Special, but not in the Sunshine Bus way

I should clarify, when I wrote nothing special as the heading to my last entry it had nothing to do with Lizzy! Seeing her really was very special indeed! I have just spent a whole week listening to all my adult students telling me this is how they pass their time. It is either this or trying to tell me they did nothing - not eat, sleep or watch TV apparently. Of course, they have all been shopping, but this really is `nothing special`.

I saw Lizzy again last night and again it was almost perfectly normal to be catching up in Japan and not the Bullfrog. This time we made it to Shinjuku, the hub of Tokyo. Unfortunately, for nostalgic reasons, we also went to the Hub - a British chain pub where you have to queue in an orderly fashion for jumbo gin and tonics - and were accosted by some boring Japanese drunks asking us if we could eat natto and what surprised us most about Japan. I, not expecting it to get through to them, said how rude everyone was and Lizzy obligingly translated. I also told them I loved natto, though they found this almost impossible to believe. This was strangely perceptive of them, though it does look and taste like something you would scrape off the back of a plant to stop greenfly spreading.

In the excitement, I missed my unfeasibly early last train (why, oh why is there no nightbus?!) and had to stay on the floor of the apartment Lizzy was borrowing. It was incredibly plush and in the `Hampstead` of Tokyo - where Suzuki-san and I will probably end up living, no doubt. The apartment was amazing and had a heated floor - a nice touch, although the glass of water I took to bed with me was warm before my dehydration had climaxed. Unfortunately, not being gargantuanly drunk, I couldn`t sleep very well and so upped and left at 7am to make the journey back to Omiya. Something that would have been fine, had it not been so incredibly cold. The whole of the Kanto region seems to be trapped in a wind tunnel and the past three or four days, while very clear and bright, have been bitterly cold.