RTE newsman spotted outside government buildings

Well Balanced Examination in Japan

By the moons of icy Hoth,

It's David Lee Roth!

Alert all of you who are looking for a well balanced examination of the Japanese educational system or similarities and differences therein. 20 weeks left from a full complement and I have found the worst one and intend to bitch about her without restraint or volume regulation.

<from here on, shouting and waving index finger like a despot> Unfortunately for neuronally-starved her, society dictated that for the period of 8 o'clock to 10 o'clock yesterday evening she was loosely in my employ to bring me plates of raw meat and ginger ale for my delectation.

Now I very much realise that this is not Tokyo. I realise it every day when an air raid siren goes off at 11 and 5 just in case there's an emergency (Yankies on the starboard bow I assume) and the only wild life one might encounter are GPS-less crabs. And I have made my peace with occasionally being thwarted when it comes to simple requests being rendered impossible by the complicated Japanese being spoken and the fact that English as a thing hasn't really ever cracked southern Japan. Much like wine, fruit or sit down pooing.

I grind my teeth bitterly when I read about jonny foreigner having trouble practicing his Japanese in Tokyo as everybody will automatically speak English to him. Git.

The truth of it is, the amount of times in a day anybody here encounters a foreigner depends very much on the schedule of one Mark-sensei. Whoever he is... sounds handsome though.

However when said foreigner learns your pissing language, speaks in the most slow and even tone possible, explains the thing several times with pictures and visual aids and you are still bewildered.... YOU HAVE A BAD BRAIN!!!

Pictured: The corporeal vessel of all her hopes, dreams and thoughts.

And a vital source of starch.

What's more is pissface then trudged about trying to avoid us for the evening and giving me the most severe of stinkeyes at any and every opportunity. She at one point looked to Meg for help to translate what I was saying (from Japanese to guttural grunts and clicks I must assume) who assuming it was her turn to order ordered corn. Or in Japanese "corn." She also pointed at the picture. The picture was also of corn.

20 minutes later a large platter that was mainly a variety of mushrooms landed on our desk. The rubberband of my ire tightened still further.

I commit my anger to the digital library of the internet in the hope that one day she will learn... any language, and will have my grievances explained to her in depth at some future time. You are all witnesses.

In happier news, my nose has returned to some kind of normality after weeks of acute pain on the tip. Much like a pimple, it was red and hot though weirdly the pain extended all the way into my nasal cavity. Attempts to pop the sucker led merely to sneezing and weeping. Sneeping.

After consulting some dubious websites I rubbed the area vigourously with warm water until... (read away now if squeamish) the tip of my inner nose hair eventually poked out ever so slightly, allowing me a one tug remedy that was immediatelly followed by the ingrown hair hole being filled with blood and dribbling down my face.

Apparently this is a thing that happens...

Though I will say it's no weirder than the time I found a chunk of baby tooth in one of my gums, then due to a lack of alternatives ground the thing up with my adult teeth and swallowed. Please enjoy that image.

Over the weekend I was held hostage to a fervent desire to nap for long periods, culminating in a 5 hour slumber bonanza yesterday afternoon. Solid.

You might recall I mentioned potentially going to the naked man festival, my reason for not going was due to an unknown Fun-Shithead quotient. For an explanation of this detail at length, check previous emails.

Instead we discovered a new mexican bar in Matsuyama and played a little table football. This allowed me to regale them with my undue amount of knowledge about the Professional Fussball League and it's activities in Ireland. Essentially it's 4 guys who all live together in the Dublin suburbs subsisting on takeaways and a regimen of not changing their underpants and living off of the tables they make and install in bars in the capital cities' pubs. Heroes all.

Every sport has it's pretty boys

My male students are still worryingly penis obsessed, goading each other by yelling phallic foods at each other. As comparisons to their downstairs business.

  

"Wiener!" 

"Baguette!"

"Radish!"

This... obsession is only highlighted by the opening of the Tokyo Sky Tree, the new second tallest structure in the world after Dubai's Burj al Metaphor

This just screams, "I have nothing to be ashamed of" Japan.

Visible from large parts of Tokyo, it dominates the skyline and lances kindergarteners with falling icicles at a rate of one a day.

Speaking of, a kid turned up at Megs school a few days ago with a limp and crying. Due to the cold floors in his school and their refusal to allow shoes, the kid has frostbite. It took all of one day for another student to tread on his tender tips, eliciting a spine chilling shriek and a pair of bloody socks.

