Hey gang. As I left off, we had another enkai on Thursday. Japanese people get ridiculous at enkais. Ian boasted that he got drunk with the mayor, lol. People open up, act, and talk about things that they NEVER would in the office, and the good thing about enkais is that all is forgotten the next day. So if one of my co-workers gets ridiculously drunk and makes a fool of him/herself, nothing is said the following day at work. It’s as if it never happened, lol. I talked to one of my English teachers a lot at the enkai. Other people joined us. Ian and I taught them to say “y’all” and explained that it’s a southern combination of you + all. Ian was saying that we are southerners and have a southern accent, and they were like, “oh, rearry?” At one point in time, I had to get up and use the bathroom. I had never been to that restaurant, so I wasn’t sure where they were. I got into the main hall and found what I thought was the bathroom. There were two doors with kanji above them. I had a 50/50 chance of getting it right. I went into the bathroom, and to the right was a curtain area, left a sink, and straight a toilet. I used the bathroom and afterward peeked behind the curtain area only to my horror to find a urinal! Yep, I was in the men’s room! 
I very quickly left before anyone came in.
Yesterday, I had the day off. I enjoy three day weekends. 
We decided to have a lazy day yesterday and hike Mt. Ichifusa today. Therefore, we didn’t do a lot yesterday. I washed a couple of loads of laundry and cleaned around the house. One good thing about such a small house is that it doesn’t take very long to clean! We took an afternoon walk around town before deciding to drive to Taragi to go to Natural, a really good bakery, and the 100 yen store (basically a Japanese version of the dollar store). Everything at Natural is delicious. Yum! We decided on eating ice cream before buying bread to take home. Their ice cream is homemade. I had mango, and Ian had rum raisin. There was this nice little porch area outside, so we went out there to enjoy our ice cream. Sometimes you just have to stop and enjoy your life, and that was one of those moments.
Today, after skyping home this morning, we went to Mt. Ichifusa to try to climb it again. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to the top. I’m willing to dedicate every Saturday to climbing that darn mountain until I make it to the top, but Ian’s a little less anxious about it. It is a really hard mountain to climb. The “path” is okay until a certain point, and then it just becomes extremely steep with rocks and roots as your pathway. You definitely have to pay attention to each step. It’s not exactly the friendly gravel or dirt paths of LBL. We kept meeting people on our way up asking us if we were going to the top. When we said yes, they would glance down at their watches and say something that we believe was something like “you don’t have time” before the sun sets. It was about 3PM, and the sun doesn’t set until about 6:15PM, so we made it as far as we could before turning back. That’s not exactly a mountain that I would want to be on at night. We did see a pretty good view of our mountain valley through the tree line. I asked a passing hiker if Yunomae was in the valley, and he said yes, so I know it was our little valley. It’s a very strenuous mountain to climb, but come hell or high water, we will climb Mt. Ichifusa sometime within the next year!
I’m looking forward to next weekend. Our friend, Brittany, will visit us. She’s been with the JET Program for the past two years and spent September walking around the island of Shikoku on a pilgrimage. We always wanted to visit her while she was in Japan, but it seemed like things always got in the way of us coming to Japan. However, things happen for a reason, and now we’re here! It’s going to be really good to see her. We don’t have big plans for the weekend. Since she spent the past month basically walking, we’re going to see what she wants to do. There are a lot of cool and fun things to do in the area, so we’ll see, or we might just enjoy having a lazy day and catching up!
Tomorrow is sports day at my elementary school. I’m not 100% sure what that includes, but I’m sure I’ll spend the day watching/participating in sporting events.
No comments:
Post a Comment