The Homo Sausage, The Beating and Other Assorted Tales

Sorry peeps, John has been visiting for the past two weeks. But the stories shall continue...

The week of 11th October:

As you may remember, I began this week with not much of a voice. Undeterred, I ploughed on through lessons and everyday activities, such as a pilgrimage to see the Homo Sausage. Calle had been promising to show me this amazing product at some point (no comments please) and one evening, he knocked on my door to invite me on this holy quest. The Homo Sausage is a processed fish sausage, which Calle assures me has a wonderful floppy texture when removed from the packaging. Here you can see Calle modelling the Homo Sausage for the (homo)market:

The trip to the supermarket proved fruitful beyond laughing at phallic-shaped items. Everything was 20% which led to some Haagen-Dazs Chocolate Fondants becoming resident in my freezer, although not for long :-)

Unfortunately, the excitement of Japanese supermarket shopping got to me and the next day, my cough returned with a vengeance. During a discreet visit to the toilets to cough and blow my noise (NEVER blow your nose in public in Japan - it's very rude, apparently), I was traumatised by an encounter with an overly-friendly toilet cleaning lady. After I emerged from the cubicle, she proceeded to ask me a host of questions in Japanese.

おばあさん　(old lady): Are you OK?

Me: Yes, I'm fine.

おばあさん　: Do you have a cold?

Me: Yes, I have a bit of a cold. It's OK.

おばあさん　: Do you smoke?

Me: No. I don't smoke.

おばあさん　: Do you drink?

Me: (thinking she was telling me to drink something for my throat) Yes....(seeing her face) No! I don't drink alcohol. Water. Tea. No alcohol!

In Japan, there are a lot of questions you're not allowed to ask, apparently, due to "privacy", or so our teacher tells us. I'm wondering why the above interaction would not be considered an invasion of privacy. Or maybe they don't apply to a dirty, drinking, smoking gaijin, coughing her lungs out in the loo. I did sound pretty rough.

Friday Field Trip to Kamakura!

Kamakura is a very beautiful town about an hour from Tokyo. It's near the sea, surrounded by beautiful trees, contains many temples and shrines and is a site of historical significance. I would tell you why but I don't actually know. I'm a bad student and didn't exactly absorb my little info pack. All I knew was that Kamakura sounds like a field trip win!

I was a little anxious before we set off on the trip. We were to be partnered with "buddies" - volunteer students from Nihon Unviersity - whom we were to talk in Japanese with for the whole day. Given the early start, the prospect of a bus journey making small talk with VERY limited language ability could be exceedingly awkward. Fortunately, my buddy, Eri, was awesome and as 元気　(genki; energetic, lively) as me, who wasn't at all bothered at my limited Japanese making an occasional appearance in the river of English that inevitably flowed from me. Here we are discovering, shaking hands through a rather fun tree:

The tree had its revenge at being molested in such a way by cursing my face when I posed for an individual shot. It is probably the worst photo of myself ever:

To the actual events of the day, we started the trip with some zazen, a Buddhist meditation practice. This involves sitting in a large room on mats in silence for periods of 30 minutes. The catch: can you sit in lotus or half-lotus position for 30 minutes without moving to relieve the pain? I could sit in neither position properly and the monk, although strict on some of the others, obviously gave me up for a lost cause very early on. Maybe it was the shiny purple leggings that made me look more suited to an eighties disco. They were definitely at odds with the main idea, which is to get away from the busyness of everyday life and everyday thoughts. "We would even stop breathing if we could", so we were told.

The first 20-minute round passed slowly and with considerable discomfort. But on the second 30-minute round, I really felt calm and the time flashed by! You have to keep your eyes open and this leads to the most bizarre day-dreams/semi-hallucinations. Faces and dancing figures appeared on the back of Tom's jumper, and wiggled there way in and out of my vision. Crazy stuff.

At the end of the session, the monk demonstrated with a large flat stick how they hit people who fall asleep during zazen. Tom P volunteered first, then Urvesh, then Peter Sensei. And I was just hoping that it was something girls could do. Then, Eri, my buddy, stuck up her hand and was struck twice on each shoulder blade. So then it had to be my turn. It didn't hurt very much and left a rather pleasant tingly sensation! (OK so maybe I did feel a little stiff the next morning...)

After this cultural practice, we were then treated to a vegetarian lunch eaten by the monks. It was very おいしい　(delicious)!

