Sorry, another late post! This was meant to be posted late last week ...

It's been a bit of a mixed week since last Friday. I felt a little sick on Thursday afternoon, and it ended up turning into a episode of the weird meningitis style virus that I'd had in February last year. Thankfully nowhere near as severe (that one nearly killed me!), but enough to completely take me out for three days. So there went the weekend, and I had to take a day of sick leave on Friday too. Thankfully I had no classes, so I didn't miss anything important. I was still annoyed, though! I hadn't been sick in over 6 months, only to get sick in the first week of the school year! :/

So I just rested and, when I had the energy to get out of bed, played a little Neverwinter Nights 2. I'd forgotten how fun it was. I'm working on a pure Drow Monk at the moment, who was abysmally weak at the start but is now decently powerful. Enough about that, though :D Unfortunately, although NWN2 was a good use of my down time, it was an unfortunate weekend to be stuck in the house. I missed a whole school enkai on Friday night, which are always a total riot. Saturday I had to turn down an invitation to go bowling with a new friend of mine in Ako, Takashi, who is my age and speaks fairly good English. Real bummer to miss that one, as he's a great guy and an inroad to making more friends my own age here. Finally, on Sunday, I missed a hanami party that was my last chance to see the sakura before the wind and rain claimed them. So as I said, the virus cost came with a very high cost! Still, on the upside, it did mean I got a metric crapload of rest, which I did really need.

Back at school on Monday, I prepared my lessons for the week, and then at 6pm, headed down to City Hall to meet Sekiyama-san. A while back, he'd asked me to help out with some English narration work based around a picture book of the very famous Ako Gishi story (the 47 Loyal Samurai). This story is extremely well known in Japan, but not so outside Japan. Some people in Ako had seen the book and wanted to help tell the story to the world. They'd decided to convert the book into a YouTube video, and to reach the wider audience they wanted to, needed someone to narrate it in English. Although the book had been translated mostly adequately into English by the mysterious "Team Kariyasalon", they were after a native speaker, and I just happened to be the local friendly gaijin who was more than happy to help out.

So we sat down in a quiet room and after a few explanations and translations by Sekiyama-san, recorded away, with me trying my best to use a good narration voice. I've never done that kind of work before so was a little unsure of exactly how to speak! They seemed happy enough with what I did though, although they also seemed very taken aback when I asked to stop and re-record a few sections because I'd made mistakes. It was hardly my fault, haha. Whoever translated the book had a penchant for extremely long sentences (40 - 50 words and longer). Easy to read, but bloody difficult to speak! :)

After about an hour or so we had finished, and everyone was mostly happy with the final result. They said they'd send me the link to the movie when they finished it, and also insisted that I take a box of delicious bread with me (how random! :D). Sekiyama-san then invited me out for dinner, which was very kind of him. He took me to an awesome little sushi-ya, which was really 'local' and superbly delicious. I'd never really been to a place like it before, but will definitely be going again. It was a bit expensive but extremely tasty. Sekiyama-san and I had a good conversation over beer, sushi and a samurai drama, about a whole heap of things, in both Japanese and English. From there we rode home and he offered to take me and any friends I wanted up to Kurashiki, which he knows quite well. We'd spoken about it in dinner and he'd just offered to take me there and show me around - good bloke! I said I'd take him up on his offer at some point in May.

Tuesday was an interesting day, I had my first ichi-nensei classes, yeehaa! I've saved all of that for another post though, hehe. I just rested at night, so nothing special there. Wednesday night I ducked down to Minato-ya for an early dinner before returning to badminton. Ewan had given me a call earlier in the week and wanted to play too, so I figured it was as good a time as any to get stuck back into it. I hadn't been for nearly 2 months, admittedly. After playing extremely badly in the last tournament I decided to take a bit of a break to reflect. Anyway, I was really glad to be back, and didn't play too badly. A lot of 'very close' shots, and I managed to learn a few new things too.

Ewan turned out to be pretty good, although that didn't really surprise me. He's very active and told me a while back that he used to play a lot of badminton in high school. Although he hadn't played for many years, he still had a lot of skill straight off the bat (racquet? haha). Better than me, and he'll only get better if he keeps coming. It was also great to see Daiichi and Funamoto-san again. I'd forgotten how much fun Daiichi's friendly rivalry was, haha. Ewan seemed to have a good time even though he didn't manage to end up on a winning team all night. He got stuck into himself a few times when he messed up shots, and I really admire how he sets himself high goals, stretches for them and expects the best from himself. I guess we're similar like that, but I'd say he's better at actually achieving those goals, hehe. He said he would keep coming on Wednesday nights which is great, as I haven't really been able to hang out with him lately and he's a good guy.

On Thursday I caught a lift to school with Harada-san because it was raining, and then got stuck at school in the afternoon, hehe. I didn't have enough money to catch the bus thanks to irritating ATM hours and poor time planning on my behalf, so I had to walk all the way home, lol. I stopped in at Paone on the way back and also managed to tee up a dinner with Kazu and Nate in Aioi. We went to a new yakitori place that was pretty decent. We had a crazy conversation about all kinds of things, including whaling (touchy subject :D), and ate and drank lots of good food.

Tonight is badminton, maybe, and some rest. Tomorrow I don't really have any plans. The weather should be fine but I don't know if frisbee will be on or not, despite the fact hanami is now over. If it is I'll do that, otherwise I might just stick around and do some chores. At night I'm supposed to be going to Kobe and Osaka to party, but I have a feeling that might fall through. If it does I might check out the 'decent' snack in Ako, 'Selfish'. It was a lot of fun last time I went, with Nick, so we'll see. Sunday no plans again. So lots of rest is on the cards, really. The virus made me very tired and it lasts about a week or two usually, so I probably should take it easy. Especially since I'm teaching properly now and that's quite draining. Still, whatever happens, I'm sure it'll be a good weekend. Dare I say it, there should be plenty on even in Ako to keep me busy enough.