The Ongoing Chronicles of Inaka Girrrrl...

We had a four day weekend which, for me, rivaled most vacations I've taken. It was really that awesome. I kept thinking "Sigh, I love my friends in Ehime-ken. I love my life in Japan." Sigh, a four day weekend - thats all it takes. If this weekend had been an animated film, it'd been one of those nauseating pink and purple happy happy ones with all the sparkles and glitter, mushy love hearts floating around, and irritating music. You know what I'm talking about, the ones that just make ya sick.

First, I have to mention that I had four - count em - four young Japanese people in my house this weekend. Ok, three in my house and one in my car (good enough). Wow - I didn't know there were four of them in my neighborhood so this is a good thing.

Friday

Ran out of the JHS at approximately 3:45pm and 15 seconds.

4:00 - Prepared homemade pizza dough, enough for four pizzas. Attempted to ignore the fact that the first batch looked completely different from the second batch...

5:00 - surprise visit from Shogakko teacher - it was a good thing!

6:00 - the troops arrive with supplies

7:00 - the other guests arrive

10:00pm - 2:00am - Karaoke!!!

Saturday

Plans to sleep until late afternoon foiled by repeated visits from the construction man. He insisted on providing me with live-time updates of the water pipe situation behind my building, eg "there will be no water from 11:54 to 12:22", and so on. Personally, I think he just enjoyed watching me stumble to the door half-awake in my childish pink snowman flannel pajamas (hey, they were a xmas gift from my brother!)

Roused the gang at 1pm. Trying to get a shower proved to be difficult given the water situation but three hours or so later we were good to go.

Finally (!) ready by 5pm we all jumped into the car and drove to Matsuyama.

8:00 9:30- ate the best Japanese version of Chinese food ever. Swore we were too full to eat another bite for the rest of the evening...

9:35 - until we found a great cafe around the corner and proceeded to force delicious cake into our overstuffed bellies. It just looked so good, しょうがない！

11:00pm-3:00am arrived at favorite hang-out in Matsuyama (see previous posts), brought deck of cards and played poker all night while listening to great music.

3:00am - 5:00 am just barely got the car out before the parking lot closed, managed to find 24 hour gas station and began the long drive home.

5:30 am zzzzzzzzzzz

Sunday

Dragged my sorry butt out of bed in just enough time to watch the closing ceremony of the town's ekiden. Amake's team took first place! Go Minatoura!

Had ramen with the girls, amake, and his adorably sweet Japanese friend. More about that another time!

Realizing that its irresponsible to play for 48 consecutive hours we managed to get some real work done at the usual study place in Ozu.

Midnight - 3:00am Caught up with friends and family from Chicago!

Monday

Distinctly less exciting that Friday, Saturday and Sunday. In fact, not worth mentioning at all.

Hope you all had a GREAT weekend too!