One of the interesting things I've noticed recently is how variable my ability to understand someone's Japanese is. It's always been this way, but now I'm conversational I seem to notice it even more. For example, when I'm in the classroom with Kurioka-sensei, I can understand almost everything she says even though I don't have the skills to actually say what she is. On the other hand, I can barely understand Kyoto-sensei when he talks to me. I thought about exactly what this is, and I think I've narrowed it down to a few things.

Perhaps the most major of which are the speed at which someone speaks and how clearly they speak. Kurioka-sensei speaks slowly and clearly, while Kyoto-sensei is the opposite. The nature of the vocabularly they use is also a big one - I think older people use a larger and somewhat different vocabularly to the younger people I have more experience speaking with. Again, Kurioka-sensei uses very plain language (perhaps because she's speaking to the students?) whereas I'm reliably informed by Mitsumoto-sensei that Kyoto-sensei likes to speak using complicated language.

On Sunday morning I was up and off early, back to Ako. For some reason I really wanted to get back there - it's a feeling I've been getting more and more often recently, which I think is a good thing :) As I was heading back so early I decided to see if anyone in Ako was free to hang out in the afternoon for a beach BBQ or something, so I sent everyone a message while I was on the train. Ewan messaged me back to let me know that he was already at a BBQ that he'd organised with his surfing friends after they had to cancel their surfing trip, and as it was at a local beach, he invited me along too. I was really grateful as I hadn't had many opportunities to meet his friends and I'm perpetually excited about any prospect of meeting some young people in Ako :P

So as soon as I got home I packed up my bag and jumped on my bike for the long ride up to Outsuka beach. It's about a 30 minute ride from home at a decent pace, including several fairly stiff hill climbs, so it was great exercise! It was even better exercise this time because I missed the turnoff to the beach and ended up riding nearly to the next town before realising. That was fun though as I needed the training for my bike race later this month, and I got some seriously decent speed up on the downhills. The long winding roads up on the cape are beautiful to ride down and I easily pushed 40km/h just coasting. I think I scared the crap out of a couple of drivers who were catching up to me on the uphills but then found themselves unable to overtake me once I hit the downhills, muahaha >:)

I eventually found the beach and the BBQ at around 2:30pm. It was a little intimidating just walking up to a BBQ full of people I didn't really know, but Ewan introduced me to everyone and it was actually really chilled out and relaxed. Just what I needed after the past few super-busy weeks. Ewan's friends were cool people, too, and I was really glad that I finally had the opportunity to meet his best friend Ken properly too. We'd met a few times over the past year but never had the chance to exchange words. Ai, Ewan's girlfriend, was also there and she introduced me to her friend, Junko. Yes, yet another Junko, hehe. Her nickname is Junko 3 :D

Kazu and Yoko also turned up eventually and we all generally hung out doing beach BBQ things - swimming, fishing, diving, eating, playing frisbee and soccer and talking about many random things. We called it a night just before 10pm, which was good because I still had some chores to do before starting school on Monday :P Kazu joined me for the long ride home, but thankfully he showed me the flat route that avoided a pretty serious hill climb :) From there it was back home to the chores and then sleep for the start of Term 2!

I thought about the day while I was doing my chores and I realised just how much fun it had been to hang out in Ako with some great local people and to be communicating with them almost entirely in Japanese. I honestly can't express how happy I was, and I really hope that I can do it more often!

Saturday was a pretty unusual day! I'd arranged to meet my new friend Kyouko in Osaka for lunch and bowling, and she'd invited some of her other gaijin friends along too. I was a little unsure about it all, to be honest, as it was only the second time I was going to meet her and having to meet the friends of someone I barely knew anyway wasn't my idea of a relaxing day out :P Still, it turned out to be much better than I expected, partially because her friends were pretty much in the same boat as me. Only one of them, Remy, was actually a friend of Kyouko's, and he'd only met her once too. The other guy, Olivier, was a friend of Remy's and had never met Kyouko.

Thankfully that made for a good starting point and when I found out that the guys were both working as programmers in Nara, it was all good, haha. The only difficult part of the day was trying to balance the conversation between everyone. Kyouko is hard of hearing and her spoken English isn't as strong as her writing/reading, so it was a real challenge to keep her in the conversation. I also had trouble understanding Remy a lot of the time, as although he spoke decent English, he had a strong French accent. Still, having lived in Japan for a year has made me pretty good at dealing with situations where I can't understand what's going on around me (hehe), so it ended up being fairly ok.

So we grabbed lunch at an okonomiyaki place in Umeda before heading to our afternoon entertainment of 3 games of bowling at a massive bowling alley in Nanba. Bowling is not really my thing, like karaoke, but they're both necessities in Japan so I deal with it and am slowly beginning to enjoy them more and more. Much to my surprise I actually bowled pretty well, too, winning the second game with the somewhta decent score of 120 or so. Good times. By the time the last game finished we had just enough time to have coffee before I needed to shoot off to Sannomiya to catch up with my friends for the beer garden at night.

As Remy and Olivier were good guys and we'd all had a fun time bowling, I decided to invite them and Kyouko to come along to the beer garden with me. They seemed pretty happy to do that so we all went to Sannomiya together and they went off on their own while I caught up with my friends beforehand. The beer garden kicked off at 6:30pm and I had just enough time to eat and grab a beer before starting the HAJET membership run. This took most of the night and went pretty well - with Matt's and Kate's help we got quite a few people paid and signed up for membership :)

The only downside of doing the membership run was that although I met a lot of people, I couldn't spend any decent amount of time with any of them. So I felt a bit bummed out once the beer garden finished and I realised I should be heading to the train to get home. Goran kindly said I could stay at his place if I wanted to stay out though, so I decided to do that instead of going home. From the beer garden the group split up, either heading to Osaka or to Trinity in Sanno, which is where Goran, Misa and I went. We arrived just after a WhyNot!? Japan party had finished and to my surprise I bumped into Yoko, the organiser, at the door. It was kind of strange seeing her in Kobe as I've only ever seen her in Osaka before. The good thing about turning up just after the WhyNot!? party though was that there were still a lot of people around, meaning that Trinity was actually pumping for a change :) So we hung around there until just before midnight when Goran, Misa and I ran to the subway and headed back to Myoudani on the last train.

Friday morning at school was pretty chilled out, thanks to only around half the teachers actually coming in, haha. I think the rest of them were still using their special o-bon leave, lucky devils :D Anyway, the teachers that did show up created a decent bustle as they drifted around trying to clear the summer holiday cobwebs out of their heads. Although that bustle signalled the end of the holidays, which I thought would have been depressing, it was actually really nice and quite welcome. The staff room had been far too quiet during the holidays!

