Forever Delayed

What a few weeks it has been. Too busy to update but filled with a mixture of stress, fun stuff and seriously awesome stuff.

To start with, I have been cleaning like a maniac, packing stuff away and generally doing dull tasks. None of that has been fun, but I have been reasonably well organized which has made stuff less irritating. Also, my supervisor has been excellent at helping me to make leaving arrangements. Once again, I feel guilty at how much other people do for me here. But I also feel relieved that I will soon be able to take responsibility for my personal arrangements once more.

My Junior High English Club did a leaving presentation for me and I felt quite emotional really. They have the tear jerking mixture of being both overly-earnest and very cute indeed. I’ve also started to receive a range of beautiful gifts. My favourite so far has been a set of two lacquered cups. I like them because they will definitely be used and look identifiably Japanese in design. Also, the person who gave them to me wrote  a very sweet card.

One strange aspect of Japanese gift-giving protocols is that receiving gifts can sometimes be slightly depressing. That’s because the routine of gift-giving is so ingrained that many gifts are based on a societal obligation rather than an individual act of kindness. A lot of the time people exchange rather thoughtless gifts that involved the minimum of effort in purchase. This can sometimes be a little upsetting if you have given a thoughtful gift in the opposite direction. Also, a premium is placed on the financial value of the gift and I generally feel that shouldn’t be too important.

Remember this place? Well we returned last weekend. This time we decided to stay for 2 nights so that we could relax and take it easy. I could easily have stayed for a week without getting bored. The surrounding area is so lush and encapsulates so many of the things that I love about Okayama. I had a great time talking about Japanese pop music with East Asia’s drunkest man. We walked up a mountain in a slightly blissful mood. On the way back we stopped off at what might be rural Japan’s only Iranian pizza restaurant. And a fine place it was too.

So now that we're back from this very romantic stay in the mountains where it was just the two of us, idyllic and romantic. I thought I should post the following song, for no obvious reason...