Last night I headed on down to the AIFA Japanese language class at the community centre near Minato-ya with my ALT friend from Aioi, Devin. I hadn't been to class since the first time I went (around 6 weeks ago), as I was too tired one night and then Golden Week took out the class in between. It was really refreshing to get back into it, though - surprisingly so, in fact. The class is more a conversation opportunity than a lesson, which originally I didn't like but have now gotten used to. Devin and I were the only two students there last night but there were four volunteers (yikes!) so we had a totally fantastic time. We just did self introductions, spoke about what we did in Golden Week and launched off into conversation from there as we felt like it.

Although the volunteers spoke a little slower than most Japanese and were obviously dumbing down their vocabulary, I was quite surprised to find that I understood most of what was being said. I guess my listening skills are getting better, at last! It was kinda extra fun I think because Devin was there, and his Japanese isn't so strong so I was actually translating for him. It was so nice to be on that side of the fence for once. I always have so much respect for my friends when they translate something for me that was incomprehensible to me. Although I still expect I'll hardly be able to understand anything the next time I go to the shops :) Keigo, aargh!! :P

After dinner, Tomoko, one of the young volunteers, invited us for dinner at the new Indian restaurant in Ako. She studies English at a university in Kobe, and is pretty good at it! She works part time at the Indian restaurant, hence why she said we should go there, hehe. Cheeky! Anyway, I'd heard about the place and that it was pretty good, but hadn't been. So we all trundled off there and had a pretty decent Indian dinner. It was so nice to have good Indian food after 9 months without it. And seriously, a restaurant that does decent international food in Japan, let alone in Ako? Good times indeed!

Over dinner we all chatted away in Japanese and English about where we worked and what we did, which was really fantastic. Meeting new people and making new friends is so much fun, and it's the kind of situation that I really like but rarely find myself in thanks to the language barrier. And it was especially nice to meet another one of those rare people who are around my age and actually live in Ako. New friend, woo! I grabbed Tomoko's keitai details as we left so hopefully I can catch up with her every now and then! Cool.

Tonight is badminton and Ewan is bringing some extra friends, so we should get some good games going. I'm also playing tennis this afternoon, which is a bit of a tradition for the teachers during the mid term tests. Tomorrow night is Minato-ya, and then I have school on Saturday so it'll be a quiet Friday night - I'll probably just go to badminton. As my weekend has been shifted by one day (I get a make up holiday on Monday), I don't really have much on, so will probably just take it easy. None of my friends will have Monday off so it'll be a good day for chores and rest, I think. I'll see if I can't hook something up for Saturday night, though.

So there's been a big typhoon moving up towards Tokyo from the eastern seaboard of China over the past few days. It's been kinda fun, actually, experiencing a typhoon for the first time. Well, the side effects of one, anyway. Unless they move directly over Ako they don't really affect us too much. We're really sheltered here on the Seto sea, right on the southern coast of Honshu. Weather from the north gets absorbed as it comes down over the mountains in the middle of Hyogo, and the island of Shikoku directly beneath us tends to sap up any typhoons. So what we basically got was some fairly strong winds, grey skies and intermittent light rain for a few days.

Admittedly I was hoping to see a torrential downpour and insane winds, hehe. I've long wanted to experience a really strong storm, which you don't really tend to get in Perth. I guess Ako is not the place to do that though! Although Japan's rainy season is approaching and apparently it does rain every day, it doesn't do so heavily. Oh well! :)

I was reminded the other day of the Japanese concept of nemawashi. I studied this in university and found it fascinating, but soon forgot about it afterwards. Surprisingly enough, I haven't encountered the term before now despite having been here for 9.5 months. Nemawashi is quite hard to translate into English because it's an integral part of Japanese culture more than a concept or word, but it's basically to do with being indirect. Nemawashi is a way to gain group consensus about something without being direct and confrontational. So perhaps instead of asking a group of people straight out 'I think this is a good idea, I want to do this, what do you think?' in which it would be difficult for the various people to say 'no' (and hence they might resent you), you go around to individuals and 'feel it out'. You do this by lightly moving the topic of conversation to the idea and judging the response of each person. If enough people like it you can then tentatively suggest it in the group and already know that the majority or all the people will support it. This avoids embarrassment, resentment and conflict.

The downside of course, is that it can take a long time to make even a fairly simple decision. And the focus would appear to be on total group consensus, something which, in my experience, is fairly rare. People are just too different, I guess. Although that said, maybe it works in Japan because of the group culture and people being inclined to do what is best for the group. If you hear that everyone else wants to support an idea but you don't, you may be influenced to support the group at the expense of your own opinion. Anyway, I think the idea is that if you want something done, you start to gain support from various people quietly, and when you have enough bulk momentum going, you can just politely steamroll your opinion into the group.

The reason I'm talking about all this is that the concept came up in relation to a rather large flame war that is currently going on in the Hyogo JET message boards over a certain issue. One person wrote that the originator of the thread was too heavy handed in their dealings with the Hyogo BoE in relation to the issue, and had therefore ruined any chance of achieving their goals. They suggested that nemawashi should have been used instead. I've found over the years that I'm much closer to a nemawashi kind of person anyway, even before I knew about the concept. I don't like conflict and would generally try to garner individual support before pushing an idea at a meeting etc., for fear of it being rejected. So nemawashi fits with me and I find I actually use it a lot of the time without realising.

