One's never alone with a rubber duck

One definite highlight of the weekend was Saturday when Robin and I went to a town called Toga for the Toga Soba Festival with an Australian friend of mine and his Japanese girlfriend. The festival was an impressive affair with some fine soba noodle dishes and surprisingly spectacular ales. There were also a variety of remarkable snow sculptures. I say sculptures; I mean architecture. These things were thirty-foot high monoliths ranging from Hello Kitty to the Parthenon, including a Police Station with actual policemen inside. The whole show was headed by the main stage, which seemed to be an homage to the Valley of the Kings with pyramids so intricately sculpted I expected Tutenkarmun himself to emerge to complain about the noise. The festival ended with a wedding ceremony. Of course. A local couple, bathed in lighting that would have made Jean-Michelle Jar weep, stood in the pouring snow for an hour while various speeches were made. The best man, wearing a tux and a pair of neon yellow snow boots, stood by the side holding an ineffectual umbrella above the bride. To mark the end of the ceremony they rang a bell in a small snow carved chapel, setting off a tremendous fireworks display. It was all rather affecting actually, but in a very Japanese kind of way.

And now it seems I am famous.
“Geoff-san” said my head of department at the speech contest the next day “did you enjoy Toga yesterday?”
“Um, yes, I did. How did you know I was there?”
“I saw you on the news”

At first I as rather worried as I had consumed rather a lot of the wonderful local brew. But the local news station, who it seems had very little else to report, had caught me peering at the local produce in an unusally interested and local way.

“Well” I replied, recovering somewhat “have to do my bit for internationalization you know…”