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Well I played 5-a-side football yesterday which they call futsal. I almost died in the process but I played it. I gave a fairly good representation of myself. The rules were each game lasts 6 minutes kick ins not throw ins and no slide tackles (nobody told me this until I took somebody out) and we had two hours of this playing one game and one game off.

The bloke who beats me at everything got a hat trick and I didn`t score any but they want me back for another go and I had a lot fun. I also reckon I am better at footie than him and with a bit of practice I`ll kick his arse. The pitch was a lot bigger than I expected. I was advised to bring two litres of water and I played two games at the start and couldn`t breathe. I drank most of my water as well. They weren`t as good as I thought they would be and so I was happy. aha

I had another holiday day again yesterday. I got up at about ten and then a couple of hours later we were drivng to the beach. We played frisbee and footie and I saw a jellyfish for the first time. Then we went to this arcade game centre and played on pachinko.

This is a game which is a cross between a fruit machine, a video game and a game of pinball. It`s in the film Lost in Translation. You have a dial which you turn which releases balls vertically. You have to try and get them in this hole in the bottom centre of the board. This is very tricky. When you do this the fruit machine part goes into play and you have to get three of a kind. When you get four balls in the hole, you start getting luckier. You get these animations in the screen of ninjas fighting and if they win you usually win. I was playing on a samurai one and was getting seriously addicted to it shouting and swearing at it.

I was winnning big. I had two pots of tokens full of coins after about an hour of winning nothing. The one I was playing on was only in an arcade centre and so you wouldn`t win any money but if you play in a proper pachinko centre you can easily win 500 quid. The game is therefore very popular in Japan. You can imagine it can`t you. I come to Japan for a job and leave with a gambling problem. Nice.

Today was the most humid day by far for me. I woke up sweating water like a >insert fat person in sauna joke here

As I haven`t done a lot since last time, I thought I`d talk about the wonderful naked and public bathing experience of the onsen.

The `onsen` which I visit are public baths. As Japan is on a large fault line with lots of volcanoes and things, there are areas where natural hot water springs occur. I went to a new one yesterday which showed the temperature of the baths digitally at 43 degrees Celsius. These are full of minerals and the like, which are therefore good for you as well as being incredibly relaxing. The Japanese have built public bathing centres around these, which as well as having the water piped up into large bathing areas, also have saunas, steam saunas, massage baths, where jets of water get sprayed from all sides, and scented baths such as rosemary and silk as well.

You pay about 600 yen which is three quid and you can stay in there for as long as you want. In fact you can stay the whole day if neccessary which is what many old age pensioners often do. They close normally at about one in the morning. These centres also have restaurants and at some you can buy bottles of the water or in sprays for medical purposes. There are also washing areas in these onsen where up against a couple of walls you have maybe 15-20 mirrors with their own shower, tap, dish and mirror where you wash yourself.

The Japanese bathing experience at home is also peculiar. The baths are much deeper - about one and a half times as deep as a western bath. This is filled with really cold water and heated elecronically (even their baths are computerised) and covered with a heavy wooden mat when not used to keep it hot. The whole family will use the same water in the bath. What is different from the West is you have a stool and a kind of plastic dish which you use to scoop the water from the bath and pour on yourself to wash your body and hair physically outside of the bath. When you are clean, you get into the bath and bathe. Of course in the heat at the moment, I have been restricting myself to ice cold showers instead of undergoing further sauna conditions.

The toilets are also bizarre for a Westerner. When you flush the toilet, the top part of it normally acts as a sink, you wash your hands with the water replacing the water in the basin.

Water. Onsen. Nice.

On Wednesday we went to buy some clothes and I spent a large proportion of my insubstantial funds on them. This is my own fault really as we brought a lot of clothes with us on the plane. We were in fact 20 kilos over between us (the customs bloke in Osaka airport stoppped us as he thought I was smuggling stuff in as we had so much) but thankfully the lovely lady at the check in in Heathrow decided to turn a blind eye to it. All thanks to Reiko I`m sure. Having unpacked the 10th jumper in the 30 degree heat and realising that as it hasn`t yet got below 20 degrees in the day and that I actually need t-shirts and short sleeved shirts and not jeans and jumpers, this was a neccessity.

