La Japoneisa: Return

There are no solutions I have come to, perhaps only a state of mind I have regained. Everything seems interconnected, which when it goes wrong becomes a vicsious circle. I think that is what happened. And so I fought my dragons (+---), tore the iron chains and broke free.

There are only empty spaces spreading in front of us waiting to be walked on, waiting to be marked with footprints that hopefully this time will leave a path more straight than the one we walked until here and now.

La Japoneisa: To be or not to be (or what to be???)

Went training again last night. It was great. The kids were practising awa odori for today's undoukai and so it was only Katsumi sensei and me training. With my private teacher I felt priviledged. This way perhaps I shall finally become a lethal weapon.
Hm. I wonder whether he is married. He is very cute and looks very 'the right guy' so I think he might be.

I don't like married people (a general statement re: the status rather than anyone in person that is).
It often seems like they have their own agenda running, they are all members of a club of some sort, a very selective club where you as a singleton have got no access. The untouchables.
I am not being bitter here *self is trying very hard not to sound like Bridget Jones, not sure it works*.
The Happy Smug Married Couples' Club might at times (of loneliness and emotional emptiness) sound rather enviably. I guess they do have it all. All that they ever wanted, all the films propagate, no? Love, peace, security, all their dreams coming true (???) and therefore they indeed do have a lawful reason to be happy and smug about it too.
But I propose 'freedom'. We, the single, ever wandering souls have freedom (and without quote marks); freedom to go, to return or never come back. Our freedom is the key to our happiness, peace of mind, content of the heart, to endless choice (and no matter how elite the SmugClub is, ultimatelly we do have a rusty old key to their door too).

La Japoneisa: 'Love goes through stomach', says my grandma

The bunch of guests turned out to be the most fun guests we had since I arrived in Chiiori; our superfun lesbian couple Jen and Autumn who are an absolutely supercool intelligent and pretty duo of girls, Chris with whom I had one of the best book discussions recently and who seemed to openly and admittingly love everything I cooked and thus automatically gained a higher status than anyone else and Vicky and Cory who were just really sound.
They all seemed to have loved my cooking and so I was floating on a little cloud of happiness the whole weekend, utterly flattered into meek bashfulness.

La Japoneisa: Undoukai (The Sports Day)

I opened my eyes and listened to the sounds of an empty house and of the life already vibrating the outside autumn air. It was foggy out there; the morning felt fresh and buzzing though also carried with it the tired sleepiness of a cloudy day, a day best suitable for reading a book by the fire, drinking tea and occasionally dosing off.
Instead of which the two of us, Bo and I, were going to partake in a sports day. As good as.
We drove down to the Wada Shougakkou (the kanji for ‘wa’ is the same as is the one in Wado Ryu-was rather excited to find that out, even though, to be honest, the matter itself is not really exciting at all) where we spotted Eiji san actively participating in the course of all the action and also, somewhat naturally indeed, the new Iya JET, Canadian Nate.
Throughout the day I was trying to work out what was it that fuelled my utter fascination with Asian babies. All day long I had them in my sight and I kept pondering. I think it is the purity that still shines from their eyes that the Western children of today seem to lack; there seems to be no want or greed, no maliciousness, no vulgarity ruling the expressions of their faces. They all seemed so serious and diligent about what they were doing, the performance they were presenting, the games they were playing, there seems to be this air of general respectfulness to and consideration for others about them. And still there was so much laughter and liveliness around and everybody seemed to have had a genuinely great time throwing balls into baskets on poles, jumping in sand bags or munching their faces into a tray of flour in attempts to find a sweet.
And to Chiiori we returned victoriously with arms full of utilities of various sorts ranging from tissues through toilet paper, kitchen wrap to washing up detergent and disposable chopsticks and Mason.
A bunch of guests arrived late at night but I was so tired I could hardly force myself to say a polite hello and suddenly I was very grateful to Mason for being there and being the entertainer.

