Late on Thursday afternoon I decided, on the spur of the moment, to take a day of nenkyuu on Friday. I'd been really busy marking exams since late on Wednesday morning, and having finally finished up at just past 6pm on Thursday I was really not in the mood for a day of nothing at school the next day. I also had the removal company coming to give me a quote at about 9am on Friday, and although Harada-san had said he'd take care of it for me, I wanted to be there just in case.

Thursday night was a really good, normal Minato-ya night, with Louise bringing along one of the teachers she knew. I'm a bit ashamed to admit that I can't remember her name (whoops!), but as I didn't really talk to her I suppose it's not surprising. Sorry random teacher! After that I went home to clean up a bit before the removal people came.

I woke up to rain on Friday morning, which was a bit of a surprise. Not long after I'd woken up and gone downstairs, I heard someone trying to get into my apartment. This happens from time to time as it's quite common for people to just open doors to houses, especially in rural areas. Coming from Australia though, where that basically means bad news, it's still quite a shock. I waited a bit then opened the door, but the only person around was a guy in a suit standing under the eaves of apartment 8, talking on a mobile phone. I wondered if he was the removal guy, but figured that if he was, he wouldn't be wearing a suit and would have stayed under my eaves to make the call.

Anyway, a little later there was a knock on the door and hey presto, it was the same guy, haha. He was the removal guy after all, and so in he came and in an amazingly short time had finished his quote. 40,000 yen to move *everything*, provided I packed the boxes myself. Ouch. Well, it could have been worse, hehe, and I figure that for the advantage it affords me in terms of time and convenience, it's more than worth it. I consoled myself that the extra money I had to spend to move everything was offset by the money I would have spent on buying new furniture had I only moved what I had wanted to. And a lot of the old junk in my apartment will be thrown out as I move, with the really horrible bigger rubbish (i.e. most of my furniture) to be gotten rid of if I decide that I really don't need it.

The rest of Friday I did washing and played games before heading over to the station to meet Yuka at around 7:30pm. We walked up to Louise and Skye's apartment from there for the nabe party, skillfully prepared by resident super-chef Ai! :) Despite being really tired, it was a lovely night. Nate came across for it too, along with Mitsue, Louise's teacher friend who came to Minato-ya on Thursday and of course Ewan and Ai. One of the highlights of the night was when Ewan and Ai announced that they are engaged :) I was so happy to hear that! Definitely some of the best, happiest news I've heard in a very long time.

I finally got home from the nabe party at around 4am and slept at around 5, so I wasn't up until nearly 4pm, hehe. Whoops! I didn't have anything organised for Saturday afternoon, though, so it wasn't a problem. I jumped in the shower and headed out to Sannomiya to meet up with my new friend Keisuke (we call him Case), who is an awesome dude. He brought along one of his friends too, Toshiyuki, who was hilarious. So we had a great night talking away in Japanese and English, although I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't understand more of their Japanese conversation. It was very informal and vulgar more often than not, haha, so I suppose it's not overly surprising that I couldn't understand. It was exactly the type of Japanese (informal) that I want to understand and therefore want learn more of, though, so despite feeling a bit down it was good experience.

I caught the last train back from Sannomiya and had a fairly early night. I had nothing on Sunday morning either, but there was frisbee in the afternoon. So I finally had the chance to try out my Skins, the special sports pants that my good friend Darrell had sent me from Australia. They were really, really effective - I was able to run faster for longer and my muscles didn't ache this morning. Amazing! It was a good session of frisbee too, really laid back and with lots of interesting, fun people. I talked to one of the guys I'd met there before, Uchida, and we practised and played together for a while. He was much better than me, though, haha.

And that was my weekend. I was massively tired when it started, tired all the way through it and am still tired now. Seems to just be the way it is these days, despite what I do. Now I'm sitting at school counting down the minutes until 4pm, haha. School has essentially finished for this year now, and I think I have 2 classes total over the next 2 weeks. Still, it could be worse. Plenty of time for Japanese study, reflection on the current school year and preparation for the next one.

My week was surprisingly busy and fun, which I needed after the pretty tough weekend. On Tuesday I caught up with an old JET friend of mine, Ann, whom I hadn't seen for ages. We went to Amanda's and my favourite 'hole in the wall' izakaya for dinner, and then kicked on to Italian Tomato Jr for coffee after. It was really great to catch up with her - she's really open and says things as they are, which is a refreshing change!

On Thursday, Yuka came down to Ako and we had dinner at Minato-ya along with the crazy regular crew :) While we were there, Louise and Skye came in and told us about a nabe party at their place this coming Friday, so we're going along to that. I'm really looking forward to it because the Ako crew rarely meet up outside of Minato-ya, and I really think it's a shame.

Friday and Saturday were dinner days, Amanda on Friday and an old acquaintance of mine, Misa, on Saturday. I met Misa last year and she'd come along to a few of the Perth group things that had happened, but the two of us had never hung out. So it was really good fun - I like getting to know new people :) Sunday I was busy as well, catching up with my friends Emerald and Myeong to walk around Kitano and the area north of Motomachi station. I'd never been to that area before and was surprised at how cool it was! Definitely need to go back there and explore some of the cafes and clothes shops. It's definitely my 'buy new clothes' time of year.

This week has been pretty laid back so far thanks to it being end of term exams. The only test I'm involved in is happening right now, actually, so I'll be marking that this afternoon and tomorrow. I didn't have any 'work' on Monday or Tuesday, haha, so I mainly studied Japanese and did other admin odds and ends. Also, completely by chance, I jumped onto the CLAIR JET website and found out that applications to be a Tokyo Orientation assistant were open, so I applied for that and sent it off. Hopefully my hard work for the BOE over the past year and the fact I was a TOA last year will mean that I have a good chance to go again.

Outside school, I caught up with Nate for dinner on Monday and my friend Tomoko for dinner last night. I met Tomoko through the AIFA volunteer Japanese lessons in the middle of last year, and we saw each other a few times there and then started to hang out outside of class too. She was studying English and teaching (including teaching Japanese to foreigners) at uni, but just as we were beginning to get to know each other and I asked her if she'd consider teaching me Japanese through paid lessons, she went to study abroad in Thailand for about 6 months. D'oh, hehe. She came back recently, though, so we met up again and she said she'd be more than happy to teach me - w00t! I love my conversation classes with Kometani-san and Kimura-san, but they're more English focused than Japanese. So I'm really looking forward to a proper 1 on 1 Japanese class, taught by a real teacher :) I'm extremely lucky to find anyone who can do that in Ako, so I'm very grateful.

This weekend is a bit of a hotch potch so far as most of my plans are still tentative. At the very least there's nabe on Friday night, yay, and frisbee on Sunday. So, we'll see - I'm sure I'll find something to do!

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.