this weekend was a super long weekend, as it was a public holiday on monday and then i had mid year conference on tuesday and wednesday. Jojo came to visit on friday nite, and i took her out to karaoke in koriyama, not so much cos its exciting but more so she can see what its like to live in Fukushima-ken. i.e. where theres nothing to do cept karaoke.

on Saturday we had a pretty easy day, just explored Shirakawa a bit, and visited Kominejo. We went to Segaworld to take some purikura, and it was swarming with my JHS students. Most of whom exclaimed something like "eeh?!? ian-sensei no kanojo?", so embarassment. One group proceeded to take multiple photos of us. Although one of them was kind enough to show me how to get purikura sent to my keitai.. which is awesome. They turned out amazing btw =)

That night we just had quiet one, cos Jo needed some resting. We watched the new Futurama movie, it was a D&D / LOTR spoof. I found it a bit disappointed compared to the first 2 movies.. but I take whatever Futurama i can get really. Could it be that ive outgrown the nerdiness of spoofs of the fantasy genre? maybe ive finally grown up.. or maybe it just wasnt very good =p

Sunday morning I went to play ultimate in Yabuki and Jo rested and Skyped at home. It was a pretty light session as i had to leave early, and they were too busy preparing for Gaia cup for me to get any real practice in. I also mildly sprained my ankle *sigh*.

After that i headed home to take Jo to a sweet potato party. It was at the home of a lady in my eikaiwa class, unfortunately i had no idea where that was. I did find it eventually, it was like way out of town somewhere.. i couldnt find it again if i tried.

Anyways the party was really fun actually.. we ate a lot of home cooked j-foods.. and talked about how my Japanese isnt any good.. and how my sister can sorta speak chinese, but i cant... and we played with Mark's daughter Monica.. who is 2 and speaks a bit of english, a bit of chinese and a bit of japanese. Jo also got to try on a Kimono.. which see seemed to enjoy.. =p

I sorta wasted Monday by missing the Shirakawa Ramen festival, because i was curled up in a ball in bed trying to keep warm. I did make a brief appearance at Round1 in Koriyama, although i wasted a lot of my minutes trying to break the high school on this uber lame snowboarding game. I managed to get 2nd place.. grr. Other games of interest were the photography game, sorta like point blank, but with a camera instead of a gun.. and the balance game where you just have to balance.. thats it.

I crashed out in Nihonmatsu so that id be closer to Fuku-city in the morning for mid year. I had sadly caught a cold from the sweet potato party.. grr. So i felt pretty terrible all of the first day, and probably shouldnt have gone out for drinkies that nite. Especially since we ended up walking around in the circles in the cold for like hours trying to find a Indian Curry place which turned out to be closed.. blergh... we did end up at a cool jazz bar which was pretty nice to chill out.

Wednesday was a total write off as I was barely lucid from the minute i woke up. My head cold was pretty awful.. i struggled thru the first session, but eventually gave up and went home at lunchtime. One of the teachers there was telling me that i should go to the hospital, because thats apparently what japanese people do when they get a cold. weird. i guess their public health system isnt as insanely inefficient and congested as the Australian one. I guess that happens when your government isnt controlled by kickbacks =p

.. in other news: i got a (very close to) max pay rise, back in Sydney. if you remember correctly im technically on annual leave atm, i havent quit my job. The new salary will probably start when im on leave without pay, so i may never see it, but its another point to consider in my re-contracting dilemma. my new salary is approximately insanely too much money. like the kind of money that grown ups make... eep!