I escaped as soon as the clock ticked over to 4pm yesterday, fleeing one of the most boring days at school ever ;/ Seriously, you know a day has been bad when the highlight is literally just being invited to an upcoming enkai. Lol. Not all woe though, as having nothing official to do gave me plenty of time to study Japanese. I learnt some useful new grammar patterns and words. Slow going, but little by little I'm improving.

Anyway, I raced home from school, quickly took a shower and zoomed out to Himeji to meet my super genki friend Kazuyo for dinner. I had 20 minutes to kill there before I met her, and as it's White Day today, I filled in the time by buying chocolates in the Sanyo department store. White Day is a really silly day, hehe. On Valentine's day in Japan, only women give gifts. It's been this way for a long time, I think. A confectionary maker obviously figured that there was an untapped market here (the men), so decided to create a day where men would buy gifts for the women that had given them chocolate on Valentine's Day. A clever ploy, and with sufficient marketing it has become a national institution, hehe. Naturally, to top it all off, the rule is that men should buy gifts worth about 3 times as expensive as what they received, hahaha.

Admittedly, I'm a little hazy on the exact rules of White Day. I don't know what type of chocolate men are supposed to return the favour for - whether it's just honmei (lover's chocolate) or also giri (obligatory social chocolate). I figured that because I didn't know, I should probably get something just in case. I figure that if you've got something, you don't have to give it if it's not appropriate (and you can eat it yourself, haha), but you have it if you do need to :)

Thankfully (I guess?!) I didn't receive any honmei and not all that much giri so I didn't have too much to buy, hehe. So I just headed to the basement floor of Himeji Sanyo, where they have a huge range of surprisingly reasonably priced chocolate to choose from. I quickly wandered around all the stores, looking at all the delicious goodies, and grabbed a few random boxes of chocolates. I was really impressed with the food hall, overall - they have a huge range of really nice looking foods there. For those of you in Perth, think David Jones food hall. It's almost that good, seriously. Very refreshing to see such a thing in Japan :) I miss that food hall a lot.

After buying the chocolates, I had just enough time to rush back to the station to meet Kazuyo at 6pm. From there, we wandered up to an 'international' food place called Baobab to have dinner. I'd seen it many times but never been in, and it wasn't too bad. We had Indian style fried chicken, mi-goreng, a tofu salad and some Vietnamese spring rolls. It was all relatively unusual (think 'fusion food') and wasn't as good as what you'd get in Perth, but for Japan, it was fairly groundbreaking :) To my delight, similar to last time, Kazuyo and I had heaps to talk about. We ended up speaking for over three hours while we ate. After dinner we moved on to one of my new favourite places in the Mej, Carma, a totally awesome cafe/clothes shop (go figure at that combo, hehe). It's hard to explain, but the place just has a really great feeling about it. It's quaint, surprisingly relaxing, has great music and really trendy decor without being at all wanky. It's run by some lovely ladies and, to top it all off, does a killer Almond au Lait ;) Kazuyo and I talked for about another hour or so there before I had to head back to catch my last train. I really like Kazuyo, she's full of life and is crazy about studying English, both of which make for great conversation.

On to the weekend, my original plan was to just chill and catch up on some sleep. That kinda changed a little bit during the week as various things cropped up, but it shouldn't be too crazy. Badminton is on a break tonight so I'm just getting a much needed haircut (my hair seems to grow even faster and get even fluffier in Japan ;/), chilling at home and hopefully having an early night. I want to go riding tomorrow morning, now that the weather is getting so much better. If Minato-san is free I might head to Shobudani with him, otherwise it'll just be Takayama and maybe Sakoshi mountain, depending on how much time I have. In the afternoon, Ultimate Frisbee is starting back up in Himeji, which I'm really looking forward to. I invited Yusaku along to that too, which should be interesting, because he said he hasn't done any exercise in ages, haha.

There are also rumours of a St Pat's day party on Saturday night, so I guess I'll sneak a cheeky onsen in after frisbee and then shoot off to that, wherever it is. There's talk of dinner in Kobe followed by an all nighter in the bars and clubs of Sannomiya or Osaka. I'm thinking the latter might not be such a good idea for me though, hehe - I really need some sleep! I might just hit the dinner and bail at 10pm to catch the last train home. Sunday I have nothing planned, so I think I'll finally catch up on my chores and maybe go for another ride.

Next week is the last week of school for the year, followed by a two week break before the new year begins. Oh so very different to Australia, hehe. I haven't really planned too much for the break. People seem pretty surprised when I tell them that. I guess a lot of JETs are going travelling overseas or within Japan, or having their families to stay. I don't really feel like doing a major trip in the break though, to be honest. That said, I am getting out and about a bit locally, though. I'll be in Nagoya for three days over the second weekend of the break, which should be great, and there's talk of a hanami trip to Kyoto on the last weekend. I might also head up to Hakuba for a couple of days to snowboard at some point, depending on timing and if anyone else can come. There are no convenient public holidays during the break, and although I have stacks of nenkyu left, I don't really want to blow it. I'll see what happens. Aside from that it's a great chance to chill out, catch up on sleep, do some chores, build my computer and play some games and do a lot of hanami, hehe. All good.