On Sunday Misa came down to Ako to explore, and we checked out the Ako museum and the remains of the castle. It was pretty interesting, even though I couldn't read much of what was written. Around 5 or so we headed back to my place for coffee, only for me to realise that I didn't have any - haha. So we went to Jusco and bought a coffee maker. We also grabbed some bento for dinner and spent the rest of the evening listening to music. Good times!

The Tuesday after that, I finally managed to have Ewan and Ai over one Tuesday night. I'd been meaning to have Ewan (and many others) over for dinner for a long time, but my old house was so horrible and out of the way that I never got around to it. Now I'm central and have a wonderful house, I can finally entertain :) Well, try to, anyway, haha. The night Ewan came I was running very late as it was my athletics night. So I was only just beginning to prepare when they arrived, and admittedly spent most of my time in the kitchen. Apparently the food was good though (random chicken stir fry thing and takoyaki) and we had some interesting conversations, so overall it was a good night. I realised that despite having been in Ako for 1.5 years, I really don't know Ewan that well. Still, it's never too late to start to get to know good people.

The last weekend in April was really busy. I caught up with Misa, Amanda and Case for lunch on Saturday at a funky little restaurant called Dada, near Himeji station. It was super cool hanging out, just the 4 of us. Around 4pm I had to shoot back to Ako for a dinner, though, which was a shame - I didn't really want to leave as the others were all going back to Amanda's for a movie/wine/cheese night! Still, I'd promised Kanatani-sensei and her family that I'd have dinner with them at their house in Ako, and it turned out that I was really glad I went. Her family is lovely and as is so common in Japan there were 4 generations at dinner. I loved talking to Kanatani-sensei's grandma, who is ancient but still very genki. I couldn't always understand what she said but I did my best, and I realised that she was one of the ladies I often used to see wandering around when I rode to school from my old house. So that was kinda cool :D

Kanatani-sensei's younger sister was there too, along with her two little kids - one around 3 years old, the other just over 1. So I played with them and stuffed their faces with the chocolates I'd brought, hehe, and I weathered a storm of interest and questions about me and Australia over about three hours worth of handmade gyoza, katsudonburi and liver salad. Fan-delicious-tastic :D I also talked to Kanatani-sensei's youngest sister and coincidentally my ex-student on the phone - she's been in Australia on a working holiday for nearly a year. I was really surprised how good her English had become!

Finally, the month finished on yet another high note as I scored myself some new furniture through pure luck :) Minato-san's wife's sister has gone to Brazil for 3 years and as a result sent all her furniture to Minato-san. He doesn't have room for it all in his house so he gave me his fridge, washing machine, dryer and a table with two chairs. I didn't really need the fridge or washing machine, but they were much nicer than the ones I had and as he needed somewhere to store it all and was being very generous letting me borrow it all in the first place, I couldn't refuse :) So I spent a public holiday Wednesday morning helping him move his old stuff out onto a truck, moving his new stuff in and then moving all the old stuff into my house. Good times! Having a dryer is going to be great during rainy season, especially as I don't have any eaves/a verandah to dry my washing under any more, and I really needed a table.

April was a little less crazy than March, but there was still a lot on. I took the opportunity of having moved to throw a bit of a housewarming party (cultural exchange right there, housewarmings aren't really done in Japan :D) which was actually pretty big (about 20 people) and went really well. The next day I went rock climbing for the first time with my friend Joe. He'd found a great free climb bouldering gym in Kobe and really liked it, so invited me along too. To my surprise, I found that I really enjoyed it, and I think I might have found a new hobby/sport :) I like it because a lot of it is about technique, planning and intelligence rather than brute strength, although fitness, strength and endurance are important too. It's also good because it has a really supportive community and it's not a team sport, meaning I can go at my own pace and if I mess things up I don't feel bad.

The Tuesday after that my parents arrived in Ako to visit me :) I hadn't seen them for over a year, so it was lovely to catch up. Unfortunately, the new school year had just started, so I wasn't able to take any annual leave to hang out with them during the day. Luckily though, they were able to shoot off to Himeji and explore Ako during the day, and we had plenty of time to catch up over dinner after school each day. Plus, we arranged to spend the weekend in Hiroshima, which turned out to be a blast.

We had planned to go to Hiroshima after I finished school on Friday, but it turned out that I had my kansougeikai (farewell / welcome party) for my day school that night. So, my parents went to Hiroshima during the day and I went to the enkai and then joined them late that night. On Saturday we went to Miyajima and had a fantastic time exploring. It's such a lovely place and this time I had the opportunity to go into Itsukushima Jinja, the famous shrine that's built over the ocean. After that we headed to one of my favourite little bar/cafes, Opium, for dinner, and then I had planned to head out into the great Hiroshima night life. Planned, anyway - after a day in the sun and not having been sleeping well for the past few weeks, I was asleep by 9:30pm, hehe. Still, it was probably for the better that I got some good sleep :)

On Sunday we did our own things, my parents heading up to Shukkeien while I caught up with my good friend Erika. As always it was super fun to hang out with her - we had kaiten sushi for lunch and wandered around the shops chatting about random things. Which is pretty much our MO whenever I go to Hiroshima, hehe :) Finally, I met back up with my parents and we finished up our trip with a dinner at the famous Okonomiyaki-mura. On Monday I said goodbye to them and headed back to Ako for my first day of night school. Which was very boring, hehe.

