweating enough to fill 3 rice paddies after which I showered and changed and went to the Aussie Bar to meet Amy, Aya and some new ALTs. Only 2 showed up as well as Scott (a third year) and Claire. We had a good night altogether and Amy and I stayed back chatting.

Sunday was a day of being unexpectedly busy as Fiona had stayed with Saddam on Friday and hadfallen over in Mr Donut, hurting her wrist quite badly. So we went to the hospital on Sunday where they proved they know how to do A&E very efficiently and quickly. Within an hour we'd been seen, Fiona had been X-rayed, reviewed, paid and we were out. Such worry warranted a cake and a trip to Starbucks afterwards, and with an hour till muy bus left we wandered round the shops berating Okayama city as has become habit. There's nothing really wrong with it, it's just not Kyoto. Or Osaka. Or Hiroshima. Or ... (you get the picture).

So I got the bus and got off early to help LeeJay cancel her phone contract. We dined at the BigSushi restaurant (the best kaiten-sushi I've been to) where the owner was very good to us and then guess what we did...

Karaoke! One hour at the Riverside in preparation for our final blast tonight. LeeJay and me rockin' out all the (s)hits for no-one else's pleasure but our own. My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard. Indeed.