Drugs

I hope it's lack of sleep that turned me into a drooling idiot today, but I suspect it's the new cocktail of drugs I'm taking. My litany of ailments continues to grow, with necrotising lymph adenitis (big neck) being caused by fighting off Infectious Mononucleosis, which is in turn caused by the Epstein-Barr virus. All this has left me dehydrated, and as a result I've gotten tonsilitis to boot.

mmm drugs.

Ika Odori! Odore!

"What should I do with this then? I know, I'll just up the cuteness quotient until it goes away..."

So since I seem to be in the process of becoming the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man, it's back once again to healthier times.

Karaoke in this woman's refurbished front room, complete with piano, bookcases and fully stocked bar. The usual karaoke antics ensued, with "Uh, I'm sure I know the lyrics to that Ace of Bass track, don't I?" et al. only with the owner's eight year old son serving the cocktails.

After that we joined the 200-strong winning team (Go Hakodate Dokku!) for the squid dance. Yes. Squid dance. The song consists of various ways to eat squid, and how great squid is. The dance consists of over two hours prancing down the street amongst *thousands* of others, and throngs of onlookers handing you paper cups of beer.

Note the threetone effect - I'd been recently grilled by the sun at Tachimachi, Bill (daughter has the mic above) was nicely tanned after the 30C summer and Olesia has that classical Russian look thing going on. The outfits were great, with teeny white nappies and our team name emblazoned front and back.

Ika po po po~!

Random tumours and more snow

No, my neck isn't supposed to do that.

However, before my neck done gone swoll up to a size it really shouldn't, I went snowboarding and took these shots.

Rain and snow a beautiful combination do make (although not at the same time).

Leaping off Cape Tachimachi

Neil looking very graceful

Me looking considerably less so

I've been sick as a dog, and I've done nothing but watch a lot of cool films and sweat for a while now. La Mala Educacion, House of Flying Daggers and The Incredibles are all worth checking out.

So. Time for a quick trip down memory lane, when things were warmer and shivering wasn't an integral part of life.

I like jumping off things. I tried diving, but it really hurt my testicles. Photos courtesy of Naoka (2nd from right) and Mayuko, who we couldn't persuade to strip down and dive with us.

Of course, swimming around here is strictly prohibited, let alone diving. It's dangerous, right? and dangerous things should be forbidden. Unless they happen to fall under the categories of alcohol or tobacco. But, since this is Japan, a simple sign is enough to deter all but schoolkids and gaijin, so we were free to leap until serious sunburn set in.

Sugoi kirei!

Today was the national 'coming of age' day in Japan, so everyone who turned 20 since the last Jan 10th got to dress up and get ceremonial for a day. I caught up with Chihiro briefly after the ceremonies, and she's pictured here wearing the kimono her mother wore for her own coming of age (and probably her mother before her...)

Abunai!

I just saw a Japanese guy run across a road when the little green man was, well, red, and I caught myself thinking 'that's dangerous'. Seriously. I almost looked at him with disapproval too, but caught myself in time. I think I'm turning Japanese. I really think so...

Christmas snowboarding

One of the rare moments when it wasn't snowing hard. Adam and two enthusiastic strangers pictured.

Car excavation. Every single day we had this much snow bury the car overnight, and that was at the bottom of the mountain! Around TWO METRES of snow dumped on the peak every day. mmmmm.... powder. Near deserted slopes too. All you fools hitting Europe for your boarding holidays should come crash at mine next Christmas and I'll show you some real back-country off-piste boarding!

Benri-ness

Dunno if Western laundrettes have caught up, but the Japanese 'coin landori' kick butt. Bung in your clothes, 500en (no powder) and go do something something else for an hour and a half. When you get back your clothes will be laundered, smelling good, fluffy and still there! Beats squeezing another appliance into my teeny aparto, that's for sure.

Sumo in the park

I know this blog is erratic, with pictures cropping up from all over the year (OK, mostly hanami) but it all hinges on when I finally get to see them. Guess it doesn't make a blind bit of difference to you in internet limbo anyway. So. This is a phone camera pic of a print, so necessarily shoddy, but recently received from a friend I chanced to bump into while snowboarding, of all places.

So these students were all tanked up on potato spirits, waved me over, and soon enough we ended up stripping in the middle of the park for a tournament. Note how he hitched up his boxers upon seeing my scanty briefs. Looking at this reminds me of 'Brassed Off', for some reason - something to do with hats? =)

My arse hit the grass hard. I suck.

Happy New Year all o' youse!

00:00 has been and gone, and we're all happy just queueing up...

Beautiful temple though...

Well, we got a free street car to one of the biggest temples in the city (we were given a free can of coffee upon disembarking) and joined an ever-growing queue of people down the temple steps and into the street. A fuckload of people. Chihiro and I were unsure about when the hour rolled over, since all our timepieces were different and no-one else seemed particularly bothered. I insisted on a kiss at around 00:02, but she was pretty embarassed amongst so many (Japanese) people.

In the temple itself there were a few customary things to be done: Throw a 5 or 50 yen coin, which both have holes in them, into a fairly difficult to hit wooden box, ring a bell, clap three times and make a short prayer; Stick your head into the mouth of a big red-faced lion (?) mask thing so it can bite you and clack it's teeth; Buy omikushi, a slip of paper with a difficult to translate fortune written on it, that comes in six different flavours, very good, good, slightly good, slightly bad etc. I got good, Chihiro got slightly good. You then tie the fortune to a tree branch, I think if you want it to come true - not sure what you do with the bad fortunes...

Later of course, there was plenty of traditional foods to be eaten back at my place, where, as I said, there was no party (!), including long noodles, a fancy lunchbox made up by Chihiro's mum containing an assortment of meaning-laden bite-sized foods, and rice-cake mochi.

Also sent and received approx 3000 emails on my cellphone, with well-wishes coming in from 1 o'clock up until 8am ish.

So. Weird in the lack of countdown, party or much social interaction. Good because I chose to return home a day early from the snowboarding holiday, where there were heaps of Aussies to party with, in order to spend it with Chihiro, and as a close friend said, it was 'good for the soul'.