We went to Risa's Dad's birthday party in a rather posh hotel-restaurant in Morioka. We never did find out how old he is, but there was speculation of around the 50 mark. In true Japanese style, they ordered more food than anyone could possibly eat. At the end, Raisa and her sister were trying to finish it off so it wasn't wasted, and after a valiant effort looked really quite ill. The best part of the evening was when (after quite a lot of whisky had already been consumed from a hip-flask) he whipped out a bottle of champagne and asked the waiter to bring some champagne glasses and even proceeded to request for the champagne to be chilled!! I love her family!!!

Alan and Jo in Picca Pecca

As a nice little treat at the end of a rather boring school holiday, all the ALTs in Iwate were treated to a three days off school for a language seminar in Morioka. Actually, the non-recontracting JETs were told if they wanted to go they had to take holiday, which was "just not on", but they certainly weren't left out of the evenings activities. This is us in Picca Pecca drinking Nikorai and Sakuras (not a good idea!), before heading off to kakaoke and three hours sleep before the next day's study.

We went to a beginners salsa evening in Morioka. We all shuffled about like lemons, but Ant and her random-Japanese partner managed to win the improv competition, and got herself a very cheap nasty bottle of bubbly.

Having all had much too hard a week at school to contemplate anything other than watching videos and eating, we decided to pool our collective laziness at Ant's house for a weekend of...well, videos and food.

Having wasted way too many hours not being able to work acehtml, I have decided to take the easy way out and post all my pictures on here instead.

All the old photos will still be available at www.thejapanpage.tk