A lot can happen in two months it seems.

I hate myself for leaving it this long to explain whats happened since november - where on earth do i begin? ive been driving myself slightly crazy over it, its a process of digestion of events for myself to write in my blog, and now im in a position where everything is slightly foggy, and how i feel about it all is quite lost. Whats the interest in just describing what i did now?. I also realise youre all despirate to get your fix of my antics, they have been great i can tell you that :P.

lets start with late november ( i have to shuffle through the photo albums to remember, but luckily i love my camera enough that nothing slipped by) lots of official business i suppose here - we were invited to our japanese teachers house for dinner and got to enjoy the most western meal i think any of us had in a while, it was really nice to enjoy such an experience, you dont get that kind of thing with your teachers at home, and she was a great cook - there was even REAL red wine. Her apartment on the outside was exactly like all the apartments you see in Japanese horror movies, and i got the good kind of freaked out walking from the elevator to the front door.

Seki Sensei and the dog, im sorry i cant remember her name

It was Eugenes birthday on the same day so it was imperative that we went out and got him slaughtered, i dont think we succeeded, but we did have an awefully good time, found a hobgoblin there, selling actual hobgoblin ales, and a friend of Roys who works there - a japanese girl with a brilliant south london accent. That was the night Yuki got a bulls-eye playing darts for the first time in his life.

Yuki's unsane bulls-eye

On the 26th, our politics teacher, courtesy of our British tutors friendship with Japanese government, organised for us to have a meeting with the chairman of the house of representatives (of the government of Japan) he's has the same role as the chairman of the house of lords in the UK. Everyone made their efforts to get into a suit, Philip even bought himself a tie, although, due to not knowing how to tie one, skilfully took it out of the packet and put it around his neck without undoing it. Well done Philip. Japanese parliament is a beautiful building, which has 70's style light boards which tell you which members of parliament are in by lighting up the button next to their name, in some geeky way i found this quite impressive - im sure someone has had a lot of fun with that in the past. There is a staircase in the centre of the building which since the building has been built, has only ever had the emperor and cleaning staff step on it, this again i think is amusing to think about, we weren't allowed to take any pictures of the inside of parliament really, but i drew a crappy sketch of it - if only i could find it. At some point soon im going to try and get the pictures up on facebook, ive got exams and papers to have finished before the end of the month, so i expect ill be doing that soon, to avoid such work.

Takahiro Yokomichi's Office

Then we come to Shizuoka - Home to 3.7 million people, a prefecture which is about a 4 hour drive south of Tokyo, its where the first Shogun came from, and its famous for mandarins, yam soup (bleurgh your heart out) and sushi. We spent two days on a coach- i mean - exploring the place, it was brilliant fun, but in Japan they like to be so organised theres not a lot of time to explore, so i felt very much like a tourist. We did however get to experience some cultural classics that ive been wanting to know about for a long time. First there was the onsen. That was the naked bathing. More fun than i thought it would be, and after a couple of scary naked minutes, not as embarrassing, makes you wonder what the big deal about body issues is actually. While we were in Shizuoka we saw some lovely temples, ate a lot of food, saw a lot of hello kitty statues, and saw Fujisan from afar, it was beautiful, im looking forward to getting closer to it at some point.

Mandarine farm, we got to eat as many as we could in the time we had, negative acid overdose

We hung out in our yokata's after onsen, chilled to the max

And thats mount fuji in the background, just...

Between Shizuoka and Christmas break, usual banter ensues: there was the day we pretended we could spend any amount of money and go Christmas shopping, Charlie and i did it all in a 12 hour shopping day and rewarded ourselves with Spanish food with Max and Roy, Roy is a fountain of knowledge when he is drunk, boy i actually love you, many times. And no evening is complete without a little humerous banter...

The Gundam floor of an electronics store, thats right, the ENTIRE floor is toy robot kits - yes James and George, your christmas present did come from here.

Comically oversized cone charlie attempted to put on her head.

There was also the Meiji museum where we got to learn all about Meiji Japan and the restoration through a few giant paintings commissioned on the millennium - its awesome mainly because many of the painters painted the king to traditional values that mean you cant look directly at him, so he is constantly being blocked by something, like someone's taken a series of bad photos for the commission. We followed that up with a healthy dose of ridiculously titled ice cream.

Baskin Robbins most offensively tasteless icecream

Just before Christmas break, when i had successfully finished all my work early, Yasuo took me on a music finding adventure, and we ended up in Koeji (im assuming that's how its spelt, you never know really) It was the first part of Tokyo apart from Ekoda that felt like it was actually lived in, we rambled the streets for a while trying to find a hidden gem of a record store, and after trawling the same street hundreds of times with no win, we finally went back after 2pm and saw a small sign in the street saying it was open. This place was no bigger than a university accommodation living room, but you could get an alcoholic drink, or a coffee, and sit and listen to the music, there was a glorified soap box in the corner which is used as a stage sometimes. Its the home of a collection of alternative and underground folk music, and its a really relaxing environment to spend some time in, even if it does feel like you've just walked into someone's bedroom. We had a chirstmas get together at university and went on our ways to do whatever exciting things we needed to do over christmas. For me Charlie and Snezh, that was going to Thailand...