夏バテ

Apparently I am suffering from "natsubate", which in our terms means summer exhaustion. I am told it is "very common", although I don't see anybody else having any problems... I feel in a constant state of exhaustion, for the first time ever in my life my appetite has disappeared, and I feel sick as soon as I put anything in my mouth. Now that, for me, is scary. Rainy season came and went a lot quicker than usual, and it is only now it is gone that I am wishing it had stuck around for longer. The dampness, mugginess, constant rain has been replaced with HELL. Or at least it feels like hell. Maybe Hell would instead be a drier, hotter place like the Mediterranean. I doubt Hell would be so humid and oppressive. I would have thought that by my 3rd summer of living in Japan I might have acclimatised just a little bit, but this is the worst its ever been for me! As I said, I have NEVER lost my appetite before.

At the time of writing this I have 15days left of my two years of living in Japan. Rob got married, and will become Rob Mitchell-Nishimura. Na-chan will become Na-chan Nishimura-Mitchell. At their wedding "party", Na-chan's pappi told me quite confidently that Rob is changing his name and adopting a new (Japanese) first name. This was news to Rob. I think he will stay Rob.

Emily is soon to be married. This is mainly of course for visa reasons, and I don't think she will become Mrs Emily Cheevers, although I would love it if she did. Her and Aonghus will get married the day after they step foot in America, so sadly we won't be able to witness that one.

The boys took Aonghus out for a "boys" night, they did the typical and went to an "oppai" bar, which is basically a tit bar where very flat chested women dance around for a bit with no tops on, then sanitise the hands of the weird geeks sat at the front taking it all far too seriously before letting them touch them. Rob found it so unstimulating he told us afterwards he preferred to sit in the massage chair outside and smoke. Seiji told me later that the foreign boys usually behave so appallingly in these places, (not knowing the rules and keeping quiet etc), that the bar owners often charge the foreigners double what they charge the Japanese to compensate! I guess it kind of serves them right.

For the "girls" night, we donned our Yukata's, and so all night had weird looks from people wondering why the hell we were dressed up in festival attire, and kept being asked where the festival was. Emily spotted some other girls dressed in yukata, but Waka-chan quickly whispered that they were probably prostitutes glammed up. We chose not to compare ourselves. Our girls night was rather different to the boys, nobody got naked, we went and sat in a "purikura" machine taking photos of ourselves, but got more distracted by the wonderful smell of Emily's hair. We went and showed Seiji some attention and ate takoyaki, declaring to everybody in the street it was the best in Kokura. Afterwards apparently the "catchsale" morons told him we looked like hard work. Pah. They were just jealous. And it was damn good takoyaki. And then we kind of met up with the boys, as was to be expected. I think we came off looking a lot better.


I am something of an emotional wreck. This crept up on me rather unexpectedly. There I was minding my own business spending a lot of time with myself, waiting patiently to go to Thailand where I will do a Thai massage course in Chiang Mai, and then on to the Transiberian with Wakako.... Then July comes round and I have to pack and suddenly I turn into a jittery wreck. I've never had the jitters before. Just looking a pretty picture of summer noodles served Japanese style in the supermarket is enough to nearly set me off crying.

Anyway, I have 15 days in which to pop to the grip shop, get myself a good old grip and try and get it working, and leave this country in a dignified manner, as opposed to not being able to hold a sentence together when trying to say goodbye to people.

On a brighter note though, Wakako and I now have ALL four visas sorted. China stopped being a total pain in the ass and coughed up a visa without any problem. We have found a wonderful Chinese girl in Beijing who is going to stick us in her grandparents house for the night we are there. Everything, it seems, is sorted. Although I won't feel completely reassured until we are actually on the train, and China didn't have a total spazz out and give the tickets to the athletes "just in case" they need them. 23rd August we begin our journey across the continents.