By stark contrast, however, the afternoon suddenly become really busy and stressful. I had set it aside to prepare for the Hyogo AJET membership run at the beer garden on Saturday night, which pretty much meant making and printing this year's membership cards. I was in two minds about this - worried because I'd heard from the previous PR that this job tended to be a bit of a pain, but simultaneously pretty confident because I'd found an old, unused membership card template on the PR memory stick and am pretty handy with Photoshop when I need to be. It turned out that both feelings were valid, hehe. Although it wasn't too much of a problem at all to pretty up the template and come up with a snazzy new design for the cards, I hit trouble when I tried to print them out as the print quality was just awful :/

I found out that this was partly caused by the ancient printer in the ichi-nensei area and partly due to the way the template had been set up by the person who made it. The printer wasn't a problem as I could change to another one, but the template settings meant that it was essentially useless for print. I was really frustrated because this was one of those things that I should have checked but at the same time shouldn't have had to have, if you get my drift.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, all was not lost. I couldn't give out any membership cards at the beer garden, but I did take along the membership forms and, with the help of some of the other committee members, managed to sign up a heap of people! We didn't get as many people as we had wanted, but given the cut in new JET numbers (by more than 30% compared to last year) and the splitting of SHS and JHS ALTs into separate Hyogo orientations I think we actually did surprisingly well. I also managed to find time in the following week to design a completely new membership card, which was a great relief.

Overall, I learnt a good few lessons from the membership run, mainly about preparation and delegation. These are the kind of skills that I rarely get to use/learn at school, so it was fantastic to be exposed to them again. Made me really miss the challenge of working at EY, actually, hehe. Good times.

It's been a fairly average week so far thanks to having a cold, which while better, is still holding on. On Monday I used my daikyuu to rest and pretty much spent it playing games and watching TV. Tuesday I had to go to school, but I was in a sick fuzz all day and can't actually remember what I did! On Tuesday night I caught up with Yoko which was great, but I was nearly asleep at the table at the restaurant by 9pm :D Wednesday I spent the entire day filling out business trip forms and never endingly correcting them with little pieces of extra or changed information from Kyoto-sensei (who looked very apologetic after calling me back for the 5th time!). At night I did my conversation class with Kometani-san where we had lots of fun talking about our holidays in a good mix of English and Japanese and grabbed dinner at Kappa-sushi. I was supposed to go to badminton but I didn't feel good enough, so had an early night instead.

Today I'm doing some lesson planning and generally keeping very quiet in an effort to stave off the cold before school starts again next week. I'll wander down to Minato-ya tonight to see what's going on there, then tomorrow night I'm off out to catch up with my good friend Amanda in Himeji. The weekend looks to be pretty good, assuming I'm not still sick, as I'm going bowling in Osaka with my new friend Kyoukou. We had planned to go partying at night, too, but we mixed up the dates and the party we wanted to go to was actually last week, haha. So I think I will head to the Hyogo AJET Back 2 Skool beer garden in Sannomiya instead, to catch up with the newbies and help with membership sign ups. W00t! Sunday is chores and resting as usual as another long school term kicks off on September 1 :) All is good ... looking forward to being useful again :)

I got home at around 3pm on Saturday, pretty tired out after my big night out and only around 4 hours sleep. To my dismay, I also found that I had caught a cold, probably off poor Sylvia, who had one when she arrived ;/ The cigarette smoke from the club definitely didn't help things either. I felt ok once I'd had a shower though, and raced off to the Welcome Beer Garden in Himeji. That turned out to be pretty good, too, despite the weather threatening rain all day. There were about 40 people there which wasn't bad given that it was in Himeji rather than Sannomiya. I caught up with a few familiar faces both new and old but only had the one beer as I had to work the next day.

The work was the secret business trip that I mentioned a while back, which really is a secret. All I can say is that it was 8-5 and that I had to be up at 5:30am to get there on time so it was a very long day. My cold had decided to kick into full swing by early morning, so I was headachey and coughing ;/ Thankfully, I was able to get some medicine at lunchtime, although to my amusement it was one that makes you drowsy. Not particularly useful given the type of work I was doing. Anyway, I got through it all ok and the day finally came to an end. I headed straight home afterwards and got some good rest, and also used my day in lieu on Monday to rest some more. It didn't kick the cold completely, but it helped :)

The business trip was definitely an interesting experience, albeit a long and somewhat frustrating one. I expect I'll be called upon to do it again next year if I stay, and I expect that I'll probably agree again if I do. Come to think of it, business trips seem to have been a very serious part of my summer holiday this year. I spent 5 days at Tokyo orientation, 3 days at Yashiro orientation, a day on my secret trip and two half days in preparation meetings. Doing all of this was exhausting and it messed my holiday plans around quite significantly, but I don't regret helping out. As I mentioned before, if it provides me the opportunity to stay a 3rd and maybe even a 4th or 5th year, it's a good thing in my book and I don't mind the short term sacrifice. I'm used to it from EY :D

I had meant to head up to Tokyo on Saturday but after feeling so exhausted after Yashiro, I changed my plans and went up on Sunday instead. Somewhat begrudging the $750 it was going to cost in travel and accommodation expenses alone (yikes, hehe) I managed to jump on a shinkansen late on Sunday afternoon. Which was when I realised just how bad a time I had chosen to travel, haha. It was the end of the O-bon festival so a lot of people were returning home to the city. As a result there were no reserved seats left on the shinkansen and it was jam packed in the unreserved sections. And when I say jam-packed, I mean it - there were people at Shin-Kobe station who simply couldn't get onto the train! :/

So after an incredibly uncomfortable 3 hour train ride spent standing up near the train's toilet, I finally arrived in Shinagawa a little worse for wear :) Haha, I've probably made it sound like the trip from hell, but it wasn't really actually all that bad. Jumping onto the handy Yamanote line, I zipped across to Shinjuku and eventually managed to find my hotel in Kabuki-cho. Yes, I stayed in the most 'dangerous' place in Japan, haha. I always have to laugh about this, especially when teachers seem shocked and worried when I say I'm going to Akihabara, Suskino, or Kabuki-cho. Japan is so ridiculously safe that Kabuki-cho, the most 'dangerous' place in Japan, is about as dangerous at night as a normal inner Perth suburb during the day. I really love how safe Japan is.

Anyway, after chilling out for a bit, I headed out into the craziness to see what was happening. Which turned out to be not a lot, haha. It was Sunday night, after all. I walked around, played a few games in the arcade, grabbed some dinner and then headed back to the hotel to get some much needed sleep.

