I cruised through my Thursday and Friday at school last week, not really having a huge amount to do. Ichi-nensei were still away so I was down to the three ni-nensei classes. They broke up the monotony of reading books, planning lessons and writing emails though, which was welcome :) The Thursday class was a standard boring reading and pronounciation class, but the Friday ones were more amusing. I got to do my body language activity in Takagi-sensei's class, which is a pretty much guaranteed way to make the kids a) laugh and b) pay attention and not sleep for a change, haha.

My favourite body language example in the activity is the 'follow me' one, which gets a wide range of generally dirty responses from the kids :) In one class, a boy actually answered 'ore ni tsuite, koi' (roughly "Follow me, baby" in English), which was close enough for me, hehe. Thanks for filling me in on that one a few months ago, Michele :P And as one of my students had said it previously, I felt it'd be ok to bust it out in another class too, which turned out to be mostly true. The kids roared with laughter and my team teacher went a bit red (I was doing the example with her at the front of the class). Hahaha. Good times. Any lesson where I can say 'Follow me, baby!' in Japanese has just got to be good, right? :P

Thursday night was Minato-ya night, before which I headed to Jusco in a desperate gamble to find some stronger deodorant. I found something that is meant to be stronger, or so the lady assured me, but I still have my doubts. I'll give it a go on a Monday when I don't have any classes, hehe. As an aside, I haven't told you, my wonderful reader in Australia, just how totally excellent you are, recently, have I? Well you are! So very, very excellent. So wonderful, in fact, that I'm sure you would find it well within your very kind stride to send me a box of cans of any kind of male Rexona. Please, please let me know if you can. I will reward you handsomely. Seriously.

Now, back to our regular programming. Errr, yes, so. Minato-ya! Yes, it was very cool. I rocked up early and after a while Nate and Miho came in, followed an hour or so later by Yoko and Mitsue. I hadn't seen either of the girls for months, so it was great to have them back. Yoko, who is wonderfully happy and bubbly, is heaps of fun to hang out with, so I was especially glad to see her again. Mitsue, who had been kinda distant in the past, was also friendly for some reason, and seemed impressed that my Japanese had improved as much as it had since August last year. Which I was kinda happy about, even though I know it should be much better. She said we should trade language and suggested that I drop in to visit the cafe where she works part time on the weekend sometime. I said I'd think about it.

Friday night I shot up to Himeji to catch up with my friend Amanda. We wandered across to the yaki-tori place I'd been with Hide the weekend before, and grabbed some tasty stuff-on-sticks. One of the waitresses here recognised me (not so difficult given the gaijin effect) and, seeing me speaking English with another gaijin, bravely spoke English to us and explained that she was studying at University. Her English wasn't too bad, although I think it was probably hampered by the fact she was really nervous, hehe. Despite her English and Amanda's great Japanese, we still managed to end up with a deliberately half cooked (believe it or not) chicken dish, which we sent back. They were kind enough to cancel it rather than charge us for it :) Half cooked chicken? Come on Japan ... I know you eat a lot of things raw (including chicken), but haven't you ever heard of salmonella?

After dinner it was up to Chum for drinks, where, as usual, I ordered my drink via the toy monkey that hangs around the cafe. I think the staff have gotten used to me now, haha. In fact, he asked Amanda and I if we would like to go to some sort of upcoming event there. Amanda couldn't translate all of what he said, but it seemed like something to do with fashion, makeup, fortune telling or some combination of them all. So naturally, not wanting to miss out on what could be a very interesting event, said we'd like to go and to let us know the details when he worked them out :) No doubt I'll be back there again soon.

I caught my last train and went home via Saion, which turned out to be a good choice as Miyo and a friend of hers were there. Miyo had awesome some awesome clothes on, very Japanese! I was impressed. She goes to the university in Ako and is one of the youngest people I know, so she gets extra cool points. We all chatted for a while and eventually Miyo insisted on making me a drink, hooray! While she did that, I spoke to her friend a little bit. She spoke better English than Miyo but was extremely shy, which was a bit frustrating. Still, we had fun overall :)

On Saturday it rained all day and was pretty miserable, but I managed to get up and off to Akashi in the morning for the HAJET committee meeting. Everyone turned up and we spent nearly 3 hours working through all of the issues on the agenda. Got a lot decided on and worked out though, so it was definitely time well spent. I went shopping with two of the committee members, Matt and Kate, afterwards, so got back to Ako around 5:30. I had arranged to meet Kazu so shot off to meet him at his house at 6:45ish, getting drenched by rain on the way. We rode down to a yakiniku place near Minato-ya, and had a great dinner of various pieces of meat cooked on a little grill on our table, mmmm.

