My week was surprisingly busy and fun, which I needed after the pretty tough weekend. On Tuesday I caught up with an old JET friend of mine, Ann, whom I hadn't seen for ages. We went to Amanda's and my favourite 'hole in the wall' izakaya for dinner, and then kicked on to Italian Tomato Jr for coffee after. It was really great to catch up with her - she's really open and says things as they are, which is a refreshing change!

On Thursday, Yuka came down to Ako and we had dinner at Minato-ya along with the crazy regular crew :) While we were there, Louise and Skye came in and told us about a nabe party at their place this coming Friday, so we're going along to that. I'm really looking forward to it because the Ako crew rarely meet up outside of Minato-ya, and I really think it's a shame.

Friday and Saturday were dinner days, Amanda on Friday and an old acquaintance of mine, Misa, on Saturday. I met Misa last year and she'd come along to a few of the Perth group things that had happened, but the two of us had never hung out. So it was really good fun - I like getting to know new people :) Sunday I was busy as well, catching up with my friends Emerald and Myeong to walk around Kitano and the area north of Motomachi station. I'd never been to that area before and was surprised at how cool it was! Definitely need to go back there and explore some of the cafes and clothes shops. It's definitely my 'buy new clothes' time of year.

This week has been pretty laid back so far thanks to it being end of term exams. The only test I'm involved in is happening right now, actually, so I'll be marking that this afternoon and tomorrow. I didn't have any 'work' on Monday or Tuesday, haha, so I mainly studied Japanese and did other admin odds and ends. Also, completely by chance, I jumped onto the CLAIR JET website and found out that applications to be a Tokyo Orientation assistant were open, so I applied for that and sent it off. Hopefully my hard work for the BOE over the past year and the fact I was a TOA last year will mean that I have a good chance to go again.

Outside school, I caught up with Nate for dinner on Monday and my friend Tomoko for dinner last night. I met Tomoko through the AIFA volunteer Japanese lessons in the middle of last year, and we saw each other a few times there and then started to hang out outside of class too. She was studying English and teaching (including teaching Japanese to foreigners) at uni, but just as we were beginning to get to know each other and I asked her if she'd consider teaching me Japanese through paid lessons, she went to study abroad in Thailand for about 6 months. D'oh, hehe. She came back recently, though, so we met up again and she said she'd be more than happy to teach me - w00t! I love my conversation classes with Kometani-san and Kimura-san, but they're more English focused than Japanese. So I'm really looking forward to a proper 1 on 1 Japanese class, taught by a real teacher :) I'm extremely lucky to find anyone who can do that in Ako, so I'm very grateful.

This weekend is a bit of a hotch potch so far as most of my plans are still tentative. At the very least there's nabe on Friday night, yay, and frisbee on Sunday. So, we'll see - I'm sure I'll find something to do!