La Japoneisa: The Empress

I smell.
It might be because I havent had a bath since like Monday, i think or it might be because I spent the last couple of days burning weeds and bushes behind the chicken coop. Hm. I do wonder.

Today Hana chan and Annie went on their holiday to a festival near Hiroshima and left the house to WayneBo and me *smiles inconspicuously, indulging in the thought*.
I feel like a grown up again. For the next few days I am the cook, the driver, The House Empress. Left the girls at Oboke where they're going to start their hitching trip, did the shopping, went to a post office and lingering down the narrow roads, fascinated by the view of misty mountains, I slowly returned home to watch the praying mantices make love.
Then I made dinner, made bread, heated up the bath and now am ready to do this all again tomorrow ^__^

Though, tomorrow is going to be different. At the local school down the hill they are holding a sports day, a day when the teachers and parents and students congregate and do fun things. We were all invited to go and so Bo and I are going to go and do fun things with them all and then, in early afternoon, we'll go to pick up Mason at Oboke since he's coming for a few day visit from Bangkok.

La Japoneisa: The Morning After

I kept waking up all last night, it might have been the empty stomach, but each time I'd wake up I'd feel bright awake, ready to get up, each time rather disappointed to find it was still dark outside.
It has got really cold over the last couple of days. You dont realize it during the day, the sun is out, or even whe behind the clouds, it still sends warmth through them and of course you're working, running around, burning things. But I am really glad I managed to finish my hat yesterday for in the evenings you can feel the summer's over and rough times are to be awaited soon.
My mission for today was to burn all the weeds that Wayne had weedwhacked and it was so enjoyable. I got to sit around the fire all day and look so it wouldn't spread and I'd get to make the fire bigger when it was getting too small.
When collecting the weeds, on my little trips with the wheelbarrow, I could feel yesterday kicking in like a drug of some sort. A rather bad drug. I'd feel week and dizzy at times and wanted to eat meat and drink milk. Like a hangover really. But that went with the lunchtime goodness and all was good.

Wayne is getting a bit too much. At times. He works hard, sometimes I think way too hard for his own good. Indeed, he is the charge hand and feels great responsibility for this place, as we all do, but even greater than that. However, or this is only what I came to observe, he doesn't seem to communicate all of his ideas and plans to the others (or maybe just me) and so I get annoyed for occassionally I feel like I'm expected to read his mind which, despite the fact I am (should be) a psychologist, I am incapable of doing.
We'll get through though. There is no time to waste it on grudges that in the long run might not even matter that much, eh?

In the evening Bo and I were off to the karate training again. This time it was kid's training and in the hall we found for sweet children two of which we actually already knew from the awa odori. The warm up was rather hardcore, the training was good but a little too short (no damage done yet). Still fun. The sensei said, on my humble request, that he'd also teach us some kata (which are rare in kyokushinkai since it's full contact). He's so cute too.


Over the last week we noticed an increase in the numbers of praying mantices in our vicinity, namely in the house. Chiiori has become some sort of 'love hotel', or so it seems when you look around and in the corners of the rooms, on the beams, by the irori, on the kitchen isle or the water boiler you see these huge ugly things mating, any hour on the hour, making love (or fighting off the competition, desperately attempting to escape or eating the husband). Quite disturbing view, if you ask me, especially whe you're having your lunch. And it is getting rather annoying for you have to watch out where you walk ( so that you dont step on them-they bite), where you sit (so that you dont sit inbetween two loved up praying mantices-like I did the other day, they were staring each other out one from each doorframe-again, rather disturbing) and generally you just have to watch out because they do bite. However, sometimes you are just helpless as to what regards this matter as they can just simply jump or fall off a beam above you and land on your shoulders and there is no way you could have known about it.
Again, as I said, rather disturbing.