We talked for quite a while about various things over dinner, but eventually go onto a frustrating topic where I simply could not explain to Kazu what I was trying to say. It's a complicated enough topic to explain to someone fluent in English, and even his very good level of English wasn't enough to understand what I was saying. Naturally, I had no chance of explaining in Japanese. So that was quite frustrating, but swallowing my irritation, I managed to break it down to basics and get enough explained to him for him to know where I was coming from, and left it at that. After dinner we shot off to Saion to watch one of my favourite movies of all time, Snatch. I laughed a lot but hardly anyone else did, despite the Japanese subtitles, which leaves me convinced that British and Japanese humour are extremely different and incompatible.

Sunday was a relatively quiet day, I finally caught up my new friend Takashi and his wife. They met me at Paone at 1pm and we drove to Round1, a big entertainment complex in Okayama. We did some bowling, played some amusement machines, shot some pool and generally hung out and had a good time. Takashi can speak English pretty well and I was in a Japanese mood, so we spoke in a good mix of the two. His wife can't speak any English and despite being young and a few efforts of mine (using Japanese) to bring her into the conversation, appeared completely content to be the token subservient, silent Japanese wife. Frustrating, yes, but only because I let it be. I just wanted to make sure she wasn't bored out of her brains, hehe. I suppose I shouldn't worry so much, I'm sure if she wasn't happy she would have said something to Takashi. Maybe. Heh.

After bowling we grabbed a very unhealthy dinner at a Bikkuri Donkii (mmm sweet, sweet steak) and a coffee to go from a Chococro before driving back to Ako. I'd hoped to get back by about 6pm so I could head up to Ewan's wine and cheese night that he'd organised the previous Thursday night. It started at 4pm, so even getting there at 7pm would have been a bit of a push. Unfortunately the roads back from Okayama were heavily jammed, as usual, and we got back at just after 8pm. So I missed out on the night, unfortunately. Oh well. Can't do everything, I suppose, and I had a pretty full weekend. I can always go next time.

Back to school today and back to normality, mostly. Ichi-nensei were off today to make up for the holiday they missed last week before going to Hachikita, although it didn't really matter because I don't have any classes today anyway. The next few weeks will continue to be disrupted as this week a lot of classes turn into exam study for next week's 'mid term' tests. Joy, hehe. No classes next week :/ Still, it's not like I don't have things to do. Now that I actually have lessons, I can plan ahead, hooray! And admittedly I spent most of today working on Hyogo AJET stuff that blossomed out of the mammothian meeting on Saturday. I figure it's work related, though, and it's a lot better than sitting on Facebook, emailing or sleeping all day, hehe.

And that's about it. Nothing majorly exciting planned until the weekend, really. Badminton Wednesday night if my leg has healed enough, Thursday Minato-ya and then an English Teacher enkai on Friday. Saturday might have some Ultimate Frisbee, followed by an izakaya/karaoke birthday bash for Emma, Amanda and Goran at night in Sannomiya. I don't really feel like staying out all night so far from home, though, so I think I might catch my last train back. There are a couple of friends in Himeji who I haven't seen for a long while, so I might stop in there. Hypocritical? Maybe a little. My only defence is that Himeji is a lot closer to Ako to do an all-nighter in, and why not see two sets of friends in one night? :)

I realised the other day that I may have given Ako a bit of a bad wrap on here. I certainly don't think I've bashed it, but I don't think I've ever really said much good about it either. So I want to clear things up! Bottom line is that I like Ako a lot, maybe even as much as Perth. With that said, does Ako have its bad points? Definitely, and I'll start there before moving on to why I still like it. The three main problems I have with Ako are that a) it's a relatively long way away from any big cities (75 minutes from Kobe and Okayama, 105 minutes from Osaka, 135 minutes from Kyoto), b) there don't seem to be many people my own age here and it's full of old people and c) although people are quite friendly, the community is quite close knit and hard to break into.

