I'm a fine thank you, and you?

Fancy dress is always a gamble. What do you do? Go all out and look like a complete imbecile, do something that most people will probably think is disgraceful or do you do something that amuses you but no-one else will find funny? I chose the latter. Eventually. We had our hallowe'en party at the weekend and it went really well. Loads of people showed up, some people had hilarious costumes and some people had slightly worrying outfits. I ended up with a bad pun that had had me chuckling away to myself al week in my apartment. Having decided against Beyonce (I had no jeans to make cut-off hotpants with) and a tampon (simple but offensive- wear white and hang a blue string off your trousers), I ended up wearing a speeding ticket on my front and a parking ticket on my head. When people asked what I'd come as, I would give the Japanese student's number one reply to the question, "how are you?"- "I'm a fine thank you and you?". At least 3 people laughed. Oh well... But lots more people danced and drank and the night went down well. In my drunken stupor I didn't notice the Police who'd apparently come along to move us on and we ended up at the Red Moon without incident. With Fiona as a witch and Saddam as the Hulk we must have scared the taxi driver who took us home. Actually Saddam's slurred, thug like repetiton of every direction I tried to give must have scared him more than anything else...

Wking up tired on Saturday morning we watched movies at Fiona's until we could be bothered doing anything and then went for lunch to Pizza Patio. We ordered 2 caesar salads to share and then realised only Fiona could eat the bacon that came on them (full rashers!) so Fiona soon had a bacon salad of her own. I then went to book my flight home. It turned out I couldn't as Korean air was closed for the weekend (!?) So I headed back to Fiona's and as I was almost asleep on my feet called Wendy and pulled out of a night of croaking at karaoke (the previous night's events had shredded my voice) and more drinking (as it would not equal success, so instead I headed to Bob's in Takebe where he, I and Rachel ate dinner and chatted till 2am. No rest for the wicked as they say, but then I must have a huge stock of wickedness to perform as I haven't been rested since I arrived in this country.

On Sunday Bob and I went to explore Takebe (or to be more precise, Fukuwatari) and looked at an old temple before heading to a fairly bizarre Japanese gardens-cum-bird zoo. One area of the place was a lovely Japanese garden filled with red leaves and neatly trimmed hedges and the other side had a fantastic collection of tropical birds in rather not-nice looking cages. Some of the birds appeared to have developed cabin fever and seemed to have gone stir crazy, incessantly flying from one end of their cage to the other. Bob and I were quite keen to liberate the birds but neither of us had remembered to bring wire cutters. So we moved along to the Flamingoes instead. These were beautiful but appeared to be standing in their own poo.

Linking the gardens and the zoo area were some very strange faux colonial buildings which appeared to be decorated in an art-deco vagabond kitsch style. It soon became clear the the Macintosh inspired glass and tiles were in fact plain with Macintosh inspired stickers on them. Gah! And the furnishings was part French Regency part Elizabeth Taylor on acid. It was a very, er, inspiring look. Across the road was a second part of the bird zoo with some more fantastic birds (crested cranes, lots of wildly colouful pheasants and some bantam hens) all lovingly situated around a resturant that wasn't sure if it was a Japanese McDonalds or a traditional Japanese food place. But the food was very cheap and tasty and we got to see some slightly crazed ducks in action while we ate. It was a great place to visit for the garden and birds and for the general oddness of the whole thing. I shall return. For the blue pigeons if nothing else...