Hamtaro

It's been quite a while since my last post. I would like to update my blog once a week, but I know if I make that my goal it'll just turn into a chore and I'll feel pressured to do it. So I'll just say I aim to update more often.

It's over two weeks since I got back to Japan, and I can already feel myself sinking back into the same old work-then-sleep-then-go-to-work-again mode. I just feel like I am doing nothing but work (which I suppose is exactly what I am doing) and when I get home from work I don't have the energy to do anything else. On the weekends I force myself to go out and meet people, but to tell the truth, I really only have the energy to be at home or by myself. Maybe it's just old age creeping up on me.

Hamtaro died on Friday. I came home from work to find him cold and dead on the bottom of his cage. In life he was such a robust little chap - the vet said he was the biggest hamster he had ever seen - but in death he shriveled up to almost nothing. The worst thing was that by the time I found him his big, beautiful eyes were already shriveled into his head and the flies were on him. It upsets me that I wasn't here when he died, that he died alone. I feel that I failed him. I buried him under the azalea bush in front of the office across the road. I can sit down there and talk to him when I go out to speak on my mobile phone at night. For over a year he was my best friend. I get a lump in my throat when I think about him.

I already have two more. I bought them pretty quickly - some might think with indecent haste. The truth is that I had to buy something to put in that empty cage. After Hamtaro died and I cleaned it out, the cage just sat there like an open grave and I couldn't stand looking at it. I covered it over with a cloth, but that just made it more sinister. I couldn't throw Hamtaro's cage away, so I ended up buying the two hamsters to put in it. They are sisters - Pearl Winter White Russians, which means they are almost pure white with dark ears and a dark dorsal stripe down the back. One has a darker stripe than the other and that is how I can tell them apart. The darker one is also energetic and runs around like she is on speed, so I call her Speedy. The other is more like me - she sleeps most of the day and just emerges for food. I've called her Snowy (although my friend suggested that "Slowy" might be more appropriate, as she seems to be one nut short of a fruit bar). It was hard the first day, seeing them in Hamtaro's tank, eating his food and playing on his wheel. I felt a bit resentful, but I'm slowly getting used to them. They can't have his special dish, though. The one I fed him his vegetables in. That was just for him, and now it is on my bookshelf over my desk.

I've been watching Alan Rickman films recently. I liked his stuff the first time he was really popular about 20 years ago and now I've been watching the films he made since then. The best ones I've seen so far are "Sense and Sensibility" and "Perfume". The worst was "Nobel Son", which I recommend you not to touch with a barge pole. I really want to see "Snowcake", which has Sigourey Weaver as a woman with Autism. In the clips it looks pretty good.

I am reading "The Help", which was given to me by my friend Barbara. It's very good. I'm not even halfway through yet, but I am already nervous about what might happen to the characters in it when people find out what is going on.

Too tired to write any more tonight. Falling asleep at the keyboard. Time for bed.