After shopping we went to the beach and I got my first ever feel for warm sea water. The beach wasn`t as good as Poole or Bournemouth`s but the water was incredible. It was like having a lukewarm bath instead of an ice bath in England. I feel this when I am in a car. Even with the windows wound down and my head out of the window for wind, it feels like a hairdryer on the low heat instead of a cooling sensation. This obviously makes a difference to England which I am pleased for though.

Thursday was a very good day. Reiko and I saw the Hanshin Tigers play baseball against the Tokyo Giants. This is a very popular game as it is the equivalent of Manchester United against Arsenal. It also meant I could get drunk and bang two mini baseball bats with 50,000 other maniacs to cries of kattobaseh fujimoto (hit it hard fujimoto) and HOME LUN HOME LUN GEORGIE. Reiko has to help me out with the chants a lot as I get the names wrong or don`t understand the chants. They also have a Hanshin Tigers song which I want to learn and sing it with everyone else. I got some funny looks from people in the crowd, but after their initial shock, I think they are happy that I am at least not supporting the other side.

Hanshin Tigers won 11-0 and the bloke who`s top I have (Akahoshi) played incredibly scoring some runs and as Tokyo are my most hated baseball side, I had a good time. I`ve really got into baseball. A lot of the time it`s blink and you miss it stuff. I often am there trying to follow the chants and the number of times you should hit the bats together for the particular chant and then the bloke throws it and he`s off. Japan have a team for the olympics this year and Fujimoto is in it so I`ll be following that I hope.

That day I also saw the Prime Minister of Japan. It is election day on the 17th July I think and he was in Osaka campaigning. In Japan all of the candidates hire vans or buses with many loudspeakers on them and babble away in Japanese with their followers on the bus in a kind of uniform with gloves etc smiling and waving at everyone in the street hoping that some people wave back. I saw Mr Koizumi the prime minister in Osaka centre flanked by about 12 security staff on the top of his bus. He looked a bit funny as he was about 2 feet smaller than his security giving him the impression he was a midget babbling on in Japanese. I caught the word America a couple of times but didn`t understand what he was saying. He is a very popular Prime Minister and will probably get reelected this time as well. aha

It sounds like I am just having a bit of a holiday and not making anytime to finding a job doesn`t it. Well that`s correct and I think I deserve it. What do you think? Do you want to fight about it? Just kidding, I have made some effort to find a job. We also went to the advice bureau for foreigners trying to find work in Japan. They advised we go to another association which we`ll probably do on Monday. Maybe.

I had a bit of a holiday day today as well. We went to Nara which is a city near Osaka. They have deer running around wild in the parks and often in the streets. It was possibly the hottest day so far of my stay and I am going brown instead of white to red and back again which I am happy about. I saw the most unexpected thing as well. We went to the lake in Nara and I looked in expecting to see some birds like swans and the like but I saw lots and lots of turtles. I couldn`t believe it. I took loads of pictures but with their weird looking green and red striped serpent heads and feet they started looking a bit sinister - a bit like massive spiders swimming so I stopped looking at them. Reiko`s mum took us for dinner in Nara hotel which is a really old hotel where royalty stay when they visit Nara. I had eel which I thought was going to be disgusting and slimy but tasted like white fish. They had covered it in soy sauce and grilled it and served it on rice in a very traditional japanese ceramic box. Eel is supposed to be good for stamina as well aha so I was happy about that. aha again!

The mosquitos have stopped biting my hands and arms and have decided that as my legs are (or rather were) virgin territory for them, they had better make a go of taking them on like the Americans did with the Indians. I have a whole batch of mini colonies on my left leg. I look like a bloke with some awful contagious disease. I expect to come down with malaria or Hepatitus B within the month. (I realise this may not be funny a month down the line in hospital at death`s door.)

Well that`s about it for this time, I`ll try and write more often so that each post can be a bit shorter. Aha! Bye bye.