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It happened in... August"Misdo" - a friend indeed / No such thing as a free dinner? / Work don't work Fourth week Yay! Free dinner! Free beer! We descend on the Castle Hotel and hoover up as much free grub from the buffet as we can. By the time we've paid 3 visits, our time is up, and it's time to be removed from the dining area by crane, and airlifted home. Third week Well would you credit it. Mrs C wins dinner for 2 at the Kumamoto Castle Hotel, with (GET THIS!) free booze. A fresh layer of TippEx is applied to whole of next week in the diary. I'm pretty lucky with jobs, in that I'm now more or less full time with one of them, while still doing bits for the other one, though that contract will be up soon. This week is the Mashiki Festival, our own local one. I am persuaded somehow to don the allegedly traditional attire of yukata and off we go. It's a similar deal to the one in the city, but there's more of an atmosphere, loads of food stalls cooking up different things and the drink is flowing. This time the dance is a circular affair, and in keeping with the more relaxed atmos, nobody's particularly bothered whether they get it right or not. Second week I have come to a decision. And that is that not all corporations are monsters. In fact one of them is a saviour. I am of course referring to that fine establishment, Mister Donut, purveyor of fine gooey comestibles to the populace of this living room since April. It has been suggested that they are dusted not with sugar, but with cocaine, and hence my almost immediate addiction. Whilst I'm not putting on any weight, I fear for my arteries. But not much, let's be clear. August also sees Obon, a festival dedicated to remembering dead ancestors. It is also marked by a carnival parade in the city centre, and families come out to watch the festivities. Dozens of clubs and groups dance along Densha-doori, all doing the same dance, all to the same tune, for about 2 hours. It's taken me nearly a month to get that tune out of my head, and I will hurt anyone that puts it back in there. But it's a colourful do, and an interesting evening out, and the little ones are up for it because they get to stay up late! First week Mrs C has just entered about a dozen competitions from the local paper. We bless the postcards before we send them off. And it was Mrs C's first payday too. Even though she's been in the job for over 6 weeks. But she won't even see most of that, because the company will deduct for the clothes they asked her to wear. So she will have been in the job for 10 weeks before she gets a full pay cheque, by which point her savings will have disappeared. She's rethinking the future of this job entirely. |
