ok another very hectic week! pretty much ever since i arrived ive been coaching a few kids for english speech contest. I briefly spoke about the Shirakawa area contest earlier, but since a couple of the kids made it thru to the All Fukushima finals the practices have seriously ramped up lately. so im staying pretty late after school everyday *sigh*

anyway the prefectural finals were on this Thursday (hooray). It is a day off school.. but its also awfully boring. Regardless of how cute the j-kids are, there's only so many times i can hear the story of Freddy the Leaf before i just start to tune out. Since ive put so much "work" into coaching these kids and i see how hard they try I do want them to do well.. but at the same time, if they do too well (i.e. make it to the All Japan Final) then thats just more weeks of staying late after school (blergh). In the end one of my students placed 3rd .. good enough to make the Finals in Tokyo (gah). The good news of course is that im rotating schools next week.. so it will now be PKs responsibility to stay back late =p I was sposed to meet the other Kennan Jets for a lil dinner.. but I had go to school afterwards for "closing ceremony" (double blergh)

Next up, friday nite ひき came around to take us to various parties in Iwaki. First up was crashing someone else's birthday party and then crashing out on their floor. For some reason in Japan they dont "crash" at someone's house when they are drunk.. they "crush" at their house... and inversely they get a "crash" on a cute girl. weird. ちょっとへんです.　Anyhoo.. we met some pretty nice Iwakians and drank a bit.. so it was all good

Next morning we arose to do a small spot of shopping, followed by 500円 lunch at the Art Gallery. A nice quiet morning before heading of to Spa Resort Hawaiians, where Hiroshi had some free tix that he needed to use before the end of the month. Basically its just a massive Hawaiian themed swimming pool. Although there aren't actually any swimming pools.. there are only wading pools and water slides and hot tubs and various onsens. It was pretty fun since it had been rather hot over the past weeks.. but im not sure if it would be worth paying full price just to wade around a bit. There were however an insane number of smoking hot bikini-clad j-girls.. so I maybe there are reasons to go back =p

Later that day... we made our to this Takoyaki party, where there was a takoyaki machine and people just brought different food stuffs to be used as filling. First was octopus (takoyaki), then beef (niku-yaki) then chicken (tori-yaki?) then salami + cheese (pizza-yaki). All very tasty.. but then the dessert-yaki came around! its pretty much the same except theres ton of sugar in the batter. Some good ones included choco-yaki, choco-momo-yaki, choco-banana-yaki, and honey-yaki. *gains many kilos*

Just to round out the night we headed to late night karaoke.. followed by a reasonably long drive back to Ishikawa to crash (or crush) at GYs house. *collapses*

gasp.. its only Sunday! this post is only halfway done. We headed out to Sukagawa to grab something to eat as well as to check out the large selection of giant shopping areas around the place. I bought a couple of items but nothing exciting enough to blog about really. The day ended with a trip back to Shirakawa's Mr Donut for late night snacks =)

Monday involved a small stop over at school to work for the day, before a long drive out to Aizu Wakamatsu for a pre-samurai-festival at ひき's. It wouldnt have been quite so long if not for the fact that we got lost going to everyones houses to pick them up =p The drive there was pretty insane... mostly cos the roads are like all 40 or 50km/h, and i was driving about 70-80 on them. I think i almost killed us all a few times.. but we got there in record time =)

The party was held in the upstairs seating area of ひき's parent's noodle store. Basically it was a massive clump of foreigners in one room eating ramen and consuming way too much alcohol. It was one of those parties where you should probly meet tons of new people.. but i didnt really... partially cos im anti-social.. and partially cos I was intoxicated. Still fun though.. we all kinda fell over into the next room, designated as the sleeping room. I think there were 18 ppl.. but 16 futons.. which leaves a couple of JETs being quite uncomfortable for a night. blergh...

It wasnt particularly easy to wake up the next morning.. but we soldiered on to go and stand around for hours to watch geriatric samurais re-enact some sort of battle. It was awesome though.. so I cant complain. Theres not much i can say about it.. so ill just insert a few snapshots of the day.

Towards to end i was suffering pretty badly from the lack of sleeping... blergh.. but at least i didnt have a 2 hour drive home... double blergh! I dont really remember much of the drive home which is not a good thing when you are the driver. On the last stretch i was pretty much hoping that the car would drive itself home cos i was not lucid enough to do anything to help it.

:: vocabulary words ::
Iwaki = a beachside city in Fukushima
onsen = japanese hot spring bath