I will start off by offering my apologies for my distinctly infrequent posting on this blog. As you have no doubt ascertained, I usually spend very little time actually sitting on the computer and when I am on it, I usually can't be bothered to do anything other than listen to music or watch Peepshow. Anyway, I am spending this weekend (well, wednesday/thursday - my weekend) at home, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to give you an update.

Unfortunately I can't really give you too many details about what I've been doing as most of my memory of the last month is kind of hazy and the few things I can remember, I would rather not have documented records of. Basically I have spent the last month going out pretty much every single night. Until today I had only had 1 drink free day in a month. Said day was sunday, where I had actually vowed to give up alcohol for a week to save money, as funds were running decidely low. That lasted all the way up to monday evening, where I went out with some friends and had all sorts of wonderful adventures. It was a fantastic evening, but unfortunately I somehow decided that it would be a brilliant idea to spend the last of my money buying drinks for everyone I was with. This is why I am having to spend my weekend at home. Fortunately it is payday on friday, which is good as I only had about £7 left. I had enough money for 1 meal today, 1 tomorrow and then my train fare to work on friday. Still, it's all good and it was totally worth it for monday night. I guess I could go into more detail about that one - it's one of my more interesting evenings out, but by no means particulary outlandish when compared to some of the nights I have had.

Ok, so it started at work. I was talking about how I hadn't had any alcohol for 36 hours and how this was totally awesome (well, in theory it was awesome - in actuality it was pretty lame). Shortly after this, I got invited to go for drinks in Yokohama by my friend Yuri, who was meeting up with one of her friends in TGI Fridays. Even though I wasn't planning on drinking again for the rest of the week, I am not one to turn down an invitation out. The invite was extended to Emma and Brian (who I work with) and so we all headed back to our respective homes to go get changed. Wen I got home I decided to have a couple of 'house doubles' as I had bought a big bottle of schmirnoff the other day and figured that it is always a good idea to lay the foundations if one is planning to have a fun evening out. I rapidly discovered that as I hadn't had much vodka for a while that I had apparently lost my taste for it - it was decidedly unpleasant. Then again, I did try and mix about 4 shots worth with a quantity of fruit juice that wasn't much greater. The second one I made definitely went down more easily. Anyway, after those and having got changed I was ready to head out into town.

I met Brian at the Kamiooka station as he also lives here and we often do nights out in Kamiooka. We got to Yokohama and met up with Emma and her boyfriend Alex and then headed to TGI Fridays. We met up with Yuri and her friend, who was very nice. We also bumped into our friend Jon who is a cool American barman who works at an awesome bar right near where I work - we go in there all the time (I now have a tab there and everything). We stayed in TGI's for quite a while and this is where my memory starts to fade. I remember at some point leaving to buy 'street beers'. Well, I say beers - I picked me, Brian and Alex up some chu-hi's. These are disgusting fruit flavoured, alcoholic beverages. I buy these instead of beer because they are 7% instead of 5%. Seems to me that if you are going to drink something cheap and nasty, it might as well be strong. Now my memory becomes very fuzzy. I remember that Brian and Yuri left to get the last train. This had been my original plan as I had the 1pm to 9pm shift the next day and I hate doing that with a bad hangover. Still, as I was having an awesome night and also becoming better acquainted with Yuri's friend, I decided that I would stay out. We went to a convinience store, where I decided that it would be a brilliant idea to buy us all a big bottle of Jinro (some nasty spirit - who knows what it is) and a big bottle of green tea (which works so well at covering up the taste of alcohol - much better than lemonade or fruit juice etc). Unfortunately it wasn't like we had glasses or anything, so I demonstrated the appropriate method of consumption. This involved drinking a large quantity of Jinro straight from the bottle and then quickly following it up with some green tea. I demonstrated this a number of times - just to make sure everyone understood the technique ofcourse. By this point I felt like my head was likely to fall off, so I passed the bottles to Jon and Alex who happily consumed it all between them. The next thing I remember is that we had somehow wandered over to Sakuragicho. Now this is within walking distance of Yokohama, but it must be like 30 minutes or something and I don't remember any of that. I remember that we encountered some guy who was playing the bongos like a king, but by that point I had become otherwise engaged - although I am not going to go into any details about that. Anyway, after a while Alex, Emma and Jon headed off on the walk back to Alex and Emma's house and left us to our own devices. If you've lost track of who is where, then just go back and start reading again - I have no intention on helping you out on this one. Basically, the night continued to be most excellent and I ended up waking up in Sakuragicho right near the big clock/ferris wheel thing - which I will be posting a video of in just a moment. I managed to get a train back, get home for 3 hours sleep and then get to work. Strangely I was feeling most death-like the next morning (well later in the same morning). I was also decidely unpleased to find that I had my end of probation evaluation that day. Still, fortunately I am awesome at my job so I am sure I did fine. I have also become something of a legend in my own time because I go on nights out pretty much every night and yet somehow still have perfect attendance at work - although there have been some occassions where I would definitely have been better off calling in sick. Still, I am determined not to have any days off unless my leg falls off or something.

Anyway, that was a very brief and largely undetailed description of one of my nights out. I guess on the scale of crazy nights out, with 1 being standard fare and 10 being utterly insane, that one probably scores about a 6. To be fair I have left out all the details about the parts of the evening that most appealed to me, but I have no intention of putting those sorts of details on the internet.

Anyway, that aside all is going really well. There is never a boring moment here; most nights out are adventures; I am constantly meeting loads of new and interesting people - basically life is still stunning.

I apologise for the fact that this post is pretty terrible, but it has been composed with no real care or consideration and atleast it's something. I hope you are all well and excelling at whatever you are doing - those of you that aren't should get yourselves on the next flight over here (unless ofcourse you have some sort of aversion to being happy, in which case I would recommend Norfolk).