Am writing this from Kamakura at the moment but we're still recovering from a brilliant weekend in Chiba.

We left Osaka on Saturday, getting the Shinkansen up to Tokyo where Sheryn met us at the station. She'd driven down from Sendai and had very kindly offered to drive us to Chiba (I think she was keen to get involved with the karaoke!) We stopped for lunch and then carried on driving to Abiko Station where we met Jim's friend, and fellow ex-Derby Evening Telegraph employee, Patrick Sherriff. He and his wife run an English school there in Abiko called Tower English. He also keeps a very good blog which you can find at http://tower-tales.blogspot.com/ (where you can see some photos of the karaoke...) Anyway, he directed us to our ryokan, which is traditional Japanese accommodation, and we freshened up before hitting the alcohol... hard.

Patrick had booked a room for us at a local Izikaya and along with the five of us there was also Patrick's lovely wife Yoshie and several of their friends. Throughout the night we were brought delicious food (yakisoba, sashimi, yakitori), not so delicious food (fermented bean curd being the prime culprit - Jim looked slightly like he might vomit on sampling it) and an unbelievable amount of beer and saki.

At about midnight we staggered off to a local karaoke bar. In the space of three hours I managed to cram in epic performances of 'When Doves Cry', Simple Minds' 'Don't you forget about me', New Order's 'Regret', The Human League's 'Don't you want me baby' and a load more. I was alarmed by just how out of tune I was when my catawalling was relayed through the speakers, though I seemed to get better the drunker I got (or maybe I just stopped caring). My definite highlights though were my duets with Don. We absolutely murdered Roxette's 'It must have been love' and Starship's 'Nothing's gonna stop us now' - IT WAS AWESOME. Unfortunately I don't possess any video evidence but I do have a lot of photos. I think we finally fell into bed at about 4am.

On Sunday we went to the park with Patrick's family (including his beautiful daughers Katherine and Emma) and some of their students for a picnic. We sat in the shade of the trees by the lake with the cicada buzzing above our heads. Sheryn and Jim had hit it off the night before, so to speak, so he accompanied her back to Sendai and he'll be rejoining us in Kamakura later today. It was so sad saying goodbye to Sheryn but she's promised to come visit us in Derby (heaven help her!) so it was hopefully only a temporary goodbye. In the evening Don and I went out for okonomiyaki with the Sherriff family and then had a much needed early night.

We've had a fantastic weekend - relaxed and messy in equal measures. I want to thank Patrick and Yoshie for the hospitality and kindness they showed us, sharing their time and their friends with us. We had a brilliant time and we loved meeting them. It just confirmed to us that the Japanese people are the kindest in the world. God, I think my transition into a hippy has stepped up a gear. How about a retrospective quote of the day to lower the tone? Spoken in Sheryn's Sydney tones: "I'm trying to pull a U-ey and you guys keep talking about kn*bs."

Love you all lots x x x