A blog is not just for Christmas....

Hello, well yet again, i've let it slide a number of weeks since my last post. I've been having too much fun and have actually been working. Oh, now don't fret not doing my proper job, but making sure that my fellow JETs got the best possible send off party (Sayonara Party).



That was last weekend (more of which later). But since my last post I have:-

• Been to Osaka and Kobe and not seen baseball, but got nicely drunk on continental beer.

• Had the house upgraded to first world conditions by having air-con installed downstairs and a brand new oven. The oven is a rare commodity in Japan so a whole new world of food has opened up to me, looks like I won't be dropping the pounds this summer. All bought and paid for by my BOE.

• Watched a lot of Big Brother (sigh) my current ritual is watching the highlight show at lunchtime after downloading it during the morning. Thankfully the shame of Huddersfield left a couple of weeks back.

So to the Sayonara party. It kinda fell on my shoulders to organise it although I turned into more of a delegator than a facilitator as Elliott, Damon and Randy (who live down south near the campsite) did most of the donkey work.

The party was at a classy campsite and we'd secured a secluded area all to ourselves.

We also picked up a beer machine and 6 kegs so we had tapped, cold beer for the party at nomi-houdai (all you can drink) for about £10. We did go a little over budget on that (like £60) but hell, t'was worth it.

The main downer of this was that due to the joys of rainy season it pissed it down all day long. Luckily we had a big BBQ area that coped with the 58 people who turned up adequately. I'd rigged my Marshall amp up to my cd player/iPod so we had music booming around our sheltered hideaway. Despite the rain we managed to get a couple of games of volleyball in and also some of the N.American kids tossed the frisbee around.

I talked to so many people, probably monopolised some people's time more than I should with the effervescent banter and ended up in the back of Jody's Corolla fast asleep somewhere between 4 and 5am. I woke up at 7am to find my car was not at the camping ground. It was quickly deduced that Steve must have taken it (as the keys were in the car, and almost $1000 i'd taken off people for beer/camping) back to Randy's (about a 5 minute drive from the campsite). I was a little pissed off but once I found the car was alright and no accidents were had I was cool with it. Probably the couple of beers I had in the morning helped my frame of mind.

Once the car was retrieved and we cleaned up the site and sorted out payment I went further down the road to Hawaiian Burger to fill the empty void. Took the slow way home stopping at Ell's and taking a 1 1/2 hour power nap before wending my way fully home.

Oh and I was bitten to shit I have 53 mozzi bites on my feet/ankles and my feet feel like two massive itches. I got some stuff from my local chemist yesterday that is cooling the itching down but I had to spend 20 minutes explaining to my elementary class yesterday that I didn't have a communicable disease and they now know how to bitch and moan about insect bites in English.

Last night I had Craig, Kirsten and BJ over for dinner and I cooked meat and potato pie, mmm northern boy's love gravy! Yep waistline, you aint getting thinner this summer!