I guess they seem like pretty big problems, and at the start of my time here, they were. I didn't know anyone, couldn't get to know anyone and had nothing to do. Every weekday I just sat in my house and every weekend I got out of Ako on the first train I could. Not really a healthy way to live, and a constant source of stress. Thankfully, though, things changed over time. I began meeting new people and as my Japanese improved, it became easier to talk to them, hang out with them and meet their friends and hence more people. As I got more involved in the community, I found I had more things to do, which meant that I was looking to leave Ako less. Naturally the distance problem is insurmountable, but with enough to do in Ako, most of the stress related to that fades away.

Hehe, that's kind of ironic. I've said what I don't like about Ako but have found reasons why the bad things aren't really bad any more after all. Which is almost as good as saying the good things :) Speaking of which, here are some of the good things about Ako. It has a big enough population to support a great range of shops, cafes, restaurants and bars, afford you some privacy and give you a great range of interesting people to meet. It's inaka enough, however, to have that friendly, strong community feel to it and be extremely peaceful. Ako SHS, where I teach, is a wonderful school where the students are very well behaved and teaching is easy and fun. It has a lot of interesting history including being an Edo salt town and of course the 47 Loyal Samurai story. It is extremely beautiful thanks to good city planning and management, having mountains all around and being right on the coast. It's small enough to allow you to get around almost entirely by bicycle. There's plenty to do thanks to the excellent natural resources (beaches, parks, mountains, onsens) and other recreation facilities (sentos, karaoke, sports clubs and so on). It's on the Sanyo train line that is a fast, cheap and convenient way to get to those far away big cities. My house is decent. There's a small but friendly gaijin population. There's a university so lo and behold there are young people living here (I just have to find where they hang out!) There are 2 large hospitals so health care is excellent. And then there's a whole lot of little things that I could write on about for ages but can all pretty much be summed up under 'atmosphere' and 'day to day life'.

So all in all, Ako is a pretty rocking place. There's so much good about it, and if it was nearer Kobe, it would be nigh on a perfect place to live. I suppose at the start the difficulties I faced pretty much towered over even the long list of good things. When you have no friends in a town, are far from friends you do have and are finding it hard to meet people locally because you don't know your way around and can't speak their language very well, even the best of places is going to suck. I guess that's why it's all about toughing it out. Many people said to me how great Ako was and I believed them, even though I didn't feel particularly good at the time.

As I said before, I'm finally beginning to feel like I belong here and am getting a lot happier. For example, on most weeknights, I can actually find things to do. Japanese class, badminton, friends to see at local bars and so on. I feel like things are going to keep getting better too. As my Japanese improves and my friendships with people get stronger, I'll meet more people and then their friends and so on, until hopefully I know enough people to always have something to do or someone to see if I want to. One thing that should really help here is an extremely random thing that happened a few weeks ago.

My friend Darrell back home messaged me to let me know that one of his colleagues used to live and work in Ako and was coming across for a visit. Darrell passed my details on to him and he got in touch with me. I found out that he'd actually been a lot more involved in Ako than I thought he had been, mainly because he came as part of the sister city relationship between Rockingham and Ako rather than as a JET. He'd worked at Jusco and gotten very into the community and the sister city relationship. We emailed back and forth and he very kindly offered to help me out with finding anything in particular that I wanted to do in the community - kendo, judo, ikebana, sado and so on. He also said he'd introduce me to his former host mother, who is very active in the community. This was really exciting for me as it represents a great chance to get more involved in the community and meet some great new people, which I'm always up for doing.

Saturday (3rd May) turned out to be an interesting and somewhat painful day. I went to bed at a fairly reasonable time on Friday night so was up relatively early too. I played a bit of STALKER on ze compy and then headed up to Paone to meet my new friends at 3:30pm. These two guys are Christian missionaries, and while most people won't give them the time of day because of it, I think that they're decent people. And so long as they don't start trying to harp on about their mission to me, I'm happy to hang out. I'd met them at Minato-ya a few weeks before and we'd gotten around to talking about mountain biking, which they were fairly keen to get into. So I said I'd show them the trails at some point and Saturday was the day!

I took them up to Takayama, which is quite a challenging course. There's a steep climb followed by a lot of rocky downhills and stiff uphills. The boys ride their bikes for hours each a day as they go around trying to convert people, so naturally they are somewhat fitter than I am. As I was huffing and puffing slowly up the steep roads on the middle of the mountain, they were going along quite well. Until we reached the higher roads, anyway, hehe. At the top, I managed to find the trail that Minato-san had taken me on last time and we zoomed off along it.

