Woo, another big weekend over. It was a pretty fun one, too. Speaking of which, it kicked off with one of the funniest things I've seen in a while. As I went to get my bike after school on Friday, I stumbled across two students getting a little interested in each other behind one of the bike racks. I didn't actually see what they were up to and it obviously wasn't anything too serious (thankfully!), but they flew apart when I came around the corner and looked at me very sheepishly. I often forget that my 'kids' are actually young adults, so I was a little surprised at first! I got over the shock pretty fast though and just laughed, grabbed my bike and rode off, wishing them a good weekend.

At night, we had the English teachers' Welcome/Farewell enkai at a really nice restaurant in Ako called Aoi. I'd seen it before but, like so many of the small little places in the area it's in, had never been. In true enkai style, there was a massive overload of food, and there were definitely some rather interesting ones. The culinary highlights included conger eel with umeboshi (salty plum) sauce and a mysterious fried dish that nobody could identify but which most people guessed to be whale. *sigh* Anyway, the most delicious dish of the night was definitely the breem & tofu steamed in sake. It was absolutely amazing and is definitely one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten. It's a celebration food, apparently, which is making me think I need more reasons to celebrate! :)

Aside from the food, the party was kind of average. The seating arrangements were such that two conversations developed (a 'boys' and a 'girls'), both of which I couldn't really join into. I don't know what the girls were talking about, but the boys were touching mostly on school management. Thankfully, Mitsumoto-sensei and Nakai-sensei saved the day and talked about random things with me, and Kotani-sensei joined in later. He's working at a school in Himeji now where my good friend Chip works, so we had something good to talk about there. It was really nice to see him (and Ishino-sensei) again, as I hadn't seen them since they left Ako SHS in late March. I may never see them again, so I was glad of the opportunity to say a final goodbye.

I was up at a decent hour on Saturday, thanks to getting a relatively early night on Friday. I took the opportunity to do some washing and played some Call of Duty 4 before catching the 1:40pm train into Himeji to play Ultimate Frisbee. Which leads into a rather funny story, hehe. As I was getting ready to go, I discovered to my dismay that all of my underwear was either drying or in the wash. Yes - I was completely out of daks ;/ Rather caught unawares, I didn't really have that many options. So I ended up having to go commando into Himeji to play frisbee - yikes! :/ I did, however, make sure I stopped off at the Sanyo department store to pick up a pair for the party at night. They didn't have any non-branded ones (I'm used to buying 7 packs for $15 or so) so I had to fork out 1,400 odd yen for the cheapest pair I could find. Probably serves me right :)

Frisbee itself was really good, I was glad I went. My new friend James taught me some useful throws and then helped me practise for about half an hour, which was a massive help. I still stuffed up my forehands in the game, but hey, they were better than they used to be. James used to captain one of the University of Washington teams, so is pretty strong. I had meant to leave frisbee at 4pm in order to grab a quick onsen and then head out to Sannomiya for a party at 6pm, but most of the people only turned up around 3:30pm and the game only got going at around quarter to four. So I decided to stay, and head to the party late. I ended up staying until well past 6pm, as Ewan, Mike and Lorelei rocked up as well and we got an awesome game going. Definitely worked off a few calories that afternoon, and was really happy to find that I didn't get all that tired. Must be all the riding I do!

After a quick onsen in the Egret building I rushed down to the station and caught a train across to Kobe. After all the running and the onsen I suddenly did feel pretty tired and almost fell asleep on the train. Not having eaten for nearly 24 hours probably didn't help either, hehe, although I'd had so much food the night before that I wasn't actually hungry until around 7pm anyway. When I got to Sanno, I met up with everyone at around 8:30 and we went up to a Nijumaru for a tabe-nomihoudai to celebrate Goran's, Amanda's and Emma's birthdays. It was a great night with lots of eating, drinking and talking. I hadn't seen some of the Perth crew for months, so it was sweet to see them all again despite being for just a short time.

I could have partied on and stayed at Goran's house, but decided to catch my last train back to Himeji instead, as I wanted to catch up with some other friends there too. Although I couldn't have known in advance, it ended up being a rather unlucky decision. When I got to Tiger Pub, I found out that I'd just missed one of my good friends that I had really wanted to see, another was in a bad mood and went home and yet another was down with bad hayfever. Not the best! About 2am I'd totally had enough and just wanted to go to sleep, totally dreading the 4 hour wait for my first train home. I was really lucky though, as my good friend Andrew suggested I head to the nearby capsule hotel. I didn't even know there was one in Himeji so had never even considered the idea, but was extremely relieved and got him to show me where it was.

