Yes, I'm alive. I was held up by a few things. No, I wasn't put into carbon-freeze by some ugnauts, but sometimes it feels like it (to those that know what I'm talking about, I salute you... to those that don't, trust me... it's a Star Wars thing. Hey, cut me some slack - I'm in the land where geeks can go nuts about just about anything). Where was I? Oh, I've been off the blog due to craziness at work in the lead up to Christmas, followed by Christmas festivites, in turn followed by nicking off for my first break since I got here - to a place in central Japan called Gifu, with my much-loved friends Tom and Jen, their daughter Ruby, and my good friend Junko from Tokyo. It's been a mixed bag of long days, frenzied marking of tests, decorating of classrooms, making of props, making new friends, chilling out (or rather trying to warm up) over Christmas and then packing myself off to Gifu, where I was promptly hit by a bad bout of intestinal turbulence. In short, lots of stress, lots of fun, lots of toilet contemplation and lots of hot water in the bath. Have I crossed any boundaries of your need to know things? Nahhh.

Well it's stupidly late so I won't go further into these things now, (I'm sure you were dying to hear more about my stomach woes) especially as this is my second time writing all this as blogger.com spat the dummy and much to my chagrin chucked out what I wrote before... so I'll leave you with some long-promised but now very-outdated pictures of autumn... Winter is in full swing here. The snow got a lot more intense since my last post - one night I got home to find my door was frozen to the door jam and the electronic lock had gone mental. It finally opened when I stuck the card key in the wrong way round. Go figure! The next day we almost cancelled my classes as a lot of students weren't going to make it to school. The snow was pretty amazing to see... I'd seen it at ski-fields before, but not all over everything in a domestic setting. It felt like someone had pulled a huge practical joke and sprayed everything with shaving cream. Anyway, I'm getting carried away... have some pictures...

The view from the bridge at the station.