The Eternal Gaijin

Two good friends PL and RW are getting married today back in Canada. With the upcoming move, Mrs Gaijin and I aren't able to attend the wedding. But we want to extend our best wishes, love and congratulations to both of them as they begin their lives together. All the best to them both.

So here we go again. The same chestnut. We're on our way again. Wife transferred back to England. Dog needs shipping. He's going to hate that. Us flying. I'm going to hate that. Job hunts. Passports (me). Packing. Uncluttering. I get sentimental over clothes ('I went to university with this t-shirt') and asking me to throw away a book is like asking Lance Armstrong to chuck out his remaining nut. Panicking (more her than me). Tension fuelled sleepless nights (more me than her). So the countdown to England has begun. We're gone at end of September. Rev, I leave Japan to you. Take care of it until I get back. And try not to let this happen too much:

On Northwest Airlines, the movies could not get worse. 27 Dresses has almost no redeeming features. Be Kind, Rewind has a few redeeming features. Also, the service could not get much worse. Throwing around eggs, chicken and boil in a bag rice does not make oyako-don. You can't stretch your legs enough. Children should be muzzled or part of checked luggage. Your iPod batteries never last long enough. Neither do laptops batteries. Nor your Nintendo DS. Old women love to speak Japanese to you. Old women you speak Japanese to and help through American customs will give you cookies. Seven hours is enough time to exhaust all the entertainment possibilities of Detroit airport seven times over. Hamburgers are cheap and plentiful. The guy in front of you in the line has had dozens already today. Good luck getting around him no matter how wide the concourse. There is no visible source from them, but there are hoboes inside the secure area. US Customs is friend...

There have been several contributing factors to this feeling of grumpiness. First of all is the weather. Now it's a well know fact that Canadians love talking about the weather so I have no plans on slowing myself down here. Fucking humidity. Just walking up the frakking hill to the house leaves me sweating for a half hour. Walking! You should smell me when I get back from a jog. If you want to understand what it's  like in Kobe in the summer, buy a treadmill. Put it in a steam room (push the fat Finnish guys in towels over a few seats to fit it in) Jog for half an hour or so. That's the feeling I get just checking the mail. What's that? Could I get into some details? Possibly something involving undergarments? Sure can. The sweat of just walking down to the main road, a hundred steep metres is enough to run down my back like a salty Niagara that soaks into a cotton briefs Gaspe Peninsula that gets stickily wedged into a my Northumberland Straits. And while the...

With the heat and humidity being what it is, I just can't be arsed, so here's a random ten from the iPod and sod all else until tomorrow at the earliest. Pepper Butthole Surfers Jupiter: The Bringer of Jollity Holst Jesus Thinks You're a Jerk Frank Zappa Thief Our Lady Peace I'll Find My Way Home Jon and Vangelis Round and Round Frozen Ghost Shaving My Neck Gene Loves Jezebel Deeper Underground Jamiroquai Good Nurse The Constantines Sure as I'm Sitting Here John Hiatt Inevitable conclusion: My iPod is a fucked up place to inhabit.

110 best books: The perfect library - Telegraph I was wondering how well my own library and reading habits stacked up. Pretty poorly it turns out. And I consider myself widely, if not well, read. And yet this is how my results turn out. If I've read it, it's italicized . If I've got it, it's in bold . So this means? Title By Notes: The Iliad and The Odyssey Homer Long. The Barchester Chronicles Anthony Trollope   Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen   Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift   Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë   War and Peace ...

The last of our decorating is now finished and I'm doing the touch ups. Next on the list is to sort out the unaccompanied air freight. Last night however wasn't a complete something on my list night. I hooked a train out ot Ashford, Kent and caught up with friend JDF, who I hadn't seen since our trip to the UK in February two years ago. It was good to sit down, joke, and generally catch up on things from jobs to mutual friends still in Japan. And of course fatherhood. About 11 months back friend JDF joined the ranks of the breeders (hooray, a legally recognized marriage in Washington. No wait. He's been married for 8 years or so. Never mind, he'd have been annulled years ago) Anyway, he and his wife made a Mini-me. Things are going well with him, despite the sleepless nights and stuff like that. I do like that fact that with his new job he uses expressions like 'on an op' as if it didn't sound like some serious-ass 'Gitmo shit. Things have changed si...