Saturday was a bit of a dead day, as I was so tired from the week that I slept in quite late. Damn you judo! :P I was a bit disappointed about how late I got up (as I am most Saturdays, hehe), as it meant I missed the Himeji Yatai Matsuri ... or so I thought! I later found out that it had been postponed due to bad weather, and was actually on on Sunday instead. So I was pretty happy about that :) I mucked around on Saturday afternoon and then headed out at night to Himeji, to catch up with Yusaku. We headed to a new yakitori place I had found, and downed some great chicken and a few beers. Afterwards, we wandered for a bit before ending up at Tiger Pub. I don't drink so much these days, so by about 10:30 I'd had enough and headed out with Yusaku to Doma Doma for a quick late night snack, before catching my last train home. It was good to catch up with Yusaku again as I hadn't seen him for a while and we always learn a lot of English/Japanese from each other.

Also, while I'm speaking about Tiger Pub I don't think I'll be going back there very often from now on. While I have some great friends there, like Andrew and Avi, there's just something about the place that really puts me on edge. It's very dank and dark, and looking around when I was there on Saturday, it felt even more run down than ever before. And while, like I said, some of the company is good, a lot of it isn't, and I'd really rather not be involved with some of the people that come in. Overly conservative? Perhaps, but I've learnt to trust my sixth sense over the years. It's a shame, because there aren't a whole lot of other options in Himeji!

Anyway, moving on, Sunday was a fun day too. Somehow, I'd been conned into playing in the Mitsubishi Social Club 'Grand Golf' tournament in the early morning, haha. Hiro and Julie Ann had invited me, as Hiro works for one of the many Mitsubishi divisions with operations in Ako. So I dutifully turned up at the Chikusa river at 9am, to the usual semi astonished stares from the workers and their families ;) I met some of Hiro's good friends, one of whom, Nozaki-san, was very amusing. We eventually started playing, thrashing our way through the long grass on the big field we were playing in. Grand Golf is much more like croquet than golf, and it was actually pretty hard. Mostly thanks to the long grass, haha. It had just been cut but not cleared, so there were massive piles of it that either made the ball jump, go in random directions or stop it completely, haha. Definitely a good challenge.

After the game, everyone took some time to wander the field to collect rubbish while the judges collated the scores. This was part of Mitsubishi's environmental iniatives, and it was heartwarming, as rural Japan can be a little feral in certain places at times. It was lovely to see that some people actually do care and want to help keep Japan beautiful. The area we were in was actually surprisingly clean, but I managed to find a good amount of rubbish hidden away in the bushes. Julie Ann won the day, however, when she found a bike in some reeds, haha. After we'd walked the length of the field, we returned to base to dump our rubbish, pick up a cold drink and sit down for the prize ceremony. My team, Mabu Tofu (AKA Team International thanks to it having a member each from Japan, China, the Phillipines and Australia), ended up coming third overall. For our efforts, we were rewarded with two big boxes of cookies each - good times! We then played bingo (LOL!) for the remaining prizes. Apparently it's pretty popular in Japan. I didn't manage to win anything from that, but most people on my team did, which was nice.

After the golf wrapped up a couple of us headed for lunch at Kappa Sushi. I had to go past the bank first, and as I did, I chanced across a big Matsuri right in the main street of town. Of course, nobody had told me about it and I had no real way of finding out otherwise, so it was a pretty big surprise. The festival, which was something to do with the salt heritage of Ako, took up most of the main street, throughout which heaps of food stalls had sprung up. I didn't have time to look around then, but after lunch, Julie Ann, Hiro and I came back for a quick gander. As Minato-san says so perfectly, it was 'nothing special', but I'm a sucker for any type of Japanese festival :) After a quick wander through the stalls, chatting to various people we knew, we called it a day.

Back at the ranch I got in touch with Kazuyo, who I'd arranged to meet at 2:15pm in Himeji. Unfortunately lunch had ended much later than I'd expected and I couldn't make it to Himeji by that time, so I arranged to meet her at just before 4pm. To my delight, she said the Yatai Matsuri was still going, so we raced up to the castle and were able to catch the end of it. The festival itself is a relatively new one, and is a parade of the 'portable shrines' from the various shrines all over Himeji city. They are quite large and brightly coloured with beautiful, intricated carvings all over them, and are carried by hundreds of fundoshi clad men. There's lots of drumming and shouting too, which always makes for a big crowd and a good time. It was all very Japanese, and lots of fun to watch. While we were there, a Japanese guy standing near us decided to start talking to me in English, despite the fact I was speaking Japanese with Kazuyo. He turned out to be a pretty cool guy, though, so we hung out and chatted for a little while before Kazuyo and I wandered off to get some coffee. Perhaps most amusingly he introduced himself as 'Eric', from memory ... interesting name for a full blood Japanese.

After coffee at Carma, one of my favourite little cafes, Kazuyo offered to help me through sorting out my mobile phone problem at Softbank. Admittedly I was hoping to get a completely new one thanks to the insurance, but the lady said that Softbank is now able to 'repair' water damage to their phones. Pfft, yeah right :P I think by repair she meant that they actually rip all the insides out and replace them with new ones, but keep the original case because it's marginally cheaper that way ;P I was a little disappointed, but hey, as long as I get a phone back I'm fairly happy ;) Unfortunately, I will lose my entire phone book because it was only saved in the phone memory, not the SIM. That is the price you pay for foolishness, though, I suppose! On the plus side, at least I will only put people back in that I really do speak to often.

After a quick trip up to Bon Marche to pick up some gaijin food for ESS club on Friday, I said goodbye to Kazuyo and headed back to Ako. I went to Minato-ya for dinner, which was great. I was the only person there so we chatted away for a few hours. Minato-san decided to close early and was in a very genki mood, so he hauled my bike into the shop and gave it a quick overhaul. No more squeaky chain, yeehaa! It's also much easier to ride now. I figured that the dirt and squeaky gears meant I was having to work harder, but I never realised just how much it was slowing me down - possibly up to 4 or 5km/h! That's what you get for not doing regular maintenance, I suppose ;P I really should be cleaning it down every month, or at least after each time I head to the mountains.

And that was my weekend! :)