The trail is a lot of fun and we I think we all enjoyed it, bouncing down the loose rocks as best we could and generally trying not to get mortally injured, hehe. I fell off three times and took some good damage to my legs, but nothing too serious. I think the best bit was on the final downhill, a long rocky zig zag with very sharp turns. On the way down that, we came across a lady hiking up it. Wynce was going first so had whizzed by her on a straight section, but I'd come across her on a narrow section where I couldn't ride past. So I jumped off and carried my bike past her, hehe. She looked at us with absolute incredulity, eyes wide with surprise :) She saw the blood on my legs told us all to take care. As Wynce put it so perfectly, how could she not be surprised? Three gaijin on a mountain in Ako, tearing along on mountain bikes down a narrow, sharp, rocky, dangerous trail that she seemed to be having enough trouble climbing up! Hahahaha. Very amusing. She managed to recover enough to tell us all to take care as we passed ;)

At the bottom we headed straight back into Ako. Wynce, who was a pro motorcross rider back in the US and had a decent enough bike to handle the conditions had done very well. The other guy, whose bike wasn't nearly as good, hadn't though, and he was a bit unhappy about it. I did warn them that the trail was tough, though! I think next time we might hit up some road biking and do some jumps somewhere instead, and maybe just Wynce and I will hit up the tougher trails. All in all, good fun!

Back home I quickly had a shower and called Nakashima-san to tell him I was going to be late to dinner in Himeji. The ride had gone later than I had thought and I couldn't make the train I had wanted to catch. In the shower, I cleaned up my injuries and discovered to my dismay that one of them was actually quite bad. I guess the sharp metal pedal had sliced through the skin on my leg when I'd fallen off the first time. The wound was quite deep and I wasn't entirely sure what to do with it, as it bled quite a bit. I was thinking I should probably head to the hospital, but in the end I decided to do the Australian thing and tough it out. So I just disinfected it and whacked a few band aids on it, haha. She'll be roight, mate!

Out in Himeji, I met Nakashima-san at just after 7pm. Thanks to me being late, we had a lot of trouble finding somewhere to eat as it was peak time and all the good places were packed. So we waited until nearly 8:30pm before we got into a great little yakitori place on the west side of Himeji. I found to my dismay that Nakashima-san had recently been given forced redundancy thanks to Hyogo-ken 'not having any money'. I was pretty upset about this as I think it's unfair, and Nakashima-san has two children to support. Thankfully he is on redundancy pay until October, so I really hope he can find a new job before then.

I shouted him to dinner, after which he insisted on buying two rounds of Guiness at Hosana. It was nearly 10pm by this time, so Nakashima-san headed home and I went on to Tiger Pub. Avi was already in there, so I had a great chat to her, and to Hisako too, who was working. I was thinking about doing an all nighter but eventually decided not to. A lot of people were away for Golden Week, some guys took my chair when I went to the bathroom and the atmosphere took a bit of a dive when some rowdy people came in, so I thought it best to just head home for the night :)

On Sunday I slept in then played some STALKER before heading out to Himeji to meet Yusaku and Kit for dinner. We ended up at the okonomiyaki place I'd been to a few months ago with Shannon and crew, which is expensive but fairly decent. From there we did some people watching (while squatting outside a konbini, very Japanese) and walked around a bit before Kit headed back to Osaka at around 9:30pm. Yusaku and I went to Tiger Pub and hung out for a while, but again the atmosphere didn't feel good, so I made the call to get out at around 10:30pm. After a little wander up to the castle it was time to head back to Ako. I dropped in at Sai-on but the boys were watching a Japanese comedy that I couldn't understand, so I didn't stay long.

On Monday my friend Junko was coming to stay, so I spent the morning tidying up the house and then filled in the rest of my time playing STALKER. It's a really good game! Junko ended up getting in at around 4:30pm, a bit late for our planned Ako History Tour, so we just went to the castle and then to Minato-ya for dinner instead. She was tired as she'd been camping the night before with friends from uni, so headed to sleep quite early. In the morning, we headed to Ako-pan to get some lunch and then she caught the 1:40 train back to Sannomiya. It was cool to see her again, even if it was for such a short time.

Minato-san had let me know the night before that he was going clamshell hunting at around 2pm on Tuesday, so I gave him a call and organised to meet him at his shop. After helping him get his sea kayak onto the roof rack on his car and stopping off at Jusco to pick up some cheap summer clothes (new shorts, w00t!), we headed down to a beach just to the west of Misaki. Along the way he told me that he was in trouble as his wife had just found out that he had two expensive mountain bikes. As he'd had them both at least since I first met him, I was surprised that he'd been able to keep it a secret for so long. Apparently he used to hide his other bike out the back of his shop, hahaha. I always wondered why he did that, lol. Crazy times.

Anyway, she seemed to have forgiven him and we all happily hit the beach. I'd remembered my sunscreen this time, thankfully, and whacked it on like crazy. I've been burnt enough (twice!) this year already. Minato-san and I took the sea kayak straight to the closest bit of (sandy, wow!) beach and powered our way around the cape to meet his wife and son on the clamshell beach. They were already digging through the rocks for the tasty little shells. I jumped out of the boat and joined them, but didn't manage to find too many ;/ Eventually, Minato-san and I jumped in the kayak and powered out to an island a little way offshore. We were going to dig for some shells there until Minato-san saw the sea urchins in the water and decided he wanted to eat some. So we spent a while digging up the dangerous little beasties with our oars and chucking them into the middle of the boat.

Back at the beach we did a bit more digging before finally heading off as the sun set. I'd found about 5 shells all up, but had also found the biggest one, hooray! From the beach we went back to Minato-san's shop to change and then up to the Ako Heights onsen. The water there wasn't particularly special but the onsen itself wasn't too bad and had a great view out over the beautiful Seto inland sea, right across to Awaji. We finished up there at around 7:30 and went for dinner at a kaiten sushi place I had never been to before. It's right near the university and isn't too bad. Much more expensive than Kappa Sushi, but nicer too. Definitely a place to put on the list!

Back at home I did some chores and got an early night, ready for school again today. Not that it really mattered, as all of ichi-nensei is away on a camp up north at Hachikita. So no classes for me today, hehe. I will have one class tomorrow, however, and two on Friday, plus I have some lesson planning to do for next week. So it won't be a complete waste of my time ;)

Again, sorry, this entry is a little late :P It was written on Saturday 3 May.

This week has been a little more interesting thanks to the two holidays in the middle of it. As the first of these, Showa Day, fell on the Tuesday, I organised to head out for some dinner and drinking with Yusaku in Himeji on Monday night. We searched for a new place to go for dinner, seeing as I'd been to Doma Doma the night before, but ended up back there anyway, haha. Around 9ish we headed across to Tiger Pub where we hung out for a couple of hours. I didn't know the lady who was working and it was quite quiet, so Yusaku and I just chatted away in Japan and English. I got some good Japanese practise in and learnt a few new things, which I was pretty happy about. The place gradually got busier and a couple of my friends walked in, so we got chatting to them until we had to call it a night so I could catch my last train.

On Tuesday I'd been invited to go to Sanda with Minato-san and his family. Sanda is near Kobe, and has a massive shopping centre and 'Premium Outlet' (read: wanky, overpriced shops) area. I was pretty excited about it as I like hanging out with Minato-san and it also involved a bit of a road trip. So I met Minato-san at 9:30am in Aioi, along with Nate and Miho, and off we all went. The drive was beautiful, down the wonderful (but expensive) Sanyo expressway. At Sanda we explored the Premium Outlet a little bit, but spent a lot more time sitting in the paved outside area enjoying the beautiful weather and playing cards, haha. After a quick tour around the rest of the Premium Outlet and bagging some gaijin foods in the semi decent Plaza store, we had lunch in the food hall (mmm omuraisu) and headed to the massive Aeon nearby.

We had a bit of an explore here but it was pretty much stuff you could get anywhere so we called it a day mid afternoon. On the drive home, Minato-san made an impromptu decision to check out Mount Rokko near Kobe. I'd long wanted to explore it so was happy to zoom up there. Again, it was a beautiful drive and the little lookout we stopped at had a great view over Kobe. Well, it would have been great had there not been ridiculous amounts of smog, haha. From there we headed back to Tatsuno where we grabbed dinner at a great little Chinese place (mmmm, 200 yen Gyoza). We were also going to head to Akane-yu, Minato-san's favourite sento, but Nate and Miho wanted to head home and I was really tired after a day in the sun. So he dropped me off at Aioi station and I headed home. Overall, a sweet day!

Wednesday was back to school for a day before school's birthday holiday on Thursday. At night I headed down to badminton and got in some good games with Ewan and the other regulars. Ewan had bought a new racquet and had gotten some more of his play back since two weeks before, so the games were quite strong. I played quite well, and identified a few areas I really need to improve in, so was quite positive for a change :) After badminton I headed down to Sai-on where I caught up with Kazu, who I hadn't seen for a while, until about 1am.

Thursday was another pretty big day. I'd organised to have lunch with Kazu, which we can't normally do, so we had trouble finding a place to go, haha. In the end I suggested Bunraku, a fantastic little place in the far east of Ako. It does just about anything you can think of - izkaya style food, donburi, tempura, udon and soba, sashimi and sushi and goodness knows what else. Something for everyone, literally. We hung out there for a couple of hours eating and discussing English grammar, believe it or not, haha.

After that, we headed out for coffee, and on the way, Kazu pointed out the Kansai Welfare University. Although I knew there was a uni in Ako and roughly where it was, I'd never actually tried looking for it. I couldn't believe how close it was - right near the recycle shop I'd visited so many times when I first came to Ako :) I wondered why I'd never visited the uni, then, and realised it was probably just silly reasons like assuming it would have been closed by the time I could get there after work (around 5pm) and that my Japanese wouldn't have been good enough to make friends. In hindsight, I really should have just gone down, hehe. It was so wonderful to see all the people around my age running around, after basically only seeing school kids and senior citizens in my daily travels in Ako.

Perhaps most amusing about the whole thing was that Kazu got a real taste of what being a gaijin can be like in Japan. Being the only gaijin on campus, I was the centre of attention everywhere I walked, and it totally boggled Kazu's mind, hehe. He couldn't believe how much everyone stared, how surprised and interested they looked and how some of them would wave and say 'Herro!' as they walked past. I suppose I've become used to it all, and it took someone who isn't to really remind me of the rather strange life I lead here, hehe.

While we were there, Kazu got in contact with two of our friends who go there, Naonori and Aya. I hadn't seen them for a while and wanted to catch up, but unfortunately they were in classes. So Kazu and I headed to the nearby Gusto Skylark cafe to hit up the drink bar. 350 yen for all you can drink juice, coffee and other nefarious beverages, w00t! Around 5ish we headed out to Misaki, the cape in east Ako, to check out the beach, and then to Sakoshi to do the same. Sakoshi has a pebble beach, so I resurrected my childhood stone skipping skills and threw some good ones out across the water. Good fun!

I had plans to head to Himeji at night, but couldn't be bothered in the end. I was tired and not really in the mood, so just headed down to Minato-ya with Kazu. Aya also joined us and we hung out there for a while eating delicious okonomiyaki. I have found a new favourite, which also happens to be Minato's least favourite thing to cook, so that makes it doubly good to order :) Washed down with a Lowenbrau, it was good times. Around 9pm we headed towards Sai-on, but I called it a night as I was very tired and had school the next day.

Friday wasn't too bad as I got a good amount of sleep on Thursday night. I had prepared for my classes on Wednesday, but somehow forgot one of the worksheets for my first period class. Very embarrassing, but Hashimoto-sensei seemed to understand and I was able to instantly change the lesson plan to do the work without the worksheet. So not too much lost ;) I will be more careful in future. As I said, I had prepared previously, so it wasn't like I screwed up because I was in a frantic rush in the morning right before class.

I also taught one lesson with Toda-sensei and one with Takagi sensei, both based on section 2 of the first chapter of the textbook. These lessons are fairly boring because they're usually the same and cover dictation (fill in the blanks) and pronounciation practise, but at least I'm teaching ;) I really hope that my presence makes the lesson somewhat more interesting. After that I had my first ESS club meeting! Only two of the three club members could attend, but it was good fun. While Baba-sensei was in control we did self introductions, but as soon as she left I broke out my iPod and playing cards and taught them some Western music and card games. I think it's going to be a very fun club!

At night I headed out for dinner with Daichi and some of the other funky people (Hayashi-san, Yamano-san, Hide and Minato-san) from the Ako Badminton Club, down to Tsubohachi. I wasn't sure where it was to begin with, and was really happy when it turned out to be the izakaya right near school that I'd been to the first night I arrived in Ako. The service isn't wonderful but the food is quite cheap and very delicious. So we all ate, drank, talked and laughed a lot. I couldn't understand a whole lot of what was being said, but I definitely understood more than I used to, so I was happy enough. It was really nice to be out with my local friends, and as strange as it might sound, especially nice since they can't speak good English. It was a wonderful opportunity to practise my Japanese skills. And to solidify a few friendships, too. Minato-san is always fun to hang around because he's the good kind of crazy and I like and respect Daichi. I was glad of the opportunity to catch up with them in a more social setting (even though badminton is pretty laid back!)

After we finished dinner, Daichi and I rode up to Sai-on for a couple of drinks. I Daichi had a little bike, the type which I'd long wanted to ride, so I traded my mountain bike for it. We raced most of the way to Sai-on which was quite a challenge given the bike's tiny wheels, one of which was flat, haha. We had a few drinks at Sai-on then I headed home at around 1am, ready for the super long weekend!

After Minori left, I decided to hang around in Himeji and do some exploring rather than returning to boring old Ako and chores. I like exploring cities, just wandering around, going down interesting looking streets and into strange looking shops, and generally being a genki gaijin. I kicked things off, as I always do, with a wander up Miyuki-dori. I hadn't even entered the arcade when I came across two young, brightly dressed guys standing around handing out flyers. When they saw me, I overheard one of them dare the other to talk to me, so I saved him the trouble, hehe. I wandered up and grinned at them, asking them what they were doing. They happily handed me a flyer and explained that there was a T-shirt sale on the 6th floor of the Forus building. I needed some new clothes and was heading that way, so thanked them and said I'd check it out.

From there, I walked all the way up Miyuki-dori, just checking out the shops and watching people. I wandered right up to the Chum where I grabbed a quick coffee and sent some long overdue messages to various people, then hit the streets for a bit more exploring. Eventually I came to the big east-west mall that intersects Miyuki-dori, and realised I'd never explored it on the west side of the main street. So I checked it out and discovered that it was mostly dead, hehe. That said, there were a couple of really nice looking restaurants over there that I wouldn't mind trying at some point. A semi-decent looking Thai, a very posh Chinese and a beautiful, modern Japanese.

On the way back I walked past what appeared to be a small beer garden, too, but which I later found out was the #3 oden restaurant in Japan. It's a hawker style open air stall place, where you buy your food from one of the stalls then sit and eat at the tables. Totally perfect for the summer, w00t! From there it was back to civilisation and to the mighty Forus building. The shops in the west side of Forus have heaps of totally crazy Japanese fashion and are awesome to wander around. It's not my kind of clothing, but it's fun to watch the high school and university students hunting through it all and also to see what they're wearing while they do it, haha. Japanese people definitely have a certain 'je ne sais quoi' when it comes to style, and most of them look fantastic even in very simple clothes. Not to mention when they bust out what, in a Western country, would be totally bizarre. I kinda wish I could do it, too, but that kind of fashion just doesn't work with my gaijin size and looks :P

I eventually made it to the 6th floor, where the t-shirt shop the guys near the station had been advertising was. I was really surprised by the store, actually. Here in drab Himeji, was a totally out there, massively brightly coloured and totally crazily genki shop. It had massive piles of t-shirts and accessories everywhere (some new and some used), graffiti on the walls, roof and floor, crazy sculptures here and there and brightly coloured plaster animal figurines scattered everywhere. Not to mention the strangely clad sales assistants, hehe. It was really laid back, really grungey and had heaps of life.

If you know me well, you know I'm not so big on the grunge/'alternative' thing, and admittedly I did have to force myself to go in. I was really glad I did though, as it turned out to be a lot of fun. I got talking to one of the sales assistants, in Japanese, which was great practise. While doing that, I found some crazy t-shirts I really wanted, but unfortunately they were all too small. So the guy ran around and found me some even crazier ones, haha. I ended up buying 6 t-shirts, which are all pretty out there. Very different to my normal style, but for some reason I feel the need for change. Perhaps it's just that I've become more confident (or more Japanese!) here and am more prepared to wear some crazier clothes :)

Anyway, after my crazy t-shirt experiences, I headed across to the big book store near Bon Marche. There, I chanced across a strange little book about Japanese fashion and my long searched for Ghost in the Shell manga by Masamune Shirou, and even managed to pick up two English novels (The Da Vinci Code and The Bone Collector). I headed back to Starbucks on the off chance of catching my friend Kazuyo, but she wasn't there. Since I was at Starbucks anyway, and had some books to read, I decided to grab a coffee and chill for a while. Yes, I have succumbed, somewhat, to Starbucks. The horror! I guess I realised it's true, though - good coffee is very hard to get in Japan. And Starbucks do do a good job. I wouldn't say I'm addicted, but it's certainly an attractive option.

