another post that took too long to write

I know, i know. i confess, its been many weeks since my last post.

so many things have happened since then i can hardley remember what i wanted to post.

since the sports day at the end of october i have been very busy with preparations for the ibaraki daisuki festival and also the ALT midyear seminar which i had to be the MC at.

in the middle of all that i went to tokyo to hang out with tom between tournaments and did a bit of shopping and partying in tokyo with a friend from sakado days.

the festival was on the 12th and 13th. it was not in mito like it had been in previous years, but in tsukuba to commemerate the opening of a new train line, the tsukuba express. a long way away. about 1.5 hours in the car.

at the festival, australia had a booth only on the sunday, but i had to be there to help out on both days. i spent most of saturday helping the UK people sell irish coffee and then i did a bit of translating up on stage for one of the international "acts"

sunday was australia's day. i had gone all out decorating our booth. i made 5 huge kanagroos out of paper that i stood up around and also printed out lots of pictures, flags and stickers to give out. We were selling beer. coopers and fosters. we only had one case of each so we had to carefully decide who to push the fosters towards cause it was a bit hard to sell when you had coopers on offer. so quite a few unsuspecting japanese people got bad beer.

after the festival on sunday i went into tokyo again to hang out with tom cause he was back from gotemba for only one night. we spent monday at asakusa and odaiba and then he caught a flight to miyazaki and i took the bus home.

this week has been even craazier. after getting back to work on tuesday, i had a primary school visit on tuesday and wednesday. the one on tuesday went fine. easy, all they wanted us to do was speak english to the kids. wednesday was a bit more crazy cause i managed to get myself on teh wrong train and go in the worng direction to get to the school. it was a long story why it happened, but in the end i got back to the right school and station with 20 mins to spare.

wed afternoon i was helping to host 10 australian and NZ visitors to the prefecture office. wed night was a welcome party at a hotel in mito. great japanese food and we went out to a pub afterwards and celebrated australia getting into the world cup.

on thurs i went with them to kairakuen (the place kate and james nicknamed the ninja house) and then to kasama, famous for pottery. we all got to make out own pot too on teh wheel. first time i had really used one so it was fun. i made a vase. but we dont get them back for 3 months cause they have to fire them and glaze them for us and then send them back hopefully not broken..

fri was back to kasama to pick them up from their japanese ryokan hotel and then a visit to the mayor and a trip to tsukuba science city. then we dropped them off in mito to meet up with host families to look after them for the weekend.

this weekend is my first free weekend in months it feels like. i am spending it all in mito. i am definately not going into tokyo at any point and i am going to relax. i cleaned my bike this morning and i might go for a ride later in the arvo after lunch. then maybe go shopping at the new shopping centre that just opened in the outskirts of mito.

well now i can get back to relaxing now i have finished this post!