I continue to be surprised by both Japan and Ako. There's no doubt that Ako is a very quiet, sleepy place where it is hard to meet people and find things to do. However, sometimes the floodgates open and one small step turns into a giant leap. That pretty much sums up my Friday. While school was as boring as ever with no classes, badminton at night was great. I played pretty well and Daiichi taught me a little more about returning smashes and volleys. He's really good at it, so I was glad of the opportunity to learn. I didn't win any games, but as I said, I felt that I played pretty well.

My first 'spin off' of the night was when I handed out the omiyage I'd brought from Hokkaido. Daiichi had asked me, mostly jokingly, to bring him something. So I took him a box of 'raisin sandwiches', as well as a box of chocolates for the larger group. While we sat down to eat those, he asked me if I'd like to go to the opening of the J League soccer season with him, in Kobe, in early March. I was excited by the idea of checking out not just a soccer game at a big stadium, but the J League too, so gratefully accepted.

Next up on the "make Daniel's life more interesting" list was Funamoto-san, who invited me to play with him in a badminton tournament next week. I was very surprised, as there are plenty of better players in the club. In fact, I'm one of, if not the weakest player. However, he said it was just for fun and that he wanted me to play with him rather than anyone else from the club. Which was very kind of him. Funamoto-san is a cool guy, he always keeps his cool and has a level head. He said he always loses in the tournaments (which doesn't surprise me, if he picks partners like me, hehe :D), so it was all just for fun and for the challenge. Cool.

After badminton, Daiichi, Funamoto-san and one of Daiichi's colleagues and I just chilled (literally) outside the gym. We chatted for a while and I traded keitai details with Daiichi's colleague. He wants to practise his English, and I want to practise my Japanese, so yet again there's that common link :) His English isn't too bad, so hopefully I have a new friend to catch up with every now and then!

To top the night off, I went down to my new bar, as I'd promised the guys I would when leaving on Thursday night. As I'd talked to the guys outside badminton, it was getting quite late (just after 11pm), but I still went as I'd made the promise. At the door, the guys behind the bar, Katsuyuki and Daisuke, caught sight of me and waved madly, huge grins on their faces. There were three people sitting at the bar - an oldish man and two young people, a girl and a guy. They all looked around as I walked in, with an amusing mix of what seemed to be fear and curiosity on their faces, hahaha.

To my surprise, the girl almost instantly stood up and waved at me, saying hello to me using my name as if she knew me. She didn't look familiar, and it turned out she didn't actually know me, but she sure wanted to - yikes! She was a little tipsy and in true Japanese style, decided to declare her undying love for me before I'd even got my first drink, hehe. The young guy, who was much more sober, was very cool. He knew a little English, but my Japanese was in surprisingly good form and so we spoke mostly in that. I ended up talking to him for about 3 hours, and found out that he used to go out with Miyo, the girl I'd met the night before. And before long, Miyo showed up with a whole lot of her friends from work, and the place was packed. So it was a great night!

At around 2am we all went home, and I discovered to my delight that my two new friends, "Cool dude" Naonori and "Crazy Girl 2" Aya actually live really close to me - just west of my house. They go to the university in Ako, and actually live in Ako. I was absolutely amazed that I'd a) met some more people around my age (they're both 21) and b) finally, finally met some of the univeristy students. They said they'd like to go out drinking with me again, so hopefully I've made some new friends there. And hopefully they might be my gateway into meeting some more uni students and building a bit of a network of people I can relate to in terms of age :D And that was it! Back home it was straight to sleep, ready for the big weekend!