After a brutally boring Monday, I decided in the end to take two days of leave on Tuesday and Wednesday. I didn't really have any plans, but after working out my travel and nenkyuu for the next year, I realised I had more than enough leave to do so. And I really needed the rest and the chance to clear up my apartment. Monday night was pretty laid back, I just wandered home and waited for my games to arrive. When they did, I gleefully started playing - I've got 8 months to catch up on, haha. Soldier of Fortune: Payback sucked, to my dismay, and FEAR: Perseus Mandate was a lot of fun but pretty much same old. I'm now playing Gears of War, which is great, and have the latest Dawn of War expansion to play after that.

I made sure I didn't go too crazy though, and got some decent sleep. Tuesday wasn't all that exciting, I spent most of the afternoon doing chores and chilling out. I did gave Minato-san a quick message to see if he wanted to bike, but he couldn't. At night I headed out for dinner with Junko K, in Sannomiya. Amusingly (looking back now, anyway), this was almost wrecked by me discovering the hard way that I had no gas and hence no hot water! On Monday morning I'd noticed that just as I got out of the shower, it had gone cold. I'd shrugged it off as the water heater just not kicking in on time, which happens occasionally. Unfortunately, it was actually a gas problem. Naturally I wasn't prepared for it so I had to quickly message Junko to tell her I was going to be late. I figured Harada-san was the best person to call, which turned out to be a lucky guess. The champion that he is, he had a gas company truck screeching up to my door within 20 minutes.

The little gas man came running out, slammed a new gas bottle in and nearly knocked down my door with his enthusiasm to sincerely apologise to me for something that wasn't his fault. Very Japanese! :) Although I missed the train I had wanted to catch, thankfully I hadn't been delayed too much and was able to catch the next one. So I didn't get to Sannomiya too late after all. After I met Junko, we headed up to the Watami near Ikuta-dori in Sanno for dinner, which wasn't too bad. I prefer Doma Doma, but it was good to have a change :)

Junko was leaving for Canada in two or three days and wanted to see the Kobe harbour at night before she left, so I took her down there and showed her around Mosaic. We grabbed coffee in a swanky little place overlooking the water and chatted away until I needed to head back to catch my last train. I was a bit sad, I guess, because I knew it was the last time I'd see her for over a year. Back in Ako I just caught up with Kazu for a few drinks at Sai-on.

Wednesday was a mish mash of things again, I spent most of it doing chores, haha. I hadn't done the washing up for a while, and although I rinse all my dishes if I leave them, it certainly wasn't a pretty sight. That took me about two hours to get through, haha. Whoops. I also did a heap of washing, but I still have a couple more loads to do. And that was my nenkyuu! Not too bad, very restful. I'm glad I took it, as I needed the rest and I won't be able to take any for the next 3 months or so once school starts again.

Today I spent most of my time doing my JET Japanese test, and am about to frantically run to the post office to get it posted before heading off to Nagoya, ready for the conference tomorrow. I'm really not looking forward to the five hour train journey, but such is life, I suppose. At least I'm catching up with one of the other JETs who is going, so I'll have company from Himeji onwards. It should be a good weekend, actually. The conference is tomorrow then Saturday is taking photos with Emerald during the day and partying with my friend Minori at night. On Sunday I'm meeting Junko M to do some hanami, and she said it should be perfect this weekend. Sweet. Then it's back into the grind for three days before another two days off to do hanami at the end of next week.