My weekend was fairly average, despite being extremely busy. Friday was fairly good though, with some excitement at school as four ichi-nensei students were caught smoking at lunchtime. Why on earth these retarded kids thought that they could get away with smoking not just at school but at lunchtime, I will never know ;) Apparently they said that they'd been smoking since junior high school and couldn't stand going a whole day at school without smoking any more. Idiots. Anyway, I'm very glad they were caught, and that they have been suspended for 1 week. Smoking is a pointless, stupid, virtueless habit and I won't stand for seeing kids throw their lives away to it. If they're not smart enough to make the sensible choice after they are out of my duty of care, then unfortunately that's their decision.

On Friday afternoon I had English club after school. We're doing a poster about Australian food for the upcoming school culture festival, and I brought in Vegemite and Cadbury chocolate for them to try. They were happy enough to eat the chocolate but I had to force them to try the Vegemite :P Both looked very unhappy after eating it, much to my delight, haha. The club wrapped up just before 5pm, giving me just enough time to zoom home, shower and head out to Himeji for Amanda's 'West Side' birthday party.

The party was at the 'dirty escalator' izakaya, where Amanda had booked a big room and set us up with a fixed course of food and nomihoudai - good times! As I mentioned, it was a west side party, meaning only people from the Aioi/Himeji area were invited. It was lovely to catch up with the local JETs again, as being in Ako I'm just outside their inner circle and don't often see them. So we spent the night catching up and of course, eating and drinking a lot of good food and beer. The only downside to the night was that about 5 people who had confirmed couldn't show up, and the izakaya (fairly enough) couldn't change the overall price for the set meal. I managed to get in touch with my good friend Kazuyo and got her to come down, which helped a bit, but we ended up having to pay about 4,300 yen each. Ouch! Anyway, after the dinner, about 6 of us went off to karaoke for an hour before catching our last trains home.

On Saturday morning I jumped on the train for the blessedly short trip up to Aioi to meet Minato-san and Nate. We were having a BBQ and had organised to meet beforehand to do all the shopping. We bought tons of interesting stuff at the massive supermarket and then headed for the park near Nate's house to set up. Minato-san, the machine that he is, was cooking within about 15 minutes of getting there, haha. I went to pick Kazuyo up from the station at about 1pm (I ran all the way there ... must be fitter than I realise!) and people continued to trickle in all afternoon. Around 3pm, Nate's friend Sean got a friendly game of Ultimate Frisbee going, and we had a hilarious time playing that for a few hours.

Eventually it ticked around towards 5pm and I had to head back home to shower before heading into Osaka at night. I'd promised Amanda I'd go to a salsa club in Osaka with her and some of our friends. To be honest, I didn't really feel like going. It was very far away, I was tired and I was having an awesome time at the BBQ and just wanted to stay and see the fireworks there at 8pm. But, a promise is a promise, so off I went. It turned out to be an ok night, after spending about 30 minutes trying to find the damn place, haha. The actual club it was at was really nice (not at all sleazy) and of course, it was great to catch up with Dan, Goran, Matt and Emma, who I also hadn't seen properly for months. I wasn't really in the mood for dancing, though. It turned out we'd missed the actual lessons part of the night, unfortunately, so we weren't really sure what we were doing! I tried my best at the start and Emma, who knew the salsa, gradually managed to teach us all some moves - lucky!

About an hour in, my stomach decided it wasn't very happy though, so I called it a night for the dancing and made a few phone calls outside while the others danced away until about around 11. We all had to head back home then thanks to the ridiculously early last trains. As I had a HAJET meeting on Saturday in Akashi, Matt offered to let me stay at his and Emma's place in Tarumi, which is just three stops to the east of Akashi. They had a nice apartment, and although I didn't sleep well, I was really grateful to them for letting me stay at such short notice!

On Sunday I headed to the HAJET meeting, which was about 3 hours long and only half the committee could attend (lol!) before looking around Akashi a bit and then heading back to Ako late afternoon. I was exhausted thanks to not sleeping well on Saturday night, so got to bed quite early. And that was my weekend. Surprisingly average, as I said. I guess I hate having nothing on so much that when I am double booked I tend to feel down about it ... it's like wasted opportunities, hehe. I want to go to everything or save up some events for the future! Oh well. I was happy with the choices I made at the time, and in hindsight I probably wouldn't have changed anything. Which is a good way to be.