Catch Up

Well its been a while, last week was mainly work work work but here are some of the highlights.

Went out with the Italian group on Thursday night, what a complete disaster, they turned up 2 hours late, fortunately I was with Ed so it was no problem. Once they turned up it took them an hour to decide to make a move to the restaurant and once at the restaurant they stood outside for 20 minutes, in the end i left them to it and went home, Ed stayed cause he fancied one of the girls but he followed me about 10 minutes later, apparently once in the restaurant they couldn't decide which table to sit at or even which set menu to follow. Italians or women.....

On Saturday finally visited the gardens in the centre of Kanazawa, for 3 days they were lit up at night, normally the park is closed at night, so I walked round the park and visited the tea ceremony building and watched a tea ceremony in progress, very interesting but a little slow, maybe you have to be taking part in it to understand it...

After this I walked around Katamachi, which is the Kanazawa entertainment district, had an unbelievably good sushi meal and then walked around a bit more and found a Jazz club with live music. Unfortunately I was the only person in the bar so the band played one song at 10 and then all got off stage to wait till more people came in. This bar was on the 4th floor of a building and most of the bars are on a floor in a multistory building. I still cant read Kanjii so its tough working out which bars would be any good just from looking at the signs.

Made major progress in speaking this week and able now to speak to the host family, its still all disjointed and I keep forgetting to say the verb, it always comes at the end in Japanese and after i have said noun, adverb, particles and adjectives I keep thinking i am done, its like saying "dinner really good" everyone understands but gives them a laugh...

Tonight I decided to go out and sample some more local food so I went out with a mixed group of students and Jets (some graduate program where english speakers come to japan to teach kids english) and we had a great indian. Followed this by going to a folk bar with Ed. This is kind of like Karaoke for talented people, yes thats right that was me out of the picture. Anyway the scenario is the bar has a stage area and any punter can go up, pick up one of the dozens of acoustic or electric guitars, or play the keyboards and give it some. Ed went up and dicked around on bass for 10 minutes or so, he was pretty good but he couldnt remember any complete songs. Once Ed finished a japanese guy went up there and picked up an acoustic guitar, took a scappy bit of paper from his back pocket and played a song about kanazawa that he had written. Brilliant doesnt do it justice, he then played a few more "standards" and went and sat down, wow!

Off to Kyoto tomorrow for a long weekend, its a holiday in Japan on Monday so no school. Probably have a 1000 pictures of temples and shrines for you to look at monday evening.