Damn! We're in a tight spot!

Also known as "Cows! I hate cows worse than coppers!"

So, two weeks to report on. I'm nursing a hangover right now so I'm not getting anything serious done... may as well do me blog.

First up - Karaoke last Friday. We went back to the big Shibuya Shidax for some more K. The big surprise (well for me, not for the locals) was one of my work colleagues' dulcet tones. This guy was reaaally good! Anyway, after screeching my way through California Dreamin' and Champagne Supernova I called it a night. Or rather, tried to. Dave tricked me into downing the last couple of beers. Of course I was sitting next to an attractive intelligent woman. So I had to try to impress her by demonstrating how much of a man I was by drinking beer as fast as possible. Hmmm. The result can only be measured in hammer blows. I was running at about three every ten seconds when I woke up the next day. A real side to side headache with up-down thrown in for fun. If you don't know what I mean, next time you have a head-ache. Try shaking your head and then try nodding. Usually only one direction elicits a pain response.

Next - Yokohama and the Raumen Museum. I took a trip to Yokohama to visit the large warehouse style furniture store called Homes on Saturday Morning. It turns out they've got loads of other stuff... in fact they have everything you could possibly want to set up a place. If only I'd known about it when I was _actually_ furniture shopping. Sigh. Anyway, I did find the coolest sofa and armchair set I've ever seen. The idea is that there are speakers built into the chairs above the shoulders, as well as a sub-woofer under the seat. You can get a pretty decent volume without disturbing the neighbours due to the proximity of the speakers, and you also experience pleasurable vibrations. One concern is whether or not having a big electro-magnet under your ass will leave you sterile and wipe all your credit cards. Anyway, I'm thinking of getting the arm-chair with my bonus. Argh, no I can't - it costs over 500 quid! I'll go ON HOLIDAY instead. (I need to keep reminding myself that... I'm soo tempted!) To polish off the afternoon we went to the Ramen Museum. It has a pretty cool diorama of a 1920s style Japanese street. There are a number of pretty famous Ramen shops in the museum and you can sit down and have some of the best noodles I've ever tried. They also sell a bunch of authentic traditional sweets and snacks. Awesome. Upstairs is a "Make your own Cup Noodle" factory. You can pick any ingredients and they'll make a cup noodle for you on the spot. Awesome!! We didn't have time, but if I go back I'll be sure to get some. In fact, if anyone comes to visit me we'll go there for a day trip.

Saturday Night - Party in Mita. Another work colleague was having a party. Unable to resist the lure of Pizza + Beer I turned up a little ragged from the previous night's excess. I'm yet to find a proven hangover cure, but the Ramen I ate at the museum was putting up a brave attempt. We ended up laughing our asses off to Dodgeball and indulging in that proven student baiting game of building towers out of beer cans. Thumbs up to Yoka who managed to knock it down seconds after taking a photo of it ("it was the flash that did it!" - yeah right).

Wednesday- Yasumi! (Yasumi == holiday). I somehow ended up drinking again on Monday with a couple of guys from work, discussing what to do for the coming holidays. I ended up eating in La Jolla, my local Mexican restaurant. Mmmm, Chimi Changa. I took a night off on Tuesday because I was feeling sick and slept in yesterday because it was a Holiday!! Awesome, I had a looong bath, went to buy an electric heater (its frickin' cold now), picked up a couple of books, and ended up going to a really cool bar. In Shibuya there is this little street near the station with a bunch of tiny little pubs (I'll try to get the photos up soon). The door is almost too narrow for me to get in, there is an almost vertical staircase that I couldn't climb properly because I kept hitting my knee on the next step up - there wasn't room to go up sideways, and four bar stools. That's it. The bar (called "Tight") could legally fit 17 people, but we had six in and it felt cosy. There was one couple sitting at the `far' end of the bar, then me and Dave, and then two random punters who had to stand on the stairs, and on the banister whilst hanging over the staircase. To go to the loo, we had to climb under the guy's legs! The decor was modern, and there were two 14inch LCD TVs behind the bar playing the latest Director's Label DVDs. The sound system was a decent Bose set up too so the tunes were pumping out. The locals ended up trying to teach us various swear words and bad English to Japanese translations. My top three where

1) Hold Me - Sounds like "Ho Mi". Which means c*ck.
2) First Kitchin - an American style diner - gets shortened to "Fir-Kin". Phonetically - "Fuh King"
3) Little Policemen - These guys didn't like the police and told me a sure way to insult them (and get arrested) was to call them Chotto Police ga.

There were more, including how to call someone a bitch, but to me it was just a random string of syllables that I can't remember... Dave'll post it if anyone asks.

Anyway it was all fun and games till we realised Dave had been robbed of about $100 :-(

I got home at around 2am. Hence my need to go for Curry at lunch today. Mmm... I think I'll round it off with a tall Mocha from Starbucks. Yummy...