Once I finally got through the long, boring school day, the rest of my night was actually pretty interesting. Before I left school, I organised with Aso-sensei to pick me up from my house at 5:40pm for the enkai. I didn't want to stay at school, go to the enkai and then come back to school, only to have to push my bike home late at night, as it's a very long way. Actually, as a side note, I discovered a few days ago that in theory, you can ride your bike in Japan after you've had a few drinks. The proviso is you can't *look* drunk. I had to laugh when I read that, hehehe. Seems there are actually two types of drink driving offence in Japan. The less severe of the two requires a breath test against predefined limits. The severe one is where you simply look drunk. Go figure. Anyway, the breath test doesn't apply to bikes, so as long as you don't look visibly intoxicated, you can ride. If you get pulled over because you look drunk though, you're busted. I suppose that's kinda cool. You can have a few drinks over dinner and still ride home, so long as you're careful. Sweet deal. Although it does concern me a little that such a subjective thing is left to the human mind when an objective test exists. Almost makes me worry more than it gives me comfort...

Anyway, back to the story, I shot out from school quite early, as I had a few chores to do before heading to the enkai. I stopped off at the evil bank then went to Jusco to see if Miyuki was around. Unfortunately, again, she wasn't, so it looks like I'll just have to go up again today. On the way to Jusco I'd ridden past a camera store and remembered that I wanted to buy an 18% grey card just to have a play around with. I've been reading about using these recently, to help with exposure in very white/black photos, so thought I'd check it out.

The whole topic is actually really interesting. Apparently cameras don't see in colour, they see in grey. Specifically, 12% grey, which is meant to be exactly half way between white and black. When you take a photo, if the exposure meter is getting an average reflected luminance of 12% grey, it will say the image is correctly exposed. If not, it will tell you that your exposure needs adjusting. The problem being, when you have a very dark image, only about 9% of light will be reflected into the camera. Although the image will be correctly exposed, the camera thinks it is underexposed and tries to push your exposure up so that it's getting 12% grey into its exposure meter. This makes the image overexposed and turns the black into grey. Yuck. So the solution is to meter the light from a grey card when you're dealing with very black or very white images.

I hope the above is correct, I'm not so hot on the technical details but I understand why it's necessary. Oh, and in case you're wondering why we use 18% cards when the meter reads 12%, apparently that's just a historical mistake. 18% grey is used in publishing, or so I'm told, which means an 18% grey card is easier to print? Or something? I don't know. Apparently you can fix it by moving the camera 1/2 or 1/3 a stop in the appropriate direction once you've exposed with the grey card. I'll test it all out, anyway, hehe.

So on the way back from Jusco I dropped into the store, Kimura Kamera. They initially had no idea what I was talking about when I asked for a 'nezumi iro no kaado', and I guess it didn't help that I tend to confuse juhachi (18) with hachiju (80). Haha. Anyway, they eventually twigged and said 'gurree kado?' - typical, undone by borrowed words yet again, hahaha. The guy was very friendly and helpful, which was great, and it turned out that he is the school photographer. I've seen him many times but never in 'plain clothes', so to speak, and never up so close, so I didn't recognise him. He remembered me though, and even knew that I had a 20D and a professional L zoom lens. I was quick to assure him that despite the gear, I'm still very much a newbie. I've always been impressed with his work, so asked if I could see his gear. He's using a 40D and a 5D and had a beautiful 24-105 L series lens. Damn that 5D is a sexy camera! :D

I also took the opportunity while I was there to ask if there were any camera clubs or lessons in Ako. Apparently there is a camera club, but it's a closed circle and invite only. The guy said that although he doesn't go, he can introduce me to the people. We'll see - closed circle sounds a little suss to me! :/ Still, he also gave me a brochure for a day long photo taking field trip, so I'll have to translate it and see where it is, hehe.

As I left the store, a guy who'd just come in was also leaving and stared at me a little strangely. He spoke to me in perfect English and it turned out he was Chinese American, not Japanese. Whoops, sometimes I still have trouble telling Japanese and other Asian people apart. It turned out that he was one of the missionaries in town. To be honest I have avoided these people up until now because I really didn't want to take any chances with being preached at. I had no choice but to speak to them this time as to do anything else would have been extremely rude. Anyway, they turned out to be ok guys. They didn't preach at me, we just spoke about Ako and things to do and a bit about our work. So fairly painless overall.

