最近 忙しい です ね！

I’m sorry! I’ve been terribly busy for the last two weeks and extremely neglectful of this blog. I feel that I owe my faithful readership of, oh, approximately 20 loyal fans (I mean you 20+ people who read my blog on a consistent weekly basis), a big explanation about why I’ve been so remiss to regale you with the most excruciatingly detailed minutia of my life. So here it goes:

I simply crawled out from under the rock that is Ikata Town and re-joined the rest of the JET community! Yes, hurray for me!!! It all began two and a half weeks ago. There were birthday parties, dinner celebrations, coffee clutches, weekend guests, and house parties. Then there was the planning and execution of the Ehime AJET sayonara party, a two-day beach party/camping extravaganza. That’s right, Chicago - I said camping. And yes, I actually slept in a tent on the beach.
Peppered throughout this flurry of JET-related social activity I managed to do some pretty cool Japanese-y things too. I passed the third-level Shorinji Kempo Karate test. I think the next belt I wear will be in the brown color family, but I’m not sure. I also finally received the certification for the Kendo 一級　試験　(first-level examination). So now I am officially ranked in two Japanese martial arts.

I discovered a cute izakaya (居酒屋 - pub, bar) in Yawatahama. The place itself was not very special but the proprietors were awesome. Local ALTs, let me know if you’d like to check it out sometime! The JHS had an enkai there last Friday. Actually, Friday was noteworthy as I feel I was unusually productive and did lots of things that are typically outside of my comfort zone. In the morning I went to school and taught some classes, as usual. But in the afternoon I got in a car alone with a map (gasp! I know, I know, I am notoriously bad with maps…and driving!) and drove out to the Futami Town office, met with the folks there to discuss tent/cooler/table and chair rental and garbage removal for our party - in Japanese (well, in my case it was Japanese For Dummies, but at least it worked). Once that was complete I drove back towards the peninsula, stopping in Yawatahama for a few hours to meet my coworkers for an enkai. Then I went home and cooked about 5 kg of vegetable pasta salad for the following day. I retired for the evening feeling strangely smug that I was able to have produced something - anything! - in a day (as that is a rare feat for me indeed).

But the most awesome thing to happen recently was to receive lots of emails from friends I haven't heard from in a while. Don't you just love catching up with old friends?

All in all, very good stuff. I really hope things continue along this vein, I could get used to this!