Another weekend in the cities

Friday night after driving down from Tango with Leigh, I joined Megan and her buddy Kelly in Kameoka for the evening. After much ado about losing an expensive, cult item -- tortillas were made by the semi-Mexican Kelly (and consumed by all).

Saturday I went to Osaka with Ian and Kelly. I had my rolling suitcase with me because inside it was my semi-broken iMac! Rolling that around was far easier than taking it in the original box. Also, I looked even more like a tourist than usual! Always a plus. We arrived at the Osaka Apple Store! With the help of Ian and Kelly, I managed to describe the computer problems to our helpful 'genius', and he whisked it away for repairs. I will be picking it up in two weeks time, and hoping meanwhile that they are fixing all the right problems! It would be really nice to have an electronic escape weapon for those long afternoons after school...
With some serendipity going on, I ran into Anthony on the train to Osaka, Simon and Lyle around the Shinsaibashi area, and Lauren O. with a bunch of gaijin buddies not long after. After a while, the three of us (tryst, if you will) met up with Megan and her friend Doug of Gifu.

We all had dinner and drinks at the Outback Steakhouse. Outback in Osaka is kind of like Disneyland for English teachers in Kansai -- I don't honestly know why. Our kindly server, Yuri, managed to put up with us for 2+ hours as we drank too much beer, ate too much meat (why did I order so much, again?) and booby-trapped Ian's plate with sauce.

After an amusing train ride back to Kameoka, we left Ian for dead and sang lots of Japanese songs at karaoke. As to say, the three of them did and I drank cocoa! I also sang me some "Dust in the Wind" because I was tired and it was the only song I could manage. Accompanied by Kelly's crunking. The perfect evening.

Sunday
Sunday was mostly laziness. Megan, Doug and I dropped Kelly off at Kyoto station and went down to the Sanjo/Teramachi area to walk around the river. It was a beautiful day! Families were out enjoying recreation, the birds were enjoying the sky (from what I could see), and there were heron everywhere! I tried to take some pictures... mostly the day was so pretty it was hard to take a bad picture, but I believe I managed. I also remember that we had Indian food with Amy, Ian and Lauren as well and that it was delicious. I did, however, have a fabulous late night road trip back to Tango with Leigh and we caught up on our weekends!

Yuppie Weekend/Sweeny Todd

On Friday, Leigh and I drove in her car down to the city. The roads are icier these days, so the Japanese people have put in hot water sprays that get rid of the ice on the asphalt. Only thing is, some of them reach your windshield and it's fairly terrifying.

I spent Friday night hanging with Megan and Greg watching The Prestige (which was kindly given to me by Desirae and Andy for my birthday) and eating PIZZA (honest to God pizza).

This is Greg. He always has a good time!

Saturday was going out for burgers at an Americana style burger 'joint' with Greg, John and Megan. It was a LOT of fun hanging out with those guys. And adding a burger joint and a dr. pepper to the mix, it felt like I wasn't in Japan.

Not long after, Megan and I put on some dresses and make up so we could look/feel fancy for the opera that Ian had gotten us tickets to! High heels make me walk... poorly. The opera, as it turned out, was a mix of professional singers and community theatre types. It was interesting, and ridiculous. The Japanese people in the crowd took any excuse to clap to the beat of a song, even if there wasn't really a beat at all. And despite the fact that they generally have no rhythm.

As we were all dressed up, we decided to grab some posh food at a restaurant I have forgotten the name of! We ordered lots of delicious dishes and alcohol (for me: espresso drinks as I was battling jet-lag). Twice it was mentioned that we were having a yuppie's night out. Posh food, posh clothes and the fact that we're all way too young to be taking ourselves seriously doing either.

Sunday Megan and I got together with Amy at her apartment downstairs (we were soon joined by Ian and Lauren). Amy fixed us up a 'southern breakfast' with walnut/banana/chocolate chip pancakes, sausages, (Megan made eggs), and tea! It was immensely delicious. We then wandered out to the city of Kyoto to see Sweeny Todd in an actual movie theatre. Japanese movies theatres are very fancy and I was pleased with the over all experience! Movie was good, too!

Then it was a long series of train rides back to Tango. However, fortunately for me, there was no snow to come home to. And there hasn't really been any snow all week!

Blakeney vs. the Mukade

Blakeney vs. the Mukade

I had a long, semi-productive day at the Board of Education this Friday. I made some props for the following week at elementary school, did some studying, caught up on bill paying, and fawned over plane tickets to different places in the world (Thailand, China, Korea,...) I might end up in Thailand for Christmas or New Years to get away from the cooooold!

After work I raced down to Yasaka to pick up Leigh, Liz and Leigh's friend Jer, who is visiting her. We drove down in my small car to Sonobe, which is about 2 hours south of Yasaka. From Sonobe we parked and hopped a train to Kyoto!

I got off in Kameoka, which is about 14 km from Kyoto city (where the rest of the group went to find their youth hostel). I however was cheaper and opted to stay with friends! So my first night was spent at Megan's house. She is a 3rd year CIR in Kameoka who is from Raleigh, NC. She looks like a long lost Weaseley sister and is the coolest, nicest girl I know in the city. We spent the evening hanging out in her cool apartment, she told me stories from her 2 years here in Japan and I shared the Inaka gossip with her. We looked at pictures and gabbed late into the evening. We were joined at some point by John Blakeney, a 2nd year ALT in Kameoka from Ireland. He is awesome. The three of us had an awesome time drinking weird carb-free beer and laughing at me not making sense (due to exhaustion plus being a lightweight).

At some point Blakeney (which I will refer to him as there is more than one John) started yelling in mysterious Irish English (which isn't really English) and said he'd been bitten by a mukade!!! Megan, having recently had a mukade up her pant leg, flipped out in the most graceful of ways. "Where is it? How did it get in??? Kill it kill it kill it!!!" So as Blakeney put ice on his arm, I lifted up the pillow, expecting something the size of... the pillow, and instead found a baby mukade. Megan sprayed it with half a bottle of bug spray, which probably did more damage to us than it did the bug. The bug died instantly and we tossed it away. Fortunately it was no bigger than a caterpillar so Blakeney did not develop a wound/brain damage/death.

Eventually, after more mukade scouting was had, Blakeney left and the two of us ladies fell asleep.