After that, we visited some temples. I paid 100yen for

a fortune (pulling a coded stick out of a box), only to receive the worst fortune you could get,

including some great advice on relationships ("Although the fact is twisted, it will soon become clear." Great, twisted relationships. Thank you, Fate, thanks very much). I later set off on an epic quest for chocolate ice-cream as I'm no fan of the green-tea and sweet potato flavours. I bought a mini-double from Baskins Robbins, got a lucky dip and won a Halloween bookmark. Well, Fate, obviously didn't hate me too much. Or maybe the best things in life are free...

The day in Kamakura ended with a visit to the Daibutsu - Giant Buddha. Here he is in all his glory:

We then returned to Tokyo for some traditional Japanese dance. We arrived late and only saw the final third, which lasted for only half an hour. Tragic? No. No way. I am perhaps the most awfully uncultured person ever but in my shattered state, I failed to find any beauty in this performance. The music was plinky-plonky and jarring, and the heavily made-up man and woman moved in very slow boring steps, like puppets. I wished I was a puppet by the end. Someone could tweak my strings and make my arms and legs move my body towards the door.

Sunday: Veggie Food Festival

Meat is expensive. As it turns out, so are vegetables as well. So if there's a trade-off, I'm definitely going for the fibre, vitamins and nutrients over the protein. The result: I only cook vegetarian food in the evenings and I'm pretty interested in vegetarian cookery.

So on Sunday, Calle, actual vegetarian, and me, nightly vegetarian, set off to a Veggie Food Festival to check out its sumptuous and tantalising offerings. I tend to find with festivals that the food always looks amazing yet whatever I end up choosing is always mildly disappointing. Calle and I set about sharing three different food items to avoid such problems. Sadly I was right in that our food was surprisingly bland and tasteless, aside from the cheap veggie dumplings! Alas! Nevertheless we were amused by the following pictures. Anyone for the loving hut?

We then hit Harajuku and Ometesando for some shopping. Not only did we share a cheesecake, strawberry and chocolate ice-cream crepe which was infinitely more satisfying than the veggie festival food, but we visited the wonderfully futuristic Uniclo T-shirt store. All T-shirts come in plastic tubes stored round the walls, many depicting famous anime series (Calle couldn't resist the Ghost in the Shell T-shirt).

We also found some shop namesakes.

Cannabis:

Freak:

More updates coming soon!

1.45am: Showering dead rat germs off my back

This post about last week is waaaay overdue, but I promise you that it's worth a read ;-)

At 1.45am on Saturday morning, I did not awake from a nightmare in which I had been coated with dead rat germs. Being slightly OCD about cleanliness - the sort that uses tissue paper to flush the chain and open toilet doors - a nightmare of that sort would have certainly been a nightmare worth sweating a few pints about. Sadly, however, dead rat germs were a very horrifying reality.

The setting: an Izakaya in Shinjuku for Ulrika's 20th birthday (she can now legally drink in Japan!). It was the same chain as we went to for Lucy's birthday - all dishes are 270yen and can be ordered by a rather fun touch screen that each table is equipped with.

Whilst the company was great and everyone was in good spirits, some dishes took over an hour to arrive. The result was that we had already ordered loads more food and were struggling to finish the plates. Also, mysterious items appeared that no-one claimed responsibility for. A bowl of tomatoes, a plate of frankfurters and burnt chips....oh wait, that was actually ordered by someone.

Now, I'd already been feeling slightly under the weather. Throat a little tender. But 4 hours in a crowded smoke-filled room and I was soon unable to talk and sat pathetically slumped in the corner. Still watching the drunk business sing and dance...and collapse provided ample amusement:

And the Swedes were having a good time:

Oh wait, one Swede was missing. He was too busy being cool with the ultra-cool person on the right:

The evening then took a turn for the worse. Not only was there substantial panic and confusion over the bill - I ended up paying 4,000yen for everyone else's drinks - but then our unexpected guest was discovered. Where we had been putting bare feet all evening. Here he/she/it is:

How did it make it out from under the table? Good question. I soon found out.

Random Swede who fortunately is NOT on the JSLP: *stroking my back* Hey. This hand touched the dead rat. *stroke, stroke, stroke*

Me: Haha, very funny. Stop that. Seriously though!