As I have been asked to accept before, it is... a Japanese way.

Well Balanced Examination in Japan.

p.s. fuck that waitress.

Bikan in Japan

He lives to hurt,

It's evil Bert!

Hello there mellayella fellas,

Another week, another grimfaced stride into the perverted underbelly of the Japanese public school system. Ready? Yes? Picture of a marsupial copulating at hand? I thought you said you were ready...

As the school year judders to an end (ending at the rear end of March, just before Gridzer presents her credentials) my kids are getting a bit more relaxed than usual. Something that I would usually welcome as they usually look like they're trying to carry around a piece of white hot burning Magnesium between their bumcheeks such are their anxiety wrought faces. But with the applications to High School in, the load is well and trully off and they have as one creature decided to tell me about their privates.

Usually this includes some, more or even more utterances of "Big Pen-iss!"

Some highlights have included:

"I want to swim in the sea...to see cougars(the Japanese word for which being Jukujo)"

"I want to go to Hawaii... to see big pen-iss"

"Mark-sensei... Peniss Japanese size or Irish size?"

"Mark sensei girlfriend, big?(chestal gestures)"

"Mark sensei, do you have AIDS?... I have AIDS"

"Big thighs? Big Pen-iss."

And so forth.

For some reason that I have not researched but that necessitated a bankholiday (on a pissing Saturday) Meg had a long weekend, even longer as she took the Friday off with one of her Victorian style swooning illnesses. The Consumption. The Quinsey. The Lurgy. The 4 day weekend. Treacherous killers all.

Anyway, on the back of this we scheduled a trip to the mainland city of Okayama in order to see whatever it is Joe Okayaman gets up to in his busy day. Much as with any mid-sized Japanese city we did the standard shlep to the castle, early lunch, plod down the covered shopping street, try to find a decent glass of something. Nap.

The only things that point out Okayama as a city of note is an antique shop on the main street with a 94 year old proprietor that beat like a government mule any museum/gallery/castle I've seen here for sheer density of amazing Japanese historical and artistic items. The auld lad himself was a thunderously nice chap too and he gave us his business card which I believe indicates he also has wee shops in Tokyo, Kyoto and London. An enterprising one so he was.

Further to this is the legend of the "Peach Boy" (or Momo-Taro) or some baby that was found in a peach and then killed a demon with his animal commando squad of a dog, monkey and a pheasant. Sounds like a cracking read I know... But on the upside, aka the creepy side there are anatomically correct statues of the nude peach boy all over the city, with his wangdangdoodle braving the scourging gales of the February cold. And his ass hanging out like a fatty wino.

He could eat a peach for hours

We hit the Okayama bar scene at about 8 only to find it was closed. There was one miserable ex-pat bar that was the El Grande Bratwurst of sausagefests. I swear to God they tried to erect a small shrine to Meg when she came in, so starved were they of female contact. Then we tried a small cantina we spotted in the day, only to find it closed forever. You win again Japan.

The next day we ended up in the Japanese Colonial Williamsburg type attraction of Bikan, an old Japanese style set of streets with few cars (apart from ours storming up the main potentially pedestrianised street) and few reasons to bother ones hoop about going into any of the yee olde shops. Except that I found a bottle of White Chocolate Beer, I'll keep you posted on that one.

Meg very much felt she earned her 4 day weekend with her trip to the hospital to get something for her strep throat. I had been in days previous to get a few anti-bios for an arm cut that got a mite infected and had mentioned in passing how 2 weeks previous I had had a touch of flu. This was all the green light they needed to administer "The Test."

This involved ramming extra long cotton buds up both her nostrils to the point that her tears and snot flowed freely as one salty stinging stream. An American-Japanese pharmacist who was acting as interpreter answered her nasal shrieks with,  "I know, archaic isn't it?"

Frankly I'd take the day of work and the evening time self-administered whiskey-IV over that in a hot minute. 

In other news it may be that Megs soft drink of choice, "Mello Yello" has gone out of production in Japan. It had been re-introduced here after a 27 year hiatus, and the nuclear piss yellow drink has been putting a sugary spring in Megs step ever since. Especially as her quaff of choice (Diet Coke) is not available here. Prompting the slightly hysterical quote:

"Japan takes away everything that I love!"

Word is starting to filter around to certain teachers that Mark-sensei is outta here with a bongo-cherry on top. And bells on. I'm leaving. I explained to one teacher (that I've worked closely with for a year and a half mind) that I wanted to study some more and her rote response was "I hope your dreams come true."