On Monday I went to Harajuku, which turned out to be a good choice. I found a punk/goth clothes store and chatted away to the owner while he suggested various crazy outfits for me. I ended up finding a pretty sweet pair of trousers and an interesting top though, so look out world ... here comes punk Daniel, muahaha. While I was in there, a young guy came in and started talking to the owner and I too. It turned out that he was a third year student at a high school in Hyogo-ken, ironically enough, and that one of the ALTs I know taught at his school. Small world! So I wandered around with him for a while to look at boots and t-shirts before we parted ways and I headed off to Kiddy Land to try to find another Kusanagi Motoko figurine ;)

They didn't have any, unfortunately, so I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering through the fantastic market like alleys in Harajuku, checking out the amazing shops there. They're really trendy but a lot are still pretty down to earth in terms of prices. Well, down to earth enough, anyway. I picked up a great t-shirt and found a totally awesome dragon bracelet, but unfortunately it was $600 so it stayed in the glass cabinet :) I also met one of the most unusual looking half-Japanese people I have ever met. Despite having lived here for a year and having seen a lot of half people, I was actually visually taken aback by the way she looked. It wasn't that she wasn't attractive (she was quite pretty), there was just something really ... unsettling? ... about the way she looked. She was cool though, and chatting away to her I found out that she was a uni student nearby and that it was her first day of part time work at the store. What a life :)

At night I had planned to go out clubbing in Shibuya or somewhere nearby, but the short nap I took at around 7pm ended up being a full night of sleep, hehe. I guess I needed it after all the orientations and parties during the summer. From there, I decided that Tuesday would be 'culture' day, so I headed up to central Tokyo to check out the Imperial Palace gardens and Yasukuni-jinja. I wasn't particularly impressed by the gardens as I've seen much better in other parts of Japan, and even Yasukuni-jinja wasn't particularly visually appealing despite its obvious historical interest. I think I may now have reached saturation point for Japanese gardens and shrines now, hehe :) Still, it was nice to walk around and be outside, and the quiet in the gardens was very enjoyable. And, to my surprise, I found I'd walked almost half way across Tokyo by accident before I found a subway station and got back to Central :)

On Tuesday night I had planned to meet up with a friend but she had to work late so I had to find something else to do. I ended up heading to a club in Shibuya called Amrax. It was doing a 'Party Hard Tuesday' reggae & R&B night, which I figured would be more fun than watching the Olympics in my hotel room :) The amusing thing was that the party didn't start until midnight (!!) so it was all or nothing, as the trains stopped at 12:20 or so. After grabbing a quick coffee in the CD store in Shibuya that is open until 3:30am (!!), I headed across to the club and got in at around 1am. Naturally, there was nobody there (it's not cool to be anywhere near on time) but it gradually started filling up and was busy by around 2:30am. The club was actually fairly nice and overall I had a pretty good time. The reggae wasn't bad and the R&B was ok, even though the DJ had an annoying habit of talking over the music half the time.

Around 4:30am things started to get a bit silly as everyone got drunk and tired, so I ended up wandering out at around 5am. To my surprise, I discovered that the trains started at 4:30am, which is actually pretty decent! I managed to catch the 5:45ish train back to Shinjuku and slept through until about 4pm :) From there I went to meet Jono and Sylvia, yay! I wasn't sure what time they would get in, so arranged to meet them at their hotel on the other side of the railway tracks at around 8pm. I had some time to burn so I wandered to the massive Kinokuniya bookshop in the Takashimaya Times Square Annex. They had an entire floor of foreign books but sadly no Raymond E Feist. Still, I did manage to pick up 5 or 6 Japanese textbooks, including books on all my favourite parts of Japanese - particles, verb conjugations and grammar :) Whee!

I got to the hotel at around 7pm and finding that Jono & Slyvia hadn't checked in, settled down to wait. I was glad I'd bought some books as they didn't turn up until nearly 8:30pm, having walked from Shinjuku station ... pretty impressive for people who can't speak or read any Japanese! :) After they checked in we wandered out to have dinner at the Watami I'd had dinner in during Tokyo Orientation, and then took a quick wander over to my side of the tracks. I wanted to show them the craziness of Kabuki-cho and then we also squeezed in a few cheeky arcade games at Taito too :) After that they were really tired so I wandered back to their hotel with them and we called it a night.

I had planned to go out clubbing but was surprisingly tired again, so I stayed in my room and played some Nintendo DS instead. As often happens with me, I got less tired as the night went on and only eventually fell asleep at around 4am, rarr! I was up at around 9am so I wasn't a particularly bright bunny, but managed to get going and met J&S at their hotel. We went into central to do the touristy thing of looking at the surprisingly unimpressive Imperial Palace. Akihabara was next on the schedule which made Jono very happy indeed, haha, his eyes lighting up at all the techno goodies around him. We grabbed lunch at a takoyaki place and walked around a bit more before playing some Street Fighter 4 and racing back to Harajuku.

There we went through the crazy market shopping street and out to Kiddy Land. One of Tokyo's famous impromptu storms brewed up while we were in there, so we stepped out onto the street 45 minutes later to find leaves blowing everywhere and the sky as black as coal. Not wanting to tempt fate, we raced back to the station and home to Shinjuku, where we searched for a curry and rice place. I got a bit lost and it started to rain, but after picking up umbrellas at a convenient pharmacy we eventually managed to find a good place. And it was tasty indeed :) We had all planned to go to the Odaiba Oedo onsen at night but thanks to getting wet and the lingering bad weather, we ended up hanging out in the hotel room instead and looking at photos :)

J&S were off to the Ghibli museum on Friday morning so I took the opportunity to sleep in and met up with them at around 4pm. We zoomed out to Odaiba on the Yurikamome line and got ourselves into the awesome Oedo onsen. It was extremely expensive but it was definitely worth it. I hadn't realised it beforehand, but the whole place was themed. Men and women changed into yukata separately but then emerge from their changing rooms into a mock old fashioned Japanese town. It was actually really well done and not too tacky at all :) Jono and I grabbed a beer before hitting the onsen, where Jono had his first onsen experience, haha. He seemed to take it pretty well, thankfully.

After the onsen, we ran into Sylvia by accident in the 'main street' of the town so sat down to have dinner together. Sylvia had been exploring and had found a garden outside, which we went to afterwards. It was really beautiful, especially in the cool of dusk. There were little pools for you to put your legs into, and a little hut that had a pool full of 'doctor fish'. These things eat the dead skin off your feet (bizarre!) and somehow Sylvia managed to convince Jono and I to try it. It was a really weird sensation and I can't say I was sad when my 15 minutes were up :D I did at least get a gasp of surprise as I sat down in the pool and a girl across from me noticed that I was a gaijin, muahaha.

After the onsen, we went straight back to our hotels to change and drop off our shopping before Jono and I met up again to go clubbing in Shibuya ... muahaha. I'd found out that the Dex Pistols, my favourite Japanese DJs who I'd seen playing at the San-in Beach Party earlier in the year, were playing, so I was definitely going to go at all costs! It was at one of the biggest clubs in Tokyo, Club Asia, right on top of Love Hotel Hill. It was an amazing experience, standing in a long line waiting to get into the club, surrounded by the glow of neon lights from other nightclubs and blatant love hotels.

