When the wheels come off

So, as you may have figured out, I'm an Assistant English Teacher in Japan (note the capitals; it's that important, I tell you).  The job has it's ups and downs, it's perks and drawbacks, but the one BIG highlight of the year is the summer holidays, which I get off (not all English teachers here get that luxury, but it's usually a trade-off between pay and free time, so it all evens out in the end).

I had planned to return to the UK for 3 weeks this summer, but after a furious reshuffling, I'm now staying here, with a trip to Korea as the big feature of this summer break.  But that's not all!  Ooh, no.  Tomorrow morning (and it's the nasty end of the morning - I'm up at 4am to catch trains, ugh), I'm off on a trip to Nagoya and Hiroshima, taking in other various places on the way, including one of Japan's most famous sights - so watch this space!

Mike the Bike really stood out in a crowd.

Even my days of rest between Karuizawa and this have been packed with stuff, planned or spontaneous.  Last weekend, not long after my last blog post, I was halfway to cycling to Cainz Home when my (t)rusty old bike gave up on me (Mike, I called him.  Mike the Bike.  Okay, stop the sniggering at the back): the back wheel buckled, well beyond repair.  I nursed the poor thing back to D2, where I bought him 16 months ago*, and I bought my nigh-identical replacement.  Spike, he's called.  Well, I couldn't think of any other names that rhymed with bike.

It's a good thing too: just that night I was halfway through cooking when I realised I was missing a vital ingredient.  You have never seen a guy hustle a bike through Japanese suburbia so fast.  To Yaoko and back in under 10 minutes.  Which was just as well: moments later the Mother Of All Storms rolled over, with lightning breaking more frequently than a card castle on a bouncy castle.  One lick of lightning struck either ridiculously close to my apartment or the building itself: no gap to speak of between the lightning, the thunder...and the power cutting off for a good half hour.

But the night wasn't finished yet.  Oh no.  Not to be outdone by the sky, the earth wanted to get in on the action too, and at 4am I awoke to my apartment shuddering at a 6.4 magnitude earthquake.  Phew.

A chance to really break Spike in came on Monday, when my friend Marcos and his visiting friend from Miami, Tanya, came to visit, specifically to take a bike-ride around the wonderful Shinrin Koen.  Shinrin Koen is huge national park near my house, and it's big selling point (for me, anyway) is the network of dedicated bicycle-roads throughout the park.  It was especially fun to be weaving through the rapidly darkening trees to reach the exit before closing time: we were sure we wouldn't be closed in, but it sure was a good motivator.  Trouble was, I'd bought my own bike, so even aftet we'd left the park I had to push-pedal my way another 4km home.  Needless to say, when I got back a shower was in order!  The izakaya food, drinking and karaoke were an excellent way to unwind afterwards too.

So, here I am.  Time to turn in and a few precious hours sleep.  Here's hoping nothing disturbs that...

See you in a few days!

*Yeah, 16 months isn't that long, I know, but I used my bike every single workday, for at least 8km.  I figured that I did around 1,900 miles on my old bike, roughly the same distance between Sierra Leone in Africa and the tip of Brazil.  A little a day sure adds up, doesn't it?  Not that 8km a day in the sweltering Japanese summer felt like small fry, ooh no.