Reminders...

The weeks are positively flying by right now, and with 5 weeks left there is so much to do. Like look for further work (d'oh!). But the past few weeks have been pretty full and I must take a moment to breath, relax and process the events. Come with me on a tedious journey into the last fortnight...

The week after the villa was marked by a trip to Bob's and a birthday bash for Jeremy at Wakaba where Shoko proved once again how hilarious she is (that week's eikaiwa had been one to remember. But the gym is adding to all the excitement. Katsuyama's gym opened at the beginning of May and is lovely and shiny and new. I have been getting fit and healthy and have been suitably adjusting my lifestyle thanks to a cross-trainer and a treadmill. Every day I count those burned off calories and everyday I feel a little bit closer to Karen Carpenter. We've only just begun, just like me they long to be close to you etc. The other good thing about the gym is that they change the music every week. We've had hip-hop week, gangsta week (this wasn't good), gay week (the CD played popular chart hits including Kylie and Dannii back to back), pop week, and now we're on 70's soul week which may just be the best...

That weekend too was a good one as we all headed to Bob's for a night of food and Trivial Pursuit. Adam and I met early to go running in the afternoon sun (and we ran! For an hour!) before being joined by Betsy, Amy, Vicki and Bob and preparing for an evening of wildly undisciplined Trivial Pursuit. As it became clear fairly soon that no-one was going to get anywhere quickly we decided to help each other with the answers. Example clue: Betsy (to me), "his name begins with J and ends in 'immy Carter'". Well, Team Betsy won and to celebrate we all went to Family Mart (not-quite-as-good-as-Lawson convenience store) in Efi, with Adam and Betsy fighting over who got to sit in the back.

The evening passed and the morning followed (as it tends to do), and we started the day with a trip to the onsen with it's hot springs. This is always relaxing, but as the day's heat was blistering anyway it was at times slightly too hot. And we carried on our day by going to the city, having lunch in an organic cafe near the railtracks, buying inappropriately priced foods at the import store and finally splitting up, me taking Bob home and finishing the curry he'd made the night before.

One other thing before I finish this wildly dreary account of recent events. I haven't been sleeping too well lately. I think the gym has removed my general sluggishness which unfortunately means that I am alert until about 1 every morning. It seems that on Monday of last week I was also alert at 5am as I suddenly woke up knowing what was going on around me. "Oh, it's an earthquake" I thought. "And not a strong one". And with the apartment shaking I put my head back down on the pillow and tried to settle back to sleep. Well, it was nothing like the one I was in last March...