Once we got back to Nagoya station after the Toyota tour, I zoomed back to the hotel with Andrew and Devin to get ready to go out at night. Devin was planning to head up to Tokyo that night, but when he heard that so many people were going to go out for dinner, he decided to stick around. He didn't have accommodation and I had space in my room, seeing as Emerald hadn't made it up, so that worked well. We headed out at around 6:45pm and bagged ourselves a taxi back to Nagoya station. The joys of travelling in a group - taxis are cheap! There we met up with the other JETs who were hanging around, and started to try to find somewhere to eat.

This turned out to be really complicated as it was 7pm on a Friday night, so everywhere was busy. I wanted to eat at a Yama-chan, which did the famous Nagoya-style chicken wings. Unfortunately there were too many of us to do that, so we eventually ended up heading to Sakae, the 'night district' of Nagoya. There we found an izakaya straight away and after a short wait, were herded into a nice tatami room. We starting eating and drinking, and after a while, Watanabe-san and Saito-san turned up to join us. Kayahashi-san hadn't been able to make it, unfortunately. They seemed really happy to be using their English and chatted away with us all night. It was kinda wierd seeing them in casual clothes after their formal uniforms, though, hehe.

I'd also arranged to meet my friend Junko M, who had been out at a welcome party for the company she'll start work at next week. She came back to the izakaya and we all chatted away until it was time to leave at about midnight. Our Toyota tour guides headed home and the rest of us went on into Sakae to Club ID to party on. The club was not particularly nice (think of your average Australian nightclub, with the only difference being that everyone is Japanese instead of Australian), but the music was great so it was fun enough. To my surprise, though, it closed at 1am! Not really sure what to do next, a group of us wandered outside looking for the Hub, a chain pub. We walked around for a bit, but never did manage to find it, haha.

It was getting towards 2am and we were all pretty tired, so we decided to call it a night. Back at the hotel, Devin decided to sleep on the floor, hehe. Thanks to being quite drunk, he actually slept fine though. Which meant that I didn't - I completely forgot that he snored something chronic, haha. So I didn't get much sleep. After waking him up at 6:30 to make sure he got on the shinkansen to Tokyo, I finally got some sleep. At around 1pm, I headed out to do some hanami at Nagoya castle with Junko. We wanted to buy bento to eat under the trees, but it took us over an hour to find a konbini, lol. When we finally found one, we wandered back to a lovely little park where the crowds were comfortable in size, and sat and ate, enjoying the flowers.

After that we headed to the castle itself and had a wander around the grounds and up into the top to look out over Nagoya. It was fairly busy though, and I was really tired thanks to not getting much sleep (*shakes fist at Devin*), so I headed back to the hotel to rest. I just grabbed a quick dinner from the nearby konbini and watched a bit of crazy Japanese TV before going to sleep. I'd arranged to meet my language exchange partner, Minori, on Saturday night, but she had finished work very late and hadn't been able to make it in. Which was good, in a way, as I was so tired it wouldn't have been much fun. I was still tired on Sunday morning, but less so, hehe.

Unfortunately, I misjudged the amount of time needed to get to the station and ended up being about 15 minutes late to meet Minori. I felt really bad about that, but she was forgiving and let me buy her coffee in a vain attempt to make up for it :) I suppose it could have been worse - thankfully we'd arranged to meet at a silver clock and she had to search for it for quite a while, so at least she probably wasn't standing around waiting for all of those 15 minutes.

It was lovely to meet her, and I was really happy to find that she was as friendly in real life as she had been on the net/phone, if not more so. Her English was better in person, too, so we had a great conversation while we searched for a cafe. I feel pretty lucky to have made such a good friend in Aichi-ken - we've already arranged to go snowboarding together next winter, huzzah!

It had been a bit of a weekend of firsts, and this continued as we went to Starbucks for coffee. Perhaps it was because my defences were down due to being tired and desperately wanting something to wake me up, or perhaps I've just become more tolerant :) It actually turned out to be pretty good, though, haha. After the mammothian effort of drinking coffee (and the fact I hadn't had any breakfast, haha), I was hungry, so we started looking for somewhere to eat. Minori took me to a really swanky wanky building near the station and we eventually managed to find a place that wasn't too expensive, and that we both wanted to try. Although the prices were inflated thanks to the decor, it still ended up about the same as you'd pay for a normal meal in Australia, hehe. Gotta love Japan.

I wandered back to the station at just before 2:30pm, said goodbye to Minori and literally turned around to meet Junko. I had realised that I probably wasn't going to be in Nagoya again for quite a while, so I decided to bite the bullet and ride the shinkansen back. I wanted to maximise the time with my friends there, and I was far too tired to worry about rattling along on the 5 hour seishin kippu journey back. So I got Junko to help my buy the ticket (which is fully automated now and can all be done in English, wowz!) and then we went to check out the orchid nursery. I was really glad I got down there, as it was one of the things on my list of places to go. To my dismay, though, it was nowhere near as good as last year. They only had about 1/4 the amount of plants in the atrium as they have previously.Still, the ones they did have were beautiful, so it wasn't a complete loss :) That's life, I suppose.

We headed back to Nagoya station from there at just after 4:30pm and I jumped on the 5:11 shinkansen back to Aioi. It only took about an hour and three quarters to get to Aioi, and then it was a short 15 minute ride home to Ako from there. Not bad, although it did burn a 9,130 yen hole in my pocket, hehe. I suppose it's quite reasonable compared to the ridiculous 5,250 yen which it normally costs to ride standard JR trains from Nagoya to Banshuu Akou, not to mention the fact that the shinkansen is much more comfortable. I suppose it doesn't come up so well against the 2,300 of the seishin kippu though, if you have time and don't mind the fact you might have to stand up for part or all of the way :D Oh well, it was worth it this time :) If I did that every week, I'd definitely be looking out for discount tickets. Apparently you can get discount shinkansen tickets from shops near the train station that will get you about 10% off.

And that's that! It was a really great long weekend so I'm very glad that I went up for the seminar and stayed afterwards. Kudos to Emerald for pointing it out to me. I learnt a lot, met some great people, made some new friends and rode the shinkansen. Sweet deal. Next stop, hanami weekend. Let's see if it can be even better! :D