We finally got in at around midnight and again, I was surprised at how nice the club itself was. The DJs were pretty average (maybe I'm just biased, haha) but a few beers helped us get into it. Finally I saw the Dex Pistols go up on stage and got really excited, much to the amusement of two girls nearby who had also recognised them. The other DJs seemed to be running late, so the DPs finally got on stage at around 2:30am and dropped some seriously wicked beats until around 4am. Jono and I were pretty tired by this point so we headed out, grabbed a quick 'breakfast' at Yoshinoya and then caught the 4:30am train back to Shinjuku. I said goodbye to Jono and then raced back to my hotel to squeeze in as much sleep as I could before I had to check out and head back to Ako.

So overall, a pretty awesome trip. It was interesting to go back to Tokyo, and to do so alone, at least for the first bit. It reminded me of the time I spent there on holiday last year. I had the same lonely feeling again, surprisingly enough. I still don't really know anyone in Tokyo, so once my friend had to cancel our dinner, I pretty much had nobody to do anything with until Jono arrived. It was only for a few days so not a major problem, but it does provide a pretty good metaphor for how Japan in general can be, especially if you don't speak the language fluently.

Also interesting was how Tokyo itself made me feel. This ranged from ecstatic to hateful. When I was clubbing, shopping in Harajuku and Akihabara and at the onsen in Odaiba, I felt the addictive tingle of excitement and joy that only Tokyo/a really big city can bring. On the other hand, I came to hate Kabuki-cho, mainly because every time I wanted to go somewhere, I had to continuously run a gauntlet of people trying to get me to go to their clubs, each with varying levels of sordiness. I was only staying there because it was very central, near Jono's hotel and there was a Toyoko Inn, a cheap business hotel chain, there. Moreover, I swayed between both emotions about the size of the city and how crowded it was.

Perhaps more interesting though, was how I felt when I returned to Ako. I felt like I'd returned home, and in many ways, I knew that I am probably happier here than I would be living in Tokyo. Tokyo is so impersonal. People in Tokyo really aren't friendly. They're afraid to make eye contact with you, let alone smile. I don't know whether it's an inverse gaijin-effect or whether they're always like that. Regardless, Kansai is definitely a much more friendly place in my opinion.

Tokyo also got me thinking about a lot of other things too, so I suppose it served more than its original purpose as just a holiday. I like things like that, that make you think about who you are and/or what you're doing and where you're heading. Going to Tokyo helped me 'keep it real' and I feel grateful about that. I find that happens often when I travel, which probably explains why I like travelling and try to do it as often as I can. For me, it's all life experiences. The more I can get, the better, and if travelling is how I can best do that, count me in :) That said, I don't know when I'll be in Tokyo again. A couple of friends who wanted to head up with me who couldn't still want to go, so I might end up there sooner rather than later. Otherwise, it'll probably be next summer holidays :)

Yashiro finished at around 2:30pm on Friday, after which a big group of us caught the bus back to Himeji. I was exhausted after Yashiro but had made plans to catch up with my badminton friend Daichi back in Ako, so I dragged myself out of my apartment and down to meet him. He was running very late and I got pounced on by the new missionaries in town while I was waiting, somewhat to my annoyance. They rode past me and noticed that I was a gaijin, so naturally they came back. I was polite about it though, and they seemed like decent people once I'd carefully warned them away from trying to preach at me. Usually the way :) While I was talking to the missionaries, Daichi and badminton Minato-san eventually rocked up and we zipped off to Daichi's house to pick up his PS2 for a night of crazy gaming action!

On the way we saw the aftermath of an accident where a car had hit a bike. It wasn't too serious, but we stopped and lent a hand. The biker was still on the ground, trapped under his bike, so Daichi and untangled him and helped him get off the road and sit down safely. As we drove away, Daichi and Minato-san were laughing and joking about exactly what I was thinking about - all the man would remember was that a gaijin had appeared out of nowhere to help him, spoke with him in semi-fluent Japanese, and then disappeared again just as quickly, haha. We laughed so much because we figured he'd probably wake up in the hospital later and think he was losing his mind, or that his doctors surely would when they heard his story :D

After rescuing the dude, we raced off to 47 Liquors to buy food and, surprisingly enough, liquor! Then it was back to Daichi's grandfather's house to party. His house was totally awesome, seriously. It's just off the main street in what is basically the perfect place to live, right in the centre of Ako. Most buildings there are quite new already, but this apartment was recently renovated and while small, is very attractive. While Minato-san went out to get more food and drink for some reason, Daichi showed me his family's shrine, which was on the top floor of the apartment. He also showed me how Japanese people pray at this type of shrine, and as I'd never seen a family shrine before, I was really grateful to have the experience.

When Minato-san came back we ate and drank and played PS2, some crazy Japanese train game which in true Japanese fashion punished the loser the most by sticking a 'bombii' (demon) to their train that did bad things every turn. Hahaha. After getting pounded in that, another guy from badminton showed up (whose name I can't remember ;/) and we wandered down to a konbini to get more food and drink. Everyone was a little drunk except for me, and I was glad about that because I met one of my students returning from a study camp. It must have looked rather amusing, with me wandering along chatting in Japanese with 3 drunken Japanese guys, haha. Yet another reminder of why I don't drink so much these days :)

At around midnight I called it a night as I was exhausted, and headed home to sleep. It was really fantastic to hang out with Daichi and Minato-san though, something I don't often have the opportunity to do here in Ako. They're cool guys and it's good to have people like that in Ako that I can randomly call up and hang out with. Friends make the world go around, after all.

The coming of the O-bon festival brought with it the return of the Hyogo JET Orientation for another year! 39 lucky Hyogo SHS ALTs and the 8 BoE staff/experienced ALTs responsible for them all descended upon Prison Camp Yashiro for some mad learning and good times. It was a really interesting experience, going back for the second time around ... lots of memories, hehe. That said, my experience was very different this year thanks to being a helper rather than a particpant :)

Not that everything started smoothly, mind you! Continuing the tradition of business trips interfering with my holiday plans, I realised that I would need to be up at 4:30am on Wednesday morning in order to get to Yashiro on time and therefore had to cancel my dinner plans with Emerald. I tend to take business trips messing up my plans pretty well, but I'd been trying to organise a dinner with Emerald for several months now and we'd settled on this date because neither of us were free for weeks before or after it. Probably partly as a result of that irritation, I slept terribly on Tuesday night and was not a happy chappy when I finally managed to drag myself out of bed on Wednesday morning. Although I did feel quite a bit better when I later found out that all the other ALT helpers had slept terribly too, hehe.

I made the first train out of Ako with time to spare, and met Nate when he jumped on at Aioi station. In Himeji we scouted the bus station and grabbed a great breakfast in a vending machine restaurant near Forus before jumping on the bus with a heap of happy little new ALTs to head up to Prison Camp Yashiro ... w00t! To my initial concern and subsequent amusement (and admittedly, irritation), one of the ALTs on the bus was complaining about how lonely he was and how nobody lived around him. As I said, I initially felt sorry for him ... until he mentioned that he was a 5 minute bike ride from central Himeji. Let's just say that I had to practise considerable self restraint to not say anything I may later have regretted :D Thankfully 'friendly experienced ALT helper' mode kicked in automagically and I heard him out and made some suggestions, for which he seemed grateful :)

We got in to Yashiro itself at around 9:40am, just in time to get to the first meeting. From there, all the newbies started trickling in to check in. Overall it was a good start to the camp, as the only 'incidents' were two people who arrived 10 minutes late and one girl who 'forgot' her business clothes. After we smashed our way through lunch and the afternoon seminars to dinner, us exhausted ALT helpers were finally being to crash out one the ALTs were safely in their rooms at around 11:30pm. And best of all, no major incidents at night either, woohoo!

The next day was a lot more enjoyable as I a) had gotten some sleep and b) was actually facilitating some of the sessions. The first session was really crazy as I had the same speech to do for three separate groups, and only 20 minutes for each. I had to really move through it as I had a lot to cover, but I think they all got something out of it. Hopefully the example lesson plan I printed out for them will be useful, as this was one of the things I found most challenging to deal with when I started. Aside from that session, I also got to run a general Q&A session with Seo-sensei, a new JET co-ordinator, and I then teamed up with Nate to run the Hyogo/Tajima area networking session.

There were no major incidents on the second night either, hooray! Even the man who had come in to the training centre *before* the seminar to say that he would be coming in to complain during the seminar (which I think is extremely ignorant! :/) didn't come in. The infamous Yashiro is no longer quite so infamous, it would seem :) And again, as I've said before, I was really impressed by the new JETs. Most of them were attentive during the seminars and had fun during their free time without taking it too far. And while naturally there are always a few challenging people in every group, all in all they behaved really well. That made my life easy, which was definitely a Good Thing and I really appreciated it. Hooray new JETs, you rock! :)

Nate, Aya and I met up with the new Ako ALT, Louise, for our first dinner, on Monday night! We met her at her apartment so she wouldn't get lost in Ako trying to find Minato-ya, haha, and took the opportunity to check out her 'mould' room while we were there. It was totally feral, even by male standards! :/ Thankfully she seemed to be in pretty good spirits and had cleaned up everything else in the apartment really well, with the help of the Ako BoE staff. So all good I guess. From there, Aya drove us all down to Minato-ya so that we could introduce Louise to meet Minato-san and get her her first bite of the best okonomiyaki in Japan, w00t! :)

I have to say, it's totally awesome to have a new person in Ako. Someone who can communicate, especially. Phillip faded away without a word, as is his style, and I still rarely hear from the ninja Claire, so I'm nothing short of ecstatic to have another real live enthusiastic talking native English speaker around. At Minato-ya we talked about all kinds of things, from her experiences in Japan so far to how things were back in Perth, and so on. It felt like I was back home for a while, what with her Perth accent and the places she talked about being so familiar. Definitely good times.

On Saturday I caught up with Yusaku in Himeji and we zipped across to Osaka for the International Party at Pure. Thankfully we'd had the foresight to book a capsule hotel nearby, as we weren't able to get home after the party, haha. Once we arrived in Shinsaibashi, we checked into the hotel and headed down to Dotonburi to grab dinner at my favourite little garlic ramen place. After that it was party time, w00t! Unfortunately, there were a lot of other events on that night including a firework festival and a few other things I can't remember, so there weren't that many people around. Definitely still enough to be fun, although the place didn't have its normal vibrant feel.

Despite this though, most of the people I did meet were pretty interesting, especially a guy who was a firefighter in Nara, and a deaf lady from Umeda. I was absolutely fascinated by her because although she wasn't completely deaf, we had to communicate mostly through writing. This was a really interesting experience for me and it turned out that it actually suited me surprisingly well. I don't hear well in clubs at the best of times, and writing is easier than speaking :) I think the fact that I didn't have to worry about my speaking skills also made it easier for me to communicate, strangely enough! Anyway, I remember being very impressed by her, as she was quite a bit older than the usual crowd and as I mentioned, hard of hearing, so I thought she was pretty courageous to come out partying. After I'd 'talked' to her a bit, she invited me to go bowling in Osaka in late August with some of her friends ... sweet deal! :D

After the party finished, Yusaku and I wandered back to the capsule hotel and the recent heat and exhaustion caught up with me. I hadn't had all that much to drink but it hit me really suddenly, so I pretty much fell asleep as soon as I got into my little capsule. On Sunday I was still tired and Yusaku needed to head to Toyooka to see his grandparents, so we headed back to Himeji quite early, after grabbing brunch at a handy Subway. I got back to Ako around lunchtime and just mucked around doing chores and playing games for the rest of the day - pretty sweet weekend overall! :)

Last week was a rather unusual and interesting one thanks to various random summer holiday events. It started in grand style with a 'secret' business trip to the Hyogo Board of Education building in Motomachi. Enough said! After the meeting I caught up with my friend Brandon and we grabbed a cheeky beer or two in Sannomiya and then dinner in Chinatown back in Motomachi. We talked a lot about the JET Program and it was great to speak about it with someone who has enough experience and maturity to have some informed opinions.

Tuesday was a very slow day at school and then conversation class at night. I was so tired I almost didn't go to the class, but had made the committment so forced myself to. It turned out to be ok in the end, too, as my two favourite teachers, Sekiyama-san and Kubou-sensei, were there. We had a great conversation almost entirely in Japanese and I learnt quite a few new words and bits and pieces of grammar. I had hoped to see Tomoko too as I hadn't caught up with her in a long time. Admittedly I hadn't been to the class much over the past few months, and had also lost her details when I damaged my phone. I'd been meaning to ask her if she would be willing to seriously take on teaching me Japanese. She is/was studying teaching Japanese to foreigners and I figured she was pretty much my best chance at finding a qualified, bilingual teacher in Ako who could really help me accelerate my Japanese. Unfortunately, I found out just before the class that she was leaving that night, of all nights, to go on exchange to Thailand for 6 months.

I have to admit that I found myself surprisingly upset when I found that out. I know this is a hard time of year for JETs, what with so many JETs leaving, but this was something different. I pinned it down to the fact that, in my experience, local people are often at least as mobile as JETs, if not more so. A lot of the wonderful people I've met and become friends with, from Ako to Sannomiya, have left to travel either internationally or to other places within Japan. Aya went to America to study, Kyoto Junko went to Canada for a working holiday, Sannomiya Junko went to Nagoya to work, Tabe went to Kyushu to work, Kazuyo went to Australia for a working holiday, Tomoko went to Thailand on exchange as I mentioned and to top it all off, Yoko is looking for a new job that will almost definitely take her out of Ako.

I suppose I sound a little down here, and to be perfectly honest, I am. Living in Japan is awesome, but it is not without its challenges. Building friendships is not easy regardless of where you are in the world, and it's made even more complicated when you have a language barrier to overcome. To keep finding people I can connect with and then having them suddenly leave is a continuous energy and morale drain. I guess I just have to keep on fighting, though :) Keep on studying Japanese, take every opportunity to get out into the community and meet people and continue my never ending search for where the young people in Ako actually hang out :D Ganbarimasu!

