Phew! How do people cope with this much time off?!!

So yes, what with the water-incident my darling laptop Toby has been incarcerated by the lovely computer-doctors at Maruei Denki... he's been there for almost two weeks, and still no word, not looking good is it? I miss him greatly and am frustrated beyond all reason by not being online at home and having to use school computers to check mail and stuff. Last night I used a spare half hour to clean, rather than check e-mail - something is seriously up. It's not that I can't live without it, just that I would really rather not. Grrrrr.

Anyway. Last weekend was a bank holiday and then we had another national holiday yesterday (there's this run of weeks at the beginning of Autumn where there's a day off on average every fortnight). Took advantage of the long weekend to drive over to Hachinohe and Mike's party, still took us 6 hours from Hirosaki to Hach including dinner and numerous stops for petrol etc. Luckily I had Anne to keep me company. Yes. We have the same name. Scary thing is the similarities don't stop there - to quote from her blog... This weekend Anne and I drove to Hachinohe to Mike's party. For those of you from home - yes there are 2 Annes in Aomori, we're both British, went to Cambridge and speak Russian. we also both have blonde hair. Freaky. But nice, in a weird alter-ego kind of way. She reminds me a lot of me when I was... dunno really, just, before now. Has it been Japan that's changed me?

Anyway the party was simply hilarious, those guys are just insane, I don't think I have met a group of guys before who have fun with such conspicious finesse... There are some pics at Tyack's page (www.charlietyack.com) which describe the events far better than I could do in a gigabyte of blog. The freaky thing is, that Tyack actually does look like Nico (well vaguely at least) and Chris looks like Richard, and Alex dances like Andy Gibson, so it's freakily like being back at uni, from my little subjective point of view. I'm in process of considering the mean-ness of denying people their power of self-definition by saying "ooh, you're just like so-and-so" within five minutes of meeting them, but hey can I help it if so many people look the same?!! I have no doubt and plenty of evidence that they are perfectly different perfectly individual people, after all.

Sunday I went back to Aomori, met up with Kathryn and Ryota, Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed, and Dan (first time since Russia!!! Dan! Where have you been??!!) and we went for yummy nosh at Saigon and then some bars, and I met up with Ken who I met in Aomori around this time last year and haven't seen since, who by some freak coincidence turned out to be one of Ryota's sempais from their neighbourhood when they were in primary school - hadn't seen each other for ten years so that was a fond (???!) reunion. Just for the record, Ken is a super-nice guy, and we think that's because he works in an old-people's home.

Monday was just staying in bed till lunchtime, gossiping with Kathryn, then made my way back to Gosh, got stood up for dinner and ended up having random conversations with the nice sushi guy about kanji. Then met up with my teachers for some kanji practice - class was off because of the bank holiday, so we went to the coffee shop. Then finally made it home. Three lessons at Daichu Tuesday, bit of a mix-up but a day in the office on Wednesday.

Thursday was off too, went to gosh and had lunch and a movie - I Robot, and by the way the opening scene of Will Smith getting out of bed deserves an Oscar for something eh ladies??!! Then went for Curry in Hirosaki at wonderful Tandoor with a load of the gorgeous wonderful Tsgaru JETs, so that was fun.

Apologies if this comes out in STUPIDITY font, for some reason can't change the settings and I'm blowed if I'm gonna go through the HTML trying to work it out - will hopefully fix things if I ever get reunited with Toby.