On Tuesday night I skipped Japanese conversation class in favour of going to see some fireflies! Naturally it was a Minato-san event (nobody else would think to tell me about crazy random Japanese things, haha), so I arranged to meet him and Nate in Aioi. We grabbed a quick dinner at Suki-ya before zooming out to Kamigori to meet some of Minato-san's friends. They had two daughters who were really cute, hehe. One was almost Kosuke's age and one was just a baby - she was fascinated by the fireflies :) Mind you, so was I! These little things, called hotaru in Japanese, live near the rivers in some sections of rural Japan and are amazing to see. I'd never seen fireflies before so it was pretty magical.

We visited a few places and generally just relaxed, watching them trace crazy random patterns of light in the air. We all gently caught a few too, and I tried to work out how they produced their light. It comes from the end of their bodies and looks almost like an LED light, it's really quite impressive. We gradually worked our way back from way out in the sticks to a place much closer to Kamigori, which was literally crawling with them, and spent nearly an hour there, entranced by the patterns. Eventually we had to head back and Minato-san was kind enough to drop me in Ako. I was really glad I'd gone to see the fireflies as they really were one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. I'm so grateful to have a friend like Minato-san who keeps me up to date with (and takes me to see) all these amazing things :)

My weekend was fairly average, despite being extremely busy. Friday was fairly good though, with some excitement at school as four ichi-nensei students were caught smoking at lunchtime. Why on earth these retarded kids thought that they could get away with smoking not just at school but at lunchtime, I will never know ;) Apparently they said that they'd been smoking since junior high school and couldn't stand going a whole day at school without smoking any more. Idiots. Anyway, I'm very glad they were caught, and that they have been suspended for 1 week. Smoking is a pointless, stupid, virtueless habit and I won't stand for seeing kids throw their lives away to it. If they're not smart enough to make the sensible choice after they are out of my duty of care, then unfortunately that's their decision.

On Friday afternoon I had English club after school. We're doing a poster about Australian food for the upcoming school culture festival, and I brought in Vegemite and Cadbury chocolate for them to try. They were happy enough to eat the chocolate but I had to force them to try the Vegemite :P Both looked very unhappy after eating it, much to my delight, haha. The club wrapped up just before 5pm, giving me just enough time to zoom home, shower and head out to Himeji for Amanda's 'West Side' birthday party.

The party was at the 'dirty escalator' izakaya, where Amanda had booked a big room and set us up with a fixed course of food and nomihoudai - good times! As I mentioned, it was a west side party, meaning only people from the Aioi/Himeji area were invited. It was lovely to catch up with the local JETs again, as being in Ako I'm just outside their inner circle and don't often see them. So we spent the night catching up and of course, eating and drinking a lot of good food and beer. The only downside to the night was that about 5 people who had confirmed couldn't show up, and the izakaya (fairly enough) couldn't change the overall price for the set meal. I managed to get in touch with my good friend Kazuyo and got her to come down, which helped a bit, but we ended up having to pay about 4,300 yen each. Ouch! Anyway, after the dinner, about 6 of us went off to karaoke for an hour before catching our last trains home.

On Saturday morning I jumped on the train for the blessedly short trip up to Aioi to meet Minato-san and Nate. We were having a BBQ and had organised to meet beforehand to do all the shopping. We bought tons of interesting stuff at the massive supermarket and then headed for the park near Nate's house to set up. Minato-san, the machine that he is, was cooking within about 15 minutes of getting there, haha. I went to pick Kazuyo up from the station at about 1pm (I ran all the way there ... must be fitter than I realise!) and people continued to trickle in all afternoon. Around 3pm, Nate's friend Sean got a friendly game of Ultimate Frisbee going, and we had a hilarious time playing that for a few hours.

Eventually it ticked around towards 5pm and I had to head back home to shower before heading into Osaka at night. I'd promised Amanda I'd go to a salsa club in Osaka with her and some of our friends. To be honest, I didn't really feel like going. It was very far away, I was tired and I was having an awesome time at the BBQ and just wanted to stay and see the fireworks there at 8pm. But, a promise is a promise, so off I went. It turned out to be an ok night, after spending about 30 minutes trying to find the damn place, haha. The actual club it was at was really nice (not at all sleazy) and of course, it was great to catch up with Dan, Goran, Matt and Emma, who I also hadn't seen properly for months. I wasn't really in the mood for dancing, though. It turned out we'd missed the actual lessons part of the night, unfortunately, so we weren't really sure what we were doing! I tried my best at the start and Emma, who knew the salsa, gradually managed to teach us all some moves - lucky!

About an hour in, my stomach decided it wasn't very happy though, so I called it a night for the dancing and made a few phone calls outside while the others danced away until about around 11. We all had to head back home then thanks to the ridiculously early last trains. As I had a HAJET meeting on Saturday in Akashi, Matt offered to let me stay at his and Emma's place in Tarumi, which is just three stops to the east of Akashi. They had a nice apartment, and although I didn't sleep well, I was really grateful to them for letting me stay at such short notice!

On Sunday I headed to the HAJET meeting, which was about 3 hours long and only half the committee could attend (lol!) before looking around Akashi a bit and then heading back to Ako late afternoon. I was exhausted thanks to not sleeping well on Saturday night, so got to bed quite early. And that was my weekend. Surprisingly average, as I said. I guess I hate having nothing on so much that when I am double booked I tend to feel down about it ... it's like wasted opportunities, hehe. I want to go to everything or save up some events for the future! Oh well. I was happy with the choices I made at the time, and in hindsight I probably wouldn't have changed anything. Which is a good way to be.

I finally got through the week - just! I was really tired by Friday, much more than usual. I think it must have been all the judo. I had a really good training session on Wednesday night against my two teachers, a san-nensei student (who has now retired) and his replacement, an absolutely enormous 2nd year student. He's so big (maybe 100kg?) that I can't even throw him - I literally bounce off. So that took a lot of energy and I was sweating like crazy by the end of it. It was a great work out though, trying to push and pull him around. I ended up using some Wing Chun, which finally, and somewhat to his surprise, got him moving a little ;) Muahaha. I paid the price though - I'm still sore today!

School was good this week too, and has been in general recently. Most classes are quite good, although the ichi-nensei have settled in and gotten used to the school now, so they've become quite rowdy. The ichi-nensei teachers are quite soft on them, I think, compared to say Okamoto-sensei and Aso-sensei, which is a bit unfortunate. I have a very mild temperament and don't like conflict or getting angry, but it does piss me off when they don't listen to me when I'm talking. Especially since I try to minimise the talking and maximise the activities. I'll have to work on that. Thankfully my ni-nensei classes are really well behaved (kinda surprising, given that ni-nensei was quite rowdy last year, especially class 6) and Toda-sensei's class in particular are just wonderful to teach for. They leap out of their seats to volunteer, are quiet and listen when I'm speaking, are good at English, try hard and are just generally well behaved. I really couldn't wish for anything more in a class!

My week was pretty awesome! My good friend Yoko came over for dinner on Monday night, which was really great. We went shopping and cooked a carbonara for dinner, then listened to music and chatted away until I had to sleep. I haven't really entertained since getting to Ako, or really hung out with my local friends individually (besides Kazu) for that matter. Put that down to the somewhat bad experience I had when I first arrived here, haha. Anyway, as I said, it was a lot of fun and hopefully I can do it a bit more in the future.

In other news, I *finally* found out that I had been selected as an assistant for the upcoming 2008/09 JET Tokyo Orientation! The wait for that was almost as bad as the wait for JET itself, haha. So I'm off to the bright lights, loud noise, big crowds and never ending excitement of my most beloved big city - I'm totally pumped! My duties at the orientation are a little different to what I expected, but it all still looks good. When we applied we were told it could be pretty random, so I suppose I wasn't really that surprised. At the moment it looks like I will head up to Tokyo on Friday July 25 ready for the orientation orientation on Saturday, and then I'll be going out to Narita Airport to meet the newbies on Sunday, w00t! I didn't realise I would be welcoming them at the airport - that's so exciting! I remember catching the bus into Tokyo last year really well, hehe. Good memories, indeed.

Apparently I will also be doing Information Desk (i.e. Q&A), Hospitality Centre (i.e. lunch duty) and possibly a presentation. I wasn't selected to assist with a CLAIR presentation, which I was a bit disappointed about, but I might still get to do a National AJET one. Good enough ;) There's also the possibility of taking new JETs to, and even attending, the Australian embassy event on Tuesday night (which sucked last year, but hey, it was a free dinner :D). Aside from that I don't know what else I'll be doing. I suppose I will probably head to the training sessions too, in case there are any questions about real JET experiences. With any luck, I might also get to hit the pool - I never got around to it last year, hehe ;)

And finally, Minato-san and I cooked up a Vegemite Cheese okonmiyaki on Thursday night which was delicious, and organised our big BBQ for Saturday night. I also took my PS2 and Katamari Damarcy down and got it going on the projector. It was fun, and I think the game (which is Japanese) even managed to freak Minato-san out ... good times!

Saturday was a bit of a dead day, as I was so tired from the week that I slept in quite late. Damn you judo! :P I was a bit disappointed about how late I got up (as I am most Saturdays, hehe), as it meant I missed the Himeji Yatai Matsuri ... or so I thought! I later found out that it had been postponed due to bad weather, and was actually on on Sunday instead. So I was pretty happy about that :) I mucked around on Saturday afternoon and then headed out at night to Himeji, to catch up with Yusaku. We headed to a new yakitori place I had found, and downed some great chicken and a few beers. Afterwards, we wandered for a bit before ending up at Tiger Pub. I don't drink so much these days, so by about 10:30 I'd had enough and headed out with Yusaku to Doma Doma for a quick late night snack, before catching my last train home. It was good to catch up with Yusaku again as I hadn't seen him for a while and we always learn a lot of English/Japanese from each other.

Also, while I'm speaking about Tiger Pub I don't think I'll be going back there very often from now on. While I have some great friends there, like Andrew and Avi, there's just something about the place that really puts me on edge. It's very dank and dark, and looking around when I was there on Saturday, it felt even more run down than ever before. And while, like I said, some of the company is good, a lot of it isn't, and I'd really rather not be involved with some of the people that come in. Overly conservative? Perhaps, but I've learnt to trust my sixth sense over the years. It's a shame, because there aren't a whole lot of other options in Himeji!

Anyway, moving on, Sunday was a fun day too. Somehow, I'd been conned into playing in the Mitsubishi Social Club 'Grand Golf' tournament in the early morning, haha. Hiro and Julie Ann had invited me, as Hiro works for one of the many Mitsubishi divisions with operations in Ako. So I dutifully turned up at the Chikusa river at 9am, to the usual semi astonished stares from the workers and their families ;) I met some of Hiro's good friends, one of whom, Nozaki-san, was very amusing. We eventually started playing, thrashing our way through the long grass on the big field we were playing in. Grand Golf is much more like croquet than golf, and it was actually pretty hard. Mostly thanks to the long grass, haha. It had just been cut but not cleared, so there were massive piles of it that either made the ball jump, go in random directions or stop it completely, haha. Definitely a good challenge.

After the game, everyone took some time to wander the field to collect rubbish while the judges collated the scores. This was part of Mitsubishi's environmental iniatives, and it was heartwarming, as rural Japan can be a little feral in certain places at times. It was lovely to see that some people actually do care and want to help keep Japan beautiful. The area we were in was actually surprisingly clean, but I managed to find a good amount of rubbish hidden away in the bushes. Julie Ann won the day, however, when she found a bike in some reeds, haha. After we'd walked the length of the field, we returned to base to dump our rubbish, pick up a cold drink and sit down for the prize ceremony. My team, Mabu Tofu (AKA Team International thanks to it having a member each from Japan, China, the Phillipines and Australia), ended up coming third overall. For our efforts, we were rewarded with two big boxes of cookies each - good times! We then played bingo (LOL!) for the remaining prizes. Apparently it's pretty popular in Japan. I didn't manage to win anything from that, but most people on my team did, which was nice.

After the golf wrapped up a couple of us headed for lunch at Kappa Sushi. I had to go past the bank first, and as I did, I chanced across a big Matsuri right in the main street of town. Of course, nobody had told me about it and I had no real way of finding out otherwise, so it was a pretty big surprise. The festival, which was something to do with the salt heritage of Ako, took up most of the main street, throughout which heaps of food stalls had sprung up. I didn't have time to look around then, but after lunch, Julie Ann, Hiro and I came back for a quick gander. As Minato-san says so perfectly, it was 'nothing special', but I'm a sucker for any type of Japanese festival :) After a quick wander through the stalls, chatting to various people we knew, we called it a day.

Back at the ranch I got in touch with Kazuyo, who I'd arranged to meet at 2:15pm in Himeji. Unfortunately lunch had ended much later than I'd expected and I couldn't make it to Himeji by that time, so I arranged to meet her at just before 4pm. To my delight, she said the Yatai Matsuri was still going, so we raced up to the castle and were able to catch the end of it. The festival itself is a relatively new one, and is a parade of the 'portable shrines' from the various shrines all over Himeji city. They are quite large and brightly coloured with beautiful, intricated carvings all over them, and are carried by hundreds of fundoshi clad men. There's lots of drumming and shouting too, which always makes for a big crowd and a good time. It was all very Japanese, and lots of fun to watch. While we were there, a Japanese guy standing near us decided to start talking to me in English, despite the fact I was speaking Japanese with Kazuyo. He turned out to be a pretty cool guy, though, so we hung out and chatted for a little while before Kazuyo and I wandered off to get some coffee. Perhaps most amusingly he introduced himself as 'Eric', from memory ... interesting name for a full blood Japanese.

After coffee at Carma, one of my favourite little cafes, Kazuyo offered to help me through sorting out my mobile phone problem at Softbank. Admittedly I was hoping to get a completely new one thanks to the insurance, but the lady said that Softbank is now able to 'repair' water damage to their phones. Pfft, yeah right :P I think by repair she meant that they actually rip all the insides out and replace them with new ones, but keep the original case because it's marginally cheaper that way ;P I was a little disappointed, but hey, as long as I get a phone back I'm fairly happy ;) Unfortunately, I will lose my entire phone book because it was only saved in the phone memory, not the SIM. That is the price you pay for foolishness, though, I suppose! On the plus side, at least I will only put people back in that I really do speak to often.

After a quick trip up to Bon Marche to pick up some gaijin food for ESS club on Friday, I said goodbye to Kazuyo and headed back to Ako. I went to Minato-ya for dinner, which was great. I was the only person there so we chatted away for a few hours. Minato-san decided to close early and was in a very genki mood, so he hauled my bike into the shop and gave it a quick overhaul. No more squeaky chain, yeehaa! It's also much easier to ride now. I figured that the dirt and squeaky gears meant I was having to work harder, but I never realised just how much it was slowing me down - possibly up to 4 or 5km/h! That's what you get for not doing regular maintenance, I suppose ;P I really should be cleaning it down every month, or at least after each time I head to the mountains.

And that was my weekend! :)