La Japoneisa: Hunger Strike

And so it was my day of fasting today. And so I did fast, 100 per cent.
But more importantly it was my day off and I spent it all (hungry and) making things.
I knitted a hat. It is poobrown and sooo ugly it is pretty. And I made two more chopstick cases, one for Ian ad one for Jenjen, as I had promised (not too selflessly as it is also to promote Pokeron the Mountain Imp both nationally and internationally).
I also wrote a letter to Maru chan who we've met on Sado and all in Japanese!!!
Very impressed considering the conditions under which all this happened.
The day is over, I am not suffering too much, but am really looking forward to breakfast tomorrow morning.

La Japoneisa: I Am a Karateka Again!!

Fields fields and more fields. And weeds. Lots of them and everywhere.
But I am slowly tackling them, they grow back every time but every time I am there with my kuwa and I tackle them again and again.
Day off tomorrow. It is going to be my fasting day. One day only. Not sure I'd be able to go on like hardcore Annie for three days. But perhaps eventually.
One day might be enough to cleanse my within, to restore the feeling of being alive.
I might consult this whole matter with Charlie though. He is a doctor in the end.

Finally went training tonight.
Koji san turned up with three of his colleagues to eat lunch at our doorstep today and called the sensei to confirm Bo and I would be coming to karate this evening. He seemed rather obsessed with the idea of filming the training and I don't even wonder why no more.
And so we went. Shortly after we arrived so did arrive Koji san, into an empty sports hall with only three guys dressed like for a kick-about session. Pne of these guys turned out to be the sensei, Katsumi Kita, apparently nationally acclaimed karateka.
Kita san is very young, or so he appears, kind of cute and muscly and tough.
The style of karate is kyokushinkai; interestingly, since my arrival in Japan this is the only style of karate I have come across. Full contact. Oh dear. I am so going to suffer.
The practice was introductory, so different from shotokan, rather easy nevertheless we still sweated in this humid air of early autumn. I am so happy to be training again. Time to get used to the new ways though. Wind blows for changes.

La Japoneisa: The Phone Is Working...or We've Got Our Lives Back!

Hurray!
The phone line is back, the internetís working! Hello world!
And I found four emails full of panic and fear over our lives in this wilderness from my mum, three emails from Ren chan (so I wasnít forgotten!!-and Hana won 5 Yen.), an email from Ian who consequently phoned me , as did my mum; my darlings who spent the last week persistently trying and trying and trying and finally getting through and calming their worries. So did dad call confessing this to be probably his tenth attempt and I felt warmth inside, felt loved and cared for.

After my fascinating day in the as-close-to-the-city-as-it-gets-around-here I was once again ready for work, full of love for the mother earth, devotion to the fields that will one day soon, as they did until now, feed our bunch of greedy tummies.

La Japoneisa: Kochi Sunday market

And so, instead of Nagoya I went to Kochi, spent half of my salary (which under our current conditions carries the worth of supergalactical 50 pounds) and am content and effusively smug about it.
Our journey there was budged by the excited expectation of the new and unexplored, the whinny roads following the river took us athwart the valley traversing up the sides of the mount, and which towards the end of the trip took us down again and we knew we were getting closer to the sea, oh so symbolic it were, towards open spaces, new horizons, to freedom.

Not that I ever felt unfree at Chiiori. Slowly I am getting more and more accustomed to its ways and am realizing my subtle fallings for these mountains, for the mist in the morning sun, for the loud shrieks of the night silence. My heart sings, my mind rests and my soul is free, as free as ever, so free it brings tears into my eyes and I feel I found a home.

