February is still going but I'll bring you right up to date with the summary style before I start rambling about things in full posts again :D February each year seems to be the time I get really busy, probably partially because a lot of people begin to realise they only have 6 months left on JET. Although mind you, the first part of the month had nothing to do with JET, haha. Kimura-san invited me over to his house on the 3rd for Setsubun, a Japanese festival that marks the 'end of winter' (according to the old seasons). There are various things that are done, including eating an uncut maki sushi roll while facing in the 'prosporous direction' for the year, eating certain types of fish and other delicacies, and then throwing beans around the house and at poor Kimura-san who dressed up as an oni (demon). Needless to say it was a blast.

Recently my twin sister came to Japan on holiday, hooray! I hadn't seen her for nearly a year and a half, so it was lovely to catch up. She and her boyfriend went to Shiga Kougen for a week or so of skiing before they came down to stay with me, so I took the opportunity to go up to snowboard with them on a handy weekend. It was a blast - awesome to see my sis again, great to meet her boyfriend, Peter, and of course always fun to snowboard. I also saw one of my old friends again, Emerald, after what seemed like ages! We had a crab nabe at her house with one of her friends, Myeong, a really interesting Korean girl who was born in Japan. I've been really lucky recently, meeting a whole heap of great people who I lost touch with during my 'down time' as well as meeting lots of new people and making great new friends.

In the middle of Feb my sister came to stay with me and we had a blast. We were invited out for dinners and afternoon teas with my friends in Ako, they got to come to my school and play sports with my kids, we had crazy adventures in Sannomiya and they went off on their own and explored Ako and Himeji. They said they had a really good time so I was happy :) They got the royal treatment from Ako, that's for sure ;) I don't think they'll forget the dinner with Kometani-san any time soon - I'm sure not going to :D

Aside from that, as I said I've been meeting lots of people from old and people from new. My friend Gareth introduced me to a girl, Yuka, who had just come back from studying abroad in Canada. Like me she's been having trouble finding friends in the area, which I think says a lot about the area. If a lovely, native Japanese girl can't find friends here, I'm not surprised that I can't either! Anyway, we've been catching up and I introduced her to my good friend Amanda, so all is good :) I also had Louise and Skye over to my apartment for dinner, given that I'd finally cleaned it up (thanks sis!). And the topping on the cake was meeting the student from the university in Ako who found me on Mixi and who I'd been talking to for a couple of weeks. She was very quiet but friendly enough, so I'm hoping to catch up with her more and also meet some of her friends from the uni :)

And that's about it! I did have another snowboarding trip planned, probably the last of the season, with my friend Minori. She got very sick last week though, and it turned out that although she was ok (thankfully!) she couldn't board. So my weekend was very quiet. I just went out for dinner with Nate and some of his girlfriend's friends on Saturday, and spent the day at home chilling out on Sunday. It rained all day, and although I did my washing quite early, nothing was dry today! So I had no underpants and had to resort to wearing my thermals, hahaha. Crazy times. I really hope those undies dry today.