Game Day

I know I said these would get longer, but I'm sorry to say this will be one more short post. However, next week I will be at speech contest and the week after will be my performance and Kobe trip, so these should liven up soon! This week I spent late at school every day helping the student practice for the speech contest on that will happen this Saturday (10/4/14). This week I will be doing the same and I'm so excited for the contest to be over so I don't have to stay late anymore! I will also be judging half of the original speeches, so I'm excited to here what the students from around Kitakyushu came up with!

This week like I said was fairly uneventful. On Friday I went to Swing21, the jazz bar I'll be performing in next week, to run through our set. It was a lot of fun and I got a chance to talk more with everyone. After rehearsal I met up with Patrick, Leah, and the two new JETs Chris and Becca at a Turkish restaurant. Even though I've been here over a year now it was my first time going. The food was delicious! The owner is from Istanbul, but can speak English and Japanese. We talked with him a lot about the different cultures and asked him questions about Turkey. We ended up staying at the restaurant for hours just hanging out after a long week of stay late at school to help the students with their speech contest practice. It was really nice to relax and learn a bit about a new place!

Saturday I mostly stayed in and cleaned. I could have gone out with some friends but I'm trying to save a little extra money for my Kobe trip coming up. Sunday I went into Fukuoka for a board game day! It was also my friend Jake's birthday, so we had a little cake for him and a few of us went out to dinner afterwards to celebrate. I played a whole bunch of new games including one called Rampage where you are a monster and you get to destroy buildings and eat people by dropping you monster token on little buildings and people. It was so much fun! We also played a deception game called Blood Bound where we all knew our own character, but no one else's. We had to figure out the ranks everyone else was, who was on our team, and who was the one neutral person and then try to capture the other teams leader. I ended up being a special character that acts like one team, but is secretly on the other one. I ended up not only interfering with an attack and saving my real teams leader, but I also captured the other teams leader winning the game for my team! It was a complicated game, but a lot of fun! I also tried a new Japanese game that was similar to Uno, but with more effect cards. All the cards ere worth point values and can be discarded or played for effects on the table in front of you. The only catch was that any card played had to match the color or number of the top of the discard pile, like in Uno. At the end of the game you count the number values of all the cards in your hand and on the table in front of you. If you are the first to lose all your cards, you get no points even if there are cards in front of you. The person with the least points after three rounds is the winner. I was in second place both the first two rounds, but ended up winning at the end of the game! It was a lot of fun! I also played some games I've played before like my favorite Betrayal at the House on the Hill and got to introduce some new people to a game called Takenoko. All in all it was a great time!

Sorry again for this being a short one. Next will hopefully be more exciting and even if it's not the week after I'll be able to talk about performing at Swing21 and spending the long weekend in Kobe!