I was just getting around to asking them what they did when they weren't out and about trying to convert people when I felt my phone ring in my bag. Looking at my watch I realised I was running terribly late - it was already 5:40 and I was supposed to be home! After a hurried goodbye, I screamed home and got there about 5 minutes late. Apologising profusely I jumped into the car with Aso-sensei and Tajiri-sensei and we zoomed off to Hinase, about 10km west of Ako. It's a tiny port town and is really quite beautiful, I must get out there to take a look around at some point. We found the restaurants, Miyake, without too much trouble, and got inside to find everyone else there already.

The enkai was really good fun, as it was just the ichinensai teachers whom I know quite well. I was wrong, the other day, sorry - the enkai wasn't to celebrate shingakki, that's done with all the teachers. This was a 'good work for the year/end of the school year' enkai, instead. So naturally, we all grabbed drinks and did the kanpai to a year well done, after a short speech by Masaie-sensei. The food was really, really good. It was all fresh seafood - sashimi, boiled fish, squid and octopus, smoked fish and sashimi nigiri. Totally delicious, although I did get a slight bit of food poisoning this morning :(

I think the best thing about the enkai was the laid back conversation, though. Everyone was talking very freely and when I concentrated hard, although it was too fast for me to understand, I could pull a lot of words out of it and sometimes get the gist of the conversation. I was pretty pleased about that, as this was the kind of Japanese that is akin to the English I would use with my friends - fast and slangy. I joined in as best I could whenever the opportunity presented itself, and got some laughs for various reasons. It struck me again how unusual this situation must be to any onlookers. A room with 9 middle aged Japanese people and a young gaijin - what a bizarre combination. Naturally I got strange looks from the people running the place, and the inevitable questions about where I came from and what I was doing here. I felt very happy about the whole night though, because of how natural it now feels to do things like this with my senseis :)

About 9pm we finished up and headed back to Ako. Some of the teachers were staying in a hotel in Ako overnight, which was probably a smart idea, hehe. Trying to explain the situation, Tanaka-sensei mistakenly said "same bed" instead of "same room", while pointing at Watanabe-sensei, much to the amusement of myself and all the other English teachers given that they are both married. Once he'd cleared that up, Tanaka-sensei invited me out drinking with him and Watanabe-sensei at a snack, but I politely declined. I wanted to be at least somewhat alert at school the next day, hehe.

Back home I quickly jumped online and ordered some games for my new computer. I'm in a rather difficult position here in Japan as games (English versions, at least) seem pretty hard to find. I was going to order off Amazon.com and get them shipped from the US, but I have no way to pay them. Similar problem with downloading games from Steam. So in the end I went with Play-Asia.com. They accept PayPal and their prices seem pretty damn good, especially with the US dollar being so weak at the moment. I got some fairly new release games for AU$40 - $60 instead of the ridiculous AU$80 - $100 I would have paid back home. Take that Australia. So, anyway, good times. They should arrive by Friday this week or Monday next week and keep me entertained for the rest of the year, hehe.

Back at school this morning and yet another day of boredom to face down. Thankfully, unbelievably, I have a class tomorrow, so I was able to do some planning this morning to fill in the time. It's a 'fun' class with Ishino-sensei's genki 2-5 class. We're going to play charades, which is a really great game. The students love it and it helps the vocabulary words stick in their heads if they can remember one of their friends dancing around like an idiot trying to act the word out. With classics like chicken and monkey, and some tougher ones like cheese and famous, it's guaranteed fun.

Tonight my computer should arrive, yippee! The only blocking point could be the keyboard, as I don't know when this will come. The shop said 3 to 5 business days, so hopefully it'll arrive today too. I might try to pick up a cheap one when I head up to Jusco to see Miyuki, just in case. Keyboards are always useful and I can always use the cheap one with my laptop when the real one comes. You can never have too many :) Tomorrow is another day at school then I'm off to Himeji to buy a new suit, hopefully. Both pairs of trousers in my current suit now have holes in them, lol. Apparently there is a store called Aoyama that do well priced suits, and there's one right near Himeji station. It also stocks 'international sizes', which should help a lot. I can usually wear a suit bought back home straight off the rack. Hopefully this is the case with this shop too, because these trousers could soon get embarrassing, hehe.