The weekend was fabulous. I can usually gage what kind of weekend I had based on how tired I am on Monday. It was a challenge but I kept my eyes open all day. We got things started on Friday night with a meeting of the Seibu Ladies Strong Drinkers Club. This is a meeting of all the available women from my junior high school in which we have a huge meal and enjoy some drinks. Those ladies are great! Especially Hanaoka-sensei. She is hilarious. I don’t really understand everything but I can follow the conversation reasonably well. It gets a little more difficult as we have more drinks because I can’t concentrate on what everyone is saying but they make a good effort to help me understand. The food was great. It was all Japanese and I really liked every course. This is unusual for me. I think I have finally changed my tastes enough that I can enjoy the things that I used to really dislike. An example of this would be the tofu dish I had. It was large cubes of tofu served in warm soy milk. This isn’t something I would have enjoyed last year at this time but it was really delicious. After that party ended, Emi and I headed to the train station after making a brief stop at another party. When we got back, Kosa met us at the train station which was good of him. We didn’t really feel like walking at that point. Then we stayed up late into the night playing cards and carving our kanji names into my kitchen table. The table is crap and I am getting a new one soon. I don’t know when though because I won’t have a free evening until Sunday of this week. The thought of that is a bit horrifying at the moment. I enjoy my night classes but I want a free evening or two to get the house cleaned up or just to do nothing. There are some holidays coming up but I am thinking of going to Korea with Kosa to get his visa straitened out. I have wanted to go there but haven’t really had the time.
On Saturday we headed down to Kiso Machi for a two day rock festival and camping trip. We had way too many people sleeping in that tent I’ll tell you! I was so squashed. I was also sleeping on many very sharp rocks. The grounds were we camped were very cool though. It was on the side of a small mountain and there was lots of fires burning and people barbequing. I have wanted to sit around a camp fire for a some time now so it was quite nice to finally get the opportunity. There were no miquitos either so we sat out for pretty much the whole night. The event itself was not that well attended. I think it was because this was the first year and not that many people know about it. They were hoping for about 600 people but they would be lucky if there was 200 there at best. The bands were all quite good though. There was a variety of genres. I heard a Japanese country group for the first time and I thought they were pretty good. The best part was that the members of all the bands hung out with us for the rest of the time. Declan and I went fishing with a group of them in the afternoon and he caught a fish. I didn’t have much luck but it was so relaxing! I haven’t been fishing for a while now. One of the bands stayed up all night with a big group of us and we all just made up songs together on the guitar and drums. It was so cool and chilled out. It didn’t feel like everyday Japan. I came home late Sunday night after having a late dinner in Kiso Fukushima. I caught the last train home by about 30 seconds and I felt lucky I got it. I was so exhausted I would have hated to have to get up and take the first train in the morning to get home before work. Kosa went to Osaka on Sunday night to have a job interview on Monday. He didn’t get the job but it is good that he has started doing interviews.
In other news, there has been a lot of bears around the area lately. Everyone is very worried about this and I think the kids are allowed to go home earlier as a result. There was an intruder in one of my elementary schools yesterday as well. Not a bear but a person. That was a little strange. The kids were right on it though. They told the teachers right away. The teachers all immediately went into the hall and scoured the school for the guy. He apparently fled across the parking lot and was not found. We have increased our after school patrol people as a result of this.

So some time has now elapsed and school festival is over. My conducting thing went ok but I was really nervous and failed to take my shoes off to stand on the conducting desk. They wrote it off as cultural differences at the enkai afterwards. I don’t have the pictures from the school festival yet but I will next week some time. Kosa and I are going to Korea on Friday for Thanksgiving and his birthday. Should be fun. I don’t know if he will be able to get back into the country because of his tenuous visa status but our hopes are high. The worst that can happen is that he will have to stay in Korea and then go home to England. I am feeling a little stressed out trying to get this all together but I know it will be a great holiday if I can get everything done. This past week I have been really busy but have really enjoyed myself. I played tennis for the first time and had a great time! I want to play again, as soon as possible. I was terrible and can’t serve but it was so fun. Most of the weekend was used up with school festival. Kosa was off at a soccer tournament so I just chilled on Sunday for the most part. A bunch of people came back to our place after the soccer and we all had dinner together. I bought a new table and chairs set that was quite cheap. Apart from that, life continues on as usual. I hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving and I will try and post something good about Korea as soon as possible. These pictures are all from the camping and music festival. We all really liked this band called High Luck Club. We hung out with them for a while and they were lots of fun. There is also a great picture of this guy who wore rubber boots the whole weekend. He has a very distinct sense of personal style that I greatly respected.