Let's do the Time Warp again

And so the obligatory shots of the 80s party on Saturday night are posted below. As you can see, I made little or no effort to dress 80s myself, because, well, I'm cheap and lazy, to be honest. But the girls put us all to shame with some real corkers. I could almost swear I was looking at some extras from Flashdance. Naturally the music was superb, bringing back all of those memories from 1985 I'd done my damnedest to forget about. What a decade that was. As they say, even if you can remember the 80s, it's probably best not to.

Apart from that it was a fairly sedate weekend. The process of packing up my life and moving out began, albeit in a small way, when I sold off my snowboarding gear to DVO. Much as I would like to try out the runs in Upstate New York I doubt I will have the time or the money as a grad student. Next to go, or rather be packed up and sent home, are some of my books and my winter clothes. I've been wanting to send the clothes for a while now but still need the damn things, despite it being nearly June. That's Tohoku for you.

So, the long goodbye to Japan starts here.

The ladies get their groove on... 

A good shot of Karen and me, despite Krysta's best efforts to ruin it.  

My concession to 80s style - a Freddy Mercury-style moustache. 

The whole gang at Nango on Saturday night. 

I-20, therefore I am

Welcome news from the new world...the I-20 form, which I thought was going to take 15 days to process, has been done and FedEx-ed to me in under a week. One fewer thing for me to worry about between now and my interview in Tokyo - big props to the fine people in the International Students and Scholars' Office at Columbia. I'll look into bringing the interview at the embassy forward now if possible, although with a 16 day wait time for an appointment and a busy couple of months coming up at work, it might be easier to leave it where it is. That'll also give me some time to prepare my answers to the questions...terrorism bad, democracy good, terrorism bad, democracy good...

Half-day at work today thanks to daikyu from Wednesday night, will probably clean my apartment and remove the beer cans left there after last night's poker session. The weekend sees an 80s party up country. With my taste in music, I should fit right in.

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever" - John Keats, Endymion, Book 1

Shepherd's pie, baked on Sunday. Just look at that golden brown crust.

Yum...nothing like a taste of home. 

Weekend roundup

Something of a packed weekend, my faithful readers. Had a couple of beers with Tom on Friday night in Shiogama...something needed to be done to mark payday, but the rest of the Shiogama clan were too boring to come and drink with us. In the course of sampling a bottle of 600 yen "ice vodka" from York Benimaru, I came across the alarming fact in the 2005 Guinness Book of records (a birthday present last year from my aunt Liz - thanks, Auntie Liz!) that your average Russian male consumes around 220 half-litre bottles of vodka per year. I just thought I'd share it with you. Not to be understood to imply anything about anyone's drinking habits, obviously, especially not Mr. Nisbetovich.

And the following day I bought that long-awaited digital camera from Yodobashi. A reasonable deal at 27,000 yen...got it home and started taking photos of random stuff, just because I can now. The evening saw a trip to karaoke and Bar Isn't It, the sleaziest bar in Sendai. As far as karaoke goes - a quick word to the wise in the Miyagi community - stay the hell away from Song Park on Ichibancho. The beers are too small, the service is slow and the rooms are overheated and lacking a remote for the aircon. Not impressed. Bar Isn't It was, well, as it ever is...the usual meat market. A good time was had by all (not sure what her name was though) and I made it home about 4 a.m. My ears were still ringing 24 hours later, a testament to the DJ, full of sound and fury, signifying...

Monday dawns, and I am another week closer to retirement...

The weekend rolls around again

The end of a fairly slow working week. It wasn't particularly notable in terms of things to do, but since word has got round that I am leaving, everyone seems to be particularly eager to get a piece of me. I've had requests this week for 7 school visits, 2 speeches, and 1 interpreting gig, which will probably be my last act as Shiogama's CIR. Couple that with the development of a new picture gallery for the city's website as well as the weekly English evening classes, and I'm going to be very busy for my last 2 months here. Not a bad thing by any means. I guess it's kind of the nature of the job to go in peaks and troughs...山あり谷あり、ってやつだな。

News is also in of my replacement, who is to be a 22-year old Japanese-American girl out of California. A Poli-Sci grad from UCLA, apparently. I spent most of Thursday translating her profile and statement for our office; not entirely sure that I should have been given it to look at, but the concept of confidential information does not appear to be particularly widespread here. There was something slightly odd about going through all the welcome letters and writing in my name for "Leaving CIR". It felt kind of like writing my own obituary...?

