Sunday, through to Friday night...

The three words that seem to be said most in the refectory are, in both languages.
Nemui - Sleepy
Atsui - Hot
Daijobu - Are you ok?/I'm ok

Just thought I'd mention that...


Ok! So, Sunday and Monday were normal days at work really… Although, I feel bad saying nothing… So, I’ll quickly mention just how much I’ve started loving working in the refectory.

Tuesday was my day off. I woke up at about 11am… Fantastic stuff! Helen and I had decided that we wanted to go do Karaoke, so had roped Yuta into taking us and asked Tomo to come (although he never turned up). I spent most of the day relaxing and getting ready for karaoke. It was good. Before Karaoke, we went for some ramen, which was amazingly good. Although I got full very quickly and Yuta had to finish it. Also, I had my first ever Melon soda… Oh god, it’s amazing!!
So anyway, on to karaoke. There’s a not a lot I can write about it… We all sang songs… And generally had fun. Yuta has an amazing voice. He sang Arashi and News songs and it’s only when he stopped singing to cough or something that I realised that there were no backing vocals. I really want to sing some of the Japanese songs next time we go. They have the furigana above the kanji when the lyrics come up on screen… But I’m way not fast enough at reading yet to be able to sing along to them, so I need to learn a song off by heart. If anyone has any suggestions for Japanese songs to learn, e-mail me or send me a face book message. So yeah, awesome fun day.

It started snowing on Wednesday morning. It made me really happy when I woke up and saw snow on the mountains in the distance and a few flakes falling. Although it stopped by the time everyone else had woken up. Anyway, Nolan, Helen and I had decided to go down to Shirakawa that morning, so, for some reason not even I can fathom, I forced them both to get up about 2 hours before the bus would arrive and made them go down to breakfast with me. I’m sure it was a good thing in the end, I’m sure if I hadn’t they would’ve woken up late and missed breakfast or something.
So, anyway, to Shirakawa. This time I didn’t end up spending hours walking around aimlessly because Nolan and Helen actually know where they’re going. We went to some huge shopping centre and I somehow managed to find myself in the 100 yen (50p - ish) section. Oh god, the random things you can get at a 100 yen shop. To my memory I bought… Several hair things, an adorable little bag (which is now my revision bag) a Japanese practice book, pens, ruler, corkboard, pins for my board, a little clock for the kitchen (which still needs