Back to my week, Wednesday was another slow day and I actually left school early for once, hehe. I've started going in late too - the horror! Haha. I noticed recently that there are only ever about 10 teachers max in the staff room during summer holidays, and I know that the ones that aren't there aren't all using annual leave. So I asked Hashimoto-sensei, who was basically the only teacher there when I arrived at 8:15am on Monday morning, what was going on. He told me that the teachers usually arrive late and leave early during the summer holidays. Having heard that I knew I could do it myself. I also knew that if I had asked if I could do it, I would have been told no. Muahaha. My understanding of the way Japan works keeps on growing :)

At night on Wednesday I also had conversation class with Kometani-san. I hadn't seen her the week before, so we had lots of interesting things to talk about. Somewhat to my surprise, I found out that Phillip, the ALT in Ako who has now finished his time here, was actually staying on in Ako at Kometani-san's second house until the end of August. Not that I had seen him, of course, and it's very unlikely I will see him before he leaves on the 31st August. Anyway, after class I had badminton, and although I didn't play very well it was fun to catch up with Ewan, Daichi and the others regulars.

Thursday was another ninja-day when I was in at school late and out early. It was so quiet, in fact, that some of the teachers, seeing Kyoto-sensei was away, suggested that I make like gaijin ninja smoke and vanish even before lunch time, hehe. As they wouldn't take their own advice when I suggested it, I didn't either though, hehe. I did end up leaving about half an hour early though. Later that evening I went down to the AIFA volunteer meeting, which was quite interesting as usual. Unfortunately I was so tired that I could barely understand anything being said. Still, I'd taken in my damper recipe as promised (and even translated it into Japanese with Mitsumoto-sensei's help!) so all the other volunteers seemed happy :) Sugano-san and I traded phone details again and, as the 'International Lady' of Ako, she has invited me out to dinner at some point. I'm really looking forward to it but hopefully it's at a time when I'm not quite as tired as I am at the moment.

After that it was time for Minato-ya, woohoo! I was really surprised and happy when I walked in, as there were so many familiar faces I hadn't seen in such a long time! Aya had come back from the US for the summer holidays, where she'd been since December last year, and Yoko, Kazu, Mitsue and Nate were all there too. I hadn't seen any of them for nearly 3 or 4 weeks. Good times! After a quick check around, I realised that the new Ako ALT, Louise, wasn't there though. Nate had also noticed, so we went on a mission to find her. Which we did, in her apartment, cleaning :( Apparently Phillip had continued the JET tradition of leaving apartments a disgusting mess for the incoming ALT, much to her (and my) dismay. She said that there was an entire room just full of mould, and the fridge and bathroom had a healthy coating too. I felt really sorry for her, but it seemed like she was through the worst of it and Claire had been helping her out a lot too.

Anyway, Louise was too tired to go out so Nate and I organised to take her to dinner on Monday, and went back to Minato-ya. I grabbed a late dinner and we all talked about random stuff and caught up until around 11pm. As I didn't have to get up for work until 8am on Friday, Kazu and I headed back to my place to play some Dynasty Warriors and kill helpless minions until around midnight - good times!

Friday was another day-with-a-difference as I had another business trip to Motomachi to prepare for the Yashiro Orientation the next week. Seems I have and will continue to spend half my summer holidays on business trips! :D Thankfully, the meeting was very efficient and we were done by just after 4pm. At the end of the meeting, Oouchi-sensei inviting us all out for a dinner party. I was pretty surprised by this as I was under the impression that the BOE never did anything like that with ALTs. As Nate pointed out though, we were helping them out with a lot of things (Tokyo, Yashiro, mid year conference and a few other projects) so it was quite fitting. He also pointed out (and I'd already realised) that it was a great opportunity to do some networking and get to know our bosses in less formal circumstances, so naturally, we both agreed to go along.

The dinner was fun, as the formality of the Japanese workplace was lost and we were able to talk quite openly as we drank and ate. We talked about all kinds of things and, further to my original surprise, our opinions about various aspects of the JET Program were asked, discussed and seemingly taken seriously. I suppose I shouldn't have assumed they wouldn't be, but my feeling was always that the JET Program was considered important by the BOE but always from a sort of distant, standoffish point of view. I guess I was wrong, or at least, was wrong about it when it comes to the ALTs that the BOE chooses to trust and rely on for help. After dinner we said goodbye to everyone with plenty of bows and the usual Japanese formality (which reappeared as soon as we left the restaurant) and Nate, Miho and I went for a few quiet drinks at Chey's House in Sannomiya before calling it a night and heading home. And that was my week!

Here's a handy link to what's been going on in my life over the past month or so -> click me! Enjoy :P

Baba-sensei called me across to her desk today and asked if I could help her with her computer, as she couldn't access the Internet. So I checked out the usual things and found out that the network was 'working' according to Windows, but packets weren't going anywhere. I moved her across onto Nishitani-sensei's network connection and both the network and DNS seemed to start working ok, but no traffic could actually reach those Internet addresses when using IE. The packets would whizz away fine into the Board of Education network, but then get dropped somewhere. I assumed it was a firewall or something similar doing it, so I told Baba-sensei I couldn't fix it and suggested she talk to Tatamiya-sensei, the teacher in charge of the school computers/networks.

Anyway, Tatamiya-sensei turned up a while later and the solution turned out to be ridiculously simple. The BoE runs a proxy which Internet traffic has to go through, and for some unknown reason, Baba-sensei's IE had decided to stop using the proxy settings. I really kicked myself for not checking it, as I've hit the same problem a few times over the years (including twice here at school). Oh well, at least I was mostly right - the problem was Internet packets being dropped by a machine over in the BoE network ;) Just wish I could have gotten that little bit further to the answer being the proxy and fix being the local proxy settings!

Random thoughts - out of the 22 people who are absent from ichi-nensei today to attend the judo and kendo interschool games, 8 of them have a surname ending in the same kanji (moto). Very amusing!! :)

I just found out that some students got blasted for parking their bikes in the wrong place, haha. I know that each class has a certain bike rack to put their bikes in, but I was really surprised that students would get yelled at for putting their bikes somewhere else. I mean, it seems a little trivial to me, as it's not like there isn't enough room - the school was designed for 1,300 students and we only have 950 or so. Sometimes this school is so strict that even I, Mr Anally Retentive, am taken aback, hehe.

It's exactly one year today since I touched down at Narita airport at the beginning of my JET career. Throughout the year I've reflected often about my experiences here, so I'm not going to write a big essay about thoughts from a year in. However, I do have a few words I'd like to say.

