Saturday was a kind of mixed day. I hadn't slept well the night before and months of not getting enough sleep had finally really caught up with me. I felt very ordinary, but managed to pull through and get to the Hyogo AJET meeting on time. We bagged a great hanami spot and had our quick meeting. The old committee handed over, us newbies introduced ourselves and had a quick chat for HAJET and what we wanted to do this year, and then it was all wrapped up. I wandered down to the Egret building to meet my friends, most of whom were late, and we all finally sat down to hanami at around noon. The AJET bentos came out and everyone was happy :)

We spent the rest of the afternoon talking, drinking, meeting new people and generally having a good time. The crowd swelled from about 20 people to nearly 50, squashed onto a few tarpaulins. Needless to say, it was a lot of fun, and I bumped into a lot of people I hadn't seen in quite a while. I felt a bit out of it though, to be honest! It had been a long time since I'd really worked my gaijin social skills, and being really tired certainly didn't help. I came out ok in the end, though. I didn't get around to speak to some of the people I wanted to, but I saw a lot of them. So no worries.

At around 4pm my friend Yusaku wanted to head to Kyoto. I had tentative plans to head to Kyoto with Goran and my other friends, but the hanami was so good at Himeji that none of them wanted to go. I didn't want to go to Kyoto either, to be honest. Nothing against Yusaku, it was just that heading out with one friend I can see almost any time was not as attractive an option as staying where the party was good and there were a lot of people I couldn't see often. So I almost decided to just tell him I was going to stay in Himeji, but figured that it would be very bad form, not to mention impolite, to do so. So I did my best to be positive about it and just made the sacrifice (very Japanese) and headed to Kyoto. I was very unhappy on the journey over, though, mainly because I was badly sunburnt and extremely sleepy. Note for next time - don't ever make solid plans for after a hanami party :D

Kyoto turned out to be ok, though. Yusaku had bagged some last minute accommodation at the Kyoto campus of the university he went to in Shiga. It was in the student dorms, and was pretty good - only 3,000 yen per night and right next to Fushimi Inari. We got there at around 7pm and walked up Fushimi Inari before checking into our accommodation. The night view over Kyoto was fantastic, which went a small part of the way towards making up for the abysmal journey to get there. Once we checked in we grabbed some dinner and then I crashed out. I don't think I've ever been as sleepy as I was that day, and it finally hit home to me that I need to change my destructive lifestyle, haha. Previously I've always felt just ok enough to shrug off the intelligent choice of getting more sleep, but no longer. Consider me a converted man - sleep is now my priority :)

I still felt pretty tired on Sunday morning, despite getting nearly 9 hours sleep. I was ok after a quick breakfast and a shower though. Yusaku and I rushed off to Heian-jingu, my favourite shrine in Kyoto. The sakura there was almost as good as I remembered it from last year, and I really enjoyed wandering in the garden. There were lots of people about, but not so many that it was uncomfortable. The weather was good, too, which helped. At around 11am we zoomed back to Kyoto station then out to Osaka to meet Yusaku's friend Kit. He was a decent bloke, and can speak nearly perfect Japanese. He had studied in Japan for a while, and got me thinking about studying Japanese formally after finishing up on JET. Interesting thought!

We didn't do a bento-hanami combo for lunch, opting instead to eat at a kaiten-sushi place in central Umeda. After that we tried to find a very famous hanami place and eventually found it, after being given bad directions and walking in the wrong direction for 20 minutes, haha. We only had about 20 minutes there before I had to leave though, hehe. I jumped back on the train at just after 4pm and was back in Himeji by just before 5pm. I didn't feel like going home quite yet so had a quick wander through Himeji, where I met another JET called Charlie and one of his friends. We went up to Himeji-jou to do a bit of late afternoon hanami before I decided to head back to Ako. I got back at just before 7pm and headed down to Minato-ya for dinner.

It was empty, so I had a good chat to Minato-san, who was very cheery. We decided to enter a bike race in September, in Nagano prefecture. It should be a lot of fun - 42km cross country mountain biking, w00t! Looks like I'll have to get training. He also ordered some parts for me (a bike stand, a quick release seat and some chain grease) while I cooked my food - bacon cheese yaki, mmmm, so healthy. I left at around 9:30pm and picked up some bread in Paone before getting home to unpack my new suit ready for today. I realised to my dismay that the shirts I'd bought were about 50% polyester, which is a bit annoying. It's bad enough in Australia, let alone somewhere a lot more humid. Still, they're easy to iron and don't crinkle too easily, plus I have several other pure cotton shirts. So all good.

Overall, it was a fairly average weekend. Perhaps the most important thing I learnt is that I'm not superman and I can't keep going without enough sleep. It's scary how it affects you, usually so slowly that you can't really see it happening. Well, at least I've learnt my lesson. I'll be getting more sleep from now on. It does have a big impact on how you feel, I think. While I'm annoyed that I let myself fall back into the pattern of life I used to have in Perth (which was in fact one of the reasons I left Perth), I'm glad that I've caught it and can (and am) taking positive steps to fix it :)