thunder, lightning, strike!

lightning vidcap 1
Originally uploaded by decentred.

I had one of those very can-do days yesterday. It began pretty normally for a day off, until we decided to go to the open-air swimming pool for a quick swim as the gym is shut for a couple of days (it seems to shut randomly for between 1 and 4 days every month). So we trooped down to the pool, only to find out it wasn't open for another hour and a half, meaning that we had loads of time to just potter about, in all the side streets and such; I took Em to Koi-Wai, where we play football, and we had another look at the castle - watching fish and turtles and such.

When we did eventually get to go for a swim, we discovered a number of things about the facilities. Firstly, there was a 50-metre pool, which was open and partly laned off, so we could swim laps if we felt like it (we didn't). Secondly, it wasn't tiled, only a kind of rough concrete, which whilst good for some exfoliation, led to serrated toes in the end. Thirdly, the facility had obviously been built by a team of Communist Russians during the early 1970's who, after having visited England on a fact-finding tour and been fascinated by the 'lidos' of Milton Keynes and Hounslow, had decided to re-create on on Japanese soil. Have a look at a picture, which shows half of the pool itself. I didn't take one of the changing rooms, in order that I wasn't summarily banned, despite being the only people there (or indeed likely to be), but they were something to behold. There was a partition between the male and female changing rooms (although this had square holes cut into it) and there were shelves full of numbered shopping baskets (up to about 235), so that you didn't need to mess about with a locker key or anything complicated like that. It's only open for 2 months in the summer, and Paddy reckons that the floor ends up covered in dead bugs etc., so I'm really looking forward to going for a quick few laps in late August.

As it was only about 2pm when we finished, I popped to the Cultural Centre, to ask about Tai Chi classes in the area. A very nice man actually called a Tai Chi teacher for me, and arranged (with the help of Google Translate) a visit/demo class at 3.30 that day. Turns out that it was only round the corner from the apartment, so I went over to have a go. I was the youngest there by at least 15 years, but they were all very nice, and the fact that I speak very little Japanese and the teacher almost no English didn't seem to be much of a problem (although it might get more tricky later on). It was tricky but lots of fun, and I'm up for going again.

I also managed to fit a new battery to my iPod, which took all of 5 minutes start to finish. Thanks to Lukas for sorting out a new battery so efficiently. It now seems loads better, but was on charge for much of last night, so we'll see how it goes later in the week.

Then the thunder started. The biggest storm I've ever seen - the above picture is a video capture from my digital camera, and must have struck about half a mile from the apartment. Cool.