My friend Brandon challenged me to think about my goals on the JET Program and why I was staying for another year. Although it wasn't something I had sat down to deliberately spend some decent time thinking about, I do think about it on and off and so it was relatively easy for me to put my thoughts into words. There are many, many reasons, but the main ones I think are that I enjoy life here (much more than life in Perth) and that there is still so much more for me to achieve here. Digging a little deeper, I enjoy teaching and the difference I can make both at school and in the community. I have room to improve as a teacher and I want to take that opportunity and make JET work for me - I have a feeling the skills will come in useful in the future. I also made a promise to myself to become fluent at Japanese before leaving Japan, and that plays a big part in the decision. A lot of Japan is still a mystery to me because of the language barrier, and the challenge to smash through that and understand is something I relish and that is very rewarding for me.

On another front, the end of the JET year brings with it a whole heap of new JETs and the departure of a lot of old JETs. Some good friends are leaving this year and that's something that I am dealing with for the first time. Thankfully none of the people were best friends or people that I saw a lot, but I still feel their absence. I can't call them up any more at random points in time and just head out with them for a random dinner in Kobe. Does it bother me? Well, yes and no. I've become used to this kind of thing over the years so I get over it pretty fast, and with communications the way they are, people are never really that far away if you really put in some effort.

I also spoke to Brandon recently about this yearly cycle of JET. He's going into his third year so he's had two years of changes. The point he made was an interesting one and was brought up in a larger conversation about Japanese vs gaijin friends. We both agreed one of our goals was to make more friends in the local community, and Brandon was quick to point out that they're less likely to leave every year, hehe. So to sum up this rather random yearly reflection, I have absolutely no regrets about coming, I'm excited about the year ahead, I'm keen to learn more Japanese, improve my teaching skills and meet a lot more local people, and I haven't decided exactly how long I'm going to stay. I'll worry about that when the recontracting letter arrives in January :)

The craziness of the past few weeks continued as I barely had time to recover from Tokyo before I was off again to Nagoya. My close friend Junko and I had been pretty stressed out during the school term and as we hadn't seen each other for a while, decided to go on a holiday to a few beautiful places near Nagoya to catch up and relax. I shot up to Nagoya on the shinkansen and met her early Friday evening, and we grabbed a quick dinner at the famous Yamachan in Nagoya city. They do all kinds of interesting foods, including some amazing Nagoya foods. I don't know why Nagoya food is so different, but it is, and most of it is pretty delicious.

After dinner we caught the train up to Inuyama, a fairly unknown little inaka place up in the mountains towards Gifu prefecture. We stayed at the Youth Hostel there, but by the time we got there it was dark and we were so tired that we ended up just going straight to sleep, hehe. On Saturday we headed out to the Inuyama Ayumatsuri, which celebrates the little fish that the locals use trained cormorants to catch. We had to walk along a dangerous road with no footpath to get there, which was quite an adventure. The festival itself was small but interesting. We got to eat one of the famous Ayu, and also checked out the horrible Momotaro shrine that was there. It really was tacky, hehe, with lots of brightly painted demon and Momotaro statues everywhere. Why Momotaro was even in Inuyama I don't know, as he originates from Okayama prefecture.

Anyway, after that we wandered through a park and down to the river for a while, but it was so oppressively hot and humid that we had to retreat to a cafe and have some kakigori (shaved ice dessert), hehe. After that we walked all the way to Inuyama-jou, a beautiful castle high on a cliff overlooking the river. From there we grabbed a late lunch and caught the train to Okazaki, our final destination. I don't know what Okazaki is famous for but on Saturday night it had an enormous firework festival with over 20,000 fireworks over 2 hours. Being a summer festival, there were of course thousands of people around, many dressed in yukata. Junko and I had brought ours with us and so we wore them out. Junko looked amazing in hers and was even able to do her own obi. I, the heathen gaijin I am, hehe, had forgotten how to tie my obi so had to get on the computer in the hotel reception and find some instructions. With Junko's help I was eventually able to get it done ok.

On the way to the festival we grabbed some food and beer at a konbini and then some yakitori from a handy stall just outside the main festival area. The woman at the stall saw me and told Junko I looked very handsome and that she was lucky, haha. It never ceases to amaze me what Japanese people will assume (that I can't speak Japanese and that I'm the boyfriend of any girl I am with) and say. Anyway, I gladly took the compliment :P From there we very enjoyed ridiculous amounts of fireworks until the festival ended around 9pm. After that we went back to the hotel to shower and recover - the yukatas are very warm despite being summer garments, and we were both very tired and probably a bit dehydrated from a day of walking around in the sun. About 10:30 we went down to a yakitori izakaya and grabbed a bit more food before heading back to the hotel and crashing out about midnight.

We were both really tired and didn't wake up until nearly 9:30, just enough time to shower before checking out of the hotel. We were still tired so we decided to head straight back to Nagoya and head home from there. I think I got on the train home at around noon and was back in Ako by 2pm, so not too bad at all! Nagoya is actually quite convenient, by shinkansen anyway hehe. Despite being already tired and the weekend being tiring as well, it was a lot of fun and I had a really good time. Junko is one of the few really good Japanese friends I've made (her nearly perfect English helped a lot here!) so I was very happy to spend some time hanging out with her. Hopefully I can see her again soon :)

Tokyo Orientation was absolutely massive, and a pretty awesome (but extremely tiring) experience. Thanks to being in Banshu Ako and therefore theoretically being unable to make it to Shinjuku for the first meeting on Saturday, I was given an extra night in the amazing Keio Plaza hotel on the Friday. Which made Friday a pretty busy day, hehe. I left Oscar's at around 10am and raced back to Ako, where I packed my bag and quickly jumped on the train to Himeji. My poor friend Amanda had recovered from climbing Fuji only to get struck down with appendicitis, so she had been rushed to hospital on the Tuesday. I promised her I'd visit her so I raced out there on the bus and chatted to her for an hour or so. Some of her teachers had come to see her as well, and one of them offered me a lift back to the station when she found out I needed to go to Tokyo. Japanese kindness never ceases to amaze me :)

At the station I quickly grabbed a ticket to Tokyo on the next Nozomi, grabbing dinner at an amazing vending machine restaurant in the meantime. It was some of the best soba and tempuradon I've ever had, which just goes to show, don't underestimate vending machine restaurants! I finally got onto the train and spent most of the time reading a very interesting book on body language (check it out - Body Language by Julius Fast). I got in to Shinagawa at around 10:30 (it takes almost exactly 3 hours to get there from Himeji ... pretty amazing!) and was in Shinjuku by just before 11. I got a little lost but eventually found my bearings and got to the hotel. I was going to go out and explore but was really tired from being crazy busy lately, so I decided an early night would be a good idea.

