I’m off to Osaka tomorrow.
Now I said to myself that this summer I would eschew my usual ‘week out of here.’ This is where I bugger off to either Tokyo or Osaka/Kyoto straight after classes finish at the end of July, for no real reason other than to escape the often claustrophobic feeling that the humid weather brings to Hiroshima‘s village-like ambience.
But not this year, I vowed. You see these last eighteen months have seen me shed wads of cash like…er…something that sheds something very often and in large amounts. So, in the interests of financial rectitude (more tea, vicar?) I vetoed my wanderlust and spent the last month skulking around various local shopping malls in search of free air-conditioning.
And yet now, here I am, about to thrust a few socks into a haversack and hit the road for Osaka. Why? Ironically because of money!
It’s a long story, for which a future post has already been composed, but the bottom line is, I have to haul my bottom to the British Consulate, there to have my visage compared to my visa by the governor-general-consulmeister resplendant in his tropical suit and pith helmet. Once gold has crossed his palm, a parchment of authenticity will be issued which will enable me to unlock a treasure chest of dubloons a gang of pirates in the Channel Islands have been ‘looking after’ for me.
I told you it was a long story.
Well, and so it seemed daft to go all the way to Osaka just to spend a few minutes inside the sandbagged compound of the British Consulate and then bugger off straight home, so I decided to spend a couple of nights there, to sample once more the cultural delights of the Kansai region such as the Apple Store in Shinsaibashi.
As luck would have, my fellow Hiroshima rogues the notorious Williams brothers will also be in town, so what better than to hang around with my old pals, get irritated by their unreasonable behaviour, shout at them and then go and do my own thing?
