Typhoon

It has just taken me almost an hour to sign in to this blog. Not only did I still find it all in Japanese, but I couldn't figure out my password. I tried every combination of user name and password I ever use, but no good. Eventually I had to reset it to what I thought it should be, which still takes a long time when the instructions are in kana. I can only think it must have been inactive for too long and it did something strange. Never mind I am in now.

I have got some time to update today because there is a typhoon and we are off school. We had an emergency dismissal yesterday and then a phone call at 5.20am to say it was too dangerous to travel for most people, so stay indoors. It was forecast, so we knew it was on the way, but apparently the storm changed direction slightly and came straight for us instead of to the west as they said it would. The wind was howling all night, but at 5am the cicadas were still chirping, which I found very spooky. I think it says a lot about the Japanese culture that here in Tokyo all the hotels got booked out so that people would be able to work today. Anywhere else in the world they would just try to get home and then if they couldn't get to work, so be it. Salarymen in Japan are a breed unknown!

I feel almost as though we have never been away, school is back to normal (except my knitting class is now 9-11 year-olds, so harder to keep track of - I have 2 girls who manage to either pull the whole thing off the needles every lesson or get in such a tangle we have to cut it off and start again), the new teachers are good fun, and everything is as we left it. We have invested in some slightly more efficient cockroach defences (ie little boxes pushed into every corner and under every shelf) since one crawled up Will's leg at 3am a couple of weeks ago. So far they seem to be working (touch wood) although we are still getting mosquito bitten quite a lot. My legs look so attractive with angry red splotches all the way up.

We have booked our flights to Australia for Christmas. We are flying to Cairns on the 15th of December and spending a few days in the tropics, then down to Melbourne for 4 days. The rest of the time we are going to stay in A friend's beach house in Geelong, about an hour outside of Melbourne. She is getting married in the middle of it all so there will be lots of people around that we know and I imagine we will be shown around all the sights until we are sick of them by all the Melbourne folks (the UK/Aussie rivalry at school hit a new high with the athletics in Osaka, and can only keep going with the Rugby about to start, so we will probably be dragged around to see how good at sport they are). We are also going to a test match on boxing day, but at least its not against England!

We have finally got new phones (Will's screen cracked and we wanted to change networks too) and these ones are able to send and receive text messages from the UK, Yay! Apparently it doesn't work with O2 phones for some reason, but everyone else can do it. I am still figuring out how some things work, like why I seem to have 2 answerphones so I can never tell if I have a new message cos I happen to check the wrong one (!) and other minor annoyances, but they are much smaller than the bricks we had last year and they give us loads of free calls because most of our friends changed to the same network, so it will be a lot cheaper overall too.

We decided our apartment looked a bit bare, like anyone could be living here, and that we didn't have enough storage space for all the bits and pieces we brought back with us, so we made a trip to Ikea when we got back. We had never driven there before, and we managed to take the wrong exit from the expressway. We could see it in the distance but we couldn't figure out how to get there! Eventually we found it, and bought lots of shelves and lamps and drawers and now it looks a lot more like a home here, we are really pleased. We even managed to spend less than we thought, which has to be a first on a visit to Ikea! I have bought some really nice fabric too, (since another teacher who moved to Hong Kong left me a sewing machine) and I am going to try to make some curtains for the living room. I will put photos of all this on, but I have put my camera away (somewhere safe no doubt) in all the new space and can't find it. Typical.

I managed to get my viola back to japan this year (after much confusion with BA) so I have been helping out with the orchestra at school. I am actually not playing the viola just yet, because the conductor got excited to have a piccolo player and chose pieces that need one, but it is nice to have the choice and be able to just play when I feel like it. I am also doing the sectionals for the wind section, which should be fun. They are awful, bless them, but it will be a challenge at least.

Although it is still very windy, the sun has come out now and the rain has stopped, so typhoon Fitow has passed us. But it is still only lunch time, and we have the rest of the day off, so I am going to go and do the ironing and other things I don't usually get around to. I might even start on my curtains!