Kochi was so much fun!
Taking into consideration how thrilling a visit to the Oboke convenient store is, the excitement of being in a place with more than one shop and two vending machines was close to unbearable.
Hana and I whizzed through the Kochi Sunday market taking pictures of ladies with fruits, ladies with flowers, ladies with plants and honey, even with peacock feathers, we roamed the confusing maze of streets of the covered shopping area, ate mochi bought in a special mochi shop (feel blessed to know that things like these exist!) and freshly baked choco chip meron pan from the smiling kind looking street vendor and got a cute purikura picture. And ah, we had a coffee. Real coffee! Fresh, black, and oh so tasty.
After a huge dinner involving lots of meat that we needn`t have had to cook nor wash the dishes afterwards, now barely being able to move, we somehow managed to roll across the town centre to k-truck chan parked by the Kochi castle and set for the trip back home.
Hana drove, eventually receiving driving lessons from me as we realized she had no idea what was the function of the gear stick and how it worked and why one can not hold the accelerator pedal down at the same time as the clutch and try to change gears. When not lecturing I sat quietly enjoying the view I was provided from under my feet stuck to the front window which revealed innumerable bags of various contents; old yukatas smelling of moth balls, woollen yarn (the guy at the wool-shop was rather magical, together with teaching me how to knit he lent me two pairs of knitting needles-and this is town 70km from us!!!), mochi, stationery, pressies for Annie, Bo and Wayne and Hana`s bag of assorted fruits and maybe 10 bottles of mineral water which apparently help you rejuvenate after you`ve just had a period. Grandeur!

Now I have supplies, Pokeron the Mountain Imp has returned to her cave and can live, survive god forgotten, for the next month (or until next pay?).

La Japoneisa: Finding My Own Place in the Sun

For the first time in a very long time I am finding myself in a situation where I am not getting what I want. And in a situation where I can not do anything about it. No matter what I do in order to get it, I am still not getting it. It feels surprisingly strange to me, the feeling of helplessness is so frustrating it almost hurts, the feeling of not having any control over what is happening with your life makes me want to cry.
Maybe it indeed is a test. Maybe it is a test of humbleness and humility, some sort of external investigation into whether the self is in possession of these attributes, capable of self-effacing existence, whether it is truly competent within at following the journey it has been consciously attempting at.
And I am not going to fail this test. I am not sure yet who it is I am proving this to, perhaps only to myself, but I am content with what I have got, happy with what I have been offered as a stead of my perfect plan and am ready to enjoy it to the fullest and try my best at succeeding in the quests it might bring with it.

Every staff member at Chiiori has got their own role to play. Maybe, slowly getting used to the life here, I am finding my own path too.
Annie had bestowed me with a task this morning before she was off to the log house to contemplate her third day of fast. To repair the crappy little box with crappy little drawers and no walls, poor bugger forgotten in the corner of the book shelf, only now and then noticed at times when people would get annoyed with its state of utter uselessness. My first carpenting job, she said.
And so I made a trip or two to the freshly tidied shed, equipped myself with one hammer, a red box of fine nails, a saw with no handle, a piece of ugly brownish string, one piece of wooden board of approximately the right size and the little fallen apart box. It was a challenge (‘Some crap things are just meant to remain crap things’, said Bo) but the end result is rather gorgeous, I am inclined to believe. It has got a handful of golden and silvery nails in it, little bits of ugly brownish string and it holds together like never before, which must be true since two out of five drawers can't really be pulled out. Still it stands upright which means it’s better than it was and I am proud of a job well done and really want to be a carpenter now.

After reading Tolstoy and Dostojevskij I never thought reading another Russian author would be a pleasure again. However Doctor Zhivago captured my heart, I am falling in love with Jura and am worshiping Pastornak’s mind.

Also, I have leaned a lesson today. Whatever you do, never try to put nail polish on dirty nails of dirty feet. It had been a rather disturbing experience, haven’t seen anything that unpleasant in a long time. There, a mountain lesson for me.
Nevertheless the nails look quite cute now. (Probably because no one can see how much they ming anymore??)

La Japoneisa: Things

The day before yesterday I learned our address in kanji:
778 0206 徳島県三好郡東祖谷山村字釣井二〇九 ‘Chiiori’
It’s very exciting, me thinks.

Been doing lamp shoji today, quite a challenge indeed. The lamps are still quite ugly but I think they’re getting better each time I do a new one and so might even be usable soon.
I took Bo to Oboke train station this morning so she could use the juhachikippu that I was so unlucky with and go on her day trip to somewhere. I guess she chose time a little better than me, eh?
She keeps trying to persuade me to shave my head too, which I shall eventually do, but have to wait first for my hair to grow the longest it can. Until then, this remains a firm though a rather distant plan, my most exciting probably (except for becoming a carpenter), for the future.

