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Published: October 17th 2009
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Kyoto
food was SO good! Hmmmmmm..... So its been a while since I updated this, save for my last entry about losing everything, which Im still p155ed off about, dagnamit!! The jobs been going well - at first, the kids were really frustrating and I really felt like slapping some of them upside the head at times, but then I revelated that in the grand scheme of things, nothing really matters. So now Im having a laugh with the kids, most of whom dont really give a 5h1t about English. My apostrophes dont seem to be working, so Im going to stop using them - its not that I dont know how to use them!
Silver week Man, I cant believe I have to write all this out again. I still feel like punching a hole in the wall. Or a person. Although I very much doubt that I could punch a hole in a person....
So I had a whole 5 days off because of 3 consecutive national holidays, one of them being Respect the Aged Day. So I went to Toyama with Alex, via Kyoto and then back via Osaka. On the Saturday, I had my mountain schools sports day, so I
Toyama
the relos had to watch my students doing kiddie events as opposed to proper track and field events like back home, and was so amused by the opening ceremony where one of the kids ran the perimeter with a torch a-flame in his hand held high above his head to the theme of ROCKY(!), and then running up some stairs and lighting the big Olympic-esque torch with his mini one. It was so surreal.
At 12pm, Alex picked me up and we headed to Kyoto, which took us around 4 hours. We had a bit of a scare when we got onto the toll road and then realised that we had less than a quarter of a tank of petrol. So after a mini panic sesh, I managed to find a petrol station on the ol Garmin satnav. Unfortunately we had to get off the toll road to fill er up and then get back on, so we paid more, but luckily we had an ETC card for the trip, so at least we werent paying stupid money. Well we still were kinda, but heigh-ho. When we got to Kyoto, we had dindins with Mr. North Mountain, where I finally managed
Nissan Silvia
the car that fits 300 horses in its engine. kerrayzee to get some sukiyaki - woohoo! So sweet, Im pretty sure Mommas sukiyaki was never that teeth-rotting.
The next day we left early to go to Toyama, so we didnt really get to see Kyoto =( But the drive was sweet - no traffic and when its shared between 2 people, its not so bad! We were taken out for dinner by Mori Junko, who brought her grandchild with - she was pretty cool. Kept repeating what Alex was saying with good pronunciation. She hasn even started studying English - kids are like Bounty kitchen towel!
On Respect the Aged Day, I got to see my grandpappy, whos like the best grandaddy in the world. Ever. Fact. I also got to introduce Alex to some of the relos in Namerikawa, including my 20 year old cousin who drives a Nissan Silvia. Ive never seen Alex so green-eyed. We felt the power of the 300 horses when we were dropped off that night and he found a straight with no traffic. Its like taking off in a plane!
We headed to Osaka on Tuesday rather leisurely, and thought wed get to Osaka around 14:30, but it seemed like
Sports Day
oh the excitement... the whole country was heading in the same direction, so after hours of non-stop traffic, we finally reached Osaka at 19:00! Not a good day. We then went out for dinner with Joe the Yank and an English couple. Nuff said. We needed a second dinner, so we went to Mos Burger for the first time. I quite liked it. Better than Macs, although much smaller and not fast. Which is probably a good thing. We spent the rest of the night drinking whiskey with Joe and went to bed the latest wed been up since we arrived here - a whole 1am! Crazy cats! It was pretty warm, so we had to sleep with the window open, but that meant we could hear all the traffic outside, a kinda lose-lose situation. To make matters worse, Alex got a dodgy tummy and had to get up in the middle of the night to empty his stinky bowels. He was in so much pain, he felt the need to wake me up and tell me about it. Needless to say, I went straight back to sleep after a couple of seconds. As Michael McIntyre wisely said - dont wake us up!
Ryugado
avalaaaaaaanche!!!!! Sports Day So my main school had its sports day postponed a few times due to swine flu. 5 kids from the same class all got it, so they had that class on lockdown for a week. When the day finally came, I kinda sat in the preparation tent not really helping. And then it was my turn to take part in the kasou event, where the kids dressed 2 teachers from their team up and then did a little dance at the end. I was one of the teachers, along with a male PE teacher from the orange team - go team orange!! They dressed us up as characters from
ge ge ge no kitaro, which is an anime series about monsters. I was Kitaro - the main guy who flies on a ghost and whose eye is his father. Yeah, makes sense. The PE teacher got dressed up as Neko-musume, whos actually a girl cat! Poor guy - he was so embarrassed and then he had to do the dance at the end, which he hadnt quite mastered! My poor team - we were continually second best all the way through...! But it was still good fun,
Purikura
an afternoon of fun in kochi city and I got to know some of the kids outside the classroom, which was nice.
Egypts visit So Egypt managed to make it over and went galavanting to Honshu with Alex for 5 days before coming back to Kochi for 5 days and then heading off again for 10 days. While the boys were back in Kochi, we went for a cycle ride up the mountain to Odochi. Didnt quite make it there though, although we did have some yummers ramen. Oh, and I ran over a snake!!!! That was weird. The next day I went white water rafting with Egypt on the Yoshino River, which was pretty good fun. Wholesome too - there were two 9-year-old girls on our raft. I even managed to do a roly poly off the rock into the water. Whodathunkit?! The next day we went to the Ryugado Caves, which Alex sped through in what I believe to be record timing. He wasn made for sightseeing...
Back in Kochi After their flying visit, they left for Osaka, and I was left on my lonesome once again. Simple enough, although Id kinda gotten used to having dinner made for me... So I finished watching Alias after my long hard days at work, and frolicked about in Kochi city for lie-zure-ay.
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