Hachi ban - monkey madness, head harrassment and a warm awakening.

Right 3 main topics this time round - Hairdressing, hot chicks and heat waves.

First things first though - Due to a number of requests regarding updates on here and not receiving notifications and blah blah blah if you start following this blog on the left hand side of your screen then I will recognise this as an open invitation to email and remind you - alternatively if you know my email address then you can request an update.... I stopped emailing this rubbish out because i wasn't sure if everyone (apart from my mother x) particularly enjoyed receiving it through email..... turns out a few of you didn't mind.

righty ho and with that being said and done lets get back to it aye?

So we shall start the tales with hair dressing this time round - I went in for a cut and came out with a head that feels like its spent an evening in a gentlemans club.

Ok so its a Wednesday afternoon..... I know I can spare 15 minutes or so as i have no classes in the afternoon - I decide its time to tidy this mo-hawk monstrosity on top of my head up (also for other reasons that will become more apparent later on). I walk down the road to the hairdressers and case the place first..... Its the kind of "across the road pacing" that one might see if they were a fly on the wall to a burglary that is about to happen. "Na - to many cars" i think to myself as a pound the foot path on the opposite side of the road, "If im going to make a dick of myself not being able to speak properly then im doing it in front of the least amount of people possible". Instead I choose a location 200 meters up the road which luckily for me is without a single customer inside. I blurt the only Japanese i know all too well which is basically a certifiable statement that im a dunce.... "Japanese i dont understand".

Im bowed to (which just means 'game on' as far as im concerned) and im lead to my hair wash super head touching chair, a towel is placed over my uncontrolled smiling face and the erotic finger dancing on my skull begins.... you know that feeling just before you go to sleep and your body twitches as you bounce back to reality - i was there. So i dont need to really go into details here but i got my haircut and skull touched and then washed 3 times - i found it kinda funny that they would put gel in my hair then wash it again only to put gel in it again. They gave my back a massage (unrelated to my head im sure, but i have since been told it is part of the treatment) and at this point the girl tried speaking English to me - i forget what she said but im sure my response was closer to that of a well drunk sounding kiwi. At the end of it all it cost me a good 70 bucks at least, but hey honestly is was all well worth every yen dropped.....

Now the heat here is not only (suprise surprise again) hot but an excuse to be noisy - well the bloody cicadas seem to think so anyway. Have you ever been on a farm and heard those massive irrigation hoses... they click back and forward shooting out a jet of water. Now multiply that 1 irrigation system by 1000 and you have something close to the noise i hear most mornings that i wake. Kinda bugging i find it.

I went back to Nimi last weekend and became a mosquito main course. We were going back for a camping session this time and an arranged meeting - i got the aforementioned haircut (you dont get a chance to make first impressions twice and i wasnt making mine with a bloody mankhawk haircut!) for obvious reasons now. Im not going to go into it but it was an enjoyable weekend - i wasnt really expecting much but was plesantly surprised when she arrived. I think her not understanding a lick of english is a novelty for now, lets see how it really goes after this thursdays dinner meet without a translator ha ha

oh yeah and monkeys - i gotta mention the monkeys! Honestly no more than 100 meters from our tent a bunch of super swinging monkeys rocked passed - they were just on the hunt for berries i think. I was sitting there watching a tree rock and sway so unaturally i thought an asian fulla was going to bust out of the bush. I asked the girl i was standing with "what the hell is going on with that tree"? With no clue what so ever we both decided to go and investigate. We got within 50 meters of the tree and a monkey pokes his head out - he was stuffing his face with berries and as quickly as we saw him he swung off........ We stood and watched the hillside for a while and quickly realised he wasnt alone - im not sure how many of the little buggers there were but im sure i saw one mate that i left back in New Zealand swing by.

Take it easy, dont be sleazy, this kiwi is super rockin Japaneasy!

Nana Ban - lets play with something, how about your life?

So where to start with the tales of stupidity this time? The beginning is always a good place to start.......

Last weekend I took a cab home from the pub in town..... after the owner of the pub had closed the bar down, we both strolled toward the taxi stand - he asked me as we walked toward the cab if i knew my address..... I repeated my address to him and then he asked me if i knew where i lived, i thought that because he was Australian this might explain in part his reasoning for asking me the same question twice and then just wording it differently......... However not realising in my slightly inebriated state that these two questions are far from being the same!

