In this case the uprising was electronic and came in the form of a Fujitsu-Siemens laptop. Hostilities are over and a new hard-drive has been brought in to restore normal relations. Given that no repair shops here would touch the thing demanding that I sent it back to Europe, I had to tamper with the thing myself and as is only to be expected I have 4 screws left over. Oh well, I shall keep them to hand in case I ever decide to build my own robot army...
There really is very little to say about last week other than, "brrr, cold" as it was rather chilly, and I spent every night sat indoors feely toasty and warm with maybe fifteen layers on sitting under the heated table. School provided the only excitement, or should I say shock as I ACTUALLY HAD TO DO TEACHING at Junior High. It appears that my teachers forgot that this is in fact my role for over a year, and despite my requests I spent almost every Junior High day sat at my desk looking like I'd been hit over the head with a saucepan (boredom has turned my brain to sponge). But it's been great being in class and laughing with the kids. Today bore a special treat when the school Principal entered the back of the class with three other teachers to observe the class. The benefit to this is that it seems to make the feral kids locate those missing genes and behave with a level of civility towards the teachers. As usual, no-one told me that the Principal would be in class, so it was a minor surprise, but he's really nice so I wasn't worried. Plus I can never understand a word he says, so even if he told me I was rubbish I'd be none the wiser...
The weekend was another bizarre effort. A group of us headed to Niimi on Saturday to celebrate Jarek's birthday but the details of what was actually happening seemed to elude all involved. Nickname Pending, Adam and I met first, going for a cheapy dinner at JoyFull and wondering round the generic shopping complex (hardware store, supermarket, 100 yen store and ugly clothes store), remarkable only for the fact that they have stainless steel potato mashers for 100 yen (how do I tell Ma that she didn't need to buy me 2 at £6 each from Marks'!?). After having a big rendezvous at Vicki's ginormous apartment (I climb the stairs saying, "which one's Vicki's". Nickname Pending points to the one that has an A3 sheet of paper with the words "Vicki lives here" in big letters across it... D'oh.) Vicki declared we should head out, so, collecting Julia and Dylan we headed to Fresta, supermarket and meeting place, where we waited until Jarek rolled up in a car that appeared to be full of people with glazed eyes. And when we reached the karaoke-above-a-combini (or combinioke as N.P. christened it) I went head on into another moment of wrongness. N.P. pulled out again in an attempt to find parking. Except I didn't quite see where she went, mistaking her car for an identical car which was whizzing down the road at high speed. So I take off with a full car wondering why she's a) driving so fast and b) driving so fast into the middle of nowhere... After asking Adam to phone her and verify her whereabouts we return and eventually start karaoke. Only to finish a short while later as it turns out we've gatecrashed an engagement party, so at the request of Vicki's supervisor we leave and head to a quiet snack bar where we dominate the karaoke machine singing 5 songs for every one the Japanese patrons sang. Dylan rocked singing proper songs while Julia and I lowered the tone with Britney's "Lucky" and a rather hoarse rendition of Pink's "Just Like A Pill". And eventually I gave into my inner show-off and singing the only Japanese song I know, and soon we were off to Vicki's to chat and watch bizarre internet videos until 5am.
Three hours later we were awake and facing the new day with squinty-eyes, lots of yawning, and a breakfast of comini-cakes, a good preparation for the rest of the day at home under the kotatsu...
The only other thing of note is that on wednesday I decided to start lent a month early and stop eating chocolate in an attempt to save money. God was obviously pleased as he made a new variation of my favourite chocolates appear in the supermarket the night before I started stopping. LOOK Parfait a la mode is truly the jewel in the crown of the LOOK family, with it's cream and sauce filling, but I have to stop thinking about it before desperation makes me eat the BodyShop cocoa butter moisturiser that's sat in my fridge...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment