It's been a weekend of eating, drinking and most importantly, being in the company of great friends. And I have the pictures to prove it! Above are pics of the Saturday night do at my place, which was instigated and organised in the main by the lovely Leina (the cutey in the green t-shirt). Below are pics of me with Suzi and Elliot, who had an intimate little dinner the night before at Suzi's gorgeous apartment. Fun times!


I had such a great weekend, and believe it or not, my apartment is practically sqeaky clean thanks to the assitance of Brianne and Reegan in the final panicky minutes before everyone arrived on Saturday night. And then all the awesome people who stayed on to do dishes and clean up after! What awesome peoples you all are!

Now of course I have to try and keep it neat til I leave for Australia. Only 2 weeks, so I should be able to manage that (curb your cynicism folks!).

Now it's time to turn my mind to very serious and important issues, such as Christmas shopping and trying to book up my time in Australia. So much to organise: meeting friends, going hiking, picnics, eating Aussie food, going to the movies for cheap, buying new clothes and CDs and most importantly, braving the beach and risking future skin cancer by trying to tan. It's all very well to be all pasty and pale in Japan, but I say to heck with healthy and alabaster, I want to be bronzed... at least a little healthy glow would be nice. I will endeavour not to get burned, because that would just be embarrassing...

At the moment I am reading a book called "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro. It's interesting... I am nearly halfway through so will reserve my judgement until the end, but I have been reading quite a few books by award-winning authors I haven't read before and getting hooked on the stories.

Well, better get back to doing nothing much at work... maybe I will look up some cute pictures to design Christmas cards for my 8th graders to colour in. Yes, that's it.. .as soon as I finish the next chapter of the book!

Another week already?

Wow, this week has flown by... I think it's all these public holidays... well, one at least. Yesterday was "Labour Thanksgiving Day" in Japan which incidentally fell on the same day as Thanksgiving in America... apparently. Of course being from Australia, where we don't even acknowledge Aboriginal people as the original inhabitants of the continent, I am a Thanksgiving novice and not entirely sure about these things. So, apart from a myriad of thanksgiving gatherings occuring this week, it was also my fellow home-townie and expat Emz's birthday (photo- me and Emz at Kobe Winery wearing Yukata!)... and we had an awesome dinner party at the Sky Buffet in town - all you can eat and drink in 1.5hrs for $30. Not bad... we all went crazy as large groups of foreigners in Japan are wont to do. And we ended the dinner with a raucous (and yet surprisingly melodic) rendition of "Happy Birthday" for the birthday girl. It got the attention of other patrons, some of whom even clapped and came to say Happy Birthday to Emz afterwards. It was really noice actually!

After that there was some bar hopping with general hilarity involved.

I have postponed my tutoring gig until Sunday afternoon this week in order to attend a nice little dinner party tonight being thrown by two lovely people - Suzi and Elliot. Then tomorrow is the BIG one at my place... at least 25 people in my smallish apartment... going to have to put up a notice for the neighbours and promise to turn the noise down at about 11.30pm.

Before I get to carried away typing all this stuff - to recap, Happy Birthday Emz! And Happy Thanksgiving - there's so much to be thankful for!

Just like any other Friday...

Good morning.
It's Friday. Friday is, by and large, a day for rejoicing. For me, Friday is a very very long day. To my young and carefree mind, Friday should be a day where you look forward to a night of going out for a few drinks and debriefing with friends (and boy do us gaijin- foreigners- need it in Japan!). However, usually I have to postpone this much needed therapy until sometime around 10pm on a Friday night because I spend these precious nights tutoring English to a couple of really sweet girls from a really sweet family.
But, hey, it's still a Friday which prevents me from appreciating this gig as much as I should. And you know what makes me an even more ungrateful woman? Well, not only do they pay me well, they feed me a well balanced meal for dinner afterwards.

The family I am talking about it the Yoshimuras. Mr. Yoshimura was my Japanese Teacher of English at the first school I worked at last year. He asked me to tutor his now 11 year old daughter, Sae. I have since started tutoring his 18 year old niece, Ayana, as well. We always have fun, and both Mr. and Mrs. have a good sense of humour and we manage to laugh and joke around despite the language barrier.

Two hours of tutoring and a meal later, my Friday night is almost over... and yet I still have that need to break out from the week and mingle with my friends.
So usually I drag myself out to town and spend the 1 1/2 remaining hours before the last train locating friends to share a drink with. Then we come home around midnight and I fall into bed.... though I have been known on occasion to insist on having an impromptu house party and have people over til about 3am. Last time I did that I felt rotten for the whole weekend, so I think I will try and avoid doing that again for a little while, although...
Well, play time is over and it's back to work... gotta find a lesson to teach little Sae.
xo

PS Above is a photo of Sae (pigtails in pink and white shirt) and her friend Ayako. Also Mr and Mrs. Yoshimura messing about, we were all taking silly pics of each other with our mobile phones!

Hi folks.
Every so often I get a new lease on life. This is one of those times. To celebrate, I am starting a new blog that will hopefully not be as messy as the last one! A clean slate is a good thing I feel...
I will endeavour to keep my posts more frequent, and perhaps shorter, though maybe you are already chortling at that because you know my fondness for writing a lot. I will do my best to keep it entertaining... failing that, at least mildly interesting.