Random Swede: I'm being serious. I touched it. *Proceeds to waggle his fingers in my face*

I stopped short of punching him in the balls. But I kind of wish I hadn't been so controlled. I made my way as fast as I could to the toilet and began rubbing alcohol sanitiser over my back. And that's how I found myself at 1.45am, showering dead rat germs off my back.

Still mute, I went to bed optimistic about the return of my voice. It's a shame optimism is often mismatched with realism. And so the next day, for the sake of my voice, and most definitely my wallet as well, I passed at the opportunity to go to another izakjaya. Instead I hung out with the Swedes (NB: NOT random rat boy), watching films and making use of the wonderful entertainment resource AKA Youtube. Calle is now a proper Swede as he has finally seen Let The Right One In - a dark, vampire romance film that avoids all cheesy, crappy elements of both genres. I haven't seen the re-make yet - reviews say it's very faithful - but I recommend you all to see the original first. It's brilliant, poignant and atmospheric.

Anyway, enough gushing over that film. To my credit, I wasn't able to praise it enough at the time due to lack of voice. I also discovered that sarcasm is ineffectual when you sound like the love child of Alvin the Chipmunk and Kermit the Frog.

The next day, I dragged myself out of bed at 8am to go to a tea ceremony with my wonderful friend Rie. Although I allowed myself 25 minutes to find her once I arrived at Shinjuku, even this proved too little time to deal with the maze-like mass that constitutes the busiest station in Japan, and possible the world. Asking for directions when one cannot speak is also difficult. Who wants to help the croaky/squeaky gaijin who doesn't speak Japanese?! 40 minutes later we eventually found each other and discovered that we were in a similar state: her voice was better than mine, although that's not saying a lot.

We laughed and coughed our way to the tea ceremony. It was held in traditional, small, Japanese style rooms set in beautiful gardens. We all sat down and watched the ladies in kimonos bring in a special Japanese sweet. And then tea was served. You have to twist the bowl twice in one direction before you drink, wait until the most senior person has finished drinking before you finish your own and then wipe where you've drink from the bowl and twist it once again before finishing. Very intricate. Everything is precise and like art. Just like this amazing lunch I got given. It tasted as good as it looked. おいしかたです！

Afterwards, I went back home to rest and recover. However, I discovered some photos which show that once night fell, I ran wild across a play park with the others, who sat around drinking on benches like chavs. I whooped too loudly, swung too high on the swings and failed at being a spinning-cage-thing hooker:

Ulrika, Antony and I also made it up onto the roof of our apartment on our way back. So much for taking it easy.

Next post: Karate, The Homo Sausage and the Dirty Gaijin (foreigner AKA me)

Wait! Is that a...comet falling out the sky?

That was how my very romantic date was interrupted. Lucy and I were taking a stroll in very romantic date spot AKA Yokohama when this unexpected phenomenon disturbed our peaceful meandering along the waterfront.

I shouldn't have been that surprised. Less than an hour earlier, I'd seen a guy wearing goldfish hanging off his ears.

The backstory....

The JLSP crew had been invited by some of the Nihon Uni volunteer students to Yokohama for Oktoberfest:

"Do you know about Octoberfest? It is a german festival.You might already know that Germans drink beer and eat potatoes everyday.And we can experience this lifestyle."

"I want to experience this lifestyle," Urvesh proclaimed. And so we all set off for this experience.

A beer festival, however, is not exactly my idea of a grand day out. So I joined Tom P and we crashed Calle's visit to the Yokohoma Museum of Art. On approaching the museum, Tom was a little slow to program his cultural mindset.

Tom P: "Is that a rollercoaster?"

Calle: "Yeah. For Chihauhaus."

The museum was exhibiting Degas, a 19thC French artist who liked to paint dancers. I wasn't a big fan of his work - the early work sat uncomfortably between impressionism and realism, and lots of the paintings were evidently unfinished, whereas the later work were repetitive paintings of naked women, bending over drying themselves. However, I did get to see a bit of Dali, including this awesome statue (the one on the right, in case you can't tell):

Tom P and I then ventured towards the beer festival, only to be smacked repeatedly with those "Only In Japan" moments. Firstly, the only available food without queuing to go into the festival was a "Love Box" - which included a sandwich and some chicken nuggets. Then we saw this dude:

I would love to know the thought processes that went into this costume creation. How organic was it? "Hmm, it'd be really messed up if I wore goldfish round my ears" versus "I love Kenta and Riku so much - how could I possibly leave them at home?"

