February is still going but I'll bring you right up to date with the summary style before I start rambling about things in full posts again :D February each year seems to be the time I get really busy, probably partially because a lot of people begin to realise they only have 6 months left on JET. Although mind you, the first part of the month had nothing to do with JET, haha. Kimura-san invited me over to his house on the 3rd for Setsubun, a Japanese festival that marks the 'end of winter' (according to the old seasons). There are various things that are done, including eating an uncut maki sushi roll while facing in the 'prosporous direction' for the year, eating certain types of fish and other delicacies, and then throwing beans around the house and at poor Kimura-san who dressed up as an oni (demon). Needless to say it was a blast.

Recently my twin sister came to Japan on holiday, hooray! I hadn't seen her for nearly a year and a half, so it was lovely to catch up. She and her boyfriend went to Shiga Kougen for a week or so of skiing before they came down to stay with me, so I took the opportunity to go up to snowboard with them on a handy weekend. It was a blast - awesome to see my sis again, great to meet her boyfriend, Peter, and of course always fun to snowboard. I also saw one of my old friends again, Emerald, after what seemed like ages! We had a crab nabe at her house with one of her friends, Myeong, a really interesting Korean girl who was born in Japan. I've been really lucky recently, meeting a whole heap of great people who I lost touch with during my 'down time' as well as meeting lots of new people and making great new friends.

In the middle of Feb my sister came to stay with me and we had a blast. We were invited out for dinners and afternoon teas with my friends in Ako, they got to come to my school and play sports with my kids, we had crazy adventures in Sannomiya and they went off on their own and explored Ako and Himeji. They said they had a really good time so I was happy :) They got the royal treatment from Ako, that's for sure ;) I don't think they'll forget the dinner with Kometani-san any time soon - I'm sure not going to :D

Aside from that, as I said I've been meeting lots of people from old and people from new. My friend Gareth introduced me to a girl, Yuka, who had just come back from studying abroad in Canada. Like me she's been having trouble finding friends in the area, which I think says a lot about the area. If a lovely, native Japanese girl can't find friends here, I'm not surprised that I can't either! Anyway, we've been catching up and I introduced her to my good friend Amanda, so all is good :) I also had Louise and Skye over to my apartment for dinner, given that I'd finally cleaned it up (thanks sis!). And the topping on the cake was meeting the student from the university in Ako who found me on Mixi and who I'd been talking to for a couple of weeks. She was very quiet but friendly enough, so I'm hoping to catch up with her more and also meet some of her friends from the uni :)

And that's about it! I did have another snowboarding trip planned, probably the last of the season, with my friend Minori. She got very sick last week though, and it turned out that although she was ok (thankfully!) she couldn't board. So my weekend was very quiet. I just went out for dinner with Nate and some of his girlfriend's friends on Saturday, and spent the day at home chilling out on Sunday. It rained all day, and although I did my washing quite early, nothing was dry today! So I had no underpants and had to resort to wearing my thermals, hahaha. Crazy times. I really hope those undies dry today.

My friend Kenta (the guy who played the live gig I went to see in late December) very kindly invited me to his house on New Year's Day to have lunch with his entire family. It was a pretty amazing day, as there were 4 generations worth of people at the table :) We had delicious osechiryouri and plenty of beer, and afterwards played some crazy card games before taking a nap in the afternoon and then finishing off the day with crab nabe for an early dinner. I was really grateful to him for inviting me along as it was shaping up to be a very lonely new year before he invited me over! And to be honest, I was pretty surprised that I had been invited as New Year in Japan seems to be a pretty serious family time. I would never have expected to be invited to lunch on New Year's Day :)

The next big thing after that was snowboarding with my friends Aimee and Goran in Nagano. It was a wonderful trip, as we went to a lovely little ski resort called Tsugaike Kogen. It wasn't too crowded, too, as we had used nenkyuu and were there on a Monday and Tuesday. I also went snowboarding the next weekend as well with my friend Minori, but it wasn't so good. We booked late so we couldn't stay anywhere, and the night bus - snowboard - night bus combination was exhausting. Still, it was lovely to catch up with her as I hadn't seen her for a long time.

The middle of January was taken up with the JET Mid Year Conference, at which I was a helper. It was quite enjoyable, despite the inevitable complainers, and being a helper and facilitating the various sessions was useful experience and kept my public speaking skills up. After the conference I finally got around to properly hanging out with the new ALT in Ako, Louise, and her boyfriend Skye. Only 5 months late, hehe. I went to dinner at their place and we had a great time catching up. It was lovely to hang out with some people who, coming from Perth, had similar backgrounds to me, and were also really cheerful :)

