nothing to prove

drink, sleep, teach

To end the madness of my traveling I did more drinking and teaching past week than I have in quite some time. It all started on Friday with a party in Maki. As I said before, Chieh was back in town so we all got together in Maki for a night out on the town. The usual crew was joined by Kristi as well, which was a welcome addition to the night's craziness. After grabbing a couple quick drinks at Melissa's we headed to a nearby restaurant, called Samurai Star. It is definitely a misplaced contemporary bar in the middle of nowhere Japan. It gave us plenty of time to get some great food and drinks while enjoying good company. Next on the list that night was karaoke. Admittedly I was a little tired that night from the previous couple of weeks and part way through the night I passed out from exhaustion. Not being my usual party animal but everyone managed to have a good time before calling it a night.




After getting a little bit of sleep and a shower, I got to head out to the small village of Tochio where the heralded Hodare Matsuri is held and visit my favorite crazies. The Hodare Matsuri is the festival of fertility and is known for people getting to ride on a gigantic wooden penis around the town. However this was the pre-party to the festival on Sunday. Food was provided for in massive quantities and everyone brought alcohol to share. Plenty to eat and drink in a group of people from neighboring prefectures and multiple teaching organizations equaled an amazing night of fun. There was everything from made up drinking games, karaoke, and various apartment madness.




Since Melissa had told me how to work my alarm, it was easy for me to get up in time to head back to Sanjo the following morning. On Sunday it had started to know and sadly I couldn't stay for the festival because of a prior engagement to teach at the Sanjo All English Day. Luckily I got some hungover McDonald's before showering and arriving at Soleil, a local community center, to start a fun day of teaching. During the day I had to teach drama class in the morning and got to teach the Japanese the rules of American UNO, which actually vary slightly from the way Japanese people play. The day was ridiculously long and I should have known better than to show up hungover but it was well worth it for the weekend of fun. Recently my days have been very low key but it will be nice to be caught up on sleep eventually.

posted by Aaron @ 3:04 AM