Such a drag...

So after a quiet night in on Friday (where I managed to stay up till 2am probably annoying the neighbours by playing Kylie and Sinitta and Christmas songs dead loud on the stereo) I decided to head to the city. The drive on the saturday afternoon was rather lovely what with the expressway being set in the tops of a lot of mountains and it being autumn (lovely leaves and such). And I almost suffered from a low-level of road rage when the slowest lorry and car in the world (both going under the speed limit all the way) actually sped up when we got to an overtaking lane which happened to be on a hill. This was a big problem because my Daihatsu Move simply wouldn't. Move, that is. And I ended up stuck behind them again. Gah! But the next overtaking lane was on flat land so I managed to get up to 130km/h in third gear. Yay for manual control!

Anyway, I left the car at Fiona's and we drank tea and then I left to sort out my ticket home for Christmas (yay! Home on 22nd December, leave the UK on the 8th January) and then Fiona came to meet me. We bumped into Maricar, another second year ALT, and had coffee together before surprising ourselves and actually both wanting to eat Japanese food. (Coming to the city is usually a chance to have something different.) So we went to the Izakaya and dramatically overordered. Oops.

Later that evening I headed out to Club Actron. I walked there because buses stop at 9:52 pm (such a great city...) but felt the better for it and had a great night dancing. It was a very peculiar night because they had drag queens doing performances (and they were hilarious and brilliantly entertaining) and then after a bit more DJing a drum-kit, some bongos and a didgeridoo appeared on stage and someone started doing live percussion and for a short while it was all very odd. But as the percussion got faster it all got better and more danceable. And in keeping with the fact that it may theoretically have been a gay night I kept up my traditions and made friends with a girl. D'oh! But she is very friendly and lots of fun and it;s always nice to mix things up a bit.

Anyway, we left at 3:30 to get coffee and I eventually got back to Fiona's at around 5am. Waking up to hear Fiona in the kitchen I looked forward to at least 3 hours more sleep until I realised it was actually 12:40 and Sunday was mostly over. Gah! So we got up slowly and at 2:30 I left to go and met Bob in the city for what turner out to be a minor shopping exhibition.

His place is on the way back to mine, so after a pasta dinner (again, I had Japanese style spaghetti which means it was served with Japanese radish, seaweed and probably fish stock) we headed off. And after dropping Bob off I celebrated having four wheels by driving through misty, foggy one lane roads to see Rachel in Kibichuo, stealing most of her stock of Nutri-grain bars and drinking her Darjeeling (the Champagne of teas!) before heading back out into the murky autumn night.

And what fun, taking narrow bends at 60km/h! Driving is much more fun than I thought it would be here. And at night it's even more enjoyable.

Well, yesterday and today were spent in a state of tiredness (no change there then) and I now stink thanks to an irritating Japanese bug that decided it was scared of me and secreted stink juice al over my jeans. Not being one to suffer in silence I wore them to Eikaiwa and I had thought no-one noticed, but if I think about it one woman did spend much of the hour with her hand over her mouth. A life of glamour is clearly not for me...