La Japoneisa: "So, How was Your Typhoon?"

Am slightly disappointed with the whole typhoon action, to say the truth. Wasn’t horrible, wasn’t scary or nothing, perhaps though the fact that I slept right through it did make a bit of a difference. And it was a little bit scary. At times I would be woken up by the howling wind that would lean against the poor old house, any minute expecting to be lifted in the sky and carried away like they did in The Wizard of Oz, and then I’d fall into a deep sleep of tired body and unrested mind again to be again woken up by the sounds of maddening nature outside of the fully boarded house.
The rays of the morning sun, desperately trying to push their way through the thick grey clouds as remnants of the great storm, brought up to date the state of current affairs: chicken coop was upside down few meters into the field and one chicken has gone AWOL. The wheelbarrow lies on its side and everything that was in it is around it and everything that was around it is scattered even more around it. The soy beans, Annie’s babies, are all laid flat on the ground and so are the peppers and okra. The brave survivors are the tomatoes and their bamboo-support-construction (well done Wayne), the seedlings and the caterpillar (which is quite impressive since it hasn’t had food for like a week now).
So much for the typhoon.
On another note, today I managed to light up my first irori, the fire place inside of our house and am rather happy because of that.
And also, I was promoted into a rank of the official Chiiori Photographer; feel very honoured and deeply satisfied and now am indulging in imagining how hip I’m going to look like with the in-the-nema-found tripod (my cool little booty of today) fixed to the side of my backpack and Sputnik (the camera) hanging off my neck. Very excited.
The ‘atama yasumi’ plans have due to the typhoon been altered a little bit and if I’m not gonna be going to Nagoya as planned I shall take the k-truck and go to Kochi Sunday Market on Sunday and roam through all the hyaku en (hundred yen) I come to encounter. Even though I still would like to go to Nagoya for would absolutely love to get some new fabrics and finally get drunk with Ozaki san, my fan.

La Japoneisa: Let Me Off This ******* Island!

Nagoya my ars!
Woke up from a restless sleep at 4.30am this morning. All was packed and I was ready to shamelessly renounce our Ship of Dreams for another, a perhaps more distant one. The typhoon was on its way, the whole night I could hear the wind howling through the trees, shaking our house, whizzing through the gaps to disturb the night’s peace. Occasionally I would hear Jackie’s quiet whimpering and then it was the harsh voice of the alarm clock on my old mobile. The morning was still dark with night and as we were leaving, hiding under happy coloured raincoats running around the house to the car, the daylight started breaking in to accompany our journey.
The whole village was dead with sleep, but of course it was only 5.50 am and a typhoon on the way.
Until ten past six we sat on the empty platform to learn that today there were no trains operating and there was no way to leave this island. With a small hope at the resting at the bottom of our hearts we made our way to Awa Ikeda where my today was confirmed and indeed, in a little while I was being carried back to Chiiori to enjoy the typhoon. I mean, I was whining about how I was going to miss it and how I really wanted to experience the beauty of our wild mountains at their worst but I knew I wanted something else more than that. There is going to be more typhoons, it’s September after all. There isn’t going to be any more Karate Expo 2005 though. But it was meant to be.
I had to escape the main room where I was choking on the smoke from the burning irori, which was hurting my eyes so much I could hardly keep them open, and now am resting in the nema full of flies of which home it had become for this time of mayhem and am enjoying the ferocious sounds of the outside world and quietly wondering about what it could be that made me stay here.

