Late on Thursday afternoon I decided, on the spur of the moment, to take a day of nenkyuu on Friday. I'd been really busy marking exams since late on Wednesday morning, and having finally finished up at just past 6pm on Thursday I was really not in the mood for a day of nothing at school the next day. I also had the removal company coming to give me a quote at about 9am on Friday, and although Harada-san had said he'd take care of it for me, I wanted to be there just in case.

Thursday night was a really good, normal Minato-ya night, with Louise bringing along one of the teachers she knew. I'm a bit ashamed to admit that I can't remember her name (whoops!), but as I didn't really talk to her I suppose it's not surprising. Sorry random teacher! After that I went home to clean up a bit before the removal people came.

I woke up to rain on Friday morning, which was a bit of a surprise. Not long after I'd woken up and gone downstairs, I heard someone trying to get into my apartment. This happens from time to time as it's quite common for people to just open doors to houses, especially in rural areas. Coming from Australia though, where that basically means bad news, it's still quite a shock. I waited a bit then opened the door, but the only person around was a guy in a suit standing under the eaves of apartment 8, talking on a mobile phone. I wondered if he was the removal guy, but figured that if he was, he wouldn't be wearing a suit and would have stayed under my eaves to make the call.

Anyway, a little later there was a knock on the door and hey presto, it was the same guy, haha. He was the removal guy after all, and so in he came and in an amazingly short time had finished his quote. 40,000 yen to move *everything*, provided I packed the boxes myself. Ouch. Well, it could have been worse, hehe, and I figure that for the advantage it affords me in terms of time and convenience, it's more than worth it. I consoled myself that the extra money I had to spend to move everything was offset by the money I would have spent on buying new furniture had I only moved what I had wanted to. And a lot of the old junk in my apartment will be thrown out as I move, with the really horrible bigger rubbish (i.e. most of my furniture) to be gotten rid of if I decide that I really don't need it.

The rest of Friday I did washing and played games before heading over to the station to meet Yuka at around 7:30pm. We walked up to Louise and Skye's apartment from there for the nabe party, skillfully prepared by resident super-chef Ai! :) Despite being really tired, it was a lovely night. Nate came across for it too, along with Mitsue, Louise's teacher friend who came to Minato-ya on Thursday and of course Ewan and Ai. One of the highlights of the night was when Ewan and Ai announced that they are engaged :) I was so happy to hear that! Definitely some of the best, happiest news I've heard in a very long time.

I finally got home from the nabe party at around 4am and slept at around 5, so I wasn't up until nearly 4pm, hehe. Whoops! I didn't have anything organised for Saturday afternoon, though, so it wasn't a problem. I jumped in the shower and headed out to Sannomiya to meet up with my new friend Keisuke (we call him Case), who is an awesome dude. He brought along one of his friends too, Toshiyuki, who was hilarious. So we had a great night talking away in Japanese and English, although I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't understand more of their Japanese conversation. It was very informal and vulgar more often than not, haha, so I suppose it's not overly surprising that I couldn't understand. It was exactly the type of Japanese (informal) that I want to understand and therefore want learn more of, though, so despite feeling a bit down it was good experience.

I caught the last train back from Sannomiya and had a fairly early night. I had nothing on Sunday morning either, but there was frisbee in the afternoon. So I finally had the chance to try out my Skins, the special sports pants that my good friend Darrell had sent me from Australia. They were really, really effective - I was able to run faster for longer and my muscles didn't ache this morning. Amazing! It was a good session of frisbee too, really laid back and with lots of interesting, fun people. I talked to one of the guys I'd met there before, Uchida, and we practised and played together for a while. He was much better than me, though, haha.

And that was my weekend. I was massively tired when it started, tired all the way through it and am still tired now. Seems to just be the way it is these days, despite what I do. Now I'm sitting at school counting down the minutes until 4pm, haha. School has essentially finished for this year now, and I think I have 2 classes total over the next 2 weeks. Still, it could be worse. Plenty of time for Japanese study, reflection on the current school year and preparation for the next one.