week overview

"You don't get anything done by planning"

Quite true Sebastian, quite true. I've been planning to write a new blog entry for a while now... I've been planning to clean up my room for a while too.. well guess what?! I've completely cleaned and tidied up my room, it's all sparkling clean, and here is a new blog entry! woo! So here's what has happened this week:

Monday started with a nice relaxing day with a drink with the Taiko group in the evening. All the Taiko players were there this time, which were a lot more than I expected! It's quite a big group! We went to this little place and had food and drinks and did our jikoshoukai's (self introductions). I was a little jetlagged and a little nervous with all these new people, but I got it all out in the end! The food was decent (quite a lot of fish, which I don't like) and the drinks were excellent (I had Meiji beer and pink champagne). Overal a fun evening! We (Gerrie and myself) were invited to participate in a festival in June, and they told us lots more about upcoming festivals in the Nagasaki area. Sounds like a lot of fun!

Tuesday was our first day of class, which went well enough, nothing's changed really! At night we decided to go out. During the winter break Claudia met this English guy called Sebastian, who has lived here for about 10 years now, and turns out to be the foreigner we saw at the Kunchi festival (the festival with the whale, all the way at the beginning of my stay in Nagasaki, remember?). He was going to show us some interesting places to go out. Unfortunately he wasn't the most inspired guy, so we didn't really have a plan, but we managed! We headed for Shianbashi, the former courtesan area, where we went to this rather nice but rather expensive bar called "Psy Bar". After a Peachtree (Peach liquor) drink and a chat with Sebastian who is overflowing with random stories that I find really hard to believe (met Princess Di, brother photographs Posh Spice, IRA relatives etc) it was time to move on. We weren't quite sure where we were heading, but we happened to pass by an izakaya that is a chain izakaya, and some of us had been to the Fukuoka equivalent and thought it was quite nice, so that's where we went!! We ordered some food (I had okonomiyaki and a delicious ice cream) and drinks (umeshuu - plum wine) and we were good to go! I sat there with part of the group (there had been 12 of us to start with, but half of them left early from this izakaya) and had a really nice time! But at 2am it was time to go, the izakaya was closing, so we decided to go meet up with the rest of the group at Ayer's Rock, and club within walking distance. It was supposed to be a night with good, mixed music, and it was! The music was mostly decent, and I had a good dance! It had been a while since we had such a good night, and I really didn't want to leave, but they dragged me home at 4:30 or so :P

The rest of the week was reasonably quiet, going to class, going home... I went shopping with Gerrie, Sahim and Richard after having some lunch and Starbucks on friday. I bought a dvd (Fightclub for 7 euros) and two random cd's that were practically free. They just looked interesting, I didn't know what they were, but it's always fun to try something new. I've listened to one of them, and it's not bad, but glad I didn't pay heavy money for it haha. The evening was spent at home, and a not too late night so I could get up at a decent time saturday morning.

Saturday morning was mochi making time. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, all I knew is that Ken was going to be there (ketchup drink Ken) and that Gerrie and Ruben were helping out. So I made my way down to the university at around 10:30. It turns out it was a natural gas/how to save electricity etc convention for little kids, where mochi was being made as a snack. With little hammers for the little kids haha.
So I watched them make mochi, helped a little, ate a little, and just hung around there. We played around with all the electricity making set ups, quite funny! Had global warming explained to us in Japanese and stuff.... A few hours later however I was so totally frozen it wasn't even funny anymore. I had expecting it to be inside, and so I wasn't wearing the warmest of clothes (good enough for walking to the uni - not for standing around in the cold) and so I decided to head home, as there wasn't really all that much left to do anyway. Later on the mochi group came to Nishi-Machi (where I live) and a group of Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese people had a little 'party'. A japanese party is, as you may know by now, sitting around eating and drinking, so I went down and joined them. Later on I watched a movie with Gerrie, and then it was time for bed!

So that brings us to today, the day I cleaned my room and wrote my blog. Woo!

Tomorrow is Ikebana day (flower arranging) and for the rest of the week I have nothing special planned. Yet. ;)

Jennifer

ps: taiko pictures here!
ps1: mochi pictures here!

Movies are on their way!