Hi. It's been a long time so I thought I'd post a quick update.

I had summer vacation in August. I had been planning to travel somewhere, but when the time came the weather here was so good that I decided I'd just hang around in Hokkaido (save up travel for winter when I really need to get away). I spent about four weeks hanging around, did a lot of driving (which really hurt the wallet as petrol went up during summer), hanging out with friends and relaxing.

I had an interesting experience at the 'beach' in Sapporo (it's hard to call it a beach... more like a place where there is some dirty sand, some salty water and a whole bunch of lifeguards). We showed up at the beach and the guy who took our 5 bucks for parking (don't get me started on that) told us that the beach was closed because it was too windy. What this meant was that you could be on the beach, but you couldn't enter the water past knee depth. If you did, the lifeguards would come and tell you off. This really pissed me off for two reasons. 1) I was really looking forward to a swim, and 2) It was windy, but it wasn't THAT windy. The waves were kind of like a windy day on Port Phillip Bay. In other words, the only people that were really in danger of drowning were babies and people with no legs or arms. I guess this policy is in line with other water related policies in Japan - for example, the rule at public swimming pools where everyone has to get out of the pool for five minutes at the end of each half-hour, so that everyone can have a rest and the lifeguards can make sure that nobody has drowned.

After the beach I spent the night at an onsen resort near Sapporo. The hotel I stayed at is famous for having a huge indoor swimming complex. There are lots of baths, pools, waterslides and other water sports. The best one was a 'dead sea' pool which, as you can probably guess, was filled with a lot f salt. It was an interesting experience floating in the salt bath. One word of advice - when there is a sign saying 'don't touch your eyes while in the pool', it's probably a good idea not to touch your eyes.

I also spent a few days camping and wakeboarding with some friends at a lake in eastern Hokkaido. I did the same thing last year, and although this year wasn't quite as much fun (the weather wasn't great), it was still good. The day before I arrived at my friend's house in Kushiro, I found out that their dog had died. It was a really, really old dog (over 20 years, I think), so it wasn't a huge surprise. However, it was a bit of a surprise to see the dog lying on the couch in their house when I arrived. It was going to be cremated the next day, so they just left it on the couch for everyone to say goodbye. It was a nice gesture, in a morbid kind of way.

Here is a picture of me getting some MASSIVE air on the wakeboard:

There's a group of people who go out to the lake every week in summer. I think it started about three or four years ago with about 5 people, one boat and a pair of water skis, and now there are a few boats, some jet skis, a massive collection of boards and skis, and there can be up to about 30 people. It's become such a big thing that they gave themselves a name: 'The Ido Marine Club', named after the guy that started it all.

At the moment I'm pretty busy with work. This is the season for 'school festivals'. At this year's junior high festival I'll be playing guitar again. Last year our band was called 'JRA' (named after the member: Jonathan, Ryuichi, Azuma) and we played... umm... 'Surrender' by Cheap Trick (I had to think about that for a minute). This year the bass player has left and so we had to get a new one. Therefore, the band name has changed to 'JAM' (Jonathan, Azuma, Mikami). This time I got to choose a song so I picked a Japanese song (knowing that no one would make me sing if it was in Japanese... heh heh). It's called 'Drop' and it's by a band called 'Thee Michelle Gun Elephant' (a great band, but possibly the worst name ever). We're also doing a short version of 'Smoke on the Water', because some girls in the brass band wanted to play together with us. They're going to play sax instead of the lyrics. I don't know how it'll go. We've only had one practice and the sax girls were having a fair bit of trouble, but I'm sure we'll get it right by performance time... actually, seeing as the performance is on Saturday, I'll have to rethink that... hmm... no, we're screwed. Oh well.

The other thing that has been taking up most of my time recently is poker. About 6 weeks ago I started playing online poker for cash. After a few weeks of screwing around I decided to start playing seriously. Now, I actually spend most of my free time at work studying poker theory, and a lot of my time after work playing. This is great for me because not only do I really enjoy it and find it a great challenge, but I'm making some nice pocket money too. I had been looking for a new hobby to take up during the long, cold winter, and it looks like I've found something perfect. This really deserves a post of its own so I'll leave it for next time.

I'll finish this blog entry with a short poem about the joys of being a sports fan.

"Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

The Demons got the wooden spoon, Spurs are firmly grasping the wooden spoon, Storm got smashed in the final, Australia look like they're going to have trouble in India, the only way Webber could get a win is if everyone else was driving backwards...

..and Victory seem to be the only team I like that is not playing like poo."

(see how I made it rhyme?)