Push bang guzzle crack bang

That was the weekend. No, it wasn't a film of "adult" entertainment, rather it was a three day event with festivals up and down Okayama some of which I managed to attend, and some of which I wasn't quite up to. And plans to meet the new ALTs went a bit awry, although we at least made contact...

I caught up with Tara on Thursday soon after she arrived, and spent a short time at hers. She is living in LeeJay's old apartment, so it was odd going in without LeeJay's things being around and Tara having not had the chance to make it hers yet. She's going to be good company next year, although it will definitely be a very different year.

On Friday I legged it out of school to make the train to Niimi so I could get my connection and arrive in Okayama at 7. A group were meeting to go and see the start of the Momotaro festival (Momotaro is Okayama's mascot- he was a boy born in a peach and he faught a monster or something- I can't remember! It's better than George and the Dragon anyway). So with Fiona, Saddam, Rachel, Andrew, Saddam's new neighbour Mark, and other ALTs we made our way to the Asahi prefectural office picking up more ALTs on the way. Only to then lose them all in the crowd. This was partly due to the fact that no-one had really eaten dinner and we all started drinking so we were trolleyed in a fairly short time. And our choice of firework watching location was far from choice. All we could see was a big tree with fireworks behind them. So Saddam barged through the crowd and we set up post a short distance away only for the fireworks to move to a new location. Behind another tree. Well, we grew tired of it quickly and in our slimlined group of five (Saddam, Fiona, Andrew, Mark and me) we headed to Fudge bar, drinking more on the way. The end of this extrememly enjoyable night has an aura of mysticism about it, mainly because I was so plastered I woke up the next morning to think certain things happened in a dream. I thought I'd dreamt up a whole email from RayVon but it turned out to be real (thank you RayVon!).

The next day turned into a bit of a shambles. Fiona and Saddam left for Malaysia and I was unable to say goodbye because I was quite disorientated at 7am. I was still disorientated at 11:10am when I only had 35 minutes to shower, shave, dress and get downtown to meet Busty for lunch before a meeting. Having only just made it, we went to the meeting, and Busty having also "enjoyed" the fireworks the night before wasn't feeling too good throughout. I soon wasn't either and cancelled a planned trip to Niimi to see the fireworks there. I wandered through town and stumbled upon the start of the Okayama Jazz festival whereupon for the first time in my life, alone, I bought a beer and sat, alone, in the afternoon, drinking beer. Alone. Something's changed... The music was good though, and within a short time Busty and I had planned our quiet evening. We would have pizza at hers and watch a film.

The film was called "Vera Drake" and was deadly serious, about a woman in London in 1950 who used to give abortions to girls with unwanted pregnancies. But the thick London accents and the slang were unfamiliar to Busty so we put the subtitles on but ended up rolling around laughing at Busty's attempts to mimic the characters and my rather unpleasant comments about Vera's one-sandwich-short-of-a-picnic daughter Ethel. And then we watched my new Bananarama hits video which of course was perfect excuse to laugh some more.

Sunday was the day of Gongo matsuri in Tsuyama. Gongo is Tsuyama's local name for a mythical animal called a Kappa that lives underwater and has a dish on it's head. If it comes out of the water and the dish dries up it dies. It also likes to scare people. In this sense it's not unlike England's Kappa-slappers, girls of easy virtue who wear head to toe kappa tracksuits that like to scare pensioner on the street by stealing from them and who drink hard, thinking that if the cider bottle empties they will die. Allegedly. (I may have to remove that last bit later) Anyway, with Tara in tow we headed to Tsuyama meeting Aya (ex-ALT Phil's ex-supervisor) on the train. And in Tsuyama we met Andrew and went to watch the fireworks. Aya knew the best spot, so we headed right up close to where the 5000 fireworks were sited. This meant we got a great view of the hugely impressive 1 and a quarter hour display. It also meant that we got covered in ash from the fireworks (we all got ash in our eyes, although this was more pleasant than the usual bugs in our eyes).

School on Monday was fun as it was somen day- somen is a type of noodle eaten in the summer and some of the staff were preparing somen dishes for the teachers. So I joined in and learnt how to make a somen summer meal. It was really good fun- everyone tries so hard to explain things- and the school nurse (who has great English skill) showed me how to prepare cucumber so it looks pretty. Summer at school could be more fun yet- the caretaker lady is going to teach me how to make Shirashi sushi on Thursday (another tasty summer dish). I may be able to open my own Japanese restaurant in London if this continues...