If any of you remember when I got wierded out when I was at this chap's house drinking and he starting playing a Maria Karey Christmas album. Well I was at the same guy’s house last night and he put on another Christmas cd!! And then they were talking about how they were going to have a big party at Christmas, a carnival even. I think they should leave Christmas alone, they have enough festivals as it is. Anyway it was a trying night as I still haven't caught up with sleep from Saturday night, oh it's a hard life! Peace

A scene from the play, when one of the lovers get a letter from the other....lover.

Some people can't handle the late nights, poor lads.

Me as Obi-wan, I am having fun honest! I was just trying to look serious and Jedi like for the photo.
Wellllllllllllllllll....it’s the beginning of the week and time to blog about my weekend! I was once again off to the mainland to party with the other ALTs. Although I did stay on Izena on Friday night. I watched a traditional okinawan play; it was all in Hogan (the old okinawan language) so even the young people on Izena couldn’t understand it. It was pretty easy to follow that it was a love story and that both lovers die, and there was quite a lot of physical comedy to keep me going. I had missed dinner though, and it was a bit torturous towards the end, it lasted three hours!! With no interval. It was worth it afterwards when a few of the old lady’s gave me, ‘otsukaresama deshita’ (good job!) and one said ‘thank you’ to me, in English. I am not certain but I think it is the same old lady I said, Niheydaiburu to a few weeks back at the undokai, after her family invited me to sit and have lunch with them. If I am correct then that’s pretty cool. Oh Niheydayburu is Hogan for thank you. After the play I got drunk with Teru, Nagi and Kiichi while watching some old Jackie Chan movies, awesome. So I then got up bright and early for the 9am ferry and went off the mainland. While waiting at the port of Elina who was kindly giving me a ride, I sat and watched some mudskippers and fiddler crabs doing their thing in a little patch of mud next to the road, it was good fun and they are the silliest creatures. I played some ultimate Frisbee in the afternoon with other jets, our team won of course. We were quite clearly superior throughout, and the fact we only started winning when Big Ben joined out team is by and by. After that it was off to Naha for Halloween fun!! And it was fun, many awesome costumes and very good to see some people I hadn’t seen in a few weeks. After having woken up painfully early, well only 8am BUT this is after 3 hours sleep, I did some shopping and then took the bus up north. This time I was about 2 hours early for my ferry, but I suppose that is better than being 5 minutes late. I’ll get it right one day! Once back on my island I planned to sleeeeeeeeeeeeep but I noticed Teru’s car outside the stage, so I showered and popped down to say hi. We watch a couple of movies before heading to a restaurant for dinner with the rest of the taiko group. It was actually dinner and drinks, and we stayed up until 12 drinking, that wasn’t fun as I was fighting to keep my eyes open! It was a blessed relief when they decided to call it a day at 12 but I almost got hysterical when they cheerfully asked if I wanted to have the 2nd party at my house. Japanese tend to split the night into two parties, the second one being more relaxed and at somebody’s home usually. I’m afraid I had to kill that plan, and headed home to sleep.