Show him the way to go home

Saturday night I had to see the landlord home. It was George`s birthday and he by 1.30 he was losing all signs of intelligent life. He donated my gift of a plastic St George`s flag to a more grateful small child and invited my boss to join us for a glass of wine, before weaving a journey five times longer than that taken by me and Matt DoS. He skipped off to raid a rubbish pile he has previously found a fully-functioning PC in so I skipped after him, while Matt stood with his bike like a bored father-of-two-stupid-children. At George`s flat, Matt and I attempted a stunted conversation (Matt has just been home for bad news and, knowing I shouldn`t refer to it, I couldn`t think of anything else to talk about) while George announced he was off to bed and audibly stripped and passed out on the bed. The partition which should have separated him from the living room and Matt`s line of vision was open and making Matt feel uncomfortable, so he left his glass of wine and pedalled home.

The next morning, George and I visited the Sogo pet department to visit Tony, a fish he has his eye on. We escalated up to the 10th floor (9th in English floors) to ogle puppies and puffer fish, but found Tony had been dispatched to another owner. George was quickly appeased by a mini Manta Ray with bright blue spots. Men are so fickle. He re-arranged some leather display dogs in the dogwear lingerie section into a compromising position and we left. After I left George, I bumped into Riaz and his girlfriend who gave me a misguidedly knowing look as I had so obviously not been home Saturday night. Their idea of my Saturday night is far more exciting than it was, although pulling George off the floor when he decided to have a lie-down in someone`s driving was quite thrilling, as you can imagine.

Later, Karen and I went to Ueno to check out tickets for an outdoor version of Othello. Sadly, I couldn`t afford itm although I was very jealous leaving her to it. I am sure there will be other plays. One of the men who works behind the scenes goes in the George, which is how we heard about it. Now he knows we`re interested, he`s bound to tell us about others.

As we were leaving the station, I was bemoaning my misfortune in not having my students take me out. One in particular, Yumiko, is a high school teacher and likes all sorts of good things. She was telling me about an exhibition from the Pushkin Museum she`s visited and I had later relayed this to George, who advised me to check out Metropolis magazine, which I immediately forgot to do. As I was explaining my desperation to see it, we saw, emblazoned across Ueno station concourse, a poster for the exhibition. It was in Ueno, so I got to go. It was curious seeing a collection of mainly French art (Gaugin, Matisse, Cezanne, Renoir) in Japan .There was even a previously unseen (by us) van Gogh. A painting called A Mother`s Kiss particularly moved me, but it wasn`t available in postcard form. I will have to limit my visits to Japanese museums and galleries; they have all the worst bits of European museums: five-deep throngs of Japanese tourists clogging up the routes and getting in the way. The more cultural Japanese seem far taller than your common garden version. We bumped into Riaz and his girlfriend, Tomomi, again and I made an apparent faux pas by comparing one reasonable izakaya to a slightly better one. For all Japan`s manners, it seems quite acceptable to just laugh in someone`s face. I intend to enjoy this newly discovered convention to the full.