I've also been attempting to get to grips with the many-headed hydra that is the US immigration system. Apparently there was a minor problem with my application for an I-20 (form needed to apply for a F-1 student visa) at Columbia and that'll be delayed. In the meantime, I've made an appointment at the US Embassy in June to have the interview ("Mr. Tuck, are you or have you ever been a member of Al-Qaeda?"). The degree of detail required is pretty daunting; I had to list all the countries I had been to in the last 10 years, which took some thought. Needless to say, Japan featured quite prominently, and so did Belgium, mystifyingly enough.

This weekend brings a shopping trip to Yodobashi Camera for the eagerly awaited digital camera, and a big everybody-who's-anybody-style party in Sendai Saturday night, which will no doubt lead to the regulation debauchery. I'll check in again on Monday...

And now on BBC2, a choice of viewing.

Coastline of Oshima, where we went camping at the beginning of May. I've upped this and some more pics, including some from my trip to Korea in March, elsewhere.

Coastline of Kinkazan 

Monkey see monkey do. Look closely in the middle of the picture.  

Deer on Kinkazan 

The results are in

Having spoken to my supervisor a couple of days ago, I'm now able to confirm when I'll be coming back to the UK - I will finish work on the 14th July, and fly home on the 19th or 20th. I'm lucky enough to have sufficient holiday to take the last two and a half weeks of my contract off, mainly through being cheap and lazy and not having really gone anywhere apart from Korea.

As many of you will be aware, 14th July is Bastille Day in France. For many French people, this represents their liberation from a socially oppressive, backward and widely detested institution. For me, it represents...well, more or less the same thing actually, in that I won't be working for the Japanese government any more.

I plan to finally move into the 21st century this weekend and sort myself out with a digital camera. Despite my somewhat straitened financial circumstances at the moment, it seems like a wise investment (particularly here, where the level of technology is a bit higher) and it'll enable me to share my snaps of Japan and NYC from September more easily. In the meantime, I'll get my photos of Korea and Kinkazan put on CD this lunchtime, and will hopefully have them up on the web by evening.

And just for Nina (since you seem to be the only person in the world who doesn't get the reference in the title ;-) ) - here you go, with a Japanese translation to boot.

The weekend

So, to Kinkazan, an island off the coast of the prefecture. 金華山、means "golden flower mountain", which is a touch of hyperbole though it is very attractive. It's one of the three spots in Tohoku (the others being Osore-zan in Aomori and Dewa-sanzan in, I think, Yamagata) where the ghosts of the dead are supposed to come back every so often to communicate with the living. Didn't see any, so that hypothesis remains sadly unconfirmed. I did see some rather mangy deer and some monkeys as we hiked up to the top of the mountain though, which was rather amusing. Photos to follow; I got some shots of the monkeys, but couldn't get too close for fear of scaring them off.

Sunday, loafed around for most of the afternoon and then attended the nijikai of a former colleague of mine (Aya-chan) who's just got married. Drinks and food in Hide and Seek in Sendai, followed by a quiet drink in an izakaya near the station with some of my colleagues. All very civilized and in bed by 11.30...

Monday lunchtime - it looks like it's going to be a slow week...

So this "internet" thing...

I was thinking in the shower this morning that it'd be a good idea to make a blog about the next few months and years...so here it is. Course, I'm not actually in New York yet, nor do I have a digital camera yet either, so this isn't going to be the most immediately illuminating blog.

But give me a bit of time, and you'll be able to read about my epic voyage of discovery across Asia, Europe and America, and thrill with me as I attempt to answer the eternal question:

What the hell is up with American spelling?

It's cold, and it shouldn't be.

TGIF. Well, less than usual, this has been a pretty good week with one thing and another keeping me busy, the French interpreting gig on Tuesday (got a bottle of wine out of that one), various admin tasks and a whole lot of code updates to the city's website. Downside, weather's turned crap, with a high of 9 ℃ today, which sucks. Colder than the UK right now, would you believe. A far cry from May in Kansai or Hiroshima, for sure. Got quite a busy weekend ahead of me, though some of the stuff may not go ahead cos of the crappy weather. Am supposed to go to Kinkazan, off the Oshika peninsula, tomorrow, though if it's cold and rainy I'd rather save it for another time. We'll see. Anyway...cheers.