Sadly, back to the grind

Recently I had a much-needed chance to decompress.

It all began 3-4 weeks ago when a wonderful friend from Uwajima visited me in Ikata. Lots of terrific people gathered at my house for what would turn out to be three days worth of fun. Highlights include playing frisbee and watching the sun set at moon beach in Misaki, bowling in Honai (what would be my worst game ever), lots of homemade deliciousness (such as pumpkin bread, chocolate cake, pizza, etc), an afternoon picnic at Red Wing Park (followed by some shameful attempts at gymnastics on the playground), card games, drinks, revelry, mischief, sushi and shopping in Uwa, and one particularly awesome late-night conversation with Wen-Wen.

It was wonderful.

Sadly, my health took a turn for the worst. My cold progressively morphed into some kind of flu-like illness and during the final hours of our Sunday outing I lost my voice completely. This was unfortunate for numerous reasons foremost being that in less than 48 hours I was scheduled to meet Rae-Rae for train ride to Matsuyama, an overnight ferry ride to Osaka, and then a six-hour plane ride to Singapore.

Um, I thought I was going to die.

I should also mention that amidst all this excitement the school year ended, my favorite students departed for high school (sob), my good buddy kocho-sensei changed schools, and there were a few changes in my department at the yakuba too. So things kinda looked something like this:

Friday through Sunday: Four friends, six towns, an unclear amount of chu-hi, approximately 65-75 pieces of sushi (guestimation). I don't know, you do the math. :D
Monday: Full-fledged sickness so terrible that kocho-sensei sent me home without docking me nenkyu (vacation time). This is actually the first time in my 2.5 years in Japan that I've ever gone home sick.
Tuesday: I made it to work sans voice. It was a looooong day as our farewell enkai for kocho-sensei et al was that evening. Yikes! Obviously, karaoke was out of the question for me.
Wednesday: Began the long journey to Singapore. The fun began as soon as I met Rae on the train for Matsuyama. Once we arrived in Matsuyama we both dropped a lot of money at the DeoDeo, thus setting the tone for the rest of our vacation and what would become one big shopping extravaganza (thankfully Rae talked me out of visiting the HardOff shop for used cd's). It was a very relaxed afternoon. We chatted over coffee, met V for okonomiyaki, and then the three of us boarded the bus to Touyo to catch the ferry to Osaka. Have you ever seen the movie "Planes, Trains and Automobiles"?

Somewhere en route to Osaka, after an impromptu birthday party for Rae-Rae on the ferry (happy birthday), my head in a flu-drug-induced haze, a few things occurred to me:

(1) This year I haven't traveled outside of Japan nearly as much as I want to. I must take immediate actions to rectify that situation.

(2) I've been wasting far too much time worrying about what people around town think about me. Perhaps as a result of #1, I allowed my world to become very narrow and therefore obsessed about things that ultimately aren't too important.

(3) Those massage chairs on the ferry are sinfully nice.

I want to write in more detail about the trip, so I'll just touch on it briefly now. In short, the four of us spent two days in Singapore, three days in Thailand, and seven more days back in Singapore (joined by a fifth person during the latter part of the trip). In between the shopping and the eating (and did I mention the shopping?) I managed to experience some of the local sites including galleries and an art museum, a night safari at the zoo, a walk through a rainforest and an orchid garden at the botanical gardens, Little India, the Arab market, and lots of sightseeing near the Boat Quay. But then it was back to the business of shopping.

I returned back to Ikata a few days ago just in time to meet M who was visiting amake from Tokyo (it was such a pleasure to hang out again...although I must say I will never look at a rhombus in quite the same way again) and for the Chugakko's welcome enkai on Friday. Despite enjoying a few too many kanpai's I woke up early Saturday morning to join two friends from work for a day of - you guessed it - more coffee and shopping(!) in Matsuyama.

Ugh, I am so broke now.

But this wasn't just your average day in Matsuyama. We went to Matsuyama for the purpose of seeing the Porno Grafitti concert. Wow - it was great! Truly what a rock concert should be. In fact, I would say it was a million times better than I ever expected and I will definitely go to the next one.

Here are some links with information about Porno Grafitti:

http://www.pornograffitti.jp/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porno_Graffitti

And now, sadly, with all this awesome activity behind me, it is back to the business of English (mis)education, eikaiwa, and club activities.

Can't wait for Golden Week at the end of the month.