I've been driving in my car.

I love driving. I never thought I'd say that. I used to enjoy driving when I lived in Manchester, but I endured driving when I lived in London. Now I love it. Why? Because where I live no long road comes without a tight bend but most of the roads come without traffic. That's not to say there aren't occassionally unexpected surprises. For example this Saturday on the way to Okayama when roadworks-traffic lights malfunctioned sending traffic from 2 directions into a one lane path. Oops. Or like those occassions when you drive home at night and forget to put on your full-beam headlights. This is particularly dangerous here because a) there is usually a cliff face rising up at one side of the road, b) there is usually a cliff face dropping down at the other, c) the road lighting is rather less than adequate and d) those really tight bends do creep up on you. So you see, every moment behind the wheel is an adventure. Of course I could take the expressway and avoid the bad lighting and bends, but then I'd have to drive at at least 120kmph and Efi's speedometer only goes up to 140. What happens after that?

It's been a surprisingly sociable few days largely due to the convenience of motoring. I met Christine in Wakaba on Thursday riding my newly repaired bike and we ate some gorgeous food (as usual at Wakaba). On Friday I went to dinner at Nao-chan's where she, Ojii-san and I discussed the important issues such as Islam, America and what colour non-Japanese pensioner's hair is.

Saturday came with a breath of spring and temperatures that verged on spring (10 degrees plus in the sun) and led me to walk around town in a short sleeved polo shirt all afternoon. I'd driven to the city to catch up with Fiona, and having met and headed to Starbucks, HMV and finally GAP we felt like we'd done Okayama and headed back to hers to chill. Except this meant I started to doze off, so I headed back out and met Julia, Nancy, Jayme and Liza for dinner in a rather lovely izakaya in the city. Nabe, sashimi, and a 10 flavour salad entertained our tastebuds while we caught up and gossiped about the lack of gossip there is from this year's Okayama JETs (I mean! We had 3 weddings and a baby from last year's lot, and there's not even been a quick fumble at a disco from any of the current crew. Most disappointing).

Well, if it was a fumble I wanted knowledge of I soon got my wish. I headed back to Katsuyama on Sunday night and decided to spend the day in town. It was another lovely one- 13 degrees in the sun, so I went out on my bike looking at temples in Kuse and Katsuyama and was definitely surprised by what I found. Not only did I find the pathway into the mountains that I'd been looking for for a while I also found an empty bag by a temple. And then another one. And as I carried on walking I heard someone spring up. As I looked a pair of trousers rose up and the owner started frantically doing up his fly and his belt. Busted! I did my very best to look the other way and pretended to be looking at birds for what seemed to be a long enough time, but when I carried on wandering he was still doing himself up. And his lady-friend was looking slightly sheepish.

Anyway, I carried on climbing up to the top of the mountain and over the road bridge that joins it to another mountain. And then cycled round town for a couple of hours until I decided that I was actually freezing and went home to doze under the kotatsu. This led to thoughts of laundry and I ended up drying laundry at the launderette and heading to Nickname Pending's for the evening to watch "my Beautiful Launderette" on DVD. After we watched the film we watched the trailers. Apparently "my Beautiful Launderette" is rambunctious. I shall check that word in the dictionary and let you know...