Flying Snakes and Water Wheel prisons.

I woke up on Sunday morning hugging a bottle of whisky. An empty bottle of whiskey. I have never done that before. Never have I consumed an entire bottle of whiskey in one night and passed out on the floor with it still in my hand. As I lay there, with tatami mat pattern across my entire face, trying desperatly to remember where I was, who I was and why, oh God, why?! was my head being cracked open by a hammer, I went through the events of the previous few days to try and trace my movements to this miserable state.

Firstly, most of the first year JETs were going to Hiroshima for a sake festival. We didn't go. It was going to take three days to get there and then 1/2 a day in Hiroshima to drink and then an entire other day to come back. We thought it sounded like a poorly laid out plan so were complete killjoys and didn't go. From the sounds of it I think we made the right choice: Most people were naked and very drunk most of the time in the cars. People peed on each other!!! (wtf?!?!?). They veery nearly got arrested when Police found illeagal South African tea in their car (apparently made with coco beans, they thought it was made with cocaine)! They mooned about 1000000000 people and cannot remember Hiroshima.

We decided instead to have an awsome weekend with other people! On Saturday was Nagasaki's biggest festival, called O-Kunchie. We met up with Canadian Owen and veery gay but lovely Kai and went around the festival which seems to celebrate food and whales. There were parades with loads of dressed up people pulling along whales and carts. The whales were deceptive though because they looked as though thay had been built by very talented school children but when they passed large parts of the crowd they would suddenly spurt water out of their blowhole onto the unsuspecting gaijin (foreigners). The food was awsome!! I had Yakatori (like bbq without the sauce), squid on a stick (it's a squid that cooked and given to u like a lolly. A whole one!) and octopus balls (NOT testicles, just bits of octopus in nice ball thingys). It was all soooo good! I want to open up a squid-on-a-stick stall in England just to see people's faces! We had a great time. Dan wanted to win a fish from stalls where you have to catch them with paper net things and try to not break them!

Then we went to a party........it was great fun....for what I can remember. I met all the 2nd and 3rd year JETs. They were all lovely! Met some French people, the boy was doing the same thing as me. He'd followed his girlfriend out and was trying to get by. Made me feel less alone! :) After 1/2 a bottle of whiskey we went to a Kareoke bar and did nomihodai (pay £10 and drink as much as you can for 2hrs). That was a baaad idea. Sung alot of songs in French...badly. Dan sang the Japanese song from Kill Bill 1, even though it was written in Hirigana, which I thought was really good! Then we went, sorry, stumbled back to the apartment where I.....don't remember anything else............................................................................................................................................

Back to that fateful morning. How could anything hurt this much?!? We had to get the train for 1hr to get home. I passed out again. Dan was really nice about it all. He looked after me!! We bought pastry from this amazing bakers! Japanese pastry is sooooo good! But they do wierd things like put curry in rolls...WHY?? I think with Japanese Pastry the rule is if it looks like they can put something inside it then they have...BEWARE! That goes for donuts too. I don' think I have ever laughed as much as I laughed when an American friend bit into a donut only to have curry trickle down his chin!

Owen decided we should go to his house and hang out at the waterfall again, so 1 hour long drive later (sob) we arrived at the waterfall and just chilled out for hours which was really nice and a perfect thing to do with the hangover from hell...well from a whiskey bottle. We stayed at Owens house after hanging out on a pier with the full moon for about 2hrs, and the day after went on this INSANE hike!

It was four hours long, which was fine. What was not fine was that Owen insisted on taking us off path and into the jungle/forest, where we bumped into no fewer that three snakes!!! One of which was a grumpy bastard. He was red and pink, small and kept shaking his tail at us. He looked vicious and he was riiight across our path. So after poking him with a very long stick to try and make him move (Owen;s idea) Owen decided that we would have to 'launch' him. So after manoevering the stick under the snake Owen launched him into the air. It landed on a rock in the middle of the river and looked pissed off. Very. So we ran away. We saw our second snake just slithering away, found out it was a particularly poisonous viper (woohoo) and Owen turns around and goes "oh, yeah grab a stick cos the next bit is through long grass (long is an understatment, it was taller than me) so we need to make sure we scare the snakes away." Dan and I were not impressed. Dan even less so seeing as Owen had made him wear shorts! The last snake was like a Garden Snake in UK and just slithered away when we turned up, so not as scary!

