This weekend Izena played host to nine new gaijin! On Friday nine other ALTs came across to spend the weekend on my island. So that meant I spend Thursday night and Friday morning desperately cleaning my house, it was gross! My plans were slightly hampered by having a welcome party on Thursday. I am sure the Shogakko (elementary school) has had one for me before but they threw another one, I was all set to leave work when they said no-no stay have some drink, and all this beer and sushi appeared. I had to do a speech and all that jazz but it was fun, although I was itching to leave as I had to speak to Kamiyama-san (my awesome neighbour) and then start tidying. I think I managed to acquire Kamiyama-san's help for the barbeque and sea kayak with my limited Japanese, it turned out we had his help and then some! I managed to get my house quite clean, if not entirely tidy, in my defense I don't have much storage space, and also I'm a messy boy. Ben was the first to arrive, coming on the morning ferry and lo and behold my predecessor was also on the ferry, Nick had come through to practice taiko at Kamiyama-sans request, a nice surprise! I and Ben had a nice cycle around my island, I tried to go to the fishing equipment store but it was closed, apparently it is open from 8am to 10am only, weird. So the rest of the ALTs (8 of em') arrived on the afternoon ferry, at about half past 4 and we all went to rent bicycles. I must say it looks hilarious, ten gaijin biking around on Japanese style bikes, baskets and all! We then went to the stage to see the taiko people and meet up with Kamiyama-san so we could go and set up the barby. I had planned with kamiyama-san to get the barby set up at 5, and I though in my head perhaps we could be down at Izena beach barbequing by about 6pm. HAH! On the way to my house, I managed to loose the two New Zealand girls, my fault really; I had something of a race with Ben and David and forgot to let the others know where my house was. Anyway it was a while until we found them, in which time we broke into next door to get more sleeping space. That's right we really broke in, with Kamiyama-sans help we bust out a couple of the security bars and Ben climbed in and unlatched the door from the inside, awesome, only on Izena! Before we got to the beach a couple more people got lost and I managed to spend 2man on food, but this was to feed the taiko members as well, anyways it was looking to be something of a feast. It must have been 8pm before we got to the beach (which is only a couple of miles away). Kamiyama-san excelled himself at the barby, lots and lots of good okinawan barby food, much enjoyed by all. We then commenced drinking and fun making, it was awesome to see the taiko members and the ALTs partying together. We had a mini game of rugger, which the Izenan team won, woot! The night continued until late, involving drinking and swimming, swimming and drinking. Highlights included my kiddies inflatable boat, which had an awesome tooty horn and a failed skinny dipping. Four naked guys in the water and everyone else on the beach waiting for them to come out, with a flash light ain't quite what I had in mind, oh well! All the ALTs bar I, Ben and David got lifts back to my house, but we were hard core and decide to take our destiny into our own hand and cycle back. We could not have made a better decision, for we had an awesome adventure! On the way back we a little drive around in the sea weed plant and then we spied a small path leading to the jungle. Well! Being boys we took it and as you might expect it lead to some tombs (most paths lead to tombs here), but then we saw another path, which also lead to some tombs deeper in the jungle. We spent some time at the second tomb before we spotted a tiny over-grown path, so we left our bikes and explored it. It took us to a beach (also not unexpected on my island), but just offshore of the beach were some massive rocks. So being boys we decide to climb them, and climb them we did. The climb wasn't bad; the bad bit was the bramble. The lower half of the rock was covered in razor sharp bramble which cut us all up pretty bad. But we made it to the top and it was amazing, sitting there with the waves breaking at the base of the rock down below our feet. We stayed for sometime before coming down, which was also pretty hair raising. We later viewed the rock during the day, and it was pretty impressive, probably would not have climbed it in the light of day. On the way back we couldn't find the path up from the beach (oh we also had a sea cucumber fight) but we found another one. This did link in with the paths leading to the two sets of tombs we found, but we did stumble around the jungle lost of quite a while, it got a little spooky to say the least! But we found our bikes and cycled home at breakneck speed. Once back be found everyone to be asleep, but being the lovely lot they are they had left enough mats and pillows for us boys, awesome. The next morning I woke up early (8am) so I could go and buy stuff from the fishing shop, I got some good fins, some booties, gloves and a diving knife, I was ready to hunt shellfish or fight of any sea creature in general!