Yay, me!

I got my first taxi last night from my station to my house by myself. Am VERY proud of myself.

I know I promised to not write too much about the weather but it's been raining again. A lot. All Japanese are experts on the weather. Until the end of June, we'd been assured by them that the rainy season would be over by the end of June. Now that it's obvious it isn't, suddenly everyone is forecasting the middle of July.

Last night I got so wet you could have wrung ME out. I had an umbrella so my head remained dry, but that's about it. I was out drinking with a large group, and we'd pre-booked a roof-garden table (yes, I KNOW!) where they'd put gazebo's over all the tables. Problem was, I was sitting where two of them joined and despite the best efforts of the staff to pin them together, the canvas they'd used for pinning came undone from the weight of the water - which proceeded to absolutely drench my right side. So nice. We decided to go to karaoke and we set off to find a great one I'd been to once before. Of course, one of the downsides of being an utter ditz, was that once we got to where I thought it was, it wasn't. And the rain was just getting heavier and heavier.... Next thing we knew three of had got separated from the other seven or so (some had gone straight home) and spent the next however long trying to find them. They SAID they were in 'Big Echo' - which is a chain of karaoke places. In Shinjuku there is more than one 'Big Echo'. We visited two of them trying to find our friends... and finally, in our dripping and squelching state, giving up and going home was the only option.

Good night though. Hungover today. I keep saying shochu is evil. One day I'll listen to myself. Maybe.

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There were a couple of stories in last weeks Japan Times that, what with one thing and another, I didn't get around to posting.

With the first of them , it was mainly the headline I liked: 'Condom makers face shriveling market'. Anyway the article isn't so great, just talks about how a lack of sex education and porn stars not wearing condoms is making them not so popular and how the Japanese market is addressing this with glow-in-the-dark, thicker and thinner condoms. As I said, the headline is the best thing about this but the idea of seeing a glowing penis in a dark room seems like a wonderful passion killer to me. (Shit, I've posted the word, 'porn', 'sex' and 'penis' - when I check where people found this site, I'm going to get some lovely surprises, aren't I?)

The second one was about internet addiction in China and how Beijing clinics are getting tough on internet addicts. This tough treatment is including electric shock treatment and drips of some drug or other that the person interviewed wouldn't be more specific about, being pumped into the addicts veins. This is for people as young as 12 and, of an estimated 94 million online population in China, some 2.5 million are believed to be addicts spending stupid amounts of time online. Anyway, on that note, time to log off I think....