my life recently

so the mito komon festival went down well. we danced from 4pm to 9pm up and down the street until we could dance no more.

there were two songs to learn - the same ones as last year, one of them reminded me of "thriller" and strangely enough one of the dance moves in the song was like a "zombie"...

it was fun (kind of), the regural beer breaks were helpful, but in was good to meet up with some of the new jets in a social atmosphere. they all seem really nice

the second group of them arrived last week and i went into tokyo to pick them up and bring them back to mito. now there are 32 newbies. another 2 will come next week and i will pick them up too (with my boss who will just stand there looking useless)

i finally caught up with tanmi, a friend from high school. we just havnt been able to meet up in the last year that i have been here. it was great to catch up, she has been living in hawaii for the past year since i saw her last.

i moved offices to the international association on friday. the new CIR is taking over my job and i am taking over the job of the guy who was here for 5 years. not bad here, but a bit quiet. no aureleian to talk to now..

on the weekend i made a spare of the moment decision to drive with tom to shizuoka to meet up with katie. i had been talking to her on msn on friday arvo and when i got home from work i thought "got nothing to do and it would be cool to see her"...

not a great idea to drive during the obon holiday season in japan. a 4 hour journey turned into 7....
we got there at 2am on saturday morning. but then stayed up talking till 5am

after getting up at around midday, we met up with a friend of katie's and went for a drive to see a waterfall and some tea fields in the mountains. later we went out to dinner with a few more of her mates. lots of fun

we left her town around midday to try and beat the traffic home... but got sidtracked at gotema outlet mall. i bought a few tops, a pair of pants, a yoga mat. tom bought some shoes.

if we had kept going we may have missed the accident wheich held up traffic for hours. it took just as long to get home as it did to get there. 7 hours...
we got home at 9pm...

but it was worth it to see katie and go shopping :)

this week so far we have had "Ibaraki Orientation" for the newbies. i have been spending the last few weeks preparing presentations and handouts for this day. it went well but way overtime.. people turned up late cause of train delays and also we had too much to talk about.

this weekend tom and i will go up to saitama to catch up with the kitohs and megu's family. more driving... hope the traffic will be better this time