Nothing interesting happened for a while until we arrived at this watermill. A really old one with a big water wheel. Well, Owen got stuck IN the water wheel. He looked like a hamster! Running in the wheel screaming 'MAKE IT STOP!!!' and trying to get out. I laughed so hard I fell over. We finally managed to block the wheel and get him out but not before we got a video, which we are going to put up on YouTube!

And then that evening we went to my first real international Baseball game in a real stadium! cool!

Anyways, that was my weekend. Pretty insanse ne? I miss you all sooo much! Thank you dales for commenting on my blog! It made me happy for a whole day! :) And thanks to everyone else who said something it means a lot!

Lots of love to all!!!
kt
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White Poo and Rainbows

I'm alive!!
And I'm in Asia baby! I'm sorry I haven't got round to doing this before, as you guys can imagine been a bit hectic! It's pretty cool here but I haven't really had any culture shock and neither has Dan. Wierd! Met all of Dan's friends and so far only one of them has a problem with me but she does it behind my back so that's fine....bitch. Apparently she's upset because Dan hasn't been spending as much time as he was with her. Poor baby. Otherwise this place is cool! If by cool you mean 30C and not getting any cooler at night. I am constantly sweaty which is not right for a lady!

So far I've been wandering in the jungle and found a really lovely waterfall that you can sit under, that has created loads of pools underneath it where you can swim! Played by the ocean, looked at all the damage the typhoon did, which is a LOT by the way. Whole walkways have been ripped up! Just walking along the pavement you have to be really careful cos some of the trees fell over and the pavement got ripped up! Somehow ended up teaching a class of 25 13yr olds how to speak french...that was interesting. I'm now going to be introduced to every French person in Nagasaki apparently. This week it's a cake shop owner. Went out bar crawling which was pretty poo really. The only reason we were bar crawling was because all the bars were empty...on a saturday night!!! Also, I've discovered that Japanese beer will hand you a rotton hang-over the next day even if you only had two. Grrrr. Wandered around a rural village which is a lot like being in France in that you have to say hello to everyone. Been to a couple of house parties which are waaaay more fun that going out!

Other than that just trying to find a job and settle in. Also planning an awsome party that starts at the waterfall during the day and ends by the ocean at night with a big fire! Wish though that you were all here! Japan is so similar and yet so different! Trying to work out how to eat the food is interesting, which part do you eat first? Is that edible? What the F*** is that? tastes good though...mostly. They do really bad Western food. Yuk!

The funniest thing that I have seen, and there have been lots cos lets face it Japanese old people are funny, is the old women who speed along on their mopeds. They're worse than the young people! they just cut across traffic, in and out of cars, with their helmets pulled low and their scarfs flapping in the wind. Seriously, it's like a cartoon!

White poo and Rainbows, comes from an experience I had here walking back from the tram stop to Dan's flat. I was walking under a tree that contained literally a swarm of birds. Not joking. The tree was full, the telephone wires were covered by the little buggers and all in like the space of a few metres. Which meant that there was a constant stream of white poo coming down but allways in a different spot. Just then I looked up and saw a beautiful rainbow! I looked back down cos I had to go under the tree and me and an old woman started sizing up the streams of poo. The odds were against us! One of us was going to get creamed! Suddenly the old woman went for it! She darted in and out, avoiding some of the poo. She was nearly across and I thought, damn if she makes it I'm blatantly in for some poo. But just as she thought she was safe a little bloop of poo landed on her hat. So I darted across and came out clean! Gave her a little smile and went on my way. True story.