It got really busy, though, so I headed off after about 20 minutes. After some more walking around, it was heading towards dinner time so I hit up Doma Doma for some good old fashioned, unhealthy fried bits and pieces. Good times! From there, I went to my final stop for the night, Tiger Pub. To my surprise, Hisako was working, so I had a chat to her for a while. A few people I knew came in, so I had a chat to them for a while, before calling it a night at just after 10pm. I had to get home for school the next day, hehe. I was glad I'd stayed in Himeji, though, and had a look around. It's like people often say, there's a lot more to a city beneath the surface, if you're prepared to look for it. I found a couple of interesting shops, bought some new t-shirts, found a new restaurant or two to check out and generally satisfied my gaijin curiosity. Good times indeed.

Wow, long time no post again. Same story as last time, haha, sorry. This entry was written on 28th May so use your imagination :)

I kinda cruised through last week as nothing really interesting happened. School was surprisingly less busy than it had been the week before, mostly because new school year prep had basically all been done. Although I lost a class or two and things had quietened down in general, I still had by far enough to keep me from going insane, though. And planning and taking classes now even feels almost routine, which I suppose is a good thing! I'm so much happier than I was last term, hehe.

At night on Tuesday and Wednesday, I didn't get around to doing much as I was tired and it was raining. I pretty much got myself home and stayed there, haha. Thursday was the return of regular Minato-ya nights, however I didn't manage to make it down for that either. I had my good friend Minori from Gifu prefecture coming down to stay and my apartment was a little bit of a mess.

On Friday night, things started to get a bit better. After my ESS club students didn't turn up for their club activity (how naughty!), I raced home and headed out for dinner in Himeji with Amanda. We catch up every now and then and have some great conversations, so I was really looking forward to it. We ended up at our favourite little place, the 'Hole in the Wall' as we call it, just near Himeji station. I can never remember the name, but it has a really great atmosphere and some very tasty food. After that we wandered up to Chum and chilled out over some coffee before zipping back to the station in time for our last trains. Or so we thought. Amanda's last train had actually left 10 minutes before we got there, but thankfully she could take a taxi and it wasn't too expensive.

On Saturday morning I got up quite early as I still had to clean my bathroom. The one downside of a bathroom that is basically all part of the shower is that everything gets wet and it's time consuming and hard at times to make sure it's all clean. It's not so bad in winter when the temperature is so low that mould just doesn't stand a chance, but as soon as the weather warms up, you have to be ultra cautious!

Around 10, I shot out to Himeji and met Minori at the station gates. She'd come down from Nagoya and had been on trains since 6am, hehe. Despite this she wasn't very tired, so we spent the day in Himeji, wandering around the castle grounds and through the Sweets Festival. The festival was very disappointing, but it didn't really bother me as I had good company. At night, we zipped back to Ako to grab dinner at Minato-ya and then headed home. We were both very tired so I made up a bed for her in the spare room (hooray, the room actually got some use for a change!) and we headed to sleep quite early.

I ended up waking up pretty late on Sunday, which was a bit unfortunate as it meant we didn't have time to check out the inside of Himeji castle as we'd planned. Instead, we grabbed some food at a konbini and caught an early afternoon train up to Himeji to just have a look around the shops. Some of my students were on the train and went nuts when they saw me with Minori, yelling out "Garufurendo? Garufurendo!??!", haha. Crazy little monkeys. They always look so disappointed when I reassure them that no, the girl I'm with is just a friend :P

In Himeji, we hung out until about 3pm when she caught the shinkansen back to Nagoya. I think this was probably wise, as although it's expensive, it's also bloody fast, safer and tends to be less crowded than the regular trains. Overall, I'm really glad she came down to check out Himeji and Ako. I was glad to have the opportunity to hang out with her and get to know her better, especially because the last time I met her I was really tired and not 100%. She's one of the nicest people I know in Japan, and is definitely one of the best friends I've made here. Shame she's so far away! :)