Happy 4th of July!

Now that it's July I really feel like I'm in the home stretch. In less than a month I'll be home preparing to meet my first class of 7th graders for math. These two years have gone by so fast, but I still have a few more adventures before I return to the States!

On Monday I went to Colet with Megan. She wanted help picking out a yukata for the summer festivals starting soon. We grabbed dinner and a coffee and we had a great night. On Wednesday Leah came over for a drink. Jupiter and Venus were both visible and almost touching, so we went up to the top of my building for a beautiful view of the city and the stars and planets overhead. Tanya came On Friday I went to Costco with Kikumi and Shinki. We went out for sushi afterwards and even won a capsule prize!

On Saturday I was up early to clean my apartment and getting all the 4th of July food ready to travel. I headed out to meet Caol and Megan at Cha Cha town to catch the first screening of Avengers: Age of Ultron playing near us. Megan and I had already seen it in Korea, but Caol hadn't seen it yet and because of the early morning time, it was fairly cheap to see it again. We all walked back to my place afterwards and pretty soon Kazuki was there picking us up! We loaded up our rental car and headed off to Yamaguchi. The drive was a little less than two hours and we had no trouble finding the campsite. We got there a bit early, so we stopped for lunch before checking into the cabin. The cabins were beautiful and had a fully stocked kitchen, so Chris and I got started on prepping the food while Caol and Kazuki headed out to get drinks and a few extra things. Once Caol and Kazuki came back and the food was all prepped we walked back to the main camping headquarters and spend some time in the onsen there. After relaxing for a bit we headed back to the cabin to start our 4th of July celebration! We started by drinking red, white, and blue sangria (strawberries, blueberries, and white wine). Soon after I started cooking the burgers and corn. We were originally going to have a BBQ outside, but the weather didn't hold up. Thankfully the cabins had a great kitchen and we were able to cook everything without a problem! We ate and drank all night and even played truth or dare for a while. It was a ton of fun and we all had an amazing night.

The next morning we made chocolate pancakes topped with the extra fruit and whipped cream from the night before. We also had red, white, and blue sprinkles to make them extra American. We headed out around 10:00 AM and found another onsen to stop in on our way back home. There was an outside pool and the water wasn't too hot, so we ended up staying there for over an hour. We headed straight home after that to return the car, but all had lunch together. We decided to get yakiniku since that involves grilling and we wanted to get some grilling in to make the holiday official. We had a great lunch, but parted ways afterwards. Megan and Caol came back with me to pick up their bags they'd left at my place. Megan hung out and we watched some videos until she had to go home. The rest of my night was pretty quiet.

This week should be another exciting one! I'll meet Kikumi and Shinki tonight to watch movies and make hamburgers. They really wanted to come for our 4th of July trip, but had to work on Saturday, so they couldn't make it. I'll be meeting Leah and Tanya for a girls night later in the week and on Saturday I'll have another goodbye party. I'm starting to pack things up, but it doesn't quite feel real yet that I'll be leaving. These are going to be a hectic and bittersweet few weeks. And although it wasn't my best performance, here's the video from last week as promised! Sorry it took so long.

Shopping and Singing

Last week at school was pretty quiet again. Leah came over on Thursday for dinner, but other than that I stayed home. Friday I did some shopping after school at Book Off. I'm getting a few of my favorite books, music, and movies to bring home for when I miss Japan. I headed to Aru Aru City after and met Megan where we did a bit more shopping before meeting Caol for dinner. We snacked on some gyoza before doing a few hours of karaoke. Megan went home after, but Caol and I stayed out a bit later at Babu Box, a bar owned by a friend of mine and the drummer for the band. We didn't stay out too much later, but it was a nice night and a nice end to the week.

On Saturday I cleaned during the day and ran errands. For dinner I met up with one of my students from Shinozaki who I don't see anymore. It was so nice to see her! We went out for conveyor belt sushi. Normally if you order sushi they put it on a special plate to mark it as reserved and it comes around on the conveyor belt like everything else, but this restaurant had a second conveyor belt about a foot above the first where the "shinkansen" would come with your orders. It would go directly to your table and you took the plates and pushed a little button to have it go back to the kitchen. It was so cool! And instead of stacking your plates to be counted at the end of the meal, there was a little shoot the plates went down that cleared them away and counted them at the same time. As an incentive to eat more, for every five plates you sent down the shoot you had a chance to win a little capsule prize. We stayed at the restaurant for about two hours talking and it was really nice to see her. After dinner I waited with her while her mom came to pick her up. Her mom was really nice and was so excited to meet me. She told me about how much her daughter liked having me as a teacher and how sad she was when I changed school and how grateful she was for the books I have her. My poor student was getting more embarrassed every minute her mom was talking, but it was really sweet. After talking for a bit we parted ways and I headed to Caol's to watch movies and hang out. Megan was there as well and the three of us stayed up late talking.

Sunday I went over to Megan's in the morning for breakfast. I had gotten Megan a waffle iron for her birthday and she wanted to try it out. Our first batch of waffles didn't turn out so good, but we got the hang of it by the second batch and made some pretty ones by the time our batter ran out. I didn't stay long and soon I was back home getting ready for band practice. The band changed one of the songs at the last minute, so I went in at 4:00 to practice. We only had half an hour to practice the new song before mic check started for all the bands, so it was a little rushed. Despite that, everything went really well! Leah, Bec, Caol, and Megan all came out to see me and we had a great night! Two other bands played as well and they were both great. Because it was a Sunday the show started a bit early, so even though the entire show was about three hours we still finished just after 10:00. Unfortunately the video's aren't up yet, but I should have links by next week!

This last weekend was so amazing and next week should be just as fun! It'll be another quiet week in school, although I am going to go to the science classes to help them dissect pig heats. I'm also taking anther step towards coming home and will be figuring out which of the new JETs will get my apartment after I leave. Next weekend is the 4th of July, so I organized a trip for eight of us to go on a camping trip where we can BBQ and celebrate the holiday. Only three of us are Americans, but everyone is really excited!