I discovered, to my delight, that it was a really excellent place. Very close to Himeji station, extremely clean and not all that expensive (2,800 yen per night). I certainly wouldn't want to do it every week, but it's bloody convenient for those every-now-and-then occasions when I want to stay out a couple of hours past my last train but don't want to do an all nighter. As I said, it was a nice place, and within 5 minutes of walking in, I was in a capsule and asleep. It was my first time staying in a capsule hotel and I really did like it a lot. It's wonderfully no frills. You stick your stuff in a locker, go to your little bed (which is actually fairly decently sized, given the notion and reputation of the capsules), crawl in and sleep the night away.

I ended up sleeping fairly well, given that I generally have trouble sleeping in any bed other than my own. So I didn't feel too bad on Sunday morning, although the capsule had been rather hot so I was a bit dehydrated. I grabbed some water, checked out and headed back to Ako after grabbing a quick brunch at the nearby Delifrance. Back in Ako I grabbed a couple of hours of really good sleep then did some more washing and finished Call of Duty 4 before heading out to Ewan's Wine & Cheese night.

I took the Apple Flats 2005 merlot I picked up a little while ago, which is a really nice wine. It's Australian, but despite that, is not too expensive to pick up here. Ewan saved it for last and, although it may just have been that we'd been drinking some very ordinary wines all night, it really was delicious - very fruity. Ewan had also asked that we all bring something for dinner, so I teamed up with Kazu and picked up some food and crackers at Paone. I had planned to get to Ewan's by about 6:30 but Kazu only had his mama-chari and wanted to stop off at 47 Liquors along the way to pick up some wine, so we arrived at around 7pm, haha. Only 1 hour late! As I told him, in Australia, that'd be considered fairly on time. Amongst my generation, anyway, haha.

Most people were already there by that time, and Yoko, the last person, turned up a short while later. There were quite a few of us, actually - Ewan, Kazu the Gay, Kazu the Greatest, Yoko, Mike & Lorelei and two of their friends. Which was good, as it made for some really interesting conversation! I also managed to catch up with Mike for a bit to have a chat about HAJET/National AJET things, too, which was really useful. He was the president of National AJET last year, so had lots of handy info and advice.

Around about 9 o'clock, he and Lorelei plus their two friends had to head off, so it was down to the normal crew again. After Ewan saw them off he jumped in the shower as his new girlfriend decided to come up for the end of the party. The rest of us kept ourselves entertained by throwing jellybeans at each other (you know, the old game where you try to catch it with your mouth? :P) and drawing a face on the honeydew melon that Yoko had brought with her. Which was very amusing! We called it Melon-san and Yoko grabbed one of Ewan's stranger hats and put it on it, making it look completely ridiculous :) We put Melon-san inconspicuously on a chair for when Ewan came back and he laughed his head off when he finally noticed it. The funniest bit, though, was when he got back with Ai and I made Yoko cut the melon up. She totally freaked out because she didn't want to cut it's face, hahaha. Good times.

By the time we finished eating Melon-san, it was getting pretty late, so we gave Ewan a hand cleaning up and headed home around 11:30pm. I rode home with Kazu and chatted to him for a while, so didn't get to bed until around 1am. Normally, I definitely wouldn't have stayed up that late, but I don't have any classes this week and I'd gotten some really good sleep over the weekend. I'm only just getting back into the group, really, so I felt it was well worth spending the time hanging out with them and getting to know them better, given that school isn't going to be that demanding. All good!

This week is looking to be quite good too. Tonight is a rest night, and tomorrow is Japanese class. My friend Devin is coming down for that and dinner after, so it should be good. Wednesday is badminton (looking forward to challenging Ewan to singles again) and Thursday is Minato-ya night. I don't have any plans for Friday but that's probably good because I have to come to school on Saturday. It's a 'PTA' thing, where parents can come to school to meet the teachers and for some reason there are classes as well. It's a Monday timetable though so I don't have any classes, haha. Woe is me ;/ Still, we get Monday off, which is nice. Come to think of it, I don't have anything planned for this weekend. Oh well! I'm sure something will come up, and if not, I can think of quite a few things to do. Should be good!