Time for some hairless bipeds... aka ningen... aka people... but best known as my friends. Mister Master Masa-sama (aka beatmaster) and I goof it up at church.


Hide and Toshi. This photo sums up their personlaities well! (Although admittedly Toshi and I can barely communicate, but our attempts seem to amuse him a lot. Me too! He just became a dad.)


Strange guy with camera. (I mean him! Not me!)

Well wouldn't you know? It's Eric.

Now it's Christmas time. Well, in the photo, that is. We're at Crossroad Bible Fellowship celebrating the birth of Jesus. The people in the photo are playing the different roles of the Christmas story and singing as the temporary choir.

Christmas didn't seem quite so Christmassy this time round for some reason. Either way, Jesus was born all those years ago and that's what matters! But I tried my hardest in a borrowed Santa hat to be festive. Dinner together was great. That's my manager from work next to me.

This is my friend Namiko, currently in Australia. It's weird to think that my parents have probably now hung out with her more than I have! Hi if you're reading!

She made a great meal for my friend Mika and I. That's Namiko's mum with Mika, who's a church friend. Namiko and Mika met in a sauna! When the subject of going to Australia came up Mika mentioned she had an Aussie friend at church... and you've guessed the rest!

We now move on to Christmas, Nihongo Salon style! That's the name of my Japanese class. It's organised by Sanda International Association. We sat in a big U-shape and watched some performances by students before playing some silly games and then eating a potluck lunch. That's my teacher in the foreground. She's great.

Rosa and Nat warm up the place with a Spanish number. It's been an awesome experience going to this class - the tuition is one-on-one, but there's plenty of opportunity to chat with other students who hail from all over the world. Nat is a super nice and sharp guy from small-town America. Modest too - I knew he could speak some Spanish, but I found out at the party he used to teach it too! I was a wallflower as usual and didn't perform anything ("perform what?" I thought... maybe I should have cracked out a number or two on my comb.)

Well, these two Blue Mountains kids have more creativity and more pluck. Steph and Taylor read out a poem they'd written. They only just went home, but were here for nearly half a year - Sanda City and City of Blue Mountains are sisters, so they have student exchanges. Taylor quickly learned how the cool kids wear their uniforms! haha. They're both cool kids.

Another Aussie connection! David and Nadia also come from the Mountains. They sang about sushi swimming around in their heads. They were nice enough to have me over on Christmas day, along with some others. It was nice to hang out in someone's home and form an impromptu family.

Well, bingo done, food eaten, time for a group photo. I will miss these people.

Another occasion - lunch after class in the Italian restaurant downstairs. The occasion was that Oscar had turned up for class! haha, that's not true. We were saying goodbye to the young-uns.

This is as recent as 2 weeks ago! I spent almost an hour one afternoon after class with these 2 ladies and we ended up sketching each other. That was really cool. Yes, I always look this terrible at class. With a 10 o'clock start time it's by far the earliest start of the week for me!

Well, here's a bunch of no-good beef-eaters. We are eating kobe-gyu - the world famous Kobe beef! It's not normally done yakiniku, or barbequed, but it tastes great to me. I also tried beef sashimi - raw beef! Very nice. This is a really mixed bag of people - from work and local. A friend of a few of us works at this place, so she got us a good deal. It's supposed to be the best beef in the world and I believe it.

I like this photo a lot. Takako and I were with a big bunch from work seeing off our friend Lexie (you can see her in a previous post). Nice photo for such a dive of a place. We were in Pure which is anything but! It's absolutely packed with sketchy people there for sleaze and the nomihoudai all-you-can-drink ticket. Nomihoudai is the first Japanese that some foreigners learn.

Next to us was a little hutch type thing that looked like Yoda's house on Dagoba. On top of it was a girl dancing around a pole - she wasn't doing the mayflower dance. All class.

We didn't last long there - ended up karaoking until first train.

Anyway on that lovely note, (started in church, ended in a seedy club) I must away to the land of Nod. More great people to come.

Buenos noches!