Time flies when you can`t get a wireless connection in your flat. So, where was I up to? Right. Last Thursday I came into Nagoya to apply for my alien registration card and to get a mobile phone. The alien card took an hour, and the mobile phone also took ages. The guy who sold it to me had spent some time in England and kept dropping in bits of British slang like, "it`s just a couple of quid" which amused me quite a lot. I still find Nagoya incredibly confusing and I can`t find anything, but luckily if you stand and look bewildered someone will eventually take pity on you and help you out.
I got on the train to go back to Inuyama in the evening, but got the completely wrong one. It took another 2 trains and an hour and a half to get to Inuyama and I needed a drink after that. Luckily Iain and Darius were already in the pub having the pants bored off them by a dull American called Ray.
On Friday... what on earth did I do on Friday? I can`t remember. I think it involved loafing around and improving my MarioKart skills.
Saturday was the Inuyama festival. I assume there`s some tradition behind it (unless people did sit around a table and say, "ok... let`s build some enormous 3 storey wooden floats, and put intricate mechanical puppets at the top... and parade them around the street for 2 days. There should be, how many? Thirteen, say? That`s a suitably mysterious number, lets go for that. And everyone pushing the floats should wear the same outfits. All those in favour? Motion passed. Now, on to the coffee morning..."), but I have no idea what the story is behind the whole thing. The streets were lined with food stalls, and it made me oddly homesick for Thailand. We walked around for a while, eating mysterious fried things on sticks and drinking beer. There were lots of small shows going on around the town and we caught live music and dancing and nearly got crushed by huge floats. Photos will go up tomorrow if I can figure out how to do it.
On Sunday it rained horribly so we stayed in, read, and ate comfort food. I went back to Nagoya in the afternoon to meet my flatmate and finally unpack my stuff. My flatmate`s called Lucy and she`s Canadian. Her mum is visiting at the moment so it feels like quite a ful