Back to the future.

Two weekends ago was the Official Gossip-High Point (OGHP) of the year, otherwise known as the Tottori Beach Party. Indeed even 10 months after the last one I was still hearing of new stories of who-kissed-whom-to make-who-jealous and who-did-what-with-who-they-shouldn't-have. So expectations were high, and personally I wasn't disappointed.

Mr Bob and I headed out from Takebe expecting maybe an hour an half's driving to reach the party site on Kozomi beach, but the journey took us three hours during which time we recieved phone calls from people who had already seen us at the party (??). It seemed the drink was flowing very early on. And when we did get there it seemed more like the Okayama JET beach party in Tottori as almost every person you would bump into was from Okayama.

The set up was this: one big covered dancing area with live DJs (dead ones are never as good as you hope), beach hut with bar, tents selling hippy clothes/ doing tattoos/ selling food and drink and a chill out tent (which I only briefly looked at from outside not understanding). The accommodation was a series of "bungalows" which were each a single tatami room with attached bathroom. Unfortunately on each of these rooms the bathroom door was high on frosted glass. Put in backwards. So as you went to the loo you couldn't see anyone outside. But from outside the bathroom you could see pretty much everything. Nice. But the rooms were plenty spacious and comfortable and had enough futons that we could discard one when a member of our group decided she wanted to see her dinner again. Oh dear.

And the Tottori crew were there in force so there was a lot of catching up to do. To names names would be unfair, so here are some of the highlights/ bizarre moments:
* one unexpected coupling which saw a swift dissolution 3 hours later. After being witnessed by most of the most of the party;
* one pair of sandals stolen from a room by a girl declaring, "I want my sandals back", even though they weren't hers;
* one black eye due to a drunken falling-face-first onto a rock incident (which apparently was given a much wilder explanation on the night);
* three lost mobile phones after a drunken fully-clothed night swimming session;

Friday night passed into Saturday and things seemed to settle down. A huge group of headed to an onsen (and got slightly lost on the way there) and then afterwards Amy, Bob, Betsy and I went exploring and found a secluded beach with pretty caves. At which point we decided to write SOS in the sand and pretend to be dead for photos because really we are mentally about 12 years old. And then we half buried Amy in a crucifixion pose and took more photos with Betsy preparing to stab her bamboo and Bob mopping her brow. I feel the flames of hell licking my feet as I type. Ooh, toasty. Perhaps in fact it was God's revenge that my camera went kaputt appoximately 20 seconds after this incident. D'oh!

Well, the evening was upon us and soon the music was getting better and better. Just after 7 Christine and I decided that we wanted to dance and took up pole position in the centre of the empty dance floor, a position I didn't leave for about 4 hours, and by the time midnight came I suddenly decided I'd done enough manic dancing and sore feet and all I should get home.

Sunday was a fairly relaxed day and was looking to be quite restful until I received a call from a new friend, Joa, who invited me down to Kurashiki for dinner and a movie with friends. He's also British and gay and he works for the company Chad used to work for, so we have friends in common. It was a good evening with Scott being his usual funny self and Joa and Zoe both being good company. And on the way back I surprised myself and Efi by driving from Kurashiki to mine in under an hour. Oops. Having first driven on the pavement on Sunday and then speeding past the ratings on the speedometer I think I may have to start being a bit more careful...