Wow, long time no post again. Same story as last time, haha, sorry. This entry was written on 28th May so use your imagination :)

I kinda cruised through last week as nothing really interesting happened. School was surprisingly less busy than it had been the week before, mostly because new school year prep had basically all been done. Although I lost a class or two and things had quietened down in general, I still had by far enough to keep me from going insane, though. And planning and taking classes now even feels almost routine, which I suppose is a good thing! I'm so much happier than I was last term, hehe.

At night on Tuesday and Wednesday, I didn't get around to doing much as I was tired and it was raining. I pretty much got myself home and stayed there, haha. Thursday was the return of regular Minato-ya nights, however I didn't manage to make it down for that either. I had my good friend Minori from Gifu prefecture coming down to stay and my apartment was a little bit of a mess.

On Friday night, things started to get a bit better. After my ESS club students didn't turn up for their club activity (how naughty!), I raced home and headed out for dinner in Himeji with Amanda. We catch up every now and then and have some great conversations, so I was really looking forward to it. We ended up at our favourite little place, the 'Hole in the Wall' as we call it, just near Himeji station. I can never remember the name, but it has a really great atmosphere and some very tasty food. After that we wandered up to Chum and chilled out over some coffee before zipping back to the station in time for our last trains. Or so we thought. Amanda's last train had actually left 10 minutes before we got there, but thankfully she could take a taxi and it wasn't too expensive.

On Saturday morning I got up quite early as I still had to clean my bathroom. The one downside of a bathroom that is basically all part of the shower is that everything gets wet and it's time consuming and hard at times to make sure it's all clean. It's not so bad in winter when the temperature is so low that mould just doesn't stand a chance, but as soon as the weather warms up, you have to be ultra cautious!

Around 10, I shot out to Himeji and met Minori at the station gates. She'd come down from Nagoya and had been on trains since 6am, hehe. Despite this she wasn't very tired, so we spent the day in Himeji, wandering around the castle grounds and through the Sweets Festival. The festival was very disappointing, but it didn't really bother me as I had good company. At night, we zipped back to Ako to grab dinner at Minato-ya and then headed home. We were both very tired so I made up a bed for her in the spare room (hooray, the room actually got some use for a change!) and we headed to sleep quite early.

I ended up waking up pretty late on Sunday, which was a bit unfortunate as it meant we didn't have time to check out the inside of Himeji castle as we'd planned. Instead, we grabbed some food at a konbini and caught an early afternoon train up to Himeji to just have a look around the shops. Some of my students were on the train and went nuts when they saw me with Minori, yelling out "Garufurendo? Garufurendo!??!", haha. Crazy little monkeys. They always look so disappointed when I reassure them that no, the girl I'm with is just a friend :P

In Himeji, we hung out until about 3pm when she caught the shinkansen back to Nagoya. I think this was probably wise, as although it's expensive, it's also bloody fast, safer and tends to be less crowded than the regular trains. Overall, I'm really glad she came down to check out Himeji and Ako. I was glad to have the opportunity to hang out with her and get to know her better, especially because the last time I met her I was really tired and not 100%. She's one of the nicest people I know in Japan, and is definitely one of the best friends I've made here. Shame she's so far away! :)