"Um, yeah... cheers."

Another fantasy football drubbing has left my haggard array of overpaid nags swerving violently onto my shit list. If one more week goes by without one of my strikers making some effort on goal I'll I'LL.... continue to stew in impotent rage.

I've an event coming into my sights called the "Naked Man Festival" next weekend that I will be attempting to attend.

<rubs hands gleefully>

Let's naked Japanese men!

Bikan in Japan

T-Shirt and Little Pants in Japan

Conqueror of moose,

It's President Theodore Roose

Another fine rice flavoured morning to all of y'all. Despite already having had my obligatory sickness for the school year my crappy body crapped out on me big style in the past 7 days when I got IN-FU-RU-EN-ZA, a very big deal indeed.

Remember that image you have of various Bird Flu/Sars emergencies in Asia where one guy who was actually living inside a huge chicken caught a sniffle and suddenly it looked like death himself walked the streets and was only satiable by making everybody wear ridiculous face masks?

If not...

<dab dab>

Well it turns out they ALL do this during the winter months anyway, it wasn't a reflection of how serious (SARSious) they took the disease. Anyway,about two weeks ago I looked up at the class that had just walked into my ignorance bunker and all but one was wearing one of those masks. During the starting portion (Me-"How are you?" Them- "How are you!!") I tried to see who was sick with what.

Number of sick=0

So I asked why they were all wearing masks. This lead them to make an I've-been-found-out face that made one think of a lawyer whose client is so damn guilty their hand sizzled touching the Bible.

For example here are some guilty types (I'm onto you Cliff!)

My question hung in the air like the curry fart I just presently made in the staff room (waft waft). Eventually somebody said "Yobo." Immediately everyone was out-Yobo-ing each other.

"Yobo!"

"Yobo's the guy you want."

"I'm twice the Yobo you'll ever be."

"Yobo forever!!"

To which I responded, "Guys what in salty frig is Yobo?"

Turns out Yobo=Guard.

Even though no one was sick, they had all their mouths covered for no other reason just that they might breath in some errant germs from no one. I pointed this out to them gleefully.

Response? "...yobo"

Anyway despite all the Yobo about, I still got a touch of flu and spent my mid-week sweating and shivering while working, eating or sleeping. To those of you who have never been sick in a foreign country, store it up. It's one of life's choicest net-bags of shit to fling at you. Though by now I have what I need to scrape myself through with the minimum bother, mainly a local brand of not poisonous whiskey for sleeping and access to the restauraunts of Imabari via motorised auto-carriage.

It might sound odd but I find work helps too, as it distracts you from the constant registeration of inner-awfulness that your body is performing.

In Japanese current affairs, the TV gave over an hour of televisual programming to the breaking news that two dogs were hugging. Frankly I thought they were making a bit of a scene of themselves and were a studded collar away from some bizarre fetish video, but then so is everything else here.

A bunch of the dames from AKB48, that juggernaut of J-Pop and having their faces plastered on tatty merchandise (think of 48 Japanese Krusty the Clowns in miniskirts) got kicked out for not being single enough.

Somehow, somewhere Ivans body temperature went up by 1 degree

I organised an event last Saturday night, which was mainly a bunch of us foreigner types cooking food together, playing board games (they should call them BORING games(no they shouldn't I love them more than life itself, that was a test, a test which you failed person that laughed)) and having a few glasses of wine.

I served up one of the few actual meals of the night (as opposed to nibbily bits) with a meat, spuds, cabbage with an onion and beer gravy. Irish style. <thrusts peace sign towards listener>

Subsequently we got to hear more from Kiwi Mark's time in Cork, where he sold a broken mini-fridge to one guy and ended up getting his car impounded. For utterly valid and reasonable reasons. We also found out his girlfriend is "quite beautiful..." though not as much as her sister and that he is the black sheep of the family with all his other brothers being accountants in major global cities whereas he sells knives down the Long Mile Road and generates reasons for his girlfriend to dump him.

In other news I caught myself miming going to the toilet on a student. He was sitting in a bunch of old tyres looking glum, and having spent the previous 3 hours with 7 year olds I thought it'd be really quite the ratherest thing to jump up on the tyre and pretend it was a squatter toilet. Unfortunately the kids didn't see the funny side and looked very much how you would expect an adult to react if someone came up and started miming going an indeterminate number on them (1 or 2). Their patience with mark senseis antics that day was subjeted to that last heavy straw causing the camel to buck and sway... before it righteously slaps you with a lawsuit and a camel smelling fist.

