New Year

I'm off to a slow start on the new year.

The New Year's holiday was great. The trip to Kochi was better than I could have hoped for. Even got to spend a night at an onsen (hot spring hotel) curtesy of Taka's mom.

Coming home was a different story. Started with some computer problems. They weren't exactly resolved...but I now know that there is either a loose wire or a short on the internal side of the power connection. It's working now, so I'm happy (if more than a little afraid to turn off the computer). I bought an external hard drive and have pretty much backed up everything of value, so I feel safe now. The hard drive I bought was a really cheap one, so the whole backing up processes took ages. Still...done.

The holiday was great. I ate non-stop. This is from the New Year's day get together at Taka's grandmother's. At this point, most were gone.
There were about 20 people there at one point. Taka's grandmother's could handle it. Those old style houses are really set for this kind of thing (sliding doors between rooms, etc.). The guy next to me was pretty drunk, but the woman behind him and I were in a hempai contest. It's kind of special to Kochi. I didn't start it, and she could have stopped it at any time....but we basically traded shots of hot sake through two full teapots worth. Between us we finished almost half a gallon of sake.

I'm going to write more soon. I think I've got the computer stuff mostly taken care of. I just wanted to get this out so I can make all my e-mail catch-up a little easier.