Remember to sleep.

It's been busy here, as the weather has tipped from strikingly cold (November to early March was just awful) to shorts-friendly mid 20's celsius sun.  The land is replete with flowers, insects have returned, and the ajeossis and ajummas have started tending the hot pepper plants that captivated my interest upon immediate arrival - every residential street is dotted with them.

The first semester ended with a flourish of work and stress, followed by the comfortable march through the increasingly warm months to find me here, at the start of May.  Other than work, though, what happened?

Desperate aversion to cold almost had me booking an escape holiday during a week off in February, but in the end I saw the fiscal light and held off on holiday-making until early April, when I returned to Tokyo.

It was Hanami time, which means having beer and street food under trees and contemplating the temerity of your short existence...or something along those lines.  I mostly walked around relaxing during this trip, as I didn't have to catch all of the novelty I could.  Coming from a civilized country to visit Japan takes a touch of the wonder out, but it was nonetheless satisfying.

Since then it was a few weeks of nose acknowledging the existence of grindstone, but more or less opting to work from a sensible distance.  The volleyball club I've been playing with since late January (HBC High Flyers) has been really kicking into gear, culminating in the last couple of weeks.  It's been both weekend days each time of flailing away, trying to play defence for me, plus the novelty of last Wednesday.

We were invited onto a Korean TV show to play a group of celebrities, which was a surprisingly competitive match.  I won't spoil the results, but I did get a lot of playing time due to an injury by another player.

It was a lot of affixing small stickers to the logos on our new jerseys, getting makeup patted onto us, waiting around (5-6 hours to make one hour of TV), and standing around while the hosts chatted in Korean with those who could converse.  I spent most of the rest of my time playing a bit of defence and jumping when appropriate.

The uptick in sporting has me in decent physical shape but I finally had to take a practice day off to try to recover/dispel sickness after playing in a beach tourney yesterday.  I had to remind myself to get more sleep after reflexively waking up early this morning, which felt good when I achieved it.

For now it's stretch drive time with a dusting of domestic trip planning possible for a June jaunt, as well as a visit from Nette's parents.  They've not been to Asia before as far as I know, so I'm sure there will be some bewilderment; as I said, though, civilized country.

Go Wyverns, Go M's, Go High Flyers, Go to bed.