Sand in your crack

It's Tuesday afternoon, we've all eaten a nice fish lunch and with the sand from the playground flying in the air, all the kids are going home. But I'm not. I have work to do (allegedly). So I'm busy doing research on the internet (ie updating my blog). Yippee for even more downtime...

Actually the downtime hasn't been so bad lately. Last Friday I was back at elementary school and am here through till the start of the Golden Week holiday. (If it rains in Golden Week, does that make it a golden shower?) Saying that, the weekend was almost an orgy of downtime. (If it was an orgy of anything else I'd have phoned you all personally to share the good news.) Weeknights are very full here- dancing, Japanese lessons, and Friday saw the weekend start with a karaoke session. Karaoke machines tell you have many calories your singing has burnt off (although they don't take into account your dancing). On Friday I set a new record of 10.7 calories thanks to Debbie Gibson's Electric youth.

On Thursday night I had gone a bit daredevil/ stupid and spent over an hour cycling round the barely lit streets in search of evidence of life in the mountains (other than a few drunken pensioners there was none). So on Saturday I decided to repeat my efforts. But in the daylight. I cycled to Ochiai (two towns away) and back and then towards Yubara (17kms up north). I didn't cycle all the way to Yubara though. The "rocks slipping" sign set off warnings that the threat of wild boars, snakes and falling off the curb in the dark couldn't activate on Thursday night. I'll save that for another time. The night was spent watching videos (I have an urge to say movies- too much American company is affecting me) and preparing for more cycling on Sunday.

On Sunday I did more exploring, and headed back to Katsuyama castle. Having explored for the whole 5 minutes it took I have concluded that LeeJay's house is actually older than this castle and retains more original features (that's not a boast either). So I wandered round the forest paths only to find they were leading me to a) electric pylons (onwards ho? Onwards no), b) fallen trees and potential landslide sites, and c) a nice little river with an interesting bridge and rocks to sunbathe on. So I rolled up the legs of my shorts and sleeves of my t-shirt and lay there. For 10 minutes. Until I got bored and started cycling again. And after further investigation I found the REAL Katsuyama castle- or what's left of it. An archeological dig site shows the remains of Takata castle near the town office of Katsuyama. Not very exciting as all the signs are in Japanese. But nice to see.

The weekend ended with me cooking Aloo Gobi Saag for me and LeeJay and us watching "Romi and Michelle's High School Reunion" (possibly the best film ever). I was obviously so excited I couldn't get to sleep, so at 3am took a sleeping pill (only an anti-histamine, nothing that would actually DO anything). And I woke up at 9:15 on Monday morning. @!?# #$*?!"! I've got a lesson in 30 minutes and I haven't had a shower.

No-one noticed at school, and the day progressed as usual with me being asked at lunchtime if meat was ok and did I have a girlfriend. Wrong and so so so wrong...

Monday night's dance class was abandoned in favour of Baskin and Robbins and a trip to- guess where?- KARAOKE! Except the nice one in Ochiai was shut, so we had to make do with the ramshackle effort in my town where AbSlance went on to stub her toe approcimately 53 times.

And so to today which has so far consisted of 2 lessons, a fire drill and lunchtime. Where I was asked again about girlfriends. It must be getting boring now, because even the office clerk said, "everyone keeps asking him that".