I'm in a t-shirt and little pants at the minute (ladies...) as I dared to go out in the cold to leg about with the children over lunch break. The rest of the school staff who are wearing 4 layers if their wearing any at all, keep telling me how brilliant I am for being slightly chilled, but then they remind one another that after all, I am from Iceland.

Was called over to my Board of Education last week for something. They wanted me to sign a document. Which I did. Just not in the box that said "Another year of Japan please."

See yez in July!

T-Shirt and Little Pants in Japan

Moomin in Japan

His carrots are juicy,

It's Chris Akabusi!

Hallowed hullos to you all including previous un-emailed types cranking it leek-side. You know who you are!

The past 10 days have seen my musical and schooldays comrade Colin make the brief trip over the bullet riddled sea from Korea and wander the land like Bruce Banner on a noodle-heavy diet. As I have shambled into school each morning he has done a me and walked for countless hours around various metropolitan areas sucking in the atmosphere through our respective experience-baleens. One for the marine biologists there.

On Saturday we went along to a little tour of my city to bash some of the obvious tourist spots that none of us living here have bothered our hoops to see, namely the castle and the towel museum. Nor will we likely bother our hoops going there ever again. Now to be fair, in both cases there was a Ronseal (exactly what it says on the tin) level of fulfillment to both spots. The castle, was just that. And the towel museum had towels and was indoors. Tick and tick.

However the castle was  5 hard earned squids to get a bit of a view of the monochrome drear of my town from a height. Oh, and some ostentatious and possibly quite old pyjamas.

The museum had 4 floors of towel shops to march through before you hit the museum, and after a few towel machines cranking away you had to walk for a kilometer passed all manner of Moomin paraphenalia. Moomin?

Moomin!

So the vast majority of the museum merely showed a bunch of these mercury poisoned hippo-eunuchs recreated in towel form. And halfway through there was a Finnish tourism board booth, with brouchures and posters. Another stunning victory for the Finns.

It's the bollocking Sarajevo winter olympics all over again! Damn you Marja-Liisa Kirveniemi

Once the tour had.... Finn-ished (eh?..... EH?) we all trundled out via local bus into the surrounding hills to go to a party for a local friend of ours whose parents had opened the doors of a holiday home they have to all of us eejits. The bus dropped us in a car park up a hill and gradually we were ferried up via a not maintained piece of country death trappery thatr at times beggared belief. So much so that when Meg was following my shoddy directions up the hill she stopped 2 minutes from the house figuring any chance of it being the right way had stopped somewhere about all the time all the rubble appeared on the road. Thankfully she realised there was no way to get back down that didn't include going over a cliff into a river and subsequent hurried prayers to all the major deities (back of the line Ganesh!) 20 minutes after the time she had jokingly suggested I should set out to find her wrecked car (heh heh...) I was heading out into the inky night and she eventually turned up looking not unlike me that time we may have met a gerontophile. Do yourself a favour and don't look up that word.

The rest of the night was a mess of grilled meat and mixed drinks including some more or fewer awful stories from one fellow JET who it turned out lived in Cork for a few years. Now this guy has been mentioned in the emails before, mainly in conjuction with his knee slappingly funny story about purchasing Doritos in bulk and having a crack a Meg while she was holding my hand.

Apart from trying to enter the country illegally, driving an uninsured and untaxed car and selling knives door to door of dubious quality he may have diddled a "not very clever person" into paying an exorbitant sum for a cheap watch. On completion of the transaction, he "ran away laughing."

Hard to tell but we may get a clearer picture of the scene if we switch "not very clever" with "intellectually disadvantaged."

Yeah... I know.

Other highlights of the night included people getting their kit off at <insert small number here> in the morning to partake in the local hotspring bath that was downstairs and explaining to an American in which way he was holding his ciggarette like a scumbag (between the index finger and thumb.) Also met a young lady called Jun who may have served myself and Meg lunch back in Dublin, she used to work in Yamamori on the quays and wasn't one for missing work apparently.

For anybody whose playing fantasy football, I currently am innappropriately close to my cousin at the summit of the family league while Meg has unknowingly released the dragon by passing out Gridzer on the inside, while the former persists in her campaign of only buying players whose moral fiber she feels is beyond reproach. Just Brad Friedel and Wigans groundskeeper then.

