sunburn
I am hideously sunburnt.
Probably not the cleverest thing to do since I am going to see Cheryl soon and its highly likely that I will spend the greater part of Sunday NAKED, but clevererity didn’t factor into my recent beach trip in which I was convinced that, since it was cloudy, I would have to stay out on the beach for much longer than normal for me to get an adequate tan.
Of course, this was painfully wrong and I am now being punished for it. I am bright red from head to toe, apart from gleamingly pallid British skin where my shorts and the small amount of sunblock that I did actually use were, which I idly spread across my chest in a random manner as an afterthought whilst lying down. This was probably the dumbest thing I did. Being red from head to toe wouldn’t nearly be as bad if I didn’t have a huge white splodge covering my chest and stomach, roughly resembling a map of South America, or leprosy, depending on your viewpoint.
I can’t believe it’s been almost a year now and that was the first time I went to a beach in Japan. The beach was at Miyazaki, which I have decided is a rather cool place to be - I envy the JETs who are there. The city has a nice laid-back feel, with lots of green and a distinct lack of oppressive hordes of people. Its also the place where I bought a t-shirt with the words “you busting shit” on the back of it, so that’s instantly a plus point in my book.
Anyway, as if I could possibly forget the searing pain as every movement of my body stretches my tender red skin, to Japanese people it seems being sunburnt is the funniest, most unusual thing in the whole bloody world. At every school what started as knowing grins or outright laughter, slowly turned into whooping cries of “hiyake!” (sunburn) whenever I passed people, whether they had already said it to me 20 times before in the day or not. It became a class topic of conversation during English lessons. People asked to see my legs (which I did actually enjoy showing because frankly, they were so vividly red on a hilarious scale). One extremely concerned teacher went as far as to say “don’t touch Jon-sensei today” which I’m not sure was for their benefit or mine, taking into account how much it hurt when people touch me, or simply warning them in // they ‘catch’ sunburn.
Tomorrow is the end of term ceremony and drinking party which means I can expect utterances of the word ‘hiyake’ to go into triple figures through the course of the day. I’m also wondering - if combined with sunburn and alcohol-induced redness - whether my face will go purple, black, or just explode off my skull into millions of crispy little pieces.
