Way back in September, I wrote a little update about our flat, with some pretty dark photos that basically showed you nothing of our living conditions. The flat is now significantly messier that it was back then, but that’s what you get for living in it for nearly eleven months. Still, I thought I’d risk the possibility of being told off by my mother and post some photos of the state of our flat now. I took a photo of every room apart from Matt’s room, as I thought he might not want pictures of it put all over the Internet, and the toilet, because nobody wants to see that…right?

This is my incredibly clean room, maintained beautifully by myself. As you can see, I’ve successfully filled up all the shelf space in the entire room with large amounts of things I “know I’ll need one day”. Sadly, that day will never come but for some reason I can’t bear to separate with anything. I feel I should justify a few piles of the rubbish though, to make it appear fractionally less bad than it really is;

• The large pile of clothes behind the dresser is things that need to be washed. We don’t have a washing basket so I have invented my own “washing corner”. Usually I get everything washed within a day or two so soon that pile will be a slightly different size and colour but still there. I think the last time I had everything washed was Christmas. As we are currently stuck in rainy season there’s no way I’m going to ever get rid of that mountain again. Curses.
• The pile behind the bin is actually a load of textbooks I use for studying, as well as a small towel I carry around during rainy season (when I remember it) and a bookbag. I am a good boy and I study very hard every day, so it logically follows that I would be too lazy too hardworking to put those away neatly.
• The clothes that are hanging from the shelving unit on the far left are my suit and also a tennis shirt. That is my “clothing to-do list” and infact, after I finish this update I am going to hang them up. I promise.
• The mountain of rubbish on the desk and above my laptop are…well piles of stuff I haven’t gone through yet but I will.

Hopefully this list has satiated any cleanliness bloodlust anyone might have had long enough for me to sort some of it out.

This is our kitchen and dining room. Isn’t it wonderful. Notice if you will the rather classy “really old and uncared for” look that the designer went for, possibly whilst high on PCP or takeaway ramen. To the right is our amazing fridge, microwave, toaster triple cooking threat, whilst cleverly off screen to the left is the amazing “shove all our cutlery” storage units.

This is the drying room, where we hang things to, well, dry. There is also a TV with some games consoles that we used a bit over Christmas when it was too cold to go outside, and to prove that the Tokyo volunteers are clearly way better at fighting games than the Hokkaido volunteers.

Next is the bathroom. The door to the left leads to the shower room, which is basically one huge sink you stand in. The only problem is older volunteers forgot to leave the fan on, leading to some pretty nasty looking mold in the corners of the room. It’s probably not healthy to shower in there but nothing bad has happened to me so far, unless you count the hours of painful coughing and the extra arm that is growing out of my chest.

Finally, this is the various crap that sits atop my desk. We have Mr. Snowman, Mr. Mushroom, Mr. Manju (the white ball, Mr. Dragon and Mr. Duck. I also have another dragon who lives on my desk at school, and Mr. Fox who lives on my bed.

So there you have it. Am I living in squalor? Yes. But am I too ashamed to post it on a blog where all my family and friends will read it and email me demanding I clean it up? No. Was that a wise move? No.

Available on Youtube!

Not long ago, I wrote about a song by Spitz called Cherry, and I thought it was time for another. I actually mentioned this song a long time ago in an update I did about Karaoke, but I never posted it because I couldn’t find a nice version. Well, thanks to Matt, this version has come to my attention, which is I believe the original version, as opposed to the dodgy panpipes one I’d found.

I know this is blatant filler material again, but bear with me. We’re in rainy season right now and it’s a miracle that the furious rain and unbearable humidity haven’t managed to drive me insane yet.

I was tagged by Jamaipanese in a game I have cleverly titled “blogtag”. Basically, I have to post eight interesting things about myself, before passing it on to a few other blog authors who’s secrets I dream of knowing. Usually I don’t really enjoy this sort of “Post your four favourite motorway signs” stuff, but I’ll give this one a go as it gives me an excuse to talk about some of the stuff I never wrote about on here.

1. Photographs
Every photograph that I have taken this year, aside from a few on my mobile phone, were taken with one of two cameras. From September to just before I went to Kyoto, I was using a tiny little black Olympus Mini Mju, which I still plan to use at concerts and so on. Nowadays I use a Nikon D80, a fantastic piece of kit with way too many buttons.

2. Music
I have a 60GB iPod Video, which is filled with all sorts of stuff. For a decent list of my music tastes, have a look at my Last.FM profile. I like listening to my iPod far too loud on the train, which lets people around me listen to music for free! I truly am a wonderful giver.

3. Japan Is Doomed
This blog is hosted by Dreamhost, powered by Wordpress and looks nice thanks to the Wordpress fSpring theme. The first post was written on August 25th. I average 7.9 updates a month, which suggests I will have around 84 updates at the end of my year, although the next two months are going to be the busiest I’ve ever had, so I am expecting to hit near 100, unless I can think of even more excuses not to post. I don’t think “My dog ate my blog” counts, does it? There are 264 comments currently on the blog, and if I let spammers post, I would have 15,591 comments. Curse you, spammers!

