Adventures in the Looking Glass

Most Monday nights I often wonder where my weekend had gone. Very often I indulge in a great deal of sleeping. This is good and not so good, as it counts in my book as procrastination.

This weekend, however, I have something to account for the passing of time. Yesterday, I went to a craft fair in Komagane with one of my students, Keiko. There were hundreds of stalls selling glass, ceramics, jewellery, clothes, textiles, and one animal welfare stall with three of the cutest ginger kittens I've ever seen. I wanted to eat them up!

One of the highlights of this, was actually getting of Ina. It's nice to see what's beyond all those menacing roads I choose not to risk my life walking along. Views such as these are examples:







I bought some green glass jewellery and a cat shaped incense burner. After that Keiko took me to a Sri Lankan restuarant which also has a shop so I could stock up on curry goodies, and on to a very cheap farm shop run by "anarchists". I didn't get a chance to go into just what kind of anarchists they were as we were distracted by some very cute baby goats:




On the subject of which, (anarchists, that is) I've finally found out what the noise is all about some mornings. A few times a week I am seranaded by the pomp and circumstance of imperialist music and unintelligable babblings from the annoying political campaign vans running around Ina. I found out that I live very near to the "Communist" HQ. The "Fascists" like to come down and park outside the communist building extolling the evils of their red ways, whilst profusely apologising to the surrounding residents for the inconvenience caused. Strangely polite for fascists, me thinks. Anyway, being a non-fascist, I'm siding with the commies as they don't wake me up in the morning.

In other news, I sent off a poem and story (another version of "Exit") to a magazine. We'll see about that one in a few months. I also watched Donnie Darko and Pan's Labyrinth this weekend. I was booing like a big girl at the end of both of them. Something's obviously wrong with me.

I seem to have got the "Firefly" bug again. It's the only DVD I brought with me to Japan so I save it for lazy mornings and nights when I can't sleep (there have been a few).

Today is a national holiday in Japan so we got the day off. I went to Komagane with Yasuko and one of my students, Yuko, for lunch. We went to an Italian restaurant for spaghetti and then onto Mr Donut for coffee. I had three cups of the stuff so I'm now simultaneously tired and buzzing. To give my shaking limbs a rest I read the entire Firefly entry on Wikipedia, with associated offshoots and found out some rather interesting stuff. I know want to watch more episodes but I have to ration myself!

Komagane is, from the bit I saw, one huge retail park in the most dramatic setting you could hope for - out-of-town shopping with mountains. Not a big deal for those who live with them, bit for a small person, from a small country, with smallllll mountains (which one rarely sees), this kind of thing is quite shiny. I'll write some more about it at the weekend for the weekly report.

Have started putting together tentative travel plans for the coming month or two including trips to Tokyo, Matsumoto and Nagano amongst others. I want to get into my new apartment and feel a little more settled and at ease with things before I start venturing off for the weekend. The Japanese switch in my brain has finally turned on and all the random syllables are now starting to make sense a little more, so much so that I can now intuit the meanings of certain words according to context, and the rest I merely repeat and ask the meaning. This is a very slow process, however, so expect no bi-lingual-ism anytime soon.