Sometimes I'm more stereotypical Western though, and if things appear to be taking too long, I will politely ask what's going on. I was about to do this in relation to joining judo club, which I asked to do about 6 weeks ago. I asked the head teacher, who agreed, and said I'd need to have a judogi made. I said this was fine and he said he'd get it done. After a couple of weeks I was thinking about asking him what was happening when he came by my desk and to confirm my size details and said that I could have my gi made at the same time as the ichi-nensei students, who were just beginning to join clubs. Again a couple of weeks passed and I was about to ask him what was happening when the nemawashi email came through. So I decided to leave it and lo and behold, a few days later, the teacher updated me and let me know that my gi was almost ready and that I would be able to start playing with the club when they started back after mid term exams.

Despite all this, nemawashi is still a very difficult concept for me to grasp. The thing about being Western is that you are often considered uninterested if you don't frequently check in with someone who you have asked for something from. In Japan, doing the same can make you appear rude and aggressive. The other side of the coin, of course, is that in Western countries, it's considered necessary to keep hounding someone for something that you are going to benefit from because people tend to be forgetful, particularly when whatever you have asked them to do doesn't directly benefit them. I don't know how Japan works in this regard, and that's probably the toughest bit. Are Japanese people generally better at remembering to do things they are asked to do? I imagine they would have to be. Nemawashi wouldn't work otherwise. If you need to keep prodding someone to do something, you can't exactly not prod them or nothing will happen! Then, of course, you appear rude, so it's a double edged sword.

I suppose it comes down to the age old question of balancing the different cultures. It's similar to the name example. When a foreigner in Japan introduces themselves, how should they say their name? Should they represent their culture and say "John Smith" or try to fit into Japanese culture by saying "Smith John". And on the other hand, how should a Japanese person assume a Westerner will introduce themselves - in Western fashion or Japanese fashion? And of course, vice versa with how the Japanese person says their name and how the Westerner expects them to say it. You'd think there'd be simple rules like "use the culture of the country you're in", but in a country like Japan where there is just a mountain of interpersonal culture and expected behaviours to learn, it's not always that easy! It's a really difficult issue, because you've got two sides with very different culture both trying to understand, accept and use the other's. So naturally, it gets very confusing!

Overall, anyway, nemawashi is a very interesting concept and exploration of culture, and I love being able to experience and play with it. When it works, anyway, hehe. It's great to actually be directly experiencing it rather than just studying it, too. In fact, it's extremely rewarding. This is the kind of thing that makes my JET experience so valuable, as it's not just great life experience, it's also turning me into a multicultural world citizen. My aim, in the end, is to be able to blend my way into Japanese culture as easily as I can Western culture. Ambitious? Yes, hehe. I haven't spent 24 years growing up in Japan, having appropriate behaviour embedded into me as a child. But I am an intelligent, observant adult and although it'll take a long time, I feel I have learnt a lot already. Not to mention that a lot of the way I learnt to act in Australia actually fits Japan better (quiet, indecisive, conflict avoiding and so on). Good times.

Whoops, I wrote this on Friday afternoon but forgot to post it before I posted about my weekend, lol. Well, you're all smart, so I'm sure you can work it out. Gomen!

Last week slowly drifted by. Nothing terribly exciting happened, which, on the up side, meant that it was nice and peaceful! I got a bunch of new games on Tuesday night, I think it was, including Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty 4 and Bioshock. I played quite a bit of AC and completed CoD4, although I wasn't overly impressed by either. Both are beautiful to look at, but AC is very repetitive and could have done so much more with the innovative concept, and CoD4 lacks innovation and has the same old cheap CoD gameplay feel. I haven't played Bioshock yet but I'm hoping it's good. Anyway, I suppose these games being pretty average is a good thing, because it means I don't want to play them all the time, hehe. Hooray for a balanced lifestyle.

I ended up going to badminton on Wednesday night, and it turned out to be a great session. I hadn't gone the week before thanks to the gash on my leg, and although I didn't play so well during practise, I actually somehow played quite well during the games. So I was very happy! Maybe I'm finally relaxing a bit more. After a few games of doubles I followed Ewan's recent lead and challenged Daichi to singles. I led up to my 12th point but then he came back and eventually beat me, hehe. I also challenged Ewan and narrowly beat him, which I was quite proud of, but his knee was sore so I think he should be able to beat me normally :)

Thursday night was Minato-ya night so I whizzed off down at around 8pm and caught up with Yoko and Kazu the Gay, who were already there. Ewan also dropped in, being too tired for futsal after his efforts at badminton the night before, and Kazu came by at around 8:30pm. We had some great conversations and I realised how much I'd really missed hanging out with them all. Eventually we started talking about the wine and cheese night the Sunday before, which I hadn't been able to go to. Partly because there was still heaps of cheese left, partly because Ewan already wanted to hold a dinner for some of his other friends and partly because I'd missed out on the last one, he decided to host another wine and cheese party at his house again this Sunday night. So that's something to look forward to! :)

Tonight is the English teachers' enkai, which I'm mostly looking forward to. The English enkais tend to be very different to most of the enkais I attend, primarily because hardly any of the English teachers drink. They either have to drive, have the "Asian drinking gene" that means one drink literally knocks them out, or simply choose not to. Which really does make for an ... interesting ... time, especially given we are in a country where alcohol plays a much more important cultural and social role than in the West. That probably sounds a little strange, so let me explain.

Aside from the obvious mind affecting qualities of alcohol that help to make people a little more open, I think that the presence of alcohol represents a clear distinction between work and personal life for Japanese people. By drinking, they seem to switch into "Personal Mode", where the strict rules of the working environment no longer apply. As a result, they tend to become much more friendly and chatty, seem to be able to say what they think and feel without fear of reprisal and are generally much more open to various topics and even just having conversations that would never occur otherwise. Which is really pretty important because, as bad as it sounds, it seems to be one of the few ways to get to know them personally. The fact hardly anyone drinks at the English enkai means that this cultural 'switch' to Personal Mode doesn't happen and the conversation tends to be very dry and work oriented.

With that said, though, I'm sure it'll be an ok night! The food will be great and I can practise my Japanese, at the very least. Enkais always finish like clockwork, too, at 8:30 or 9:00pm. So I can probably drop in at Saion on the way home, hooray! Then tomorrow is Ultimate Frisbee in Himeji from 2:30 (w00t!) and then the birthday party at night. Sunday is now the wine and cheese party and I might use the spare time in the morning to catch up on some sleep and chores, play some games and maybe even do some much overdue maintenance on my bike.

Woo, another big weekend over. It was a pretty fun one, too. Speaking of which, it kicked off with one of the funniest things I've seen in a while. As I went to get my bike after school on Friday, I stumbled across two students getting a little interested in each other behind one of the bike racks. I didn't actually see what they were up to and it obviously wasn't anything too serious (thankfully!), but they flew apart when I came around the corner and looked at me very sheepishly. I often forget that my 'kids' are actually young adults, so I was a little surprised at first! I got over the shock pretty fast though and just laughed, grabbed my bike and rode off, wishing them a good weekend.

At night, we had the English teachers' Welcome/Farewell enkai at a really nice restaurant in Ako called Aoi. I'd seen it before but, like so many of the small little places in the area it's in, had never been. In true enkai style, there was a massive overload of food, and there were definitely some rather interesting ones. The culinary highlights included conger eel with umeboshi (salty plum) sauce and a mysterious fried dish that nobody could identify but which most people guessed to be whale. *sigh* Anyway, the most delicious dish of the night was definitely the breem & tofu steamed in sake. It was absolutely amazing and is definitely one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten. It's a celebration food, apparently, which is making me think I need more reasons to celebrate! :)

Aside from the food, the party was kind of average. The seating arrangements were such that two conversations developed (a 'boys' and a 'girls'), both of which I couldn't really join into. I don't know what the girls were talking about, but the boys were touching mostly on school management. Thankfully, Mitsumoto-sensei and Nakai-sensei saved the day and talked about random things with me, and Kotani-sensei joined in later. He's working at a school in Himeji now where my good friend Chip works, so we had something good to talk about there. It was really nice to see him (and Ishino-sensei) again, as I hadn't seen them since they left Ako SHS in late March. I may never see them again, so I was glad of the opportunity to say a final goodbye.

I was up at a decent hour on Saturday, thanks to getting a relatively early night on Friday. I took the opportunity to do some washing and played some Call of Duty 4 before catching the 1:40pm train into Himeji to play Ultimate Frisbee. Which leads into a rather funny story, hehe. As I was getting ready to go, I discovered to my dismay that all of my underwear was either drying or in the wash. Yes - I was completely out of daks ;/ Rather caught unawares, I didn't really have that many options. So I ended up having to go commando into Himeji to play frisbee - yikes! :/ I did, however, make sure I stopped off at the Sanyo department store to pick up a pair for the party at night. They didn't have any non-branded ones (I'm used to buying 7 packs for $15 or so) so I had to fork out 1,400 odd yen for the cheapest pair I could find. Probably serves me right :)

Frisbee itself was really good, I was glad I went. My new friend James taught me some useful throws and then helped me practise for about half an hour, which was a massive help. I still stuffed up my forehands in the game, but hey, they were better than they used to be. James used to captain one of the University of Washington teams, so is pretty strong. I had meant to leave frisbee at 4pm in order to grab a quick onsen and then head out to Sannomiya for a party at 6pm, but most of the people only turned up around 3:30pm and the game only got going at around quarter to four. So I decided to stay, and head to the party late. I ended up staying until well past 6pm, as Ewan, Mike and Lorelei rocked up as well and we got an awesome game going. Definitely worked off a few calories that afternoon, and was really happy to find that I didn't get all that tired. Must be all the riding I do!

After a quick onsen in the Egret building I rushed down to the station and caught a train across to Kobe. After all the running and the onsen I suddenly did feel pretty tired and almost fell asleep on the train. Not having eaten for nearly 24 hours probably didn't help either, hehe, although I'd had so much food the night before that I wasn't actually hungry until around 7pm anyway. When I got to Sanno, I met up with everyone at around 8:30 and we went up to a Nijumaru for a tabe-nomihoudai to celebrate Goran's, Amanda's and Emma's birthdays. It was a great night with lots of eating, drinking and talking. I hadn't seen some of the Perth crew for months, so it was sweet to see them all again despite being for just a short time.

I could have partied on and stayed at Goran's house, but decided to catch my last train back to Himeji instead, as I wanted to catch up with some other friends there too. Although I couldn't have known in advance, it ended up being a rather unlucky decision. When I got to Tiger Pub, I found out that I'd just missed one of my good friends that I had really wanted to see, another was in a bad mood and went home and yet another was down with bad hayfever. Not the best! About 2am I'd totally had enough and just wanted to go to sleep, totally dreading the 4 hour wait for my first train home. I was really lucky though, as my good friend Andrew suggested I head to the nearby capsule hotel. I didn't even know there was one in Himeji so had never even considered the idea, but was extremely relieved and got him to show me where it was.

I discovered, to my delight, that it was a really excellent place. Very close to Himeji station, extremely clean and not all that expensive (2,800 yen per night). I certainly wouldn't want to do it every week, but it's bloody convenient for those every-now-and-then occasions when I want to stay out a couple of hours past my last train but don't want to do an all nighter. As I said, it was a nice place, and within 5 minutes of walking in, I was in a capsule and asleep. It was my first time staying in a capsule hotel and I really did like it a lot. It's wonderfully no frills. You stick your stuff in a locker, go to your little bed (which is actually fairly decently sized, given the notion and reputation of the capsules), crawl in and sleep the night away.

I ended up sleeping fairly well, given that I generally have trouble sleeping in any bed other than my own. So I didn't feel too bad on Sunday morning, although the capsule had been rather hot so I was a bit dehydrated. I grabbed some water, checked out and headed back to Ako after grabbing a quick brunch at the nearby Delifrance. Back in Ako I grabbed a couple of hours of really good sleep then did some more washing and finished Call of Duty 4 before heading out to Ewan's Wine & Cheese night.

I took the Apple Flats 2005 merlot I picked up a little while ago, which is a really nice wine. It's Australian, but despite that, is not too expensive to pick up here. Ewan saved it for last and, although it may just have been that we'd been drinking some very ordinary wines all night, it really was delicious - very fruity. Ewan had also asked that we all bring something for dinner, so I teamed up with Kazu and picked up some food and crackers at Paone. I had planned to get to Ewan's by about 6:30 but Kazu only had his mama-chari and wanted to stop off at 47 Liquors along the way to pick up some wine, so we arrived at around 7pm, haha. Only 1 hour late! As I told him, in Australia, that'd be considered fairly on time. Amongst my generation, anyway, haha.

Most people were already there by that time, and Yoko, the last person, turned up a short while later. There were quite a few of us, actually - Ewan, Kazu the Gay, Kazu the Greatest, Yoko, Mike & Lorelei and two of their friends. Which was good, as it made for some really interesting conversation! I also managed to catch up with Mike for a bit to have a chat about HAJET/National AJET things, too, which was really useful. He was the president of National AJET last year, so had lots of handy info and advice.

Around about 9 o'clock, he and Lorelei plus their two friends had to head off, so it was down to the normal crew again. After Ewan saw them off he jumped in the shower as his new girlfriend decided to come up for the end of the party. The rest of us kept ourselves entertained by throwing jellybeans at each other (you know, the old game where you try to catch it with your mouth? :P) and drawing a face on the honeydew melon that Yoko had brought with her. Which was very amusing! We called it Melon-san and Yoko grabbed one of Ewan's stranger hats and put it on it, making it look completely ridiculous :) We put Melon-san inconspicuously on a chair for when Ewan came back and he laughed his head off when he finally noticed it. The funniest bit, though, was when he got back with Ai and I made Yoko cut the melon up. She totally freaked out because she didn't want to cut it's face, hahaha. Good times.

By the time we finished eating Melon-san, it was getting pretty late, so we gave Ewan a hand cleaning up and headed home around 11:30pm. I rode home with Kazu and chatted to him for a while, so didn't get to bed until around 1am. Normally, I definitely wouldn't have stayed up that late, but I don't have any classes this week and I'd gotten some really good sleep over the weekend. I'm only just getting back into the group, really, so I felt it was well worth spending the time hanging out with them and getting to know them better, given that school isn't going to be that demanding. All good!

This week is looking to be quite good too. Tonight is a rest night, and tomorrow is Japanese class. My friend Devin is coming down for that and dinner after, so it should be good. Wednesday is badminton (looking forward to challenging Ewan to singles again) and Thursday is Minato-ya night. I don't have any plans for Friday but that's probably good because I have to come to school on Saturday. It's a 'PTA' thing, where parents can come to school to meet the teachers and for some reason there are classes as well. It's a Monday timetable though so I don't have any classes, haha. Woe is me ;/ Still, we get Monday off, which is nice. Come to think of it, I don't have anything planned for this weekend. Oh well! I'm sure something will come up, and if not, I can think of quite a few things to do. Should be good!

Not quite as bad as last time, only 6 entries :) Here's a link to easily view them all :)

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! :)

One thing you hear a lot about Japan is how polite people in service industries are. And it's mostly true, in my experience. The customer is god, and most customer servants will take enormous levels of abuse and irritating behaviour from their customers without so much as saying a word or batting an eyelid. They more than likely bitch about their bad customers later, but that's another story, hehe. Interestingly, yesterday, I came across a train station employee who very much broke this stereotype. I'd encountered him before, and he's a really grumpy old bastard. My first run in with him was with my friend Amanda, who came down to Ako on the way to Okayama. She bought a ticket from Himeji to Okayama, then changed her mind and got off at Ako. She didn't want to waste the ticket, so wanted to either get a refund or be allowed out of the station and then back in with it to go the rest of the way to Okayama. Very reasonable.

She speaks fluent Japanese so it was no problem for her to explain the situation, and with the help of a nice JR employee at the Ako ticket window, got something worked out. She could go on to Okayama, return to Ako, show a piece of paper and get a new ticket back to Himeji for no cost, no harm done. When we returned to Ako, however, to do the exchange, she ended up with Mr Grumpy. Despite her fluent Japanese, he just decided to ramble on at her in what was, as far as I could tell, somewhat angry, impolite Japanese. She was not happy, and neither was I, but we couldn't really do anything about it. He didn't listen to her, he didn't help her, and he literally had a go at her for what he obviously thought was a waste of his time. Bastard.

I had my turn with him yesterday. I organised to have dinner with a friend in Himeji, but counter-invited him to Ako as I was quite tired. I didn't hear back from him, so headed to Himeji to meet him under the original arrangements. I had just gotten onto the train when I got a message to say he would come down to Ako. No harm done, I simply got off at Nishi-Aioi, waited for the next train, and came back to Ako. Now that wouldn't be a big problem in Australia. There, I would either pay nothing (if I'd only been in the station for 15 minutes or so) or would have had to pay some default fare, which would have been automatically deducted as I swiped out of the station. In Japan, this situation basically can't be handled without human intervention. They just don't seem to be able to handle the concept of getting out at the same station as you swiped in at.

Now I knew about this rather unusual flaw in the system, so went straight to the counter to explain instead of trying to swipe through. In very polite Japanese, I excused myself, apologised, and said I'd made a mistake. Before I could explain further, Mr Grumpy simply snatched my card from me and whacked it into his console, probably assuming all I needed to do was fare transfer. His foolish assumption caused him to come unstuck when he saw that I had boarded at Banshu Ako. From there, he again didn't listen to me, simply assuming that I had just gone through the gates and was asking for help on how to get somewhere. He unleashed a torrent of Japanese at me, of which I could only make out something about going somewhere. I again tried to explain, in very simple and clear Japanese, that I previously boarded the train in Ako, gotten off at Nishi-Aioi, had NOT left the station there, and had returned to Banshu Ako by the next train.

He got more and more irritated despite the fact I was careful with my Japanese and kept it as simple and clear as I could. Yet again, he didn't listen to what I had to say and assumed that I wanted to go to Nishi Aioi, despite me having clearly explained that I had been there and come back to Ako from there. He told me to enter the gates again. At this point, I didn't really know any better, so simply followed his directions, thinking I had to do it to clear the card. Something made me stop, though, and clarify with him exactly what was going on. I told him yet again that I wanted to stay in Banshu Ako. At this point, he actually lost his cool. For the first time, I saw a Japanese customer service person get irritated. Anger flashed in his eyes and he muttered to himself in a thick Japanese accent, snatched me card away from me, slammed it into his console, cleared it, spoke loudly and tersely at me in a torrent of impolite Japanese while pointing rudely at me with my card, then roughly shoved it back at me.

Feeling cornered because I couldn't understand him despite trying my best, hurt because he obviously hadn't listened to me despite clearly explaining things two or three times and had gotten angry for no reason, and angry because he had been so impolite, I felt very upset but could do little but walk away. As I did, I couldn't help but say loudly, in English, "Thank you so much for you polite assistance". A bit of a cheap parting shot I know, but I was so unhappy. If I had known enough Japanese, I would have complained about him to someone higher up in the station. As is my way, I tried to think about whether I had done anything unreasonable. I couldn't really think of anything. I always try to be very polite to people, and living in a country where I can't understand the language perfectly means I've become very patient at listening and speaking/explaining. I know that my Japanese is just good enough to cover the situation I was in, if the person I was talking to listened carefully and was patient. He didn't, and wasn't. My only crime was not being able to speak fluent enough Japanese for it to have been like an 'everyday' transaction for him.

So my final summary is that, yes, yet again it is my level of Japanese that let me down and made the situation worse. That's a given. But after what happened to Amanda, this guy has a history of being a dick. Therefore as far as I can see it, he was much more at fault than I was. He didn't listen, he made bad assumptions, was impatient and rude and let himself get angry at a customer who was being polite and trying his best to understand and explain. Inexcusable. So I just concluded that he is a grumpy old man and is to be avoided at all costs, and tried to forget about it. I had a bit of a rant about it to Minato-san too, and felt better, hehe. It's strange how such little things can really affect you. I hate bothering people, and understand that I'm often going to be a pain here because I can't speak the language fluently. That said, I certainly didn't deserve the treatment I got. Perhaps that's what hurt me most. The fact that I'd done everything I could to be the best customer I could, and he'd been so blatantly rude. It makes it all the worse when you've tried to do the right thing and you get nothing back for it.

So there you go. Take it from me - Japan is not all smiling faces when it comes to customer service. "There's one in every town."

My weekend turned out pretty well after all, although I have to admit I wasn't awake for much of it, hehe. On Friday night I wandered home and played some Neverwinter Nights 2. I was really tired from the week and still recovering from the virus, so ended up sleeping right through my alarms on Saturday and well into the afternoon. Which was probably for the best - rest is good! Not a big problem, either, as frisbee wasn't on and I had nothing else important to do on Saturday morning/afternoon anyway, haha. At night, it turned out that my long awaited party times with Oscar and Becky were still on after all, so I quickly got ready and raced out to Sannomiya. After a bit of searching, we finally found a decent place to have dinner and ate, drank and talked until just before 10pm.

To my dual relief and disappointment, they had both had an enkai the night before so didn't particularly want to party all night. As I had enough time to catch a train back home, we decided to call it a night and catch up again another time. After they very kindly gave me a couple of road sodas (cans of Asahi, hehe) for the journey home, I jumped on the train and was soon back in Himeji. As I'd only woken up late in the day, I wasn't very tired. So I fired off a message to Avi, one of my Australian friends living in Himeji, to ask if there was anything good going on there. She let me know that there was an event at Roxy (basically the only nightclub I know of in Himeji) and quite a few people also hanging out at Tiger Pub (one of the few pubs/bars) as well, so I decided to check it out. It meant that I'd have to stay up all night in Himeji, but I was prepared to risk it, hehe. The party scene in Himeji may not be thriving, but at least it's close to home!

It turned out to be a good decision, as I bumped into a whole heap of awesome people at Tiger Pub and we had lots of laughs and good conversation. The first person I met when I got in the door was my new mate Andrew, who I'd met on the Nagoya Toyota Trip. We chilled for a bit, mainly just catching up on what we'd both been doing since the trip. While we were talking, a girl I'd met a few times came running over and joined us. I didn't actually recognise her at the time, hehe - whoops. She works at Tiger Pub occasionally and I had actually met her a few times there before. So we all sat down and drank and talked together until they decided to go to Roxy with Avi and her husband. I wasn't really in the mood for dancing, and my friend Mokoto from Ultimate Frisbee had just walked in, so I stayed and chatted to him and some of his visiting friends. Who were, naturally, from Perth, haha. Good times!

A few drinks and hours later, Andrew and Hisako walked back in and we hung around chatting until Tiger Pub closed at around 4:30am. I had to wait until just before 6am for my first train, so I picked up some breakfast from a handy konbini and walked up to the castle to watch the sun rise. It was really good, actually. Although I was tired, it was beautiful being one of the few people on the otherwise normally very busy streets of Himeji. I found a chair in a park and sat down to eat and watch the sky get light to the east. Finally, around 5:30am, I wandered back to the train station and caught the train home.

I fell asleep on the train and was woken up by one of my students, hehe. Otherwise I would have ended up in Maibara, as the train turns around as a special rapid once it gets to Ako - scary stuff! So I asked him if he was going to school, but he said he was off to Himeji to play kyuudou. At 7am? Ouch! From the station, I rode down to my favourite bakery on the offchance it was open, but was de-nied :/ I checked out a few other places, but even at 7am, most of Ako is still asleep. Thankfully Paone was not, so I bagged some breakfast and wandered home to eat it and then headed to sleep. I woke up mid afternoon and just hung out, did some chores and generally rested before another busy week at school.

Overall, I'm glad I stayed out in Himeji. I very rarely do all nighters, and certainly wouldn't want to do them too often (especially now I'm teaching properly), but it was definitely a good night. I've kind of shunned Tiger Pub a little, like I do most gaijin bars, but the people there really are good value and it's certainly not all gaijin. There are usually more Japanese than gaijin in there, which is great. Realistically, a night out in Sannomiya or Osaka is just too far away, especially when considering the long, painful journey home on the first train. Not to mention that from what I hear from my friends, those places aren't necessarily a lot of fun unless you go often and know the good places/have good friends there, anyway. So maybe I should pay a bit more attention to good old Himeji. Now if only the trains ran past 11:25pm :D

School this year is shaping up to be mighty fine, much to my relief after the abysmal time I had last term. I actually do have classes this year, my god! Haha. The chance to be useful and actually obtain some job satisfaction, who'd have thought :) Like last year, I have 14 classes on my timetable, of which I am guaranteed to have at least 7 every week. Those 7 are ichi-nensei Oral Communication classes, which I teach with Nishitani-sensei, Kurioka-sensei and Hashimoto-sensei. The other classes include 3 'mixed' classes (one for each year group) and 4 ni-nensei reading classes. Generally I never teach the 'mixed' classes, but the head ichi-nensei teacher, Matsushita-sensei, asked me to come along to his 'as needed'. Which could mean anything from never to every week, hehe - we'll see.

The four ni-nensei classes are a little more complicated, as they are reading classes. I'm not as immediately useful in these as I am in an OC class, due to the type and structure of the lesson materials. Additionally, this type of class is usually very time consuming (the students have to read and understand the whole chapter) so there really isn't time for me to be taking up a whole lesson each week. Originally I was teaching one class every week with Takagi-sensei and Touda-sensei, until Okamoto-sensei caught wind of it and changed it so that I'm only used as needed. This is the way he uses me, and I fully understand why it has to be that way. So no problems there. Going from 0 to 7 is already a shock to the system, so having the ni-nensei classes as an 'as needed' thing (which could be weekly, anyway) is probably good, at least to start with.

So anyway, last week was my first week with the ichi-nensei. It was quite a lot of fun, although a bit exhausting. The kids were mostly very well behaved, if a bit too quiet for my liking. That's good, I suppose - better that than badly behaved, although I do wish they'd be a bit more genki and maybe volunteer every now and then ;) To 'break the ice', we played a guessing game about me. Apparently I look a lot older than I actually am, haha. Most kids guessed I was in the range 26 to 30 :D Strange - in Australia it's the opposite, haha. I guess it works the same way going back - Japanese people tend to look young to gaijin, so we must look old to them? Hehe.

In terms of the teachers I teach with, I'm pretty impressed so far. I teach the most classes with Kurioka-sensei, who is just awesome. She has so much control in the classroom (of time, the work and the students) and is brutally efficient but is also able to keep a fun atmosphere. I'm used to chaos and mayhem from when I taught in Okuto-sensei's class, where we rarely finished everything but had a lot of fun learning what we did. So it's nice to have some order, hehe. I think I learnt more about teaching from that one lesson than I did from all my classes last school year, hehe. I have four classes with her, so I'm looking forward to learning quite a bit more.

The other teachers really range in terms of everything. Some are extremely nervous, some are really genki, some are just cruising, some don't really know what they're doing and some are just masters. So it's shaping up to be a very interesting teaching year. Thankfully, to help smooth things out a bit, I have an 'in charge' teacher for each year group. I make a single lesson each week directly for these teachers - Kurioka-sensei for ichi-nensei and Takagi-sensei for ni-nensei. All the other teachers then use those lessons too, which makes everyone's lives much easier.

Overall, my timetable isn't too bad either. Last week I taught 10 lessons - 2 on Tuesday and Thursday and 3 on Wednesday and Thursday. Monday is a spare day, which is great, as I can plan all my lessons and take care of any marking I might have. So yes, having 10 lessons was just totally awesome, it was so great to be busy. That's what really struck me about last week actually, I rarely had nothing to do. Preparation, looking through student work, building relationships with the teachers I teach with and so on. Very good times. In the rare few moments I had spare time, I managed to fill them by talking to Baba-sensei, who wants to do a weekly 'chat session' with me to flex her English. She's great to talk to, so I'm looking forward to that too.

So there you go - all in all, looking like a great year. About bloody time, haha. I came to teach, and 9 months in, I'm being given the opportunity to really get involved. 10 classes isn't a 'lot' as such, I know some JETs teach 15 or 20 or more, but at least it's a start. It also gives me a great balance in terms of being able to do other things like study Japanese. So overall, very happy, and looking forward to the year!

Sorry, another late post! This was meant to be posted late last week ...

It's been a bit of a mixed week since last Friday. I felt a little sick on Thursday afternoon, and it ended up turning into a episode of the weird meningitis style virus that I'd had in February last year. Thankfully nowhere near as severe (that one nearly killed me!), but enough to completely take me out for three days. So there went the weekend, and I had to take a day of sick leave on Friday too. Thankfully I had no classes, so I didn't miss anything important. I was still annoyed, though! I hadn't been sick in over 6 months, only to get sick in the first week of the school year! :/

So I just rested and, when I had the energy to get out of bed, played a little Neverwinter Nights 2. I'd forgotten how fun it was. I'm working on a pure Drow Monk at the moment, who was abysmally weak at the start but is now decently powerful. Enough about that, though :D Unfortunately, although NWN2 was a good use of my down time, it was an unfortunate weekend to be stuck in the house. I missed a whole school enkai on Friday night, which are always a total riot. Saturday I had to turn down an invitation to go bowling with a new friend of mine in Ako, Takashi, who is my age and speaks fairly good English. Real bummer to miss that one, as he's a great guy and an inroad to making more friends my own age here. Finally, on Sunday, I missed a hanami party that was my last chance to see the sakura before the wind and rain claimed them. So as I said, the virus cost came with a very high cost! Still, on the upside, it did mean I got a metric crapload of rest, which I did really need.

Back at school on Monday, I prepared my lessons for the week, and then at 6pm, headed down to City Hall to meet Sekiyama-san. A while back, he'd asked me to help out with some English narration work based around a picture book of the very famous Ako Gishi story (the 47 Loyal Samurai). This story is extremely well known in Japan, but not so outside Japan. Some people in Ako had seen the book and wanted to help tell the story to the world. They'd decided to convert the book into a YouTube video, and to reach the wider audience they wanted to, needed someone to narrate it in English. Although the book had been translated mostly adequately into English by the mysterious "Team Kariyasalon", they were after a native speaker, and I just happened to be the local friendly gaijin who was more than happy to help out.

So we sat down in a quiet room and after a few explanations and translations by Sekiyama-san, recorded away, with me trying my best to use a good narration voice. I've never done that kind of work before so was a little unsure of exactly how to speak! They seemed happy enough with what I did though, although they also seemed very taken aback when I asked to stop and re-record a few sections because I'd made mistakes. It was hardly my fault, haha. Whoever translated the book had a penchant for extremely long sentences (40 - 50 words and longer). Easy to read, but bloody difficult to speak! :)

After about an hour or so we had finished, and everyone was mostly happy with the final result. They said they'd send me the link to the movie when they finished it, and also insisted that I take a box of delicious bread with me (how random! :D). Sekiyama-san then invited me out for dinner, which was very kind of him. He took me to an awesome little sushi-ya, which was really 'local' and superbly delicious. I'd never really been to a place like it before, but will definitely be going again. It was a bit expensive but extremely tasty. Sekiyama-san and I had a good conversation over beer, sushi and a samurai drama, about a whole heap of things, in both Japanese and English. From there we rode home and he offered to take me and any friends I wanted up to Kurashiki, which he knows quite well. We'd spoken about it in dinner and he'd just offered to take me there and show me around - good bloke! I said I'd take him up on his offer at some point in May.

Tuesday was an interesting day, I had my first ichi-nensei classes, yeehaa! I've saved all of that for another post though, hehe. I just rested at night, so nothing special there. Wednesday night I ducked down to Minato-ya for an early dinner before returning to badminton. Ewan had given me a call earlier in the week and wanted to play too, so I figured it was as good a time as any to get stuck back into it. I hadn't been for nearly 2 months, admittedly. After playing extremely badly in the last tournament I decided to take a bit of a break to reflect. Anyway, I was really glad to be back, and didn't play too badly. A lot of 'very close' shots, and I managed to learn a few new things too.

Ewan turned out to be pretty good, although that didn't really surprise me. He's very active and told me a while back that he used to play a lot of badminton in high school. Although he hadn't played for many years, he still had a lot of skill straight off the bat (racquet? haha). Better than me, and he'll only get better if he keeps coming. It was also great to see Daiichi and Funamoto-san again. I'd forgotten how much fun Daiichi's friendly rivalry was, haha. Ewan seemed to have a good time even though he didn't manage to end up on a winning team all night. He got stuck into himself a few times when he messed up shots, and I really admire how he sets himself high goals, stretches for them and expects the best from himself. I guess we're similar like that, but I'd say he's better at actually achieving those goals, hehe. He said he would keep coming on Wednesday nights which is great, as I haven't really been able to hang out with him lately and he's a good guy.

On Thursday I caught a lift to school with Harada-san because it was raining, and then got stuck at school in the afternoon, hehe. I didn't have enough money to catch the bus thanks to irritating ATM hours and poor time planning on my behalf, so I had to walk all the way home, lol. I stopped in at Paone on the way back and also managed to tee up a dinner with Kazu and Nate in Aioi. We went to a new yakitori place that was pretty decent. We had a crazy conversation about all kinds of things, including whaling (touchy subject :D), and ate and drank lots of good food.

Tonight is badminton, maybe, and some rest. Tomorrow I don't really have any plans. The weather should be fine but I don't know if frisbee will be on or not, despite the fact hanami is now over. If it is I'll do that, otherwise I might just stick around and do some chores. At night I'm supposed to be going to Kobe and Osaka to party, but I have a feeling that might fall through. If it does I might check out the 'decent' snack in Ako, 'Selfish'. It was a lot of fun last time I went, with Nick, so we'll see. Sunday no plans again. So lots of rest is on the cards, really. The virus made me very tired and it lasts about a week or two usually, so I probably should take it easy. Especially since I'm teaching properly now and that's quite draining. Still, whatever happens, I'm sure it'll be a good weekend. Dare I say it, there should be plenty on even in Ako to keep me busy enough.

Hey all. Sorry for the sudden dumping of posts, I finally remembered to send them home from school where I can actually post properly. There are 15 new posts, so to make things easier, here's a link to view them all :) Enjoy.

This is rather frank and open post. Nothing too serious, but just be warned :)

I've been having some very interesting discussions with my local friends recently about 'dating' in Japan. This is rather fascinating for me, as I really don't see how Japanese people get together. The men and women are in general quite introverted and 'shy' (besides the crazy nanpa men, of course), and I don't think I've ever really seen a man make a move on a woman even in places where I'd expect to see it (bars, clubs and so on). So when I was out with Tabe, Ai and Kazuyo recently, I asked them what they thought. They all said that the best way, for girls anyway, is through a "friend of a friend". One way that they do this is called 'konpa', where a group of guys and girls will get together to hang out. It's usually done at a bar, izakaya or similar, and everyone sort of mingles until they find someone they like. Or not, hehe. If something happens, it happens, otherwise you go to another one.

I guess it's not really that different to how it works in Australia, although I think there's a lot random pick up attempts back home. When I used to hang out at places like the Raffles in Applecross, I used to see people 'working the crowd' all the time. It's a confidence thing, I suppose. All three of the girls moaned about how shy Japanese men are, and Ai said she'd even made the first move towards a couple of guys she liked. That's pretty impressive, I think. I suppose for Japanese women, it ,may even have come down to almost desperation! Either you make a first move or you stay single, because the horde of men that do actually really like you are all standing around staring at their feet and wondering what to do.

The other interesting thing is how Japanese people who have lived overseas approach dating. Living overseas really seems to change most Japanese people - it makes them a lot more open and confident. Ai and Tabe studied for a while in Australia, so they're good examples of this. They both said that while they certainly wouldn't rule it out, they would probably find it quite hard to find a decent Japanese guy now. This a general trend in Japan, in fact, with lots of women seemingly interested in gaijins. I think a lot of this is just various types of brainwashing, but everyone I have asked who is interested in gaijin have put up fairly good defences for it. Apparently we are taller, more chivalrous, more confident and generally more fun to hang out with.

While that makes me feel somewhat lucky to be in Japan, I really don't like being chased just because I'm gaijin. I know a few girls who seem to only be interested in talking to me and getting to know me because of that, and it makes me feel really used. The first few months here, the attention is totally awesome and you tend to lap it up and use it to spruce up the ego. After a while it gets tiring, though. Seeing that look of surprise and interest on a girl's face just because you're gaijin becomes tiresome and boring, not attractive. It's somewhat difficult to trust that people who say they like you actually like you because of who you are, and not just because you're gaijin and/or can teach them English. So there you go, a double edged sword, hehe.

Ever since I first came to Japan way back in March last year, I've been seeing people entering and exiting train station gates using some sort of proximity card. The system that is used down here in Kansai is called ICOCA. It's similar to the Smartrider system in Perth. When I got here, I thought about getting one but found out that they didn't give you any sort of discount, so didn't bother. Nate showed me how to get discount tickets (10% off) which was enough for me. One day though I was racing for a train with my friends and some of them shot ahead through the gates. A couple of us had to buy tickets and we missed the train because of it. So I figured it'd be a good idea to get one.

I ended up buying one in Himeji, on the spare of the moment, just because I had some time to kill. It was really easy, too. I just pressed the ICOCA button, randomly guessed which kanji to press, shoved some money in and hey presto, out came the card :) It's really convenient, too. Unlike the Smartrider system, which was a) buggy and b) required the card to be ridiculously close to it to work, this one a) works and b) has some decent range on it. So you can just throw your wallet on the panel and push it forwards as you walk through the gates. Sweet. No more missing trains while scrambling for tickets or coins, not JR trains anyway.

The only downside I can see is that you don't seem to be able to link your card to your bank account, like you can with the Smartrider system. That was one of the best things about the Smartrider system. It automagically topped the card up every time your funds ran low, so you never had to worry about buying cards/tickets/credit. I'll have to see if it can be done, and if not, I'll suggest it :D Anyway, I feel a bit more like a local now, with my sexy card. I still get funny looks all the time, but I especially get funny looks when I use the ICOCA to go through train station gates, hooray! :)