Its pretty weird thinking that ive only been here a month…its gone very fast. Once again ive had an eventful few weekends since my last post. Largely because of all the nice people that invite me out. If its not hospital staff its random people on the street. Seriously I was just waiting at a traffic light crossroad thingy on my bike when these two japanese women just started talking to me. And now im playing volleyball with them and their university friends next Sunday. So im pretty busy all the time, if im not working im being invited out.

Last weekend I was invited out to a yacht day. Started off pretty miserably with rain and cloudy skies. As far as I could guess we were meant to sale the yacht a good way to this meeting point or something. Anyway it was decided that it was a bit too wet and windy to yacht so we drove instead. We then had a barbecue on the platform under a pier with about 30 random people. Really good fun, despite the language barrier we could still communicate and have fun. so yeah the barbecue (or yakiniku) was awesome, tasted amazing. We even got a chance to go on a different yacht in the end as the day cleared up.
Then we went back to some guys house who had a piano. I got some requests, but I ignored them and played what I could remember. realised i miss playing the ole piano. They had some sheet music for “santa clause is coming to town” which I played despite it being the first day of October. we ate more raw fish and drank some more sake. so a good night, not what im used to but im sure i will be pretty soon.

ok so next style of invitation is where i go out to eat a dinner with people. we went to another yakiniku (barbecue), i got invited to a ramen restuarant where the bowls were hauge, a random chinese restaurant and then to someones house where we had okonomiyaki which is a sort of pancake thing. so my schedule is pretty busy which is really good.

this weekend was especially awesome. first we got invited to make mochi for the festival of nagoya. this basically consists of heating rice, smashing it with a big hammer to turn it into a paste, breaking bits off and making round things called mochi. then they had to be wrapped up.

so that was saturday. pretty good experience and all but to make it better we then got invited to the festival. adn after that we just got invited to be inovled more and more. so we started off as just being invited. then we were going to get uniforms, then we moved to carrying the shrine, and then we were told we could actually throw the mochi to the children from the top of the scaffolding. ok so that needs some explaining. basically these people sort of dress up and carry this shrine aroudn town, giving sake to town memebrs and making a lot of noise. thats part 1. part 2 involves throwing mochi from the top of a stage. the mochi are sort of rice cakes, some have prizes. we threw the mochi to the first age group (under 10s). then we watched the next group and finally we got to have a go at catching in the final round. was really good fun. we won 5 bottles of waching up liquid and some bin liners. i was pretty annoyed since i spent 2 quid on a new bottle of washing up liquid the day before.
mixed in with that day was random fun things. we got free candy floss, free goes at fanfare games and we played some universal games with the children like rock paper scissors and tag.
after all that we went back to the big mans house and had a decent meal. had some sweet potato sake which was pretty good. met loads of new people and had a lot of fun. it so bizarre the situations you get in but im enjoying them anyway.

forogt to mention we went to our second concert...razorlight. and today we bought tickets for snow patrol which i really look forward to.

right so today is Monday and it’s a national holiday in Japan, so I get the day off. Im back at work tomorrow to finish my last but one week at the stroke care unit ward. I chose my next ward on the Friday...I start in the paediatric ward on the 29th October.

anyway ill be off now. we just downlaoded the new episode of lost and well i wanna get home an watch it.

here is a link to all my online photo albums:
http://www.bubbleshare.com/users/profile/58452

the two newest ones from october are here:
http://www.bubbleshare.com/album/73776/overview
http://www.bubbleshare.com/album/73757/overview

Videos:
you can view all my videos from this webpage
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=jamesrharper
there are 10 videos on mochi there...emjoy

until next time