"Sayonara Kamikaze"...

is no doubt what I will be screaming on Monday as I throw my laptop off my fourth-floor balcony. It has decided it hates me and doesn't want to work. It really doesn't want to work. So much so that when I tried to format the hard-drive last night it told me that there wasn't a hard-drive installed. AAAARGH! and such like. Anyway, I am having a last ditch attempt to get it going again before I strip it down and sell the individual pieces as British artworks at a local craft fair.

It's been a funny old week really. Last Thursday I pulled a muscle or fifty in my back/ shoulder/ arm area so that I couldn't turn my head to the right, couldn't lie down comfortably and couldn't move in certain directions. Driving was clearly not an option so I stayed in watching episodes of "Lost" on my pre-death laptop and gorging on the chocolate I'd brought from England to give to schools (d'oh!). Until Sunday when the laptop died and I decided I had to venture out. I went to Tsuyama city which is increasingly a non-event. I struggled to fill 2 hours with activities. Indeed the highlight was going to a Lawson's I haven't been to before and it wasn't even that nice.

Monday was saved by the cleaning lady (a.k.a. the lady of no apparent job-description who does random things but is possibly the nicest person in the school) who brought in mochi (rice balls), cooked them and served them with shiruan (red-bean paste soup) and seaweed and kinako powder. Served them to me that is. I was full before lunch but still managed to eat on.

Our eikaiwa met on Tuesday at the brewery where *please remember I am not an alcoholic before you continue reading* we had a party and I got drunk. Oops. It was a new year's/ birthday party (for me) so I was entitled to drink lots, and they had Hoegaarden beer (yum yum YUUUUM) and lots of meaty foods which I couldn't eat. But the plaice was lovely...

Wednesday and Thursday were Joyful. With 2 'l's. Both evenings Rachel and I met in Takahashi's JoyFull (family restaurant) for dinner and unintended Japanese practice courtesy of the drink's bar tickets with games for the under 10s printed on them. We could understand 1 of the games! Yay! We couldn't understand the other 3. Boo!

Actually wednesday was a very good day courtesy of Kusakabe elementary school where the kindergarten kids were almost fighting during the games we played, I had a very interesting discussion about religion and science and "intelligent design" (dodgy new "scientific" theory to prove Adam and Eve as opposed to Darwinism which is being taught in some American schools) and then to top it all off we made- yes MADE- ichigo daifuku from scratch. It was amazing and they tasted great. I should know- I ate 5. Still that's 5 strawberries which means I had my five portions of fruit for the day (in fact I had orange juice for breakfast and a salad for tea, so I must be up to about 63 portions which means I don't have to eat any more until March).

And today I'm at school lamenting the fact that it's a new year, my hair needs re-perming, my laptop's buggered and either I have turned into a pre-weightloss Oprah and squished the seat on my bike or someone's been driving over it repeatedly while I've not been looking. I'll be spying from the window at the weekend...