hey all,
So yesterday my school had their enkai, which is an all you can eat/drink social affair with the school staff. For a lot of ALT's, this means you get to see your fellow teachers get drunk and work up the courage to talk to you for the first time.
For me, it meant paying 6,000 Yen for lots of pretty decent food and a little alcohol while playing several games. We did Bingo, and also a multistage competition between the first, second, and third year teachers, and the administrative staff (the group that I belonged to), that involved picking up dried beans with chopsticks (tricky even for people who use them every day of their lives), doing pushups, and drawing a picture. The games where pretty fun, but a lot of people drove to the restaurant, so most were not drinking very heavily. As at work, I was still ignored most of the time by most of the people.
After that, I ran into one of the new ALTs (the replacement for the replacement that quit before his first day of work), and we went over to the Hub in Omiya for a few drinks. Pretty good time, as I ran into a bunch of drinking buddies there and got a phone number from a cute Japanese girl.
A special trip to an island was planned for this weekend, but they left Friday night by boat from Tokyo, while I was drinking with my teachers. There is another trip that will take me back to Okutama, the first hike I did with the outdoor club. The plan is to leave tomorrow, hike for several hours, stay in a lodge for the night, and check out a cave the next day. We will be hiking the tallest mountain in Tokyo prefecture (Kumotori-yama), and visiting the largest cave (Nippara) in the Kanto region (which includes Tokyo, Saitama, Chiba, Tochigi, Gunma, and Kanagawa prefectures).
Tuesday I will rest up for my planned climb of Mt Fuji on Wednesday/Thursday. Fuji is so huge that most people climb all day the first day, rest in one of several huts most of the way up the mountain for a few hours, and try to reach the peak at dawn, which is supposed to be one of the most amazing sights you will ever see. A good part of the second day is spent getting off the mountain.
Next weekend looks free at the moment. The rainy season has, I believe, officially ended. Despite that, it did rain quite a bit yesterday. However, it brought a brief respite from the heat, which has been hovering around 35 C, or 95 F for most of the last week. I've been trying to get a weather widget to work on this blog, so you all can see how ridiculous the weather is over here, but so far it seems buggy and instantly reverts to the default of New York instead of displaying the weather in Omiya.
I hear that it will rise above 35 C for most of next month, in addition to being humid, which is why even Japanese people detest their summer weather.
Cheers,
