It's very rare for me to say things like this, but there really was too much on this weekend just gone (more about that later though...) It started damn early too, straight after school on Friday. As soon as 4pm ticked around, I rushed home, showered, and shot out to Himeji to meet a heap of JETs and some local friends for a dinner catchup. I arrived a little early, so wandered around Miyuki-dori to kill some time. Eventually I bumped into my good friend Amanda, whom I hadn't seen for ages. We had a great time swapping news as we walked back to the station. Just after 6, everyone else had pretty much arrived, so we wandered off to the nearby okonomiyaki place for dinner.

There were a lot of great people there - the 'boys' I hadn't caught up with for a long time (Chip, Shannon and Devin), Amanda and her crew and two of my new friends (Yusaku and Ann). Once we finally worked out the okonomiyaki place, we all ate, drank, mingled and talked and it was just a really great, laid back catch up session. Dinner wasn't too bad, as far as okonomiyaki goes. Not as good as Minato-ya, and much more expensive, but decent enough. Especially with beer, hehe. After dinner we decided to wander up to the Chum for another drink. I love the Chum, the Chum is good. As they say "You can make good memories at the Chum!" Haha.

After one drink it was pretty early still, but most people decided to head home. They had other things to go to, difficult bus/train times or were broke, hehe. In the end, it was just Ann, Yusaku and myself. Which turned out to be a lot of fun. We wandered up to Starbucks to drop in on Kazuyo, who seemed very surprised and happy to see us, hehe. They were closing though (which I'm kinda thankful about, haha - I don't like Starbucks, haha) so for want of a better place to go again, we headed to Tiger Pub.

Although I'm really not a big fan of Tiger Pub, I have to admit it was quite a bit of fun. My Himeji 'contact', Avigail, was in there, so I chatted to her and finally had the chance to buy her one of the several drinks that I owe her from over the months, hehe. I also had a quick chat to Hisako, the new girl who works behind the bar on Friday nights, who seems really nice. After that I finally got back to the table with Ann and Yusaku (whoops!) and we talked away until it was time to catch our last trains home. I got a good laugh out of Ann on the way back as she was fairly tipsy. Ironically, she'd only had one, relatively weak drink, and she'd had it over about 45 minutes :D Such is the problem of being tiny, I guess, haha.

Back in Ako I wandered home and did my usual Friday night thing - staying up way too late watching TV, haha. I didn't sleep particularly well so was a little out of it on Saturday morning, but felt ok after a shower. I'd arranged to meet Julie Anne and Hiro (Ako friends) to visit a senbei (hard Japanese rice cracker) factory near Okayama. It was a slightly unusual thing to do, I felt, but that said I was very interested too. They picked me up at around 1pm and we drove off to the factory. The drive was beautiful, along winding coastal roads overlooking the extremely pretty Seto Inland sea. There are lots of little islands and wonderful port towns along the coast, and combined with the green forested mountains on the mainland, it makes for one of the most stunning views I've ever seen. To my great surprise, I could actually feel myself relaxing simply from looking at it.

We got to the factory at just before 2pm and went on the 'tour', haha. Which took all of about 15 minutes, and consisted of wandering through the factory looking at some machines and watching some people making mochi and senbei. Lol. Apparently this festival is quite famous too, it's on TV. I'm not entirely sure what all the fuss was about, but maybe it's just me, hehe. We did get to try a lot of the senbei, though, which was really groovy. And on the way out we all bought some big bags of them. Before we left the factory, we dropped in at a stall selling oysters. Julie Anne's boss was running it, so naturally they were very generous to us and gave us all free oysters, whee! Japanese oysters are enormous, very delicious, and best of all, very cheap! I think I forgot to mention this, lol. We eat them a lot during the oyster season, at least once a week. Muahaha. One of the joys of living on the Seto coast - there are oyster farms all along it.

It was around 3pm by then, so we decided to kick on the short distance into the centre of Okayama City itself. In the past, I haven't particularly liked Okayama (aside from the castle and famous garden). I was surprised at how nice the central city was though. The bustle on the streets and hordes of young people in trendy casual clothes were a very nice change from the everyday peace and quiet in Ako. Julie Anne wanted to look through OPA, a trendy clothes store, so Hiro and I felt we'd better go too. You know. We certainly didn't want to see all the beautiful young women wandering around in the latest fashions, but we had to keep Julie Anne company :D (For those of you *not* fluent in sarcasm, and I know there are a few of you - yes, that was sarcasm :D).