There are few groups of men as odious as those in English professional football (footballers in other countries at least have the good grace to be gimpy in languages we can't understand) and I fear if she persists, Ingrid will fall to the level of a certain doomed Arsenal fan, who is slumping down the table like pooteen on a hockey puck (note to self: live with a Canadian less. And use better similes. And wash.)

Pictured: Gits

In other news I have just been told I will have to wow all the teachers again with my eye watering German-skills as we sing some Beethoven that they don't understand and haven't the wherewithal to pronounce anything close to correctly.

Isolated as they are, national stereotypes don't necessarily land here as they might elsewhere. For example the Irish stereotype is that we are from Iceland. The American stereotype is that they are internationally minded. And the German stereotype... from Japans perspective, is probably that they are a bunch of happy go lucky layabouts. Compared to the Japanese anyway.

Peace of cake,

Moomin in Japan

Boozes Korean in Japan

Who that flooring it on the way to Peckham?

It's the 400 year old neck of Victoria Beckham

A merry 2`sday to you all fellow living human types!

The past week got off to a flying start with one of my more talented students walking up to me after class and going "Sherdur." "Sher-DUR! After I recorded this and made it my ringtone we were able to figure out she was saying "Sheldon," particularly in that I looked like him. The character from BIG Bang Theory that is.

Not the wealthiest man in Nevada (apparently), the second guy

We then had ourselves a chinwag about a whole load of American programmes she's been watching on one of the cable channels that mysteriously got cut off from me after I closed the door in the face of the TV licence guy.

The main news of my week was however the arrival of C-dog. Too street for ya? Try C-money then. Bit more 90's. No?

It's Colin then. Colin's here. You joyless sons-a-b..

<dead air>

Yeah Colin came over from the good Korea (depending on which one you ask) for 2 weeks of being bowed at, stared at and generally verbed at. We met in Osaka airport on Saturday despite me judiciously standing at the wrong end of the terminal for an hour before I realised. Then he gave me the greatest gift a man can give another man in a public place without airport security getting antsy.

That's right, duty free Korean booze.

We then had a quick potter about Osaka before hitting the town. Japanese delicacies of the evening included cabbage pancake and the fresh genius that is an all-you-can-drink bar. An hour and a half of such boozy musings and we started wandering from bar to bar, into any old cack-lodge that took our eye. Lowlights of which were chatting with a gimpy perv of a barman in one Irish bar,

Gimpo-"Ohhooo, I bet you were looking at their legs there weren't ya!? Oh yyee're dirty feckers I can see it!"

Us- "Umm, any danger of you, getting our drinks and leaving those girls to ming in peace?"

On the plus side, sensing our distain he wormlike, felt the need to buy our love with some anti-IMF solidarity freebie drinks. Nice-u!

This probably led to my highpoint of the night where I asked how long a lady had been pregnant in a bar. In fact, looking at her roundbottomed flask of a belly I literally said "How long has there been a baby inside you?"

Her answer... "never"

Colin managed to pick up some rather persistent  attention from some lass who drew him multiple maps so he wouldn't get lost trying to find her the next night.

She was to be found at the brilliantly named "Clazy Market," not that we went there in the end. But I'm sure some lucky chap did. <sleazy smirk>

There was also a conversation with a Filipino guitarist we saw which we remember as being about musicians and how vital it is communicate across the false bonds of nationhood, a dream for the future, through the magic of 12 simple notes.

That said, it is as likely that it was like...

"Oh yeah man, we .. am.. guitar" (Hammett= Filipino by the way<reaches>)

We flogged around in a fairly chilled out fashion in Nara and Kyoto both and also hit a Brazilian meat restauraunt on the Sunday. And it hit us with a stomach stretching poundage of garlic steak and slow roasted everything. I've tasted the future guys, and it's roasted pineapple covered in cinnamon.

I've also seen the future but it mainly involves everybody in Europe pleasuring Asian businessmen for handfuls of corn meal. I for one welcome our rice-crazed overlords and remind them that my soft hands and well moisturised forehead mean I am a premier candidate for any positions they might have teaching their children, folding their ridiculous t-shirts or ratting out my countrymen to Beijing G-men.

In other news, Colin brings worrying news from over the water. They're a little less keen on us round-eyes over there and specifically there are a few Korean ultra-nationalist types who write articles in the paper going on about how we're paedos only sneaking in to try and satisfy our paedoy desires.