That week remained pretty boring as well, as I had very few classes at school :/ So I made up for it by doing lots of stuff outside of school hours instead. One of those things was joining the school athletics club. So now, I run for about an hour with the long distance team every Tuesday. Yes, I know, Daniel running ... unbelievable, right? :D I started doing it because I realised that I liked ultimate frisbee enough to want to actually be somewhat good at it, and I needed to improve my endurance and speed in order to do that. I also wanted to lose the weight I put on over winter and get fitter in general, so it seemed like a pretty good deal to me. I'm also thinking of joining the sprint team on Thursdays as well, but we'll see :)

The weekend after that brought with it my night school's kansougeikai, which had a completely different feel than my day school's enkai did. The biggest difference, I think, was that it was much smaller and everyone knew each other much better. So the atmosphere was much friendlier :) I was surprised at how well I was able to understand what everyone was saying, too, so I was feeling pretty good :) And it was nothing short of awesome to be able to sit down and chat with everyone informally, especially the younger teachers. I also met two teachers who had just finished their time there - a friendly young teacher called Kometani-sensei and Toda-sensei's (an English teacher at my day school) wife, both of whom were really genki and a lot of fun to speak with.

Towards the end of the night I got a bit down, though, as I suddenly realised that it was unlikely I'd ever be able to become friends with these night school teachers either. We only work together once a week and naturally they work completely different hours to me for the other days. The weekends are common, but I don't know if they would have the spare time to hang out with me. I suppose the language barrier makes me a bit tentative here too, and although I'm really trying my best, the realisation of how difficult it can be to live in a country where you can't speak the local language fluently really hit home again. Still, I decided that if I never tried, I'd never know, so I made sure I asked Kometani-san for her contact details before the party finished :) I'll be damned if I'm going to let the (rapidly dropping) language barrier prevent me from making friends or being happy in general!! :D

March turned out to be a really busy, fun month! I think that was mostly because of the fact the weather was a little bit warmer, which made me feel a whole heap better. I'd been in a bit of funk towards the end of winter, and it was nice to feel happy and genki again and to get out there and start catching up with people I hadn't been able to during the winter.

First up was dinner with Nishitani-sensei, one of the English teachers I teach with here at school. This was pretty groundbreaking for me, as in the past I'd never really managed to hang out with teachers outside of school very much. This was mainly because the teachers are always so busy, but also partly because I wasn't really sure if it was appropriate. It's always been a bit of a sore point for me, actually, as teachers (especially English teachers) represent the best potential source of friends for me here, even now.

However, I finally got over all my (silly) concerns and thanks to the teachers having a bit more spare time due to the school year ending, arranged to have a quick dinner after school on Wednesday. And as I expected, it turned out to be good fun. So I'm really hoping that it's something I can do again, both with Nishitani-sensei and some other teachers I like.

On the Friday that same week I went out for dinner in Sannomiya with my friend Deyi, whom I hadn't seen for ages! She's one of the new JETs I met last year at the Tokyo/Yashiro orientations, so it was really interesting to talk to her about her experiences through the year. The next day I shot off to Akashi and finally managed to hand over to the next Hyogo PR, Goran, at the final HAJET meeting for the year. It was a big load off my mind, as the position had gotten a bit heavy thanks to the difficult times I had towards the end of last year.

After that meeting I met up with my friends Emerald and Ann for a small dinner at Emerald's house (yakiniku - yum!) and the next day we went to the Tagata-jinja Hounen Matsuri. This festival is one of the most infamous in Japan as it is a so called 'fertility festival' and pretty much involves putting a giant wooden penis on an omikoshi (portable shrine) and parading it through the streets of a small town called Komaki, in Aichi prefecture. It's pretty crazy and was a lot of fun, although there were a few too many gaijin being silly for my liking.

In late March I took some nenkyu and went up to Tokyo to meet my friend Jane. We hung out up there for a few days exploring, sightseeing and generally buying far too many cool clothes and random junk. She also came down to stay with me in Ako for a while, which was slightly unfortunate timing as I was moving house over the weekend she was here. Still, it turned out that it wasn't such a big problem after all. We went to my friend's photo exhibit on the Friday night (which was great!) and she met a few people who were going to party in Osaka on Saturday night. So she went off there and did an all nighter, hehe.

That freed me up to pack up the rest of my house on Saturday and then move everything on Sunday. The move wasn't too onerous overall, although I was pushing it to get everything done in time to go to my friend Kazu's wedding reception on the Sunday afternoon. I'm really glad I did manage to go, though, as it was an absolutely wonderful party. Kazu looked really, really happy and was in good form (his usual crazy, genki self, hehe) so I was overjoyed for him, and we all had a fantastic, relaxed time. The whole Ako crew was there and I met a heap of his pretty interesting friends too (great Japanese practise) so all in all it was a sweet deal.

And that was my March :)

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 :)