I woke up at around 7am when my room mate, a friendly guy called William who is the president of Tottori AJET this year, wandered in from a party, haha. He had some friends who were doing a hotel room party somewhere - talk about the Tokyo lifestyle :P Crazy, action packed and no breaks, not even for sleep, haha. I went down to grab a cheeky late breakfast before the orientation orientation meeting started. It was a pretty good day - really laid back. We packed some welcome bags, found out what our duties were and generally knocked the orientation out of the park :) At night I headed out for dinner with my friend Brandon, and we ended up at a really nice izakaya. It wasn't so nice when the bill came and we were up for $45 each, but we'd been rather overpaid for our travel expenses so we didn't particularly mind.

From there it was out to a hotel at Narita airport to prepare for the arrival of the JETs the next day. I had to get up ridiculously early as I was meeting the very first plane of JETs (from Australia) that was scheduled to arrive at just before 7am. Thanks to only getting to the hotel after 10pm and then having things to do until after midnight, I didn't get much sleep - maybe 5 hours. Thankfully the excitement of the new JETs arriving and a cheeky coffee snagged from Starbucks at the airport the instant it opened, I was ok though. After a strangely tense wait, we finally got to jump and cavort around as the very first 2008/09 JETs entered the country! Although they were from Australia and hence had no jet lag, they had come up on the night flight so most of them were pretty tired. We tried to genk them up as much as we could, and finally got them all safely onto the buses and on the way to Shinjuku.

I was lucky enough to be a bus leader, so I was in charge of one of the buses. It was really good fun as I got to play tour guide and tell the group all of the things they needed to know about orientation as we travelled to the hotel. And I have to admit, it was awesome to be with a big group Australians - their accents were music to my ears :D Thanks to being so tired they were a bit of a tough crowd, but I didn't take it personally. It was kind of like teaching some of my classes actually, haha. I tried to keep everything short so they could sleep and read their orientation books, and then I wandered up and down talking to everyone and getting their story, where they were going in Japan and taking any questions they had.

We arrived at the hotel just before 10am, and I jumped in to help out with various things throughout the hotel. About 11:30 I went for a Starbucks run and in the afternoon I managed to sneak in a bit of time for a nap. I didn't manage to sleep but just lying down and taking it easy really helped. I had a Hospitality Centre shift from 6 - 8 which wasn't ideal, but it could have been much worse. After that I went out for dinner with a couple of the new JETs, introducing them to their first izakaya and Japanese cultural experiences. It was funny to watch their awestruck faces as I explained to them about taking their shoes off etc, and as I ordered in Japanese and helped them to order in Japanese too.

After dinner I went out with Brandon to check out Kabuki-cho, the 'dodgiest' place in Japan. It was good fun as naturally, we're not dumb tourists wandering around just waiting to be dragged into a yakuza snack bar trap. We kept to clean places (like the crazy izakaya very appropriately called 'Mysterious') before calling it a night just after midnight. Back at the hotel, Brandon pulled out his DS so we ended up playing multiplayer games until much later than we should have, haha. It was awesome fun, beating the crap out of each other in New Super Mario Brothers.

Monday was the real start of orientation, at the lovely hour of 8:30am. Brandon and I ran the prefectural meeting for Hyogo, which basically consisted of shouting over the top of everyone else to try to make sure everyone was there, give them their school information and then tell them what they needed to do at orientation. After that we were free for the day, so we wandered around Shinjuku for lunch and then did some printing for the Hyogo AJET Welcome Packs at a convenient Fedex Kinkos. The staff bordered on assholes, surprisingly, but we got there in the end.

Back at the hotel I had another hospitality centre shift from 4 to 6 and then the Welcome Reception from 6:30pm. That went really well and I got to chat to some of the new Hyogo JETs in more depth. We continued this on to the Hyogo AJET Night Out at the Watami izakaya closest to the hotel. Hokkaido was there too, and between us, we booked out nearly an entire floor, haha. I also bumped into Vanessa, one of the few Perth JETs who didn't get placed in Hyogo. I hadn't seen her for almost a year so it was great to catch up. Unfortunately I had to call it a night very early as I had a 6am shift on the hospitality centre the next day.

Getting up at 5am after another relatively late night and a couple of nights of bad sleep wasn't particularly enjoyable, but I fought through it and got through my shift in genki style. I was on with interesting people, too, which made the time fly by. After we'd finished our shift, I went for breakfast with them and we had a good chat. I wasn't required until the early afternoon, so I went to sleep again and woke up feeling marginally better. We had our prefectural meeting where I met Oouchi-sensei again, and he let us hand out our Hyogo AJET Welcome Packs. He's really pro-HAJET for some reason, which really helps a lot.

After that I played games with Brandon until it was time for the final helpers meeting at around 5pm. Many of us were heading to embassies, so we went downstairs to prepare for that. There wasn't a bad turnout for the Australian embassy event, which was encouraging. The event was identical to last year, featuring boring speeches, a plea to help sell Australian education and then some mediocre food :P Still, never look a gift horse in the mouth, right? When we came out of the embassy, to our surprise there was an enormous storm going on outside. As we ran to the subway a giant flash of lightning actually blinded me and from the fact the thunder came almost at the same time, I realised it was far too close for comfort - probably about 300 metres away. Needless to say we ran like hell underground, haha.

Back at the hotel I changed and headed out with Brandon to Kabukicho again. We grabbed some beer and yakitori at a great little place we'd seen the night before, and Brandon insisted on ordering raw horse heart. I tried some, but it didn't do much for me hehe. We were eventually joined by one of the new JETs who had spotted me as he walked by, and he tagged along for the rest of the night. We grabbed one more beer in a club called Tokyo Loose, but it was empty except for a few very skanky looking gaijin, so we left very quickly. Back at the hotel it was another night of DS before finally getting some more inadequate sleep in preparation for the long trip home.

The departure meeting was at 8:45am and we rolled into the buses around 9:30am. At Tokyo station we jumped on the Nozomi and shot down to Shin-Osaka. Brandon and I played more DS on the way - hooray for bluetooth, as we were sitting far apart. The guy behind me on the train must have thought I was insane as I kept turning around to make signs at him whenever I killed him or vice versa. Around noon we cruised into Shin-Osaka and had a little bit of time to do some shopping before getting on the final buses to take us to the Yashiro Training Centre. Here the same whirlwind that hit me last year happened again this year, with the kids being rushed to the meeting room and almost immediately spirited away by their teachers.

I was a bit stuck once I got to Yashiro, as I didn't have a teacher coming to pick me up and there were no Ako JETs. Thankfully, Oouchi-sensei had my back and sent me packing with a Himeji JET. It was a slightly awkward situation as I didn't want to intrude on the JET getting to know his teachers, so I just stayed quiet. We finally got to Himeji and they very kindly dropped me off at the train station, and I jetted home to collapse into a sleep of much exhaustion :P

Overall, I felt kinda proud of the new group, I have to say. Sounds a bit silly, but as a helper, they were absolutely awesome to help. The Hyogo bunch was extremely impressive, in particular - they struck me as really enthusiastic, intelligent and mature. I'm looking forward to seeing more of them at HAJET events this year and continuing to help them out.