Never really thought of myself as a blogger before... but it seems to be the trend of late, so I thought I'd give it a go. Apologies in advance for the boring content you will endure as I capture my life in size 10 Arial font (for the most part, anyway).
So without further ado, Let's blogging!
It's Friday afternoon and everyone is off doing homeroom stuff. The tea lady and I were chatting for a while, and I said I should do something productive. I told her I might start cleaning out my desk (it needs to be cleaned). Straight away she said "mada mada mada!", meaning "not yet! not yet! not yet!" She told me I still have plenty of time to do that. Her desk is next to mine, and she said if I cleaned out my desk now, she would be sad everytime she looked at it. And it's too early to be sad.
On Saturday night, I went to a surprise birthday party for a friend. The party started at 8pm, but I was on my way back from Tokyo so ended up arriving fashionably late with N around 9:40ish.
About 11 people were there to celebrate. Food was ordered in from one of the best restaurants around (Hyakuzen) and the drinks were flowing.
The host of the party disappeared at one point, and returned wearing only his Y-fronts and sunglasses, and was yielding a bag full of stuff from the 100 yen store. We played a batsu game, which is where you play some sort of game, and the person who loses/makes a mistake has to partake in some sort of penalty. The game we played was "takenoko" or bamboo shoot. It's difficult to explain the rulese - one of those games you have to play to understand.
Anyway, N and I were a bit reserved at the beginning, but then N grew a bit bolder and decided to be more active in the game. She paid the price.
But a good night was had. Stayed the night, and woke up to a huge breakfast and great music.
I went out for dinner with a friend the other night. She is taking over from me as the secretary for the Gunma JET Council. She doesn't have very big shoes to fill, I must say. I wasn't exactly the most productive secretary Gunma JETs have ever seen. Sure, the minutes were typed up and any correspondence dealt with. But above that, I didn't really do much else.
It had been a long time since I had hung out with K, and had a decent talk about, well, whatever we felt like talking about. I realised (again) as I was sitting there, eating my fried chicken and veges and having a conversation about Australia/American/Canadian polictics, just how amazing K is. She is knowledgeable, she is entertaining, she is sarcastic, she is beautiful, she is endearing, she is... awesome. She's the kind of person who inspires people. She's the kind of person who makes you want to be a better person. She's the kind of person who makes you want to do things that make you happy; things that you are passionate about.
I think it was the last time I will see K before I leave Japan. But I know that she is one person I will definitely keep in contact with post-JET. Thanks for the past year, K.
Yep, only four weekends to go til my time in Japan is done. And I have to go to Tokyo on every one of those weekends. So this weekend, I am making the most of being in my house by cleaning up and going through three year's of stuff. Actually, it's more than three year's worth of stuff, because my predecessor left stuff in the cupboards, and her predecessor left stuff in the cupboards. For some reason, people on JET think their successor is going to want a fax machine that doesn't work, or a set of purple fluffy ear muffs, or a plastic container that, well, I don't know what it's meant to do. I mean, when you move out of a house or apartment under normal circumstances, you don't usually think "Oh, maybe the next person living here who I have never met will want this stuff that I have never used before. Best if I leave it here for them rather than throw it out." But I'm not going to do that. I'm throwing all this crap out. (I hope you appreciate my efforts B!)
It's Friday afternoon and everyone is off doing homeroom stuff. The tea lady and I were chatting for a while, and I said I should do something productive. I told her I might start cleaning out my desk (it needs to be cleaned). Straight away she said "mada mada mada!", meaning "not yet! not yet! not yet!" She told me I still have plenty of time to do that. Her desk is next to mine, and she said if I cleaned out my desk now, she would be sad everytime she looked at it. And it's too early to be sad.