Following on from that, the famous Nick John came back to Ako for a visit with his wife Kanako. I caught up with him quite a few times, the first being at one of Okada-san's wine parties. It was a fun night, tasting wine and kicking back with Nick and a bunch of great Ako people. I also met one of the Ako librarians and the manager of Paone, my favourite supermarket - so great success! Aside from that, it was a bunch of random things again - frisbee started up again in Himeji and I saw my friend Yuko for the first time in ages and I went up to Toyooka to hang out with my friend Gareth and watch yukigassen (sports style snowball fighting that is like paintball). So all in all, a pretty good month! I met a lot of new people and finally, finally began to make some Japanese friends around Ako :D

December had about an even number of ups and downs, the downs mainly thanks to it being so cold I really didn't want to leave my apartment, haha. The start of the month was actually quite warm, and the highlight was the school bounenkai. It was another true 'forget the year' party which had plenty of interesting surprises, including me winning a takoyaki maker and seeing a lot of the very serious people I work with get drunk, laugh, tell crazy stories and generally reveal secret English skills. Good times. Before Christmas I also caught up with my good friend Chika from Osaka, made a new friend in Ako, Hiroe, through Mixi and went to the famous Ako Gishi festival (I had to work, though >_<).

Christmas was quite fun, too. No hot dates (Christmas is 'dating' time in Japan, for some reason :D), but Amanda threw a Christmas party in Himeji that was wonderful. We had dinner at a Balinese restaurant (go figure :D) in central Himeji, then hung out at Amanda's place for a nabe lunch on Christmas Day. At night I went to see my friend Kenta play a live show at Beta in Himeji, which was fantastic. He was pretty good, and the bands after him were very amusing too. I bought a couple of CDs and also got the never-fading joy of causing a few of the live house staff to explode when they saw a gaijin come in :D

After that I went very cultural, hehe, thanks to my new conversation partner Kimura-san and his family. Kometani-san, my first conversation partner, introduced us and I started to do conversation with Kimura-san every week too. By chance, he is involved in a lot of cultural things in Ako and insists on taking me along to them, which I really enjoy. We made new year decorations (omamori) by hand at the local volunteer fire station and whacked the crap out of some rice and made delicious mochi, and although I couldn't actually go he also invited me to his house to make osechiryouri, the famous and delicious Japanese new year food.

My New Year was pretty quiet as I decided to stay cultural as well. Some of my 3rd year students were playing a live gig at Beta in Himeji on the 31st, so I went along to that, much to their delight. Afterwards I went to Oishi-jinja here in Ako to do hatsumoude (first shrine visit of the year, often done at midnight) and then I met Minato-san to watch the first sunrise from the top of a hill out near Sakoshi. It was a great experience, and a nice start to the year.

November was a bit of a tough month as the Japanese winter started to dig its heels in, which made me not particularly want to leave my house :D I'm really not a big fan of the cold! The month did have its interesting moments though, hehe, the most amusing of which was Minato-san trying to set me up with another girl in Ako. In conjunction with her mother, no less, haha. Crazy times. It was pretty bizarre, actually. It all started when the lady came into Minato-ya when I was there and she got talking to Minato-san about how her daughter. Before I knew it I was over the road and in her daughter's room, being introduced to her and two of her friends. It really made for a rather unusual experience! We agreed to catch up for coffee some time, although how this changed from a lovely little coffee shop into her aunt's house, I'll never know. It was the most brutal coffee I've ever had, too, because this poor girl was hardly given the chance to speak - her mother and her aunt grilled me with questions all afternoon and into the night, when we all went for dinner at a great Okinawan restaurant in Sakoshi. Very, very crazy :D

Aside from those escapades, I also took a trip to Mount Shosha with my friend Yusaku, played frisbee in Himeji and started ikebana with my students. And the highlight of the month was catching up with my friends Jacinda and Luke, who came over for a holiday from Perth. I hadn't seen them for over a year, so it was wonderful to catch up. We went running around various places like Arima-onsen and izakayas in Sannomiya, so plenty of fun.

October was a pretty random month which consisted of a whole bunch of totally different things. There were a couple of birthday part-ays (my good friends Suzie and Matt), I helped my friend Deyi move house (very interesting experience!) and I also went to a bunch of festivals. The most interesting of these was the Hiroshima Sake festival held in Saijou, where sake from all over Japan is collected together in one place for a night of mayhem. I'm not a big fan of sake, but it was a good night with lots of laughs. I met a couple of great people from Germany who were just travelling around Japan, too, and we went out in Hiroshima after the festival. It was Fun, with a capital F!

I also took the opportunity to explore Hiroshima a bit more too, as it's one of my favourite places in Japan. One of the other assistants I met at Tokyo Orientation last year lives in Hiroshima, so I arranged to meet up with her for an afternoon as well. We had a lovely time visiting the beautiful garden in Hiroshima and wandering around the cafes and shops in the CBD.

Other than that, I played some judo at school, attended a frisbee tournament in Akashi and made a very genki new friend, Yuko, and partied hard at the Himeji Hallow'een Party. So very random, yes, but overall a good month.