We were finally ready to leave the onsen at about 5pm, and made the short ride over to Maruyama. There was a nice hill on the way down so Joe and I shot off down it chasing a car, topping out at 66km/h. Nice! :D We'd just set up the BBQ when Yoko showed up with her friend Megumi and two of Megumi's colleagues, Rafael and David. They were all super cool people so they were good company, and made for a really friendly BBQ. Just after we'd started cooking everyone else turned up - Hiro, Louise, Skye, and Kazu the Greatest, and even Mitsue and later two of Mitsue's friends too. We all had a great time making the fire, drinking, eating, chatting and generally lazing around.

That night Nate, Miho, Joe, Hiro, Kazu and I squeezed into Ewan's tent for the night, although I didn't really get much sleep. I felt ok when I woke up though, somehow, and we packed up and stuffed everything into Hiro's / Kazu's car. They said they'd drop the stuff off at my house in about an hour, so Nate and the rest of us rode back the quick way down through Sakoshi, stopping at Circle K for brunch. But the celebrations weren't over - Nate had organised another BBQ on the banks of the Chikusa River, so once again we shot off to Jusco to meet everyone and pick up supplies. I realised that most of the people that were coming were the same as the night before, hehe, but there were a couple of new faces including Yuko and one of the teachers Joe teaches with, Katsuchi, and one of her friends. We managed to get another roaring fire going and cooked up our tasty meat and veges before getting stuck into some serious frisbee throwing and, once Minato-san arrived with his family, bike riding.

It all wound up around 4:30pm, with everyone heading off in their own directions after dumping stuff at my house. I felt a bit lost as to what to do then, as I'd been with people and having an awesome time since the Friday night. So being on my own with nothing to do turned out to be pretty intense! So, I played Dawn of War 2, haha, and dug out my dodgy toaster oven to eat the frozen pizzas that Mitsue had, for some unknown reason, brought to the BBQ :) And finally, on Wednesday, the last day of Golden Week, I caught up with Kometani-sensei from the night school enkai. We went for lunch together along with one of her friends to an interesting little restaurant called Arushokudo in Himeji. It had all-you-can-eat-bread, so I was Happy :) After that I went and bought myself a new wallet (it has a picture of Himeji castle on it, wheee) then at night I put a semi-decent dent into the backlog of TV series I had collected due to my month without Internet.

And that was my Golden Week. It was definitely one of the most fun times I've had here in Japan, and I think that a big part of that was the fact it was spent locally, and with local friends both Japanese and gaijin. It hit that perfect middle ground, and it just made for a lovely experience. So much so that it was extremely hard to get out of bed today and come to school. Now I understand why Japanese suffer from 'May syndrome', when people tend to get a bit down in early May because of moving companies / schools at the start of the new financial year and the subsequent adjusting and because the wonderful holiday that is Golden Week has come and gone. But like anything, I'm sure that feeling will pass. I already have a great weekend lined up ... it's just a matter of getting through another 1.5 boring school days :)