Everything happens for a purpose.
The typhoon stopped me from going to Nagoya. It stopped all the buses and trains, shut all the bridges only so I could not go and now, that I have arranged alternative plans that depended on a working phone line, it disconnected that one too! And so I am left here, in my beloved nowhere, contemplating on the intentions of the fate's controlling finger.
Two options come to my mind: either,
1. The people I want to see and hang out with are bad bad bad and this way all the gods are trying their best to make me avoid hanging out with these impersonalized evils.
2. It is a test designated to see how strong minded I am and whether I can put my mind to things and achieve what I want.
(Celestine Prophecy, where are you now, eh??)

My whole inner me is ready to give in, just let the flow take me where ever, knowing that there are good things to come across. Though the curious part of me is telling me to try some more and see what it comes out as. Hana chan is the little devil sat on my right shoulder, whispering promising little words to my ear, tempting me, my eyes wide open, hungry with desire to know, to see the future.

La Japoneisa: I Want to be a Ninja!

A new day came and I opened my eyes into yesterday’s morning. It was still raining as remains of the yesterday’s typhoon of which we caught just an edge. Luckily.
The plan was firm; to clean the disgusting black dust covered beams of the house and all that goes with it, i.e. all the bamboo and ceramic decorations, vases, pots, bowls etc. and get ready for the beast of a typhoon that’s supposed to be coming tomorrow and is said to have its eye right on our mountain (centre of typhoon = typhoon’s eye).
By 9am the troop was up and ready, Annie, Hana chan, Bo and I, scarves on our heads and scarves over our faces, ninjas armed with brooms, cloths and buckets of water we were ready to begin our quest.
Bo chan and I climbed onto the beams and spent the whole day with our legs hanging down, indulging in the excitement from the novel view while reaching for the spider webs, dead caterpillars and other repulsive objects, trying to keep ourselves on top. Highly enjoyable.
By the end of the day my arms and feet were so dirty only nails were shining white in them, my hands were covered in thousands of little cuts, I had one new blister, a moustache and black snot.
The rain persisted and as the grey darkness progressed the front of the house got covered in puddles and Jackie Chan surmounted the porch where he then sat, looking like an old ojichan, with resignation in his confused face of a retarded dog.



Ichioka san turned up on our doorstep again, smiley face hidden under a huge black umbrella as he found the house in a state of deconstruction with a group of crazy Chiiori kids dressed up as ninjas playing with brooms. He brought us the new issue of his Tengo Shinbun (The Idlers’ Newspapers??) and from under his arm he took out (as I observed hidden under the dust on the gallery above the kitchen) a piece of cloth, saying that I might like it since I was looking for more fabric. It was an obi, on one side gorgeous black silk with two little golden engravings and some writing and on the other, strangely enough, pictures of cars and trains. While I hid my disappointment (got so excited about the idea of owning an obi embellished with traditional patterns of sakura in blossom, birds, fishermen and beautiful girls in yukatas), thinking that perhaps it could at least make a nice posh going out handbag with a tacky inner lining, if I keep the black silk on the outside, Annie explained to me how precious this item actually was and how lucky I shall consider myself to be given it.
It comes from the Meiji period, which means the time around 1920s when the Japanese got really thrilled by the artefacts of industrial revolution and thus what are considered to be the traditional Japanese patterns were then replaced by the images of the new inventions of the 20th century. I am honoured and am going to make something for Ichioka san from it.
The girls kept laughing at me every time I took the scarf off my face, “I thought Veronika suddenly started to look very masculine…” and finally at the onsen I had a proper look and there it was. A moustache.
When I was a kid I thought I looked like my grandfather because, frankly, he was the only one I could look like, since except for me, he was the only person in the family to have blue eyes. Though later on I realized that we don’t look like one another at all, even the blue in my eyes was different, perhaps the only thing common in both of us is the love to boss people around (^__^). However now, looking at myself in the mirror, with this Hitler moustache over my lips (cant believe the girls let me walk in public looking like this) I recalled my grandparents’ war time pictures my grandma and I were looking at over the holidays, pictures of when they were both very young, and I appeared to myself like another copy of my granddad.