After that we caught a quick coffee and then started back to Ako at just before 4pm. To our dismay though, the roads were horribly jammed. I was a bit worried, as I needed to be back in Ako by 5pm to catch the train to Himeji to meet Hide and Shou for dinner. It became clear pretty soon that we weren't going to make it. Obviously feeling responsible, Hiro said he'd drive me all the way into Himeji. I felt a bit sorry for him, but I really didn't have another choice. I had been late to meet the guys last time too, and didn't want them to have to wait for an hour this time! So I gratefully accepted after making sure Hiro knew it wasn't his fault :) I still ended up a little late, even though we took the expensive and free flowing Sanyo expressway, but the important thing is that I got there in the end.

Dinner with Shou and Hide was good fun, as usual! The first place we tried to go was full, again (we'd tried twice before to go there - must be famous!), so instead we went to a funny little place somewhere on the 'bad' side of town. The food was pretty good! We had karaage chicken wings, garlic rice, fried oysters and whale. Yes, whale. I wasn't entirely sure what it was at the time, to be honest. It was raw, naturally, and one of the bloodiest sea creature-meats I've seen. That's what you get when you let the local lads take care of the ordering, I guess :D I wasn't really sure whether to eat it or not. I'm certainly anti-whaling, but I'm not an in-your-face protester about it. In the end, I decided to eat it, mainly because it was already on a plate in front of me. Not particularly happy about the situation, but neh. At least it didn't taste so good - so I will probably never eat it again :) Oh, and please, no flame comments about whales/whaling, ok? :)

After dinner we went down to Hosana, the 'British' pub, for a quick Guiness, then up to Tiger Pub for some more random drinks. At just before 10:30 we headed out, as Hide had to get home to his family, hehe. Shou and I just missed a train, though, and had to wait nearly an hour for the next one. We decided to go for a walk around Himeji to kill time, instead of waiting at the train station. As we left the station, a girl looked at me strangely and then stopped to talk to me. It turned out to be Hisako, from Tiger Pub, haha. I didn't recognise her because I'd never seen her in good light before, lol. We had a quick chat, and hearing we'd missed our train, offered to take us to Aboshi, two stops down the JR line. Although that didn't help us (all trains to BA go through Himeji), it was very kind :)

Shou and I then went to play some fighting games in an arcade. It was good fun! We wanted to play Time Crisis 4 (he loves it too!) but they didn't have it, so we played King of Fighters instead. I'd never played before, so he beat me in the first game - only just though. I learnt pretty fast and must have actually developed some useful skills from DOA, so I beat him in the second and third games, haha. After that we wandered back to the train station, listened to some J-Pop on the way back to BA and then walked home.

Sunday I had to wake up early again for another blasted badminton tournament, haha. I was not happy, as I really needed sleep. I didn't want to go, but had made the promise so went anyway. I met Funamoto-san at Paone and we zoomed off to Aioi. To my disappointment, there were just as many people as last time, and our games were just as ridiculously timed. After 2 hours of waiting, we finally played a single set. In which I played terribly, possibly the worst I've ever played in Japan. I hadn't practised in two weeks, though, so I guess it shouldn't have been a surprise, haha. I had very poor control over my shots and couldn't smash at all. It was extremely frustrating, and I got very upset with myself. Still, I tried not to let it show, and saw the game out as best I could. Given I've been playing for over a year now, and that I play quite frequently here in Japan, I had expected to have improved significantly by now. The fact I haven't really hurts me, especially as it hasn't been for lack of trying or lack of as positive an attitude as I could muster :)

As I felt really awful, I just decided to go home, despite having another game later in the afternoon. We had 5 players on our team so they didn't really need me, and I was ridiculously tired and demotivated. So I just packed my bag, said goodbye to everyone, and left. I caught the train back to Ako, and after a quick lunch at Minato-ya to cheer myself up, wandered home. At night, I'd arranged to meet my new friend Ann for dinner in Himeji, and although I was feeling really tired and down, I didn't want to break the promise. So off I went to Himeji again for the third night in a row, haha. We went for dinner at Doma Doma as my favourite little yaki-tori place was closed, and then went for a coffee at a place I'd seen many times called Carma. Both very cool places, and we had some great conversations. As I thought might happen, and one of the reasons I went, just having someone friendly and able to speak fluent English around really cheered me up. So that was good :)

We went scuttling back to Himeji station just before 10:30pm so that I could grab the second last train, and I rode home to crash out ready for school this morning. All in all, a good weekend? Well, yes, overall. The badminton situation was really bad, but the rest of the weekend more than made up for it. In fact, I think I was quintuple booked on Saturday night. So there's a lot on these days :) The same is true of this week, but I've decided to really cut back and take a rest. The badminton incident was enough to shock me into realising that I'm really not getting enough sleep and I can't continue to do that. The feeling was similar to the one I used to have all the time back in Australia when I was overtired and overstressed from my job. And it's very not nice! So this week is R&R week :) I may head out to see a few people in Ako, but aside from that I think I'm just going to chill and get some really early nights. Plenty coming up towards the end of the month, so I want to be prepared and in good spirits. :) Ganbarimasu!