Shuumatsu

This weekend was fun.

On Friday I had lunch with Jo, James and his wife, and Karen, the other JET in this town. She teaches the high school. On Friday night, I went over to James's to play Colecovision and drink Sake until pretty late. So, that was fun.

On Saturday, Karen picked me up, as I'm still about a week away from having a car, and we went to neighboring Tottori prefecture. Tottori is the only prefecture less populous than Shimane, but there's a town called Nichinen which is basically right on the border, and we met a couple JETs there, Heidi from Unnan and Sally, whose house we went to. After a while, we went looking for a place to have dinner, but it was late and Sally only knew of two restaurants in the town, which is absolutely tiny. It's basically just a single street with some shops and houses on it. So, we ended up going to a Chinese restaurant which was deceptively small. We ordered a bunch of stuff and shared it, including Chahan, which is just fried rice. It came with a bowl, which we weren't sure was soup or sauce. Anyway, Karen said she'd try it, and I did too. It was funny, but I'm not in the mood to go into a lot of details right now. After dinner we got some half-price ice cream at a grocery store and then watched the Rainman at Sally's. It's maddening when movie have subtitles because I can't help reading them, which can be frustrating in Japanese, and pointless when the actors are speaking English.

Then Karen and I went home and that was that.

On Sunday, Karen took me to the nearby town of Hirata (A different one, Alex) and we met up with Ivy, a JET there, and Satoko, a Japanese woman that they hang out with. We went to a couple stores because they wanted to get stuff for the rest of the day. Then we went to a beach, maybe Taki, I don't remember, but it was something like that. We didn't really go to the beach, we just went to the shopping complex there to get takoyaki, which is octopus balls. It's a pretty delicious food, and the girls were chanting "takoyaki" on the way there. I guess they really like it. So, we had that, and then kept driving to get to another beach called Nima. We were there for about 5 hours before meeting up with Heidi and Sally at an onsen nearby. I didn't have any sunblock on, so my entire torso and head are sunburnt fairly badly, which is making me not want to blog. The onsen was nice, even if it hurt madly getting in the tub at first. It felt great after a while. It was also incredibly crowded. I think this is because it's near the beach, where a bunch of people were, and I'm pretty sure this week is Bon-yasumi, which is some sort of holiday thing. I'm not really clear on it, but I won't get my car until next week as a result of the dealer being closed this week.

After the onsen, we went to Izumo to meet up with Yuko, another Japanese friend and eat dinner, which we had at a Chinese restaurant because the one we'd wanted to go to was packed and we would have had to wait an hour. We had a splendid time, and there was a unlimited drink bar, in the style they call Viking. I had some kind of melon frosty drink which was pretty good. By then my sunburn was really starting to hurt, so after dinner when we went to the Club Sega to get pictures taken, I didn't go in the booth because I didn't want to be crowded. But, anyway, then there was some gift giving in a parking lot, and Heidi drove Karen and me back to Karen's car, which had been left in the parking lot of a store for convenience. When we got there, there was a guy just standing in the parking lot, which was empty save Karen's car. We think he might have been waiting for us to move the car, which probably shouldn't have been parked there, as we never even went in the store, but no big deal. He didn't say anything, so he may have just been keeping an eye on the ruffians making noise across the street in front of a hotel. Then Karen drove me back and I had a great time trying to sleep without letting anything touch my back or shoulders. I turned on the AC in my bedroom, which I was grateful for, but it still took a long time to get to sleep. So today is a little uncomfortable, but I'll make it. Plus, I have the magic healing powers of miso soup on my side.

Correction: I may have (I'm not going through my old posts to find it) called Yakult's baseball team the Sparrows, which is a terrible name, but they are actually called the Swallows, which is an even worse name.