Well, here I am - I feel like I've successfully jumped off one ledge only to find myself preparing to jump off another. Germany was successfully left - minus not closing my bank account and leaving half my books there, but I have a trip freshly booked to go back in November and close and collect as appropriate. Exams are done with - I didn't have the energy to study during the last few weeks, preferring to spend any spare time decompressing and attempting to sleep, but the exams themselves went okay with no blanking or freezing. I'm sure I could have done better if I'd studied more, but that would be an alternate universe.
Monday and Tuesday were spent frantically tidying up as I had a guest arrive on Tuesday evening, the other half of a friend I always stay with in Tokyo. The front room looks great and the bathroom like some minimalist artwork - until you open either of the cabinets, anyway. The cluttered truth is sitting in our bedroom and the computer room until such time as we get around to doing something with it. Probably involving throwing half of it out.
Next on the list was getting some new trousers, since I managed to destroy two pairs in Frankfurt, and I had to face the unhappy fact that I am my usual size only if I get the more expensive M&S trousers whose definition of 'stretch' is a bit more flexible than the cheap ones. I was also ready for a sit down after just walking into town, walking around and coming back, which does not bode well for Japan, where I usually spend all day every day walking. All my own fault, of course (nothing made me choose a packet of pain au chocolat and a coffee over a tray of fresh pineapple and water in the supermarket in the mornings) but still bodes painfully.
Still feeling very unprepared for Japan, but we have the essentials - passport, tickets, money, hotel reservations. Will pick up the phones at the airport and can then do my mobile blogging with pics as I did last year. Looking forward to seeing Kanazawa, which I haven't been to before. Cleared off the camera's memory stick in anticipation. Time to make a dent in that hosting I've paid for...
One final night out tonight, taking my guest and meeting some friends in Sweeney's pie shop, and then it's into bed and up early tomorrow to get to the airport. Have been reading some pretty mixed reviews of Finnair so hope they're all right. Their customer services certainly weren't as bad as I'd heard - ended up calling them yesterday to book himself's vegetarian meal after realising he hadn't done so, and try to get us seated together.
(This was after calling my calling card people, finding out the reason I couldn't make a call was they'd switched me to a new account but then suspended it as I hadn't used it for 6 months... I was trying to use it in Germany, but as they hadn't given me the new account number, I wasn't able to. Usual fun going around and around with this with their customer services.)
Item falling off the to-do list this time is doing my tax return but if I do it online, as I usually do, I can still do it after I come back. There isn't much left to assemble it all, it just takes time and I'd rather not start it now. That will slot into November, along with writing my last essay (on the status of women in interwar Japan and Korea and how it led to their vulnerability to the 'comfort women' system) and trying to come up with a thesis or annotated translation topic. And trying for the nth time to find a tiler for the flat. And catching up with a lot of friends.
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