Well, that's another 29th February down for another 4 years! Turned out to be the kick off to a pretty good weekend, too. After work on Friday, I zoomed into Himeji to catch up with my new friend Yusaku. Well, zoomed isn't perhaps the most accurate of words, given that for the first time ever in Japan, JR cancelled a train on me. I was not happy as I'd just gone through the gates and had to wait 40 minutes for the next train, rarr *shakes fist*! Got there eventually though, and we headed to Doma Doma for dinner. Yusaku was pretty cool, although a little quiet. Still, not surprising I suppose, when you're meeting a potentially crazy gaijin for the first time, haha. His listening and speaking of English were excellent though, so we were able to have a pretty good conversation. After Doma Doma we wandered up to Tiger Pub, mainly because neither of us knew of any better place to go. Although I'm not a big fan of the TP, it does do 10% of drinks for JETs :)

We drank there for a while and I helped Yusaku practise English. There was a new girl behind the bar so we all got a good conversation going. Somewhat amusingly, she works as a dietician during the day. Now there's a crazy difference in jobs :) At around 9:30, a girl I see in Himeji a lot called Avigail walked in. She's from Australia and is pretty good to talk to, so we chatted for a while and then went with her to Nobu, a small bar nearby. After another quick drink or two, it was off to catch my last train home. To my dismay, as I was walking back to my bike, I managed to put my foot into the narrow drain by the side of the road. I was listening to my ipod and not watching where I was going in the dark, so it was my own fault I guess. Luckily it wasn't a bad fall so I just jumped back up and kept going. I stopped by at Saiyan, the little bar I like, on the way home.

Saturday I slept in and jumped on the train to Osaka to meet Portia, a JET, at 2pm. I was there a little early and she was running late, so I went to the Yodabashi Camera in Umeda and drooled over new camera equipment. I need a tripod bag and I'm also eying up a couple of flashes, filters and maybe even a new lens and camera body. If I can get out to do enough photography and get good enough at it to justify all of that, that is :) Hehe. Portia eventually rocked up around 3pm and we slowly worked our way to the Osaka Museum of Art. I had free tickets to the Emily Kngwarreye exhibition there, an Australian artist who does traditional Aboriginal paintings. We got there at 4:30 though, and had to leave at 5pm, so it was a little too short a time to fully explore! Still, I can always go back another day.

After that we moved on to Shinsaibashi, one of my favourite places, for dinner. Portia knows Shinsaibashi well as she lives in Kawanishi, near Osaka. Lucky girl, she's really central but still in Hyogo prefecture. We had dinner at a great bilingual cafe called Slices, which does good pizza. I haven't had a decent pizza since coming here and admittedly have been craving some for some time :) From there we wandered around to do a little bit of shopping in the amazing stores in the back streets of Amemura, then grabbed a cheeky drink at a bit of a gaijin bar called Zerro (sp?), near Club Pure. From there, it was back up to Shinsaibashi and home on the long, long ride to Ako. I had a great time, as Portia is an interesting person and isn't afraid to put her opinions forward - always makes for good conversation!

I stopped in at Saiyan again on the way home, and was pleased to see that Kazu and Miyo were there. Somewhat to my amazement, Kazu told me that Naonori and Aya were also around, and that they'd gone to the station to meet me off the train! I was really taken aback, as although they're great people and I like them, I hardly know them. Unfortunately for them I was the sneaky ninja of Ako and slipped through the gates without them noticing me, so I rode back to the station to find them. Back at the bar we just drank and chatted for quite a while. Naonori had brought a dictionary so was practising his English. Despite having had quite a bit to drink, he learnt fast. We all left there at just before 2am and after a quick stop at Family Mart for some late night sushi, walked home.

I was up a little too early for my liking on Sunday, and off on the train to Tatsuno to meet Masaie-sensei for some plum flower viewing. I'd told Yusaku about this too and he'd accidentally interpreted it as an invitation. I didn't have the heart to tell him and had no real reason why shouldn't come (Masaie-sensei had said to bring some friends if I wanted), so figured I'd just leave it. We all met at around 11am and drove down to the farm. It was pretty cool! There were so many people there that we had to park quite a way away, and there was a lovely walk through fields of some crop that had a bright yellow flower. Up in the farm, the ume was in full bloom, and was gorgeous. There were many photographers there and a lot of them had some serious gear - a lot of Canon 'L' series lenses, professional tripods and very nice camera bodies. Photography is a very common hobby in Japan, and they're good at it! It was nice to see a real range of people doing it too, not just the usual crowd of older men.

I'd taken my camera too, but was in a really frustrating situation and felt I couldn't use it much. I'd specifically gone with Masaie-sensei and it would have been really rude to take too many photos. That said, I really wanted to! Gah. Story of my life recently. I really must find some people who want to go out and do some photography, or make some time to just go out and do it myself! Anyway, after I resolved myself to the fact that I wasn't going to be able to take many photos, I just enjoyed the scenery and chatting to Masaie-sensei and Yusaku. We wandered down to the beach nearby and then had lunch in the little cafe at the farm. It was a really laid back day. After lunch, we continued our trip down the coast to a nearby port. Here, we ran around on the tetrapods in the ocean, ate some free (and delicious!) oysters and bought some fresh seafood at the beautiful little markets there. After that it was back to Ako, where we proudly showed Yusaku our castle and temple.

It was about 5pm by the time everyone left, and I had cravings for Daikichi for dinner. I decided to call Shou to see if he was around and wanted to go, but got voicemail. So I wandered down to Minato-ya instead, as I hadn't seen Minato-san for a while. It was good to see him and eat some tsuna-zuri (mmm, mmmm!!) while we caught up. After about an hour there, a friendly family came and the girl with them turned out to be one of my ichi-nensai students. After a while, I realised it was actually Aya's family! Aya is the girl who used to run Wednesday nights at Minato-ya, and is now studying in the US. It was great to finally meet them, as I'd heard a lot about them and just missed them several times. They can all speak English fairly well, so we had a fun conversation in Japanese and English. Meki-san got pretty drunk and was hilarious, and just before they left he invited me to go to his house for dinner one day. I was very happy about this, because previous ALTs who were considered 'popular' in Ako were often invited to his house, and he works for the BoE (he's Claire's and Phillip's boss).

Back home, I mucked around on the net and generally avoided doing chores (haha) before heading to bed for another week of nothing! The students have tests from today until Wednesday, and most of the teachers are on nenkyu when they don't have tests. I'm going to take a day tomorrow to just chill out, catch up on chores, go do things in town that I haven't been able to (like go to the post office and bank) and hopefully, finally, catch up with Minato-san for a ride on his day off :) Should be good! So all in all, a pretty crazy weekend. I wouldn't like to be that busy every weekend as it's exhausting and I had no time for doing any chores, but it was certainly better than having nothing to do, hehe. Next weekend I have dinner and drinks on Friday night, a badminton tournament on Sunday and possibly a soccer game on Saturday. Huzzah!