I have just spent my last session at my gym, Sports Club Fun. As of 11 pm today, it will close its doors forever. Which means that on Monday, I have to, gallingly enough, go join the gym that forced Fun's closure. Well, I guess I could make some sort of moral statement and NOT join it, but that would leave me with far too much free time. Plus, I'd get fat. And as was so charmingly pointed out to me last weekend in Roppongi, as I reached for another beer, I'm "too cute to get fat".

I have no words.

I may freeze to death at this weekend's ohanami. You'd think an April picnic out under the cherry blossoms would be all balmy and t-shirts and chilled beverages, but it seems that winter has decided to make a comeback. I remember my first ohanami waaaaaaay back in 2001 was cancelled due to snow. This may be another such year.

In other news, Masami's unborn child is now 3.4 kg. The average birth weight of Japanese babies is 3 kg, and he's still got three weeks to grow. She's starting to sport a slightly panicked look, all "um...get this child out of me before I give birth to next year's sumo star!" She has actually outgrown her maternity pants and can only wear big tent-like dresses. If she doesn't give birth soon, she's going to be forced to resort to just wrapping a sheet around herself, toga-style. Her doctor has instructed her to walk an hour in the morning and evening to encourage not-so-wee Liam to drop into position. One of the mothers (of a student) suggested squats. I suggested jumping jacks. Masami: "Really? That works?" Me: "Pfft. Like I'D know. But it sure sounds like it should, doesn't it?" She elected to ignore my advice.

The cherry blossoms are here! When I lived in Victoria, all that meant was that some of the trees were very pretty. Here, it means that on any given day during a roughly two-month period, a large section of the population is getting completely smashed in a park somewhere.

We had a mini-ohanami on Sunday; just took a glass of bubbly out to the teeny tiny park near Cat's apartment and admired the blossoms. And then played a bit...



This Saturday I'm going to an ohanami in Shizuoka, and quite possibly again the weekend after. The blossoms only last a short time, so it's best to get as much ohanami in as you can.

I wonder if there are people (rich people, who don't need to work and whatnot) who follow the blossoms. That would be pretty cool. You'd start in mid-March down south, and follow them all the way to the top of Hokkaido. Every weekend you'd picnic in a new city. What am I saying? Of course there are people like that.

One thing that has always confused me about the cherry blossom parties is that when you read guide books, they always comment that offices send junior workers out to snag and keep good picnic spots and the rest of the office follows after work. Now, this is always made to sound like a chore the junior workers must perform...some sort of initiation rite or something. How is this a bad thing? "Hey, Junior, take this tarp and go spend this gorgeous spring day loafing about in a park filled with hundreds and thousands of fragrant pink blossoms. We'll stay here in this sterile, flourescent-lighted environment and toil away, joining you later."

I mean, do they have to start at 3 am? Do they choose the workers with the most violent hayfever? Do the junior workers then have to work unpaid overtime for the next three months to catch up on their missed paperwork? If I was a senior manager, I'd so be out there on that tarp, tie loosened, shoes off, chu-hi firmly in hand, right at the crack of dawn.

Luckily I'm an English teacher, so I can do that anyway, sans the tie.

On Friday night Cat took me out to a NOVA party. It was held at a place called Christon Cafe, which turned out to be a mispelling of "Christian". Yes, it was a Christian-themed izakaya. There were crosses everywhere, and as you walk to the elevator there were various religious murals with saints gazing adoringly at each other, with slogans at the bottom exhorting you to eat at the cafe. Inside it turned out to be huge...more cathedral than church, and with crystal everywhere. And, of course, more religious murals on the ceiling, a la the Sistene chapel. The waiters and waitresses all wore (no, not nun habits) tshirts with a silkscreened hippy-style Jesus beaming benevolently on them.

However, they didn't take the Christian theme all the way. Despite the fact that it is Lent, there was no skimping of the drinks or food.

Well, I am back to the chaos that is my apartment. I had a great long weekend in Tokyo with Cat and Sheila. As usual, I came home filled with thoughts of finally getting my act together and cleaning the hell out of this place, and then organizing stuff, and then running out and buying 6 bags full of fresh veggies. These good intentions lasted, as they always do, for only about 10 minutes after arriving home. Now I am happily back in processed foods-eating, dust-bunnies-never-hurt-anyone land.

Yikes. Today I discovered a teeny tiny baby cockroach in the sink at school. And if there are baby cockroaches here, in this bastion of cleanliness and order, you just KNOW they're lurking around my apartment, too, making friends with the dust bunnies and plotting escape routes for when I'm chasing them with poison.

Time to go lay down some poison traps, and also load up on spray. Last year Liz showed me this wonderful stuff that kills the roach in about 2 seconds, unlike the stuff I use, where I have to chase them around the apartment, spraying poison into the air (which can't be good for me, either) for a good 10 minutes. (Ok, that's probably excessive, but I defy you to be rational when confronted with a cockroach the size of Guam.)

Random photo testing!

Ah, THIS is why I created the blog. To give me something to do on Wednesday nights when no one shows up for the adult classes! See, now I can just type a bunch of random stuff here, instead of clogging up the inboxes of everyone I know with whiny "I'm booooorrrrrreeeeed" emails.

This is ridiculous. We technically have 4 students in the 7 o'clock class and 3 in the 8 o'clock, but only 2 and 1 ever come. They have all called to cancel. They all have excellent reasons, too...sick kids and ailing mothers and massive overwork. But can I just close up shop and go home? No. Why? Because the other students who are registered but who haven't shown up in...um...ever (seriously, there's a couple of names I don't even recognize...who ARE these people?) MIGHT show up. They won't, but they haven't called to say they won't be in. Probably because they forgot they even have an English class on Wednesday night months ago. So, here I am. Bah.

Hmm. Now I'm feeling oddly self-conscious. Probably I should have started this on a day when something fabulously interesting and/or amusing happened to me. As it is, I had the day off (my first national holiday in five and a half years) and I mostly spent it gazing in admiration at my newly internetted computer. I'm beginning to suspect that getting internet was not such a bright idea. Will I ever read a book again? On the plus side, I've spent rather less time watching tv since getting my modem to work.

I was not entirely unproductive...I did make it to the gym for a balance ball class. That was fun. What's not to love? Bouncy fun! Whee! The lady with the World's Weirdest Haircut was there. I've never actually talked to her, as our schedules rarely overlap. Oh, and of course, I don't speak Japanese. Ahem. Anyhow, she has quite a severe, short cut. This in itself is unusual in Japan, where most women tend towards feminine hair. Even short cuts are often kind of floofy and permed. Not hers. Short, functional...except for the one hank of braided hair growing just behind her left ear and falling nearly to her shoulder. What is up with that? Does it have some kind of religious significance? Did she lose a bet? Why would anyone DO that to their head?

So, here I go, jumping on the blogging bandwagon. Is my life nearly interesting enough to really warrant one of these? Oh heck no. Will I keep it up or get distracted a week in and let it die a slow and unobserved death? Only time will tell. In the meantime, blog experimentation awaits!