Booze

So, a vodka and tonic in Japanese is a vodka tonic. I`m liberated. Friday night after work went out for a colleagues birthday, had a couple of doubles and FISH and CHIPS in an Irish pub. Was pretty cheap too.

Then Saturday there was a welcome piss up for a few of us newer teachers at another of the schools I teach it. It involved a 3500 yen eat and drink as much as you can deal. Now, 3500 yen (about 17 quid) is a lot of money to me at the moment as I won`t have much money to throw around for another couple of months but, after much dithering, I gave in and went along. The choice of free drinks was pretty wide, but as my request for vodka some how became gin, that`s what I stuck to. As they are, obviously, pretty slow at coming with the drinks (we only had two hours) we were mass ordering. The first time I asked for a large gin (well, I actually tried to get a pitcher for myself, but they weren`t going for that for some reason) the waiter looked absolutely horrified. They obviously don`t get many Brits in that particular Shinjuku Izakaya. But bring them they did. And I spent most of the two hours rotating my way through pints of weak G & T. As we started running out of time, I thought I`d try to get a straight shot or two from them.

I wasn`t expecting a straight half pint of gin though!

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I didn`t get overly drunk, had a great evening and had no hangover the next day. We sang some karaoke and most of the group went on to sing more. My current budget wouldn`t allow for it though. Still, there`s no rush.

My modem finally arrived and gets switched on Wednesday. Problem is though that the installing instructions are all in Japanese. I have managed to figure out which bit to plug into which other bit though. And as anyone who knows me could testify, even if the instructions were in English, I`d probably have difficulties. And all my IT-knowledgeable friends are back in the UK.

Of course this ALSO means I`ll be MSN`d again!

My swollen gum cleared up by itself, which is a relief, as I didn`t want to have to tackle a dentist here.

And I now know where there`s a massive library, near me, with a huge selection of English language books. Can`t wait to find it!

Second Japanese lesson went much better too. I told her that memorising huge chunks of information wasn`t the British way of learning and I wasn`t capable of it. She understood. Thankfully! I just need to find the time to sit down and get into the habit of regular study!

Oh and I am SO bored with wearing suits and the same shirts every day. In the UK I wore the same thing all the time, but it was never a problem. Figure this one out!