Nagoya Weekend

bonjour all! im still alive, no worries. Ive had a crazy last couple of days up in japan. On friday I went into Shiyakusho to go to a jet meeting with all the other alts employeed by aichi prefectural board of education. We signed some contracts and got to hear some information about team teaching and classroom discipline..blah blah. After that we all went out for drinks and dinner and then karaoke of course, it was quite grand. Then I stayed at my friend Maria's with Ernesta, a boy from Jamaica. The next morning we got up and met everyone for the AJET bbq where i met all the second, third, fourth, and fifth year jets in aich. We ate yakisoba and lots of beef and drank plenty of beer. After that we went out for a second party, as the japanese call it, at an american bar in okazaki, near nagoya, and i had PIZZA...it was delicious!haha at dinner i was sitting with matt, maria, and briana, and our boss hashimoto-san and apparently he had too much beer at the bbq and passed out at our table...omg it was hilarious. the japanese cannot hold their alcohol, we took so many pictures of us with him passed out but couldnt really mess with him cuz hes our boss!! On sunday I met Matt and Maria at the the Nagoya/Boston museum of art to see the Claude Monet exhibit, which had tons and tons of sweet paintings i had never seen before and after that we wandered around kanayama and then rented a movie and just watched it together at his flat. After that I went home to bed and slept until like noon on monday because i have this week OFF!! I am on kensho, which is like study week, because everyone in japan has obon festival this week and no one goes to work, so i decided to spend the week at maria's who lives in Akaike, about an hour away from me. I met her at 5 on monday night and we cooked a big stir fry dinner and watched movies all night. Then tuesday we got up and went exploring around Sakae, which is a hopping area of Nagoya. We went shopping, wandered around, went to starbucks of course!! Then we ran into Briana, another jet, at the foreign food store buying doritos, what else, and we went to the foreign book store so I could get some books to read while i have no internet or phone. Then we met Matt at Maria's for dinner and made steak sandwiches and fries, which was also yummy...its nice to have my lovely irish mate Maria to cook for me, i love it! oh and Maria has cable so i can watch michael phelps DOMINATE the olympics, i love that man! But they only focus on the japanese athletes here and its really annoying since they only show judo and badmitton, arg. After dinner on tuesday the three of us went to an arcade and played video games all night haha and they have this thing in japan where you can take photos of yourself and then add all these cute little ditigal accessories to them, its fab! and then today maria and i got up and came back to sakae to shop again and we have been trying for hours to get phones and its failing miserably blah. So now i am sitting in a tiny booth watching michael phelps on tv because we are waiting on the phone company to try to get us phones without our gaijin cards boo. anywho, tonight we are either going to see a movie or go to the irish pub we found in town, which could be quite a riot with the group we have here. tomorrow i am going hom to get my apartment in order and then who knows, i have nothing to do on friday or monday and then on tuesday i have to come back to the city for prefectural orientation again...it shall be grand. hope all is well in the states, life in japan is getting a tad easier, it helps to have friends around or else it gets quite lonely...and its hotter than heck here. This time of august is the hottest and i hear its gonna get a little hotter, who knew nagoya was the hottest place in japan...i am just a giant sweat ball all the time! much love! shitsure-shimasu!