The Writing's On The Wall...

Well, it's official - last Friday I signed the relevent piece of paper that means my time in Japan will now come to an end as of late July this year. Mixed feelings really - excitement at being able to see longtime friends and family again, relief at being able to live somewhere where I can communicate properly with strangers but also sadness at leaving all this behind, as well as trepidation at the amount of preparing I'll have to do prior to my departure.

Let this therefore be my first mention of something I'm likely to scribble about repeatedly over the next few months, namely the fact that EVERYTHING in my small, yet cluttered apartment has to be either shipped home or got rid of before I leave. Due to local government cutbacks, I will be the last in a long line of JETs to live at my current address and work at my current school, so no handing over the reins and passing on of all the useless junk I and several others have accumulated over the years for me. Instead, all I've got to look forward to is no doubt a great deal of stress, frustration and wrestling with Japanese waste disposal laws.

Still, hard though all that's doubtless going to be, at the same time I'm now looking forward to really making the most of what little time I have left out here - though obviously balancing that out with my imperative need to save enough money to keep myself afloat while contemplating my next career move in the UK, of course...

To slightly brighter news, examples of my musical 'talents' are now up for all to see and dismiss at Rupert Murdoch's latest cashcow MySpace - go to www.myspace.com/78ratio hear the home demos recorded a couple of years ago by Mark, Sophie and myself while we all shared a house together in Brighton, getting drunk in the evenings and proceeding to do silly things with a few guitars and a computer.