Before it would get dark Bo and I had a special mission allocated to us. Go down to the log house and board it up so when the typhoon comes we wont find ourselves floating over the clouds, “Hey look Jackie! We’re not in Iya anymore!!’
The aesthetic perspective over the piece of art we left behind us is rather debatable perhaps, though we still do believe it’s the most beautifully done up house in Iya, taking into consideration what one can do with five boards and no ladder (met Omo san on our way down, who, responding to our request, said that girls can’t use a ladder and so he won’t lend us one-fair enough, though if anyone went by they would see one or even two girls hanging out of a window, together with a cushion, nails and a hammer and would very typically wonder about what on earth are the Chiiori kids up to now).
Hurray! Nagoya tomorrow!

La Japoneisa: Rain, Rain, Rain in the Mountains

I was woken up by the hypnotic sound of raindrops falling onto the roof, the windows, the porch, into the dim grey light of a rainy day.


Another day off forced upon us. Hurray! Another day to be spent making things.
Annie came up to have her breakfast and then returned to the log house to enjoy her day off, Hana chan came and went and so it was Bo and I in our kingdom again.
I started making a case for postcards and letters that could also hold the letter knife I made the other day, however somehow I miscalculated during the measuring process and so The Thing turned out to become an iPod and a tissue case. Good enough for me. It’s cute, rather unbalanced and wobbly in its cuteness but it seems to serve its purpose sufficiently well. When I was almost finished with it Ichioka san visited, had a bit of a chat and a cup of ocha with us, complimented us on our handicrafts and was off again. He is so adorable. Just as is Omo san and Masao and Eiji (in a thought-evoking strangely different sort of way, as to what regards Eiji and Masao, I would say, but still endearing).
The day went by and to say the truth, as much as I love not doing anything and appreciate a day off, by the end of this second day of forced off I didn’t know what to do with myself and could not wait for the next morning to come so I could do things again.
Still, gotta love days off :-D!!!

La Japoneisa: Lean Mean Sewing Mashine

I am so making things!!!!!!!!
Today I sewed my first pair of pants and my first handbag. With a sewing mashine (mishin)!!!!!!!!!!!




Wayne left yesterday afternoon for an atama yasumi (to rest his head),
this afternoon Annie and Hana chan went to Tokushima for Annie's first DJing gig together with Keiko who was off home to come back in a month, and so left our two adorable guests, Natalia and Thomas, who after almost two weeks at Chiiori left for Kyoto to continue their wa(o)nderlife.
After lunch we had a little talky session with Don san who then also left, with Yoshie san and Lee, to see the grandparents. Thus Bo and I were given this day in paradise, to enjoy the finally attained, and rather giggly and chatty, peaceful tranquility.

Typhoon coming tomorrow. Jackie seems scared shitless (or shitfull, and geeeee it stinks!). I am excited!

La Japoneisa: Red Red Wine...

The sink is still not working. Or is still unpluggled. The tooth paste foam falls down it into the plastic washing bowl bucket thingie and we remain satisfied and happy because it doesn't matter really.
Oh how lovely red wine can be. Donsan left with Yoshie and stumping tantrum-holding Leechan and left a bottle of fine red wine open on the kitchen isle. Shouldn't have done. Oh yay! Talking to JenJen on msn, progressively getting pissed on the way, is indeed highly enjoyable. It would have been enjoyable anyway, oh how much I love JenJen, but this way I get to laugh at my own jokes, and that's always good ne.
So now, after three quarters of a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses of sudachishu, am thinking of how grand it will be to be in Nagoya next week and I feel fine.
Nazdravie!
(Oh dear, my head spins.)

La Japoneisa: Who Do You Think You Are?

There are times when I wonder what do our neighbours actually think of me.
I know that Wayne thinks that I talk too much and I ask way too many questions to actually expect an answer to them, and sometimes I wonder whether he thinks me an utter retard for asking them.
But the other day Nobusan came to visit and with the usual omiage he brought a bubble gun 'for Veronika', because he thought I'd really like it. Which essentially absolutely made my day indeed.
But I still do wonder sometimes.