School was excessively boring today, as all the students had a day off while the teachers scurried around running the school entrance examinatons for junior high school students. These tests are pretty hardcore apparently, and to my surprise ran for about 8 hours! They certainly don't do things by half measures here in Japan :) Poor little buggers. Still, the upside of all this was that we got a special bento for lunch, yippee! It was delicious. Aside from that, I can't really remember exactly what I did. Studied some Japanese, wrote in my journal, wrote an article or two for the Hyogo Times (our local JET magazine) and sent some emails is about it, I think.

The teachers were really busy with the tests and by about 3pm there were none of them left in the staff room - they were all supervising or marking. I was a little disappointed as I hadn't had a chance to give Morita-sensei and Yoshida-sensei the chocolate I'd bought them for White Day. In the end, I had to go, so I just left it on Yoshida-sensei's desk along with a note in English. I felt a bit skeezy doing that, as I much prefer giving gifts to people in person, especially in Japan. I really had to go though, and I'm sure it'll be fine :)

I had an appointment to get my hair cut at 5:30pm, but had a few things I wanted to do before that. First on the list was a trip up to Jusco to see Miyuki and give her the chocolate I'd bought for her for White Day. She wasn't there, surprisingly, so my White Day chocolate giving plans came unstuck again. Who would have thought that giving out chocolate would be so hard, hehe. From there, I rode up the hospital to reschedule my doctor's appointment. I went in on Wednesday to make one but to my disappointment, I simply couldn't understand what the nurse at the front counter was saying. I was saved, to both my relief (I wanted to get the details right) and dismay (I wanted to do it all in Japanese), by the super friendly 'resident English speaker' nurse that all the other nurses run to whenever I rock up, hehe. This is the nurse that said to me that if I ever needed anything, to just "come to the counter and one of these really cute nurses will help you", hehehe. She gets extra cool points for saying things like that ;)

Anyway, today, she wasn't there, so I got to bust out my mad Japanese skillz for the appointment change-aroo. And to my delight, it actually worked! I cancelled my appointment and rescheduled it for the next day, w00t. Phew, bit of a challenge, but for a worthy cause. It's the shingakki enkai (new school term) on Monday night and I'm definitely not missing that! Although the decision to schedule it on a Monday night has me somewhat confused, given there is work the next day, haha :D

It was a little after 5:20pm by this time, so leaving the nurses giggling in the hospital (hee hee hee), I rode up to Or to get my hair cut. I vaguely remembered that it wasn't that long ago that I had it cut before, so I was a little ... disappointed (?) ... and asked them to cut it really, really short this time. Damn stuff grows like weeds, hehe. I quite like going to the barber here as it is actually a really great opportunity to practise Japanese, and a good benchmark for me to check myself against (compared to the previous time) each time I go in. Today I was absolutely ecstatic that I could understand most of what was being said, and we had a decent conversation for almost the whole time it took the team to cut my hair. I even asked if it was difficult to cut gaijin hair, which made the barber laugh. He said it was because it's soft, as opposed to hard like Japanese hair, and my hair is especially soft.

My final stop for the night was Paone, to pick up stuff for dinner. I was on a real high having successfully used Japanese at the hospital and in the barber, so I was super genki when I got to the checkout. I jumped through it and sung out 'konbanhaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!' to the cute girl behind the counter, who immediately laughed and went bright red. It was awesome, hahaha. I asked her how her day was going and she went even redder, but she managed to put up a good conversation :) I would have talked for longer but there were other customers, poo! Damn those other people wanting to buy groceries, haha. Very, very amusing, anyway. And that's my day! Time for some long awaited and much needed sleep...