Friday night out yay!!

Another shot of my shoes! And also, behind that the seriously steep stairs leading up to R's house. It's almost like climbing up a ladder! Friday night I went out with R and his girlfriend and a girl I went to high school with who also used ot teach in Kamogata a couple of years ago. Shes come back for 10 days to visit and do some bizzo for the BOE and that. She's thinking about coming back to live again I think. It was so much fun to have another Aussie around. There was a BBQ for her on Friday arvo, put on by the mayor's wife and friends. I basically used the time to start drinking early and had a very liquid lunch indeed. A few of the other gaijin from the area were there, including the irritating couple from America. Luckily I run into them only occasionally. He is alright... I think. You never really get a chance to speak to him because she will jump in and answer every question for him. The other JETs refer to her as J's Spokesman. Thankfully she seems not to like me so doesn't bother talking to me at all, the only good thing about her. For some reason they continue to be invited to all these events and everyone seems to tolerate them pretty well so it was good to hear another Aussie's opinion on her which was "That chick's got her head stuck so far up her own arse it's not funny". Yep, just as I thought.

We threw a bit of a frisbee around and ate a few sweets items including some dark chocolate TimTams which K had brought with her from Oz. Yummy. I caught a lift home with my neighbour and then headed into Okayama where I wasted a few hours in an internet cafe before meeting up with everyone again and heading to a birthday dinner. I didn't really know the birthdya girl, but I knew most of the guests so it was all good. We headed out to the Aussie Bar after that, picking up a couple on the way. They were American marines, out off base for the weekend. K bought herself an All You Can Drink stamp and proceeded to use it to get all of use free drinks all night. I also managed to wrangle a couple free beers out of the barman, and a little keychain thing that has Guiness written all over it. Nice work. At one point I noticed R struggling through by himself with the male marine we had somehow collected so I went over to see if I could help him out and managed to scare the marine away after which R says "Can't thank you enough for saving me from Captain America there" and we proceeded to play a very lengthy and unnecessarily unskillful game of darts to ensure there was no returning to whatever it was marines talk about. My good deed for the month completed. Oh, they were nice enough I guess, it just seems that they never have anything interesting to say. They are on base constantly so really all they have to talk about is army stuff - unfortunately of no real interest to anyone else.

There was also a random incident when a very Mormon looking fellow gave the birthday girl (who recently got married) the eyeball on his way to the bar, and then came back later to chat. He wasn't drinking and was extremely polite and well-spoken and said he wasn't an English teacher, but couldn't really explain what he did do here. When he left to go to the loo we all asked "Is he a Mormon?" And one bloke said "No, but he's definitely some variety of Christian>" which made us all laugh loudly and discuss how you come to that decision. When he came back he walked straight past us back to his mates and we realised later on that you can pretty much hear everything that's going on from the toilet so he surely overheard us! Oops.