Booooring Weekend!

Well seeing I have done almost nothing but sleep this weekend, I thought I would just let you know that I am not dead!

Well, the reason for my massive amount of sleep is because I was up until 4.30am Friday night putting together a video for Mum for her birthday. I think the family has seen it. Below are some snapshots of the video.... If you want to check it out, you can download it from http://www.megaupload.com/?d=N9EQ6SJR

Hmmm, what else.... On Saturday, I got a delivery of stuff from the furniture store. I had purchased a desk, chair, rug, toilet converter, light and heater. When the delivery man came to the door, he only had four boxes. He had the desk, chair and heater.... and also a cabinet which I had not ordered. So I got through the language barrier and told the guy that I desperately needed the toilet converter. He disappeared and called the furniture store. He then told me he would come back on Sunday with the right stuff......

A couple of hours later, I get a phone call from him. It was really difficult to understand and he hung up because he couldn't understand me.... 10 minutes later he came up to my apartment again, once again with the box with the cabinet in it... He was really excited and told me to open the box. I opened it up, and inside were the boxes with the light and toilet converter!

Man, my weekend was so exciting huh?

OK, can't post a boring text only story.... Here are the before and after photos of my spare room. I even changed one of the paper window things!!!! I had better stop before I have a heart attack or something....

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Gujo Hachiman

Last weekend Megan, Josh and I took a 1.5 hour bus trip to a town called Shirotori (it means white bird), for a wine party. It was held at Josh's friend, Chris' house. It was a fun night of chilling out and drinking. I met this couple of Japanese blokes. They could not speak a word of English, and I could barely understand their Japanese. Actually, I lie. They could speak a bit of English. They said "Which one? Boyfriend? Which one?". They eventually passed out from too much partying so I was pretty relieved....

These are the only photos I can salvage from the party. I was having such a good time that I didn't bother to take my camera out. These photos were taken with my mobile phone. Josh is passed out in a happy state on the left. The next dude is Akira (one of my boyfriends). Next is Megan and I posing.... Then the second boyfriend, Hinde.

The morning after the wine party, we chilled out at the local Onsen (hot baths). So I suppose it was so hot that it wasn't exactly a "chill out".... It was my second onsen. There were quite a few people bathing. You all have to get naked, and then go and wash yourself at this little individual shower. You have to sit down on a stool and throw a bucket of water over you and scrub all your dirtiness off. I didn't spend much time in the actual hot baths because they were too hot (42 degrees). The pic below is of a rock garden outside the onsen. For obvious reasons, I can't really take a photo of the onsen!

After the onsen, we trekked into the town of Gujo Hachiman. Apparently there was a festival on, but it was definitely not outside.... Here are some photos of what I did in Gujo Hachiman...

This dude was really cool. We went to an Origami museum, and he happily showed us his creations. He got such a kick out of every creation he made. It was as though he was seeing each creation for the first time, it was really cute! So here are some of the creations:

The dog was my favourite, because if you would move the sheet of paper underneath from side to side, the dog would then walk. The origami guy had magic hands. He made the freaky, scary bugs in no time.

I also visited Gujo Castle. It was a pretty castle, and the view was really nice. There was a group of five of us. There was quite a bit of discussion of whether we would drive up or walk up. Thankfully, we walked up. It was a nice walk too!

This is the group of us that toured around Gujo Hachiman for the day. They are Josh, Chris, Mario, Megan and Meeeeeee!

We also saw some carp fish in the ditch thing next to the footpath. It was cool when they jumped out of the water.

The following picture is of the river at Gujo Hachiman, I just put it in because it was pretty.

And lastly, here is a photo from my balcony. It was a cool sunset. The photo doesn't do it any justice. Also, the other apartment doesn't really do much for it either....

OK, that's enough for me. Over and out!

Kimonos and Crazy Shimizu

Last Saturday, myself and a few other ALTs joined in on a cultural performance which was held at Gifu station. Megan and I were to dress up as princesses. Lisa was a queen, Craig was a king, and Doug was some kind of samurai. It was a pretty crazy day actually. It started off with us being greeted by this guy called Shimizu. He was a crazy man. He decided that Megan, Doug and I should see some comedy performance. He started sprinting through the hallways of the station, and we struggled to keep up with him. I decided his name would then be Crazy Shimizu. He slowed his pace as we sprinted past a few paintings which he started flailing his arms at. I think he was saying that he painted them. Somehow I don’t think he gave us enough time to appreciate the artwork. We arrived at the comedy performance, and we just stood there. I have no idea what we were in a rush for. We couldn’t understand the comedian because surprise surprise, he spoke Japanese!

Lisa and Craig were the first to go on stage. I didn’t see any of it because I was behind the stage. Apparently Lisa had 9 layers of kimonos put on to her. Sounds pretty cool I reckon. I don’t know what Craig did, I think he just went out there parading his wooden paddle stick thingy. It was funny watching the audience from behind the stage. Crazy Shimizu was video taping the performance. He was very artistic. At one point, I saw him going up an escalator with his video camera still focused on the performance. A few seconds later, he came down the escalator.

Megan and I went on next. We were dressed in traditional kimonos. It was such an effort to put them on! The first layer was some kind of wrap around white thing. It looked like a nightie or something. Then the team of two ladies started slapping bits of material on me. Apparently my right shoulder is lower than my left shoulder, so they evened it all out. After these weird bits of material, they then got to work on flattening me out. I don’t know how many sashes were tied around me, but I did find it hard to breathe. After the girdle type things, the kimono was finally put on! Mine was nice. It was a pale kind of blue with flowers around the bottom. Megan’s was cool. She had a larger print, and a darker greenish blue colour.

However, they didn’t tie our obi until we got on stage. Our performance was basically to stand there and have a couple of ladies trash us about tying the obi on. It was a massive effort to stay standing! I don’t have pictures of the stage performance though. Apparently we are going to be getting a video of it from Crazy Shimizu.

Meet King Ralph (and the jester)

Here's my dog Ralph. He was a bit upset I didn't post photos of him. Well if he came to Japan, I would have definitely put a photo of him up! Stupid little spoilt thing..... I love him though

I suppose the other one will then get all upset if I didn't post a photo of him huh. I thought this was supposed to be about my time in Japan! Oh well, I suppose the dogs are running the show today.... Meet Scruff. He's an idiot. I also love him (I also love Andrew's foot)

I hate doing dishes

Can you all put some kind of fundraising scheme together so I can buy a dishwasher?