My week was pretty awesome! My good friend Yoko came over for dinner on Monday night, which was really great. We went shopping and cooked a carbonara for dinner, then listened to music and chatted away until I had to sleep. I haven't really entertained since getting to Ako, or really hung out with my local friends individually (besides Kazu) for that matter. Put that down to the somewhat bad experience I had when I first arrived here, haha. Anyway, as I said, it was a lot of fun and hopefully I can do it a bit more in the future.

In other news, I *finally* found out that I had been selected as an assistant for the upcoming 2008/09 JET Tokyo Orientation! The wait for that was almost as bad as the wait for JET itself, haha. So I'm off to the bright lights, loud noise, big crowds and never ending excitement of my most beloved big city - I'm totally pumped! My duties at the orientation are a little different to what I expected, but it all still looks good. When we applied we were told it could be pretty random, so I suppose I wasn't really that surprised. At the moment it looks like I will head up to Tokyo on Friday July 25 ready for the orientation orientation on Saturday, and then I'll be going out to Narita Airport to meet the newbies on Sunday, w00t! I didn't realise I would be welcoming them at the airport - that's so exciting! I remember catching the bus into Tokyo last year really well, hehe. Good memories, indeed.

Apparently I will also be doing Information Desk (i.e. Q&A), Hospitality Centre (i.e. lunch duty) and possibly a presentation. I wasn't selected to assist with a CLAIR presentation, which I was a bit disappointed about, but I might still get to do a National AJET one. Good enough ;) There's also the possibility of taking new JETs to, and even attending, the Australian embassy event on Tuesday night (which sucked last year, but hey, it was a free dinner :D). Aside from that I don't know what else I'll be doing. I suppose I will probably head to the training sessions too, in case there are any questions about real JET experiences. With any luck, I might also get to hit the pool - I never got around to it last year, hehe ;)

And finally, Minato-san and I cooked up a Vegemite Cheese okonmiyaki on Thursday night which was delicious, and organised our big BBQ for Saturday night. I also took my PS2 and Katamari Damarcy down and got it going on the projector. It was fun, and I think the game (which is Japanese) even managed to freak Minato-san out ... good times!