The Art of Modern Dance

The Flood

September 27^th 2006

Today our apartment building flooded.  The roof was like a wading pool and the water rain down into the building, found its way between cracks and walls and made it’s way to the front of the building – to our roof.  The ceiling, light fittings and walls were running with water.

It started as a drip in our apartment and luckily I was home to notice it.  Suddenly the walls started weeping, like some Japanese horror movie.  From here the roof started to gush water and it was on for young and old.  I spent the day running about moving the bed, books, CDs, clothes and whatnot, grabbing anything I could to catch the water and then emptying buckets, bowls and vases as they became full.  The whole building was effected, but it was our apartment that was worse hit – joy!  The ceilings in both bedrooms and the kitchen were leaking, the walls were crumbling and the wallpaper peeling away. 

The best part of all of this is although we couldn’t sleep in the bedroom for a few days the landlord (read: fucking moll who must die) refused to give us any support or rent reduction.  She then hired friends to fix the problems.  They slapped on some paint, covered the sagging roof with a new bit of wood (you’d think you’d remove wet saggy wood, not just shove a new bit over it) and left the tatami floors, crumbling walls and water stained woodwork untouched.  They also stole a watch valued at 3,000,000yen from our next-door neighbour and had to bring it back and apologise later that night.  Fucking landlord hasn’t dared show her face since the flood.  Clearly she’s trying to foster her tenants artistic flow in the hope that our soggy, abject distain for her laisser-faire handling of the situation will lead to the Japanese version of RENT bubbling up from her very own building.  She’s a piece of work and clearly needs to be run down.  I worry that if I ever do she her Benz in the building parking area again I will be forced to badge it!  Absolute slag!

Anyhoo, the roof is covered and the wet smell has abated so at least we can move furniture back around, put the bed back and sleep in the bedrooms again.  Thank god we were home and able to save most of our stuff.  The moll should be thanking us too, as we were the ones who realized the building was flooding, notified her staff and the real estate agent to get it fixed (the problem was some pipe/drain on the roof) before too much damage happened.  The clean-up has been a nightmare.

I do believe I am ready to move.

Confessions Tour 2006

August 20^th - Madonna’s Tokyo Dome performance.

We got our tickets early in the game through the pre-sale competition. Having the tickets so far in advance meant I was excited months ago and seemingly quite nonplussed by Madge’s pending performance… well, until the show started.  It was a great concert and I had a fun night.  Esther looked great, sang well, entertained and had the entire Dome up dancing.

This is my 4th Madonna concert and my second time to see her perform live this year.  Earlier this year I wrote one of those “Tell Us Why… In 25 words of less” things and won 2 tickets to her “secret live” at Ageha here in Tokyo.  I was within arms reach at that concert and so being so far away at the Tokyo Dome show couldn’t detract from my enjoyment.  I was on the main arena floor, so I shouldn’t be complaining… but you always want to be closer, don’t you?

There are so many places I want to see in Portugal too.  I have no idea how many places we’ll make it to (as we’re playing it by ear), but we will be in Lisbon before Christmas and will fly out of Porto on Dec 30^th or 31^st.  I just got a great book on Portuguese food from Mary-Liz, for my birthday!  So lucky… can’t wait to try all the food and wine Portugal has to offer.

The last stop on our whirlwind winter escape is Paris.  I have been wanting to get back to Paris for years.  I can’t wait to see it all… it’s been so long.  We leave Paris on January 4^th, so we’ll have a few days to hang out, walk the streets, eat, drink and be merry!

First Day back

It’s true what they say, you know…. School Does Suck!!