I do not often lament being single, but I have to admit, when I am invited to weddings it would be nice to have someone in my life who was more or less obligated to go with me. Kozue is getting married today and she has invited me to the second party (for which I am truly grateful, as if you go to the wedding/reception you usually have to shell out something like 30 000 yen). It's a costume party in Yokohama so I will be hopping on the train in a few hours. I'm pretty sure the only person there I will know will be the bride, which should be fun. At least there will be some of her Peppy colleagues there so some people will speak English. And there will be booze. That will also help.

Coming up with a costume was rather difficult. It has been a long time since I've had to think of a non-working Halloween costume. I tossed around a few ideas and was contemplating elaborate hairstyles and wigs when just the other day it hit me that I was making this far harder than it had to be. And so I am wearing the red dress I had made for my brother's wedding and some devil horns. I won't win best costume but I will be comfortable and I've been dying to wear that dress again for ages anyway.

Sunday I have to check out of the hotel at what is probably going to feel like the ungodly hour of 10 am and making my way up to Andy's house for lunch. He has a big do planned, with roast chicken and guests and everything, although we have agreed that I will probably need at least an hour curled up on the couch, drinking tea and watching Monty Python before I can actually be expected to participate.

Then I have to get back here in time to haul out my suitcase and pack for Korea as I am heading there on Monday. I sort of suspect I should at least get that started now, or else suffer all week from a half-assed packing job.

Stuart had a new student tonight, so Masami came by with the (jammie-clad) boys to do the meet n' greet. I was still at work because I was prepping for tomorrow's Halloween party (which mostly consists of putting out the candy and cleaning up after today's Halloween party) so of course I stuck around to play for a bit. This meant that when the new student arrived the first thing he saw was me, wearing a wolf head, wrestling with Ewan, who was also wearing a wolf head, while Liam danced around us taking pictures with my camera and shouting "I'm going to cheese you! I'm cheesing you!", having apparently decided that "cheese" is a verb meaning "to take a picture of".

He did not run screaming but we'll see if he comes back.

Have you ever noticed how the people who cheerfully say things like "there's no such thing as being good at yoga!" are generally those who are, well, good at yoga? They can do the poses gracefully and they come out from meditation with serene smiles instead of rubbing their legs and whimpering. Me? I am most definitely not good at yoga. I mean, I'm not bad, but once you get me out of the gym and into a proper yoga class it all goes to hell.

Last year Satoe convinced her yoga teacher friend Peter Roussel to come teach a short workshop in Hamamatsu. This year he came back for a full weekend, and I spent the day out in Hamakita Forest Park, mostly whimpering and rubbing my legs. It was a great experience and I can't wait to do it again next year but OW. It's not even the asana (poses). Those I can do (some better than others, granted.) It was the sitting on a block crosslegged and breathing for millennia that did me in.

I thought I had finished my Halloween baking but how wrong I was. See, what I wanted to do was this:




But I used this recipe, and while it is truly amazing, all light and fluffy and moist and topped with cream cheese frosting, they came out flat-topped. Since I ended up with twice as much frosting as I had cupcakes, I clearly need to try again with a different recipe. I am now wracking my brains for a sure-fire round-domed cupcake recipe, preferably in chocolate, to try on Tuesday.

If I ever quit, everyone at the school is going to find themselves facing a major sugar crash.

I was just sighing online to Flash about how my evening would be that much nicer with a glass of wine (alas, I spent most of my weekly budget on Mexican food over the weekend), when I got an email from a company called Wine Academy Superstores informing me about upcoming wine tastings. I have never heard of this company before. They appear to be located somewhere in America. How did they get my email address? The only logical conclusion is that they have psychics working in the marketing department.

Yesterday and today were the kind of fall days that feel like a reward for putting up with summer. It is actually pretty much exactly like a Canadian summer out right now, except the nights are not as cool and the sun sets a lot faster.

Last Friday I went back to the kindergarten for the first time since before the September holidays and got to shock a whole new building with the short hair. One group of little girls ran at me with fingers pointing, gasping and shouting and asking questions, which officially remains the best reaction ever. (One of the questions was "did you cut it by yourself?" Awww. Little kids are so cute, thinking I have that kind of talent!)

The weekend mostly consisted of eating Mexican food. In other words, it was pretty much ideal. Also, there was booze. What more could a girl ask for?

I have not really been up to much, hence the lack of updates. Mostly baking for Halloween and enjoying actually being able to cook meals and buying more nail polish and catching up on tv. You know, the usual.

OPI has released a line of polish colours affiliated with the upcoming Muppet movie, and while the colours are pretty, none of them really grab me. The names, on the other hand, do. I sort of want to buy a bottle or two just in the hopes of one day having the following conversation:

"Ooh, what a pretty shade! What is it called?"

"Wocka wocka!"

It has been over a week now and pretty much everyone has seen the new 'do. I still have one or two people to shock but for the most part the fun is over. The reactions were mostly positive although one or two little girls at work looked at me all "You had such long shiny pretty princess hair! WHY WOULD YOU DO SUCH A THING??!?" and one older lady at the gym gasped "mottenai!", to which I replied "Well, I did not technically waste i...wait, do I even know you?"

It is 10 pm and I am still waiting for my pizza dough to finish rising. My dinner schedule was thrown off by Masami showing up to work just as I was finishing and bringing two pajama clad cuties with her. Dinner, schminner, I got in some good cuddles and got Ewan to show off his rather impressive robot impersonation.

The downtown school is a very handy thing to have. For as long as I've been working for MI, Andrew has been talking about wanting to do a wine tasting event. (He is quite the wine connoisseur and actually knows what he is doing, as opposed to my approach which is more "Is this wine Australian? Because those give me headaches. No? Fill 'er up.") Apparently they did one at the Hatsuoi school many, many years ago (before I started), but it was a bit of a pain. The fact that not many of our adult students live near here meant they had to drive, and there's not really a lot of parking, and the space is not set up to handle a bunch of people at once. So a second event had to wait until we had a more appropriate venue.

Wine tasting turned out to be rather more popular than yoga. Probably because we did not do the proper "swish in your mouth and then spit it out" technique but rather just drank it all. Well, Andrew did it the correct way and several of the younger ladies dumped their wine after a sip or two (and then Masami and I cried as we watched it all go down the sink) but most of us just drank our five glasses plus bonus bubbly (and then set into the remainder of the wine afterwards). Also there was bread and cheese and other nibblies. We will clearly have to do one again soon, as the event filled up with students from downtown as soon as Andrew announced it there and our poor Hatsuoi-based students were left out. Also this was a red wine tasting and probably we need to experiment with white wine, too.

Today was the penultimate beach clean of the year. There was a lot more visible typhoon damage down at the beach, with many trees just snapped in half. Also the typhoon brought with it what might be all the styrofoam in the ocean. I understand that it is important to get these tiny pieces before they break down even further and get into the food chain, but there is something rather unsatisfying about squatting over one tiny piece of beach for an hour, picking up 4728939 teeny tiny pieces of styrofoam, not getting anything like a full bag of trash, and standing up to realize that your one square meter might be clean but the rest of the beach is still screwed. It is so much more fun to find big pieces and wander up and down the beach in the process.

Also, spending the afternoon at the windy beach has made me really, really miss ponytails.