Sakura mania

I`ve been told the cherry blossom can turn you mad, but I suspect almost everyone out here already is. Japanese and gaijin alike. On a low level, my neighbours are horridly anti-social while I live in fear of complaints about playing my music (the Sex Offender received a complaint about a party whilst listening to music alone in his flat before 11pm). The obsessive-compulsive disorders of my neighbours manifest themselves in many ways. One switches on their washing machine during sleeping hours so I doze off and wake up to the rumble of churning dirty linen, another wails like a cat being torn limb-from-limb while having sex (strangely, the man makes no sounds during, only before and after so I know the girl is not alone) as I try to settle down for my early Saturday start and another neighbour who slips into hob-nail boots at 5.25am every morning to prepare for work. I have no idea how a Japanese person could get so much weight into their thudding steps, perhaps I will soon discover my apartment is shared with a sumo stable.

As a nation, there is a huge bout of OCD afoot. Retail therapy is rife (almost all train stations double as department stores) and Japanese claims of good manners and clean living are just an excuse to cover up the fact that, in their twisted minds, they have to wash their hands fifty times and day and can`t step on floor wearing shoes or their families will die.

Alcoholism is rife in the Salarymen too. Yesterday, the Cafe Lampers attempted a bit of a limp hanami. It was quite a traditional affair. We went to the park (after being taken to a piece of ground that was practically a car park, but contained a slide and two cherry blossoms leaning over a mesh fence and deciding that was not quite enough) and laid out of blue sheets (finally, Ian, I get what you meant!) and tucked into sub-standard okonomiyaki. Later, Graeme, the hideous Canadian JET turned up with wine he was swigging from the bottle in an effort to look cool and the party was redeemed slightly by alcohol. Fortunately, as Greame is a hideous attention-seeker and thinks he`s cool, I can freely take the piss and he thinks we`re just being chummy. I have to watch it though, as Kaori may think the same and I don`t think it is safe to cross a jealous Japanese stalker. Eventually it started to rain a little and we were moving to go when we spotted a group of tremendous drunks. One was so bad he had actually pissed himself and dragged himself up to reveal telling wet patches on his cheap jeans. We spent half an hour stood watching and laughing at him and his friends trying to stand (in the picture you might be able to see one weaving towards a tree before thumping the earth) before we got caught, then another twenty minutes marvelling at how the less drunk friends joined us in laughing and tried to guess how many times they`d fall down before they made it home. Even the drunks we were laughing at joined in. It was incredible, but the park was littered with old men passed out on benches (one of whom tried to roll over and fell off) and blue sheets. They rob me of my title of Kamikaze Drinker. The pressure of 16 hours a day in the office forces them to embrace sake with passion.