4. University
My first day at Sheffield University will be October 1st. I am taking Japanese language, which is a four year course, the third of which is at a university in Japan. I have no idea which university in Japan I will end up at or even which one I want to go to yet, I’m not even going to worry about that yet. Alongside Japanese I can take a variety of other subjects, I’m thinking of an English Teaching course (TOEFL) or possibly advanced drinking studies, although I heard the coursework for that is a nightmare.

5. Forgotten Things
Although I try to use this blog to remember everything I’ve done, there’s quite a bit of stuff I never updated about for various reasons. They include seeing Delta Goodrem (I’m not a fan but she is stunning) in HMV, eating Ostrich at Leon’s birthday party (it was delicious) and visiting the Edo museum in Tokyo but failing to get any photographs. Oops.

6. Vital Statistics
My blood type is A positive. I am 182cm tall (or so). Eating black licorice makes me sick. I am a huge fan of cold Kirin beer. My favourite movies are Shaun Of The Dead, Battle Royale and The Shawshank Redemption. I also love The Lion King and The Truman Show but people laugh at me when I say that. I am right handed.

7. The Future
I leave Japan on August 20th and start university, as I said, on October 1st. I plan to come back to Japan next summer to visit everyone. I don’t know what I will do with Japan Is Doomed, but it will stay online for people to read. I’ll probably move it over to another site when I decide what I want to do.

8. Contact
I always reply to emails so please do drop me an email sometime. I will always write back and be nice. This is a clever way to get out of thinking of an 8th point and nothing more.

I am going to “tag” the following people; Leon, Nate & Dafydd. Gentlemen, start your writing!

So this update is a bit late. You want a fight about it?

It was one day after the end of Junten’s sports day. I was tired, sunburned and incredibly confused about what I had just seen. Whatever we did today should not involve riding a train for more than an hour whilst trying to stop people from squashing a small chocolate cake. However, this is exactly what I did as I feel if I ever decide to become a ninja, they would really be impressed in the interviews when I told them I was excellent at defending desserts on public transportation. Or something.

Barney, an American teacher we work with at Junten, invited us to his house to meet his family and explore the local countryside, near the sea in Oiso. That’s right! Countryside! Beaches! I think this about the third time this year I’ve seen some real nature. When I get back to England the first thing I will do is scale a tree and eat leaves for a few days.

As you can see, the sun was one again beating down, although it wasn’t quite as bad as Saturday, I had a full day of jumping between patches of shadows ahead of me. It actually turned a little bit cooler in the afternoon which was perfect as it allowed me to slowly but surely edge out into the sun, like a tiny squirrel exploring a forest grove for the first time. Except I don’t have an irrational fear of Badgers.

I’m sorry to say it, but this update has a picture of flowers in it. The place was just stuffed full of them and it was so nice to see some colour other than grey. I took quite a lot of pictures of flowers, but in the end I decided just to stick with this one. Again, I’m sorry. Prepare to hold your breath…

There, that wasn’t so bad, was it? Plus, look at all the pretty colours!

Anyway, after a short stop and tour of Barney’s half-Western, half-Asian house, we headed out to climb one of the nearby mountains, which is where the title of this article comes in. Along the way we were assaulted by various forms of wildlife, mostly the very small, creepy variety. If you’re squeamish please look away now, as the next photo has 8 legs and would like nothing more than to eat your toes.

The point of wading our way through all this horrible nature was to get a good view out of the tower which adorned the top of the mountain, offering a few as far as Tokyo, and in the opposite direction all the way to Atami. It was truly a stunning view, and even though the sun had gone in a little you could still see a great deal of distance.

I haven’t been up the Tokyo tower yet, but it’s something I really want to do during the day so I can get a photo like this of the city I live, although to see a picture which would sum that up pretty well, click here.

After we made our way back down to the ground, it was time for dinner, which included mashed potato! After that superb twist of culinary fate it was time to go home, as we had an hour and twenty minute train ride ahead of us, and work in the morning. The last thing we did was take a nighttime stroll along the beach close to Barney’s house, filling our hearts with joy and our shoes with sand, before walking to the station.

Thus ends another page in my book of Japan. We made it home by about half past midnight, collapsed into bed, and although I don’t remember going to work at all on Monday morning, I apparently did as I’ve still got my job.

Throughout the Junten Sports Day, various different classes and year groups of students performed Yosakoi dances. Yosakoi is a traditional Japanese dance and is typically performed by quite a large number of people (usually 20+) at the same time. Although we only saw about three or four performances, it’s really quite a large and complex thing so if you’re interested, you can read more about it here.

I quite enjoyed the performances because the students who were doing it wore these cool costumes and it’s pretty impressive when they all move together. That said, the less well behaved students would refuse to get into it and grudgingly threw their limbs around but it’s hard appreciate a dancer when he has a look of pure boredom on his face. Nevermind.

I’ve decided to just post a few photos here today, as most of them are the same but with various different poses and groups of students. Enjoy!

So there we have it. This concludes the four-update write up of the sports day, one of the strangest events I’ve ever bore witness to. Tomorrow I shall tell you of my amazing trip to Oiso, a town not too far from Atami, a place I visited and wrote about way back in October.