One of my favourite teachers, Mitsumoto-sensei, came past my desk this morning in his little hayfever mask and stopped to see what I was doing. He hasn't been very busy recently now that the san-nensei have finished, so I stopped writing in my journal to have a chat to him. He saw my journal up on the screen - big paragraphs of English in a small font in Notepad - and seemed very impressed, hehe. He always cracks me up regardless of what he's doing, but this was extra funny - I swear that some of my teachers are still surprised that I can write in English :P

Anyway, we got talking about various things and the topic eventually moved to the coming end of the school year. The Japanese, or at least the Hyogo High School, education system requires that teachers move schools every few years. So this is the time of year when the principal is interviewing all the teachers and working out who he's going to send on to another school. It's a pretty relaxed time of year now that all the tests are over and classes are winding down, so the staff room is pretty relaxed and there is lots of gossip going on. I can't understand much of it, but Mitsumoto-sensei was kind enough to fill me in on all the latest mutterings. For some reason, Japanese staffroom 'gossip' is much more interesting to me than work gossip was back in Australia, haha. Yay Japan.

Anyway, the long and short of it pretty much comes down to who is leaving, who is coming to and who is moving around in the school. Very exciting :D It's all set to be announced to individuals next Thursday or Friday, and to everyone on the following Monday. So far, bets are on Yamamoto-sensei (the judo teacher), Inoube-sensei and Hashimoto-sensei (one of my favourite English team-teachers) to leave, at least two new teachers to come (one of whom is a young English teacher who just passed their teacher test) and Mitsumoto-sensei to teach ni-nensei instead of ichi-nensei.

I was also able to give Mitsumoto-sensei a few pieces of information in return, which was nice. The first was thanks to Louise letting me know that a teacher at a school in Awaji that one of her ALT friends teaches at is apparently coming to Ako SHS, and the second was that my apartment is going to be used by a teacher after I move out. As there is one empty apartment right now and if Hashimoto-sensei moves there'll be another (and he has hardly any stuff in his so it'll be quick and easy to move and clean up), I figure that the office wouldn't put a teacher in mine until they'd filled those up first. So, by that I'm guessing that there must be at least 3 new teachers coming in, and that's excluding those who will live outside the teacher housing.

So, good times! I'm not particularly impressed by rumours, but I am very interested to see who does actually leave and who comes to replace them. Last year there were an enormous amount of changes, but apparently this year there won't be as many. It always seems to be the good teachers who leave (Kotani-sensei and Ishino-sensei last year, to name a few) so hopefully this year my favourites aren't taken away from me :D

I arranged to meet up with Tomoko for coffee again after school yesterday :) She lives right out in the true boondocks of Ako (out my way but at least twice as far from the city centre) so we organised to meet at a little coffee shop called called 'Gusto' on the edge of town, about half way between our houses. It was awesome to catch up with her again as I feel that I've really been able to connect with her as a friend - something that's extremely rare for me in Ako. I suppose the fact she speaks fairly fluent English is a big part of that, for sure, but we also seem to have a similar way of thinking regarding many things and have had many common experiences. For example, she's going to be an English teacher and has similar ideas for and a passion for teaching English that mirror my own, she agrees how important it is for people (especially those learning a foreign language) to travel overseas, and she also understands how hard it is to learn a foreign language and to live in a foreign country. I don't meet people like that in Japan very often, let alone in Ako!

Also, catching up gives us the fantastic side-benefit of Tomoko being able to practise her English and me being able to practise my Japanese. Tomoko's English is much better than my Japanese - which figures, given that she's been studying it for 9 years, hehe - but I still try to speak as much Japanese as I can. I think I manage to carry a fairly decent conversation :) If I can't quite communicate something then we just revert to English so that I can explain properly and she can tell me how to say it naturally using Japanese. It's really good practise as each time I meet her is probably worth several hours of me at my books, not to mention the fact that I probably use as much 'normal' Japanese over one afternoon of coffee with her as I would in a week otherwise. I try to do the same to help her with her English too, and she said it's great because she doesn't know that many native English speakers. So, I'm really, really grateful that I've not only made a new friend, but that we're able to help each other with language too. I'm hoping to catch up with her at least once a week :)

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.