I get in the cab and bid farewell to my Australasian publican and his Japanese girlfriend. I rattle of my address which almost states everything including the planet I live on an we begin to move - driving driving driving........ I wonder if we should be home by now I think to myself? Then he starts to speak Japanese to me - "geez mate steady on - I don't know what your saying - take me to the supermarket..." I reply. God I know my address but I'm probably saying it wrong - I have no idea where I live......... Thaaaats what the publican meant!! Arghhh - I know the supermarket is by my house and its called "Happy's" - "hey mate take me to Happy's, Happy's, Happy's"..... in any other country and I would have possibly ended up in some other compromising situation by proclaiming that - but luckily for me I got home.... oh to be happy I thought..... but the poor driver I could tell was not happy and not about to pick up another foreigner in a rush.

So last weekend I went out to a place called Nimi.... now theres not much that rivals the ongoing blissful beauty that is the New Zealand landscape - but if Japan and New Zealand were drunken blokes in a bar......... well................. Japan wouldn't be blamed for having the unprovoked balls to poke New Zealand in his chest with Nimi standing in Japans corner.

This place was postcard picture perfect - the trees covered the hills with a leaf that seemed unnaturally soft to look at, the water was like a mirror that had been slid up alongside the lake bank reflecting everything that looked down upon it and we baked in sun that almost found you searching for shade.

The people I was with pulled out their kayaks and I abstained from this venture for reasons obvious to some....... taking in my surroundings and enjoying the company of a frog with a florescent green stripe down its back was entertaining enough...... and simple things amuse those with simple of minds I guess...... a friend and I looked after the bbq anyway (small side note - girls in Asia and Europe just want to play with bbqs like girls in New Zealand...... it doesn't matter where you are, the female form are yet to comprehend that the bbq is a mans out door kitchen - you've got one in the house we dont play with so dont play with ours when we are outdoors).

The others come back and we feast on Japanese bbq which is like a pretty and dainty version of a kiwi bbq, thin strips of meat with kebabs of chicken and asparagus......... it really is fantastic!

So we finish up - we get a few beers in us and the others decide to go kayaking again - only this time im not getting out of it. I remember kayaking at college - taming the Otaki forks and floundering around in the Waikanae pools as we learnt Eskimo rolls (is it an Inuit roll now to get all p.c?). We have a 2 seater kayak that the others kindly hold while I squeeze inside..... its a bit tight I think, but hey I remember how to vacate a kayak if anything goes wrong..... and like anything is going to go wrong anyway ha ha - we've only been drinking a little (hic) im partnered with a kayaking newbie and I haven't done this in over 10 years....... Lets go destroy this lake!

So we paddle off and within 10 minutes (if that) of leaving the dock we realise something is horribly wrong with the boat (most likely the passengers). We are struggling to keep it going straight and we are doing massive bumble bee turns on the water.......... just take it nice and easy, nice and easy................ oh bugger that, lets just splash each other! Half in a state of wanting to play and half in a state of wanting to sort out the damn boats steering im not paying much attention to the other kayak which is barreling straight for us........ this is when my chest apparently attacked another kayakers oar - the post event claim if things had turned really sour and the police were to be asking questions (my uncontrollable chest, does something sound a little off here ha ha ha). The boat tips and it rolls left once, it rolls left twice, im thinking we're still ok...... third time was not so lucky and over we go....... now what i remember from what we were taught at school was to correct the oar, flip the boat up again, paddle inland and do a haka.... However I went under, biffed my oar, and attempted to roll out of the kayak................hmmm im stuck in a kayak under water, without my oar, upside down and running out of air......... was that last beer such a good idea i wonder? Its funny how the green haze of the lake just calms you as you batter yourself to remove the kayak your attached to....... I come up for air to faces staring very concernedly at the water that I've just pierced through...... theres silence for all of two seconds followed by an uncontrollable laughter - as my kayaking partner swims closer i notice the water gets warmer - oh the hilarity of the stupidity of the situation i find myself in! I think it was a solid 5 minutes of laughing before i can bring myself to actually accuse the aforementioned of relieving himself in the water.......... for which he strongly yet smilingly denies. Im towed ashore with a kayak full of water and another body hanging on to empty our vessel and attempt stupidity 101 again, however second time around it is a much more sober affair......... I mean how do you splash someone satisfactorily if you've already tried drowning them?

Theres more to tell but for now i will leave it at that - I hope your all sitting up straight with your arms folded behaving yourself!

K