Ain't no cure for the summertime blues...

Coming from Tasmania, summer is my favourite time of year. The days are long, dry and sunny, the nights are short and cool, but not cold. The ever present Tasmanian rain lets up for a moment, and you can bandy about with your friends outside having barbecues and whatnot. The usually chilly beaches are actually able to be swam at, you can open the windows and have a nice breeze through the house in the afternoon, it's a good time for frisbee, a good time for salads and fresh ingredients, a good time all round. I ♥ Tasmanian summer.

Suffice to say, it's a little different in Osaka.

It's humid. Steamy. Like you'd expect in Singapore on a really steamy day. There's only the slightest breeze (if you're fortunate enough to be in it's path - which luckily with the new house, we are - the old house was in an area of totally stagnant air) and if you open the window, all you manage to do is let in more steam. The food turns rancid in two seconds, the garbage stinks even if you put it out twice a week. You end up hiding in your air conditioned room and going slightly stir crazy...

... similar to Tasmanian winter ...

...or you can go out and watch movies in air conditioned cinemas, or window shop in air conditioned department stores, or go to the air conditioned museum/aquarium/gallery - but you're seeing the pattern here. For a Tasmanian to feel comfortable, it is imperative to be under the influence of some air conditioning. No air con = hot crabby Tasmanian.

Our power bill doubled last month.

Now, what most ex-pats seem to do during summer is drink their way through it. In the cooler months, I am barely interested in drinking, but as the temperature climbs, so too does my will to drink. However, my judgement has never been very good when figuring out when to stop drinking, so a few hangovers have ensued, and last week I fell down when I was drunk, broke my camera, broke my arse, and landed on Tom's laptop - which appears to have come out unscathed - unlike my camera and my arse. I fell on my tailbone. There's no bruise but it's not stopped hurting since. I've decided that it's time for me to stop drinking again, at least until such time as my bum stops hurting.

I tried to keep on doing cultural things on the weekends in June, but the hangovers were definitely interfering. However, we still made it to Heian Jingu last month:

Heian Jingu

I regret to report that I probably won't be getting out and about much until July 20th long weekend. We've booked a night at a Ryokan in Koyasan, and we've got 7 days in Hokkaido coming up in Obon, followed by a few days in Tokyo, and a day in Iga Ueno with our mate Glenn, so it looks like we'll be posting more photos soon.

And, bless my lovely husband, Tom helped me pay for a new camera, so I'll still be snapping happy for you all over the coming months. I would like to get a D-SLR camera... but I doubt I'll be able to put aside enough cash at this rate.

In other news, my first gig with Sister Ray is fast approaching on Thursday, 30th July - and Thrall has just had the first gig confirmed at Socio on Sunday the 13th of September - so soon we'll be firing on all cylinders with the bands. Probably a good time to be sobering up for a while, considering the amount of stuff I have to do!

Oh well, love to you all, I wish we could get some of your cool weather up here, and we could send some of our hot weather to you, and then we'd all have comfortable, warm weather...