BBQ at Komatsu Beach

I like the way the Japanese think!

beetle shaped rafts?!...ummmm ok.

The crew

Yoshinagawa Matsuri (Festival)

Ahhhh...I love fireworks!!

Yochien at the Beer Garden

 

the partiers of the school...too bad everyone couldn't make it

Pretty much all of the teachers from the yochien (kindergarten) got together tonight to relax and have a good time as a unit after school today.  We met in the lobby of the hotel below the beer garden and all went up together at about 7ish.  Daniel and I felt extremely underdressed after arriving since all the Japanese teachers had dolled themselves up...something I didn't do deliberately since I figured it was a beer garden and I didn't want to be over dressed for and show up my co-workers.  Man was I wrong...they all looked SOOO beautiful. 

Anyways, after getting upstairs we realized they were the ones a tad over-dressed and Daniel and I fit right in.  from 7 till 9:30 it was tabehodai (all you can eat) and namihodai (all you can drink).  Something the Japanese don't think of as a challenge, but the rest of us do...I cleared 8 full plates while everyone else had 1 maybe 2, and Daniel had like 10 drinks while the rest of us were down at around 3 or 4.  We'd taken the train in together and were going to get back the same way after stopping at Ingrid's to say hi....so we had to dodge around the good intentions of our fellow teachers when we were offered a ride home...I'm not sure how they would have taken it if we'd told them we were going to go to a bar after just been at a beer garden for nearly 3 hours.  I'm sure they would be watching us very closely at work tomorrow at the very least!!

I get paid to do WHAT?!

Yes folks, baseball.  I not only got paid while sitting and watching a baseball game all day today, but had my admissions ticket costs covered by the school.  We lost by a failed plan to try and win in the 13th inning...which is too bad since it would have mean Seiko's team would have been the best in the entire prefecture and gone on to national finals.  But I think a 2-2 score all the way to the bottom of the 13th is a pretty darn good job!

On top of the awesome day of watching baseball on the clock...since the game went so far into overtime, we didn't end up getting back to school until 6:30, so the school gave us an additional 1.5hours of vacation time we can use anytime.  Talk about awesome school benefits!

B.O.B.

BOB aka Beers On Beach...or in my case, Peach Chu-hi On Beach (doesn't have the same ring to it though does it?).  An AWESOME way to spend a beautiful sunny Sunday!

Ultra Potato

On the bus ride home

We saw this while on the bus coming back from Osaka Monday after noon.  If you told me the name and asked me to guess what kind of a business it was...never in a million years would I have come up with a used car dealership.  Just goes to show you how much creativity they put into naming stuff over here!!

Gion Matsuri Day 2

Great festival to go to, though the parade on the 2nd day is probably only a one time thing.  It`s very cool to see, but VERY long and Japanese summers are no small thing to be standing out in for 6 hours.  Definately will do the night before several more times if I ever have the opportunity again!