Indeed there is this chap who stalks foreigners in Seoul just to see what they get up to. He denies that it's stalking calling it "following." Clever Trevor. Some smart tack has even printed up t-shirts with the picture of the guy saying:

"Please tell me if this guy is behind me." 

Stonking. C-doodle arrives down to me on Thursday and is staying for a few days before heading back over to Kim Jong Newpants and the rest of that shower.

Boozes Korean in Japan

Kasabian in Japan

He's one fast learner,

It's Ike "the fist" Turner!

Re-arrived Christmas flavored hellos to you all!

After two weeks slithering around the land of my birth dousing myself with all solids and spirits that had the misfortune to cross my path I'm finally back sushi-side. Umm.. Hurrah!

Apparently this is visiting season as next weekend my dear ole chum Colin sidles into Osaka, my aunt Shena in March, Gridzer in April and Meaghans sister and chum in May. In case you were thinking about making the trip out then... piss off. Japan's full.

As is our spare room (please enjoy sleeping on a bed of our rolled up laundry guys, any brown stains are totally gonna be chocolate.) Once the last visitor goes home, it'll be a matter of weeks before I myself will be ducking out of this sweetest of gigs and back into the financially secure European way of life that has continued on apace since I left. I assume.

Oh a grand thank you to all the people who willingly (or otherwise) got their pictures taken by me so I could show some of my kids what white folks look like. Rest assured thay thought all of your names were ridiculous. Then again, such criticism is originating from 11 year olds called "Teppei" so I wouldn't lose an entire nights sleep over it.

Ireland was much as it always is although I did find myself being propositioned by more european females than I ever recall. I guess more accurately they were propositioned to me by their unctious male companions but I'm still taking the complement! (which I guess is that I looked like a "sure thing" or just someone so lonely that I might start making a scene if someone didn't say SOMETHING to me.... yayyy...)

One was some campy Swede (or Nordic of another type) pushing his admittedly rather dour friend upon me. Another was in a chipper the following night as the opening stages of World War 2 were played out in microcosm. A knowing Pole and a nervy Dutch girl were trying to limit the damage of speaking to some obnoxious German who was putting the moves on her. In keeping with the metaphor, I (the Irish guy) tried to keep out of the whole fucking mess only becoming embroiled when the German shoved me towards the Dutch girl and shrieked "KIISS WITH TONGUE!!!"

I quickly complemented Nijmegen University, whipped my burger off the counter (from the bitterly swearing Pole) and slinked off to the airport.

Pictured: Hitler on the tear on Dame Street

My trip back here was uneventful except that 5 seats ahead of me were Kasabian, heading out to their Japanese tour. Having never intentionally listened to them or nursed them as children I had little introduction-fodder so sat back and tried to get some sleep. I will say though that a cat-hat is not proper attire for a 12 hour flight to Tokyo... though to be fair in Tokyo itself you're basically gonna look like a fusty old local.

<withering sigh>

They were all in jeans skinny enough to make your ears bleed and gimpy little shirts. What a shower of fancy-Dans! The following 24 hour were spent trying to keep awake long enough to get on-get off the relevant trains and after leaving Ireland at 7 in the morning I was safely in bed at 8 in the evening. Albeit the following day.

Since then myself and the Megger have been making full use of the sudden excess of previously sparse resources (coffee, Barrys etc) and I resultantly have been a teeth chattering caffinated wreck. Another new addition to the house was a chess set I bought with the intention of drawing Meg into the cerebral dichromatic world of pinch nosed Russians and clock slapping. So far it's just led to a whole lot of Meg threatening to flip the board and to plug my face with some of the more invasive pieces.

As we exchanged gifts it became vastly apparent that I had underestimated the scale of things egregiously. Not telling specifics, my present to her was actually designed to fit inside her present to me.

In other news one of our fellow expats here got hisself another Japanese girlfriend who we met at dinner on Saturday night. Predictably the girl is a wisp of a thing and hopefully will be comfortable losing a lot of weight as she is currently dating a human food-hoover. I realise this is a little rich coming from fatty fat fat fat over here but I can only just about occasionally come up to the lowest hem of his level. Anyway we had to watch her as she attempted to lick the occasional piece of raw fish (scant reward for the effort involved frankly) that was already shooting towards his gaping maw. Or mawing gape. Ooh yes, the second one.

Alright then, I'm off to sneeze my way through another few days of school and then piddle off to tear a hole in Osaka with Colin who should be flying in on Saturday morning from lemon-Seoul.

In the meantime off diddily off off!

See yee on the merry morrow,

Kasabian in Japan