February

1. I once mentioned that the reason we drink ourselves to oblivion every weekend is because we don’t know what else to do — not being able to read Japanese makes it very difficult to browse the entertainment guides. But, I’m happy to say, we’ve started branching out, and the weekend is no longer solely devoted to breaking one’s liver (though, we still do that quite often).

2. Last week, my friend Dan and I wandered down to the river by the peace park and sat under the bridge and rocked out some blues — me on guitar and he on the harmonica. It was too damn cold to play for long outside, and we were quickly upstaged by a bunch of uber-cool Japanese lads cranking out Sting and other tunes. I can’t wait until spring comes, there’ll be tons of kids down by the river cranking out tunes. Sundays will be totally awesome.

3. Afterwards I went bowling. Yep, Ten Pin Bowling. It’s pretty popular here, and you can drink while you play! Drunk bowling is great, if somewhat embarrassing. You can count the drinks you’ve had by the number of gutter balls per game. You should try it some time.

4. What else was there? Ahh, yes, Valentines Day. Valentines runs a little different here than back home. Here, girls buy guys chocolate, and guys reciprocate by buying girls candy and cookies and stuff on March 14th, which is White Day. And it’s not solely people you really like, it’s co-workers and friends as well, so it’s kind of a nice day for everyone, rather than a miserable day for single people. I got 8 boxes of chocolates, so I got some White Day shopping to do (as well as some serious exercise to burn off the choco-fat).

5. That’s about it for February, which marks my 11th month in Japan. I’ve received my new contract, which I will sign tomorrow, and I have my papers together to renew my work visa here. So I’ll be here for another year at the very least, though I don’t see myself coming home permanently for some time yet. Sorry Mum.

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