Thinking Outside the Box

Most excellent greetings my friends and anonymous readers. The weather has been all over the map lately, but we were blessed with absolutely fabulous weather on Sunday. Project Luck had planned a huge beach party for Sunday and we were worried the weather forecast (cloudy skies and rain) would come true. Maki's friend Kayo was to pick me up WAY early at 7am, at which point I was still sleeping. I was able to get dressed, pack my junk and run the 8 blocks to the pickup spot in just over ten minutes! Not bad for someone who'd only gotten around 3 hours of actual sleep I think. To top it off we ended up being somewhere around 25 minutes early to where we needed to be. Talk about irony! Anyway, the setup they had at Takasu beach was really great. There was a full square of open tents, and they even had a food and beer tent set up! We spent the whole day doing various activities. The first thing I tried was making some bead accessories. My bracelet was a mess, but one of the girls l...

I don't know what the title has to do with my entry, but it is a line from a song in the movie The Lost Boys , which has popped up in conversation several times this week. So, it seemed appropriate. Let's see, where to start. Ah ok how about on Friday? Sitting in my classroom with my two students around 3:30 in the afternoon. Hear a few sirens and whatnot, but figure no big deal right? Head downstairs to the lobby after class to see quite the commotion going on down the street. Apparently the ramen shop three buildings down had itself a wee meltdown. Back home that wouldn't be a big deal, but in Japan it can be a rather alarming thing, since there is basically no such thing as space in between the buildings. It'd take little more than a soft breeze to take the fire over to the next building and before you know it the whole block is gone. Fortunately only the one building was damaged. Saturday was supposed to be a lazy day at home. Sleep in, no plans, sit around and wa...

Hey they can't all be witty... Another party-packed weekend. I seem to be collecting those too recently. Three parties in two days if you want an accurate count. Saturday I woke up WAY earlier than planned (ie: 6:45 AM!). Not having anything planned until about 13 hours later you can imagine my frustration at not being able to go back to sleep after that. The day was rather rainy and dreary but I slogged through the drizzle to achieve my entire list of "to-do". There is something to be said about persistence I guess. Hey I even managed to clean up my apartment a bit. Not that that's really anything to brag about but I digress. I headed down to the pub for the Canada Day party I'd set up with a few other displaced Canucks. Naturally I was the first one there even though I was late. Seems stomach flu, girlfriend implosions and laziness disuaded my three countrymen and -women from attending. That left me to entertain the 12+ Japanese folks that showed up. So, we hun...