From being confronted by the weirdness of Japan, I was then confronted by all things German. Pictures of beer and sausages grinned down at me. The festival was packed and included a traditional German band on stage. And a vast number of foreigners sloshing their way between tightly packed wooden benches.

Lucy and I were, unsurprisingly, less than enamoured and so we ventured along the waterfront. It was quickly evident that this was a very popular couple activity. So whilst we were feverishly snapping photos of the landscape and sunset, the couples snapped away couply photos of themselves. So of course, we did things properly - we got our own couply photo too.

Then I saw the "comet". To be honest, it was falling WAY too slowly to be a comet. So slowly it didn't actually look like it was moving. And there are two of them! Here are a couple of shots:

And here are some zoomed in photos:

I'd love to know what you make of it. Or if anyone has heard about this in the news.

Sunday involved no "comets" but a fun afternoon out with my friend Rie. And some purikura - these photos machines that make you look uber-cute with super big eyes:

Fatty flesh of tuna ship: izakaya, karaoke, anime and life in general

Hello. Long time, no speak. There’s a lot here. Choose your favourite subtitles below, or read it all if you are a devotee to my wonderful writing ;-)

Lucy's Birthday: karaoke, drunkenness, foot massages

This is Lucy with her birthday candle dinosaur. I should state first off that the title does not refer to Lucy. She is a non-drinker like me. And I don't think she participated in foot massaging. She may have been responsible for the karaoke though.

For her grand 24th, we piled off to an izakaya for much food and merriness. Here’s some of the tempting English menu:

We then gave into her obsession: karaoke. Antony and I duly got the party started with a rendition of “Don’t Stop Me Now.”

And Tom and Niklas did a beautiful duet:

It was sweat-fest and the floor was sticky with spilt drinks but we did ourselves proud and had several dances en masse. Towards the end of the evening, several people were drunkenly slurring their way through “Ring of Fire.” When the fire alarm began to ring. Only Lucy’s Japanese friends and I seemed able to hear it. In my exhausted, semi-trance like state, I just sat and pondered the irony whilst Lucy’s friends rushed to find out what was going on. False alarm, fortunately.

There was of course an after-party. Here’s a riveting scene:

Axel is massaging Tom’s foot and Lucy just can’t take it any more. The night ended with some very very drunk people. An unnamed member of the party brought his own “member” to say hi when someone took pity on him and tried to get him to drink some water and go to sleep.

Life Safety Learning Center: typhoons, earthquakes and penis envy

Friday was our visit to the Life Safety Learning Center so we can deal with the dangers of living in Tokyo. I was in an earthquake when I was here last summer so I was interested to hear what they were going to teach us. Instead I found that the Life Safety Learning Center was more a Life Hazard Center. The whole building was so warm that I almost fainted on several occasions whilst the smiling “Heatstroke Warning” posters mocked me from the walls.

Nevertheless, I endured a magnitude 7.0 earthquake which lasted all of 5 seconds at maximum magnitude and left us all with bums in the air and heads under a table.

I also experienced a typhoon in waterproofs that were clearly misnamed. It was unpleasant as I couldn’t breathe properly without inhaling water. We also crawled on our hands and knees through a dark smoky room, whilst covering our mouths with handkerchiefs. Keep low, keep below the smoke. Don’t you dare go above ~1.4m or …the sensor will locate you and “advise you to get down”.

My favourite part of the trip was easily the fire extinguisher practical. We got to fire real fire extinguishers at a screen with a simulated fire - whoosh! Hoisting up the heavy canister was uncomfortable but hosing the screen was immense. It was the closest thing I’ve ever had to peeing up a wall. Guys, I envy you so much. I might have to rethink my career plans just based on this 15 seconds of freeeeedom and train as a firewoman. Judging by this photo, I wasn't the only one who enjoyed it....

Sophistication, with a hint of naughty snacks

Despite the above note, I passed the weekend in a very sophisticated manner. On the Friday night, I hosted a film night. We opted to watch “The Ghost Writer”, which purported to be an intense political thriller. Sadly, I discovered that even though a film may star Pierce Brosnan and Ewan McGregor does not mean it great. In fact, I found Ewan McGregor to be incredibly annoying in serious need of accent coaching because his English accent made him sound part-Cockney. Also, my dreams of being a grand hostess were shattered when Axel brought back chocolate-covered crisps and some other crunchy things labelled “Bukkake”. According to Wikipedia, bukkake means “splash” or “heavy splash” and represents a practice that occupies a “relatively prevalent niche in contemporary pornographic films.”

Undeterred in my pursuit of sophistication, on Saturday I met my friend Akiko for lunch, before admiring her new apartment and borrowing some literature. I will casually skip over the fact that I then napped for an hour and half before passing out for eleven-and-a-half hours that night due to cumulative lack of sleep. My start of the day on Sunday was therefore closer to the start of the afternoon. But still undeterred, I transformed myself into a domestic goddess. I hovered and scrubbed my floors, I cleaned my cooker, my sink my bathroom, my toilet and put on two loads of washing Then I cooked myself a nutritious meal and did my homework. Oh yes. My mother would be proud…or scathing that such transformations never rarely occur at home.

Reality check: Japanese classes

In case you were wondering, I am learning Japanese in the interludes between these anecdotes. Still, classes can be fun. In Japanese, they have a distinction similar to “this bike” and “that bike” in English. You say kore if the thing you are talking about is near you, sore if it’s near the person you’re talking too, and are if it’s far away from both of you. This gave our wonderfully enthusiastic teacher Iwami an excuse to steal our items and hide them around the room for the lesson. She managed to sneak items into pencil cases and bags, turning students into unwitting thieves. I hope that I manage to make a grammar lesson half as fun when I teach English!

Apathy of a lazy student…leads to boy love

No. I was not involved in any boy love. Boy love is between boys only, you see. And sadly, despite my penis envy during the fire-extinguishing, I haven’t yet saved up enough for the op. What I’m talking about is yaoi, anime about love between boys, apparently made by women for women. It’s the equivalent of yuri, which is the girl love stuff (read: lesbians) for guys.

During serious vocabulary learning procrastination, I set out on an Internet tour to explore yaoi. I was hoping for stories of forbidden love, deep and complex relationships, and lots of angst, but ultimately touching and sweet. I was wrong. Let’s see….

Forbidden love: check.

Lots of angst: check.

Deep and complex relationships: well, I suspect that’s what they were aiming for.

To be honest, I couldn’t get past the fact that whatever the hell I’d loaded was depicting an older, masculine male raping an effeminate teenage boy (yes, that is a boy in the picture) that he’d bought at a gay sex slave auction in order to “save” him, because he knows the boy from a forgotten past and loves him, really he does. He feels so guilty in fact that he promises he’ll try not to rape him too much in the future. And he even made him dinner when the boy was sick, and he’s a mean person who has never made dinner for anyone before. Isn’t that sweet? Needless to say, I didn’t make it to episode 2. I don’t know which women are enjoying that but I'm not one of them.

Friday fun :-)

Friday came round again. I like Fridays. We finish classes at 12.10 on Fridays. However, I don’t like 3 hours of chapter tests, a hiragana and katakana (Japanese scripts) dictations “quizzes”, a review, followed by more grammar. My TEFL-instincts were also inwardly screaming at the teacher to let us practice the phrases in pairs instead of going round and round the class for 40 minutes, speaking on average once every 5 minutes. Yet lunch in the cafeteria which serves amazingly delicious food, followed by hardcore shopping in Harajuku was enough to maintain my mood. Here we can see Calle examining the choice of male clothes on Takeshita Street. Which do you prefer: Bi-Men’s or Nudy Boy?

The evening resulted in another sophisticated film party, with a beautiful yet mind-bendingly crazy anime suggested by Calle called “Tekkon Kinkreet”. Fantastic animation. Sadly, the night degenerated into some not-so-sophisticated content being loaded onto my computer amidst snorts and giggles. At least I avoided more “boy love”.

Weekend update coming soon.

Who knows what was going on here? Simon says, touch your head!

Mt Fuji Hide and Seek

Regard this picture. How would you describe it? Serene? Beautiful? Picturesque? Inviting, even? This weekend was to be a relaxing trip to the Mt Fuji and the Fuji Five Lakes region. According to a friend of one of our group members, we were to walk from Lake Kawaguchiko to Lake Saiko up a slope with beautiful views, to an area of grass plains, perfect picnic spots and ideal lake swimming. Does this all sound overly romanticised? I hope so. Because here we are, sweating our way up steep slopes, lost in dense forest, and racing against time to catch the last bus before we were stranded in the middle of nowhere.

To cut a very long rant story short, things didn't exactly go to plan. The Saturday was fine, even though I felt like a mild version of death and really wished that I drank alcohol so I would have an excuse for being part-zombie. We attended a matsuri (a festival) held at a shrine in Yamashite. Imagine a fair with lots of little food stalls and game stalls. Now make it really quaint and Japanese-y ie. everything will have smiley faces, all the stalls will be colourful with flags, the food won't be crap, and the games will be simple and old-fashioned. For example, Antony tried to win a turtle by using a rice paper cup and dipping it into water to capture three before the cup disintegrated. (He succeeded on his second attempt and turtle AKA Matsu is doing fine).

Now if I'd happened upon a matsuri as a child, I would have thrown up in over-excitement. Matsuri would have been synonymous with magic. Take a look at some of the pictures. It's a very child-oriented affair so I snapped some pictures of particularly kawaii (cute) kids.

There were also some amateur sumo fights!

Things then went wrong...pretty much from the moment I woke up on Sunday still feeling like death, and had to accept I was and probably shouldn't be going on a trip to the lakes. Nevertheless, I set off with the group at 5.45am and we caught our 7.10am without trouble. The 1hr45min journey then took OVER FOUR HOURS due to "holiday traffic" (Monday was "Aged people's day" in Japan. I want to know why did they make it a holiday? It's not like aged people are working.) On arrival at Kawaguchiko, half of us got on a train, accidentally leaving the other half behind, to then receive a phone call telling us there was no need to head to the hostel yet as all the "stuff to see" was near the station.

Now I like to think I'm an honest person. I dislike liars and try to avoid it at all costs. But I was pretty annoyed at having wasted 290Yen and then having to pay for a return journey. So on arrival I tried to tell the ticket man that I'd come from the nearest station. He looked at me, picked up the phone, spoke rapid Japanese, hung up and faced me:

"Tell me the true station. Tell me the true. Guilty. Guilty! GUILTY!"

Oh, OK then :-( The hammer of judgement fell and I meekly handed over the fare.

The day didn't improve as we soon discovered it was way too far to walk from Lake Kawaguchiko to Lake Saiko and notions of a relaxing walk, especially considering the lateness in the day, were rapidly vanishing. We caught an over-priced bus, abandoned it at first sight of Lake Saiko and the keen amongst us rapidly threw ourselves in, trying to avoid the weeds that tangled round our ankles. I state this now: this was probably the best half an hour of the day. And no, that's not saying a lot. But it genuinely was fantastic water to swim in.

Some of us then decided to catch the bus in search of beautiful forest walks and the "Sea of Trees" only to be caught in more traffic and have not one clue where to get off. We eventually hopped off, examined a tourist map and joined a trail in search of a lookout over Mt Fuji. Sweating, stumbling and swearing, we began to fear we'd never find it when we bumped into a very helpful tourist. It was only 10 minutes away. Quick, everyone! Let's get there before we miss our bus! We panted and we staggered our way up. So here was the view:

To the right, you can just about see Mt Fuji. He's a bit shy. Or maybe he's just hiding his face because the bastard is laughing so much at us. Who knows?

We then take a different route back, find a bus stop, and a bus arrived within 10 minutes. There must be light at the end of the tunnel. Wait, no, it's just the tail lights of all the other cars in anoth hour long traffic jam.

Thankfully, our hostel - Mt Fuji Hostel Michael's - was very clean and new, with a very friendly owner.

The next day was considerably better. We walked to an enchanting hillside shrine only 20 minutes from the the hostel with great views over the town and mountains.

We returned to Lake Kawaguchiko and went up the ropeway with great views of the lake, only it was clearly Fuji's day off again from being visible. We then took a lakeside walk. And only about then, with some time to spare before the return journey, did we have time to properly appreciate the lake and its beauty.

Of course, we also had some fun:

And I was very interested in the giant yellow-and-black spiders. Isn't it kawaii?!

It probably doesn't need to be said but the return journey didn't take 1hr45 back, surprise surprise. It took 3.5hours. But if there's one thing I've learnt from reflecting on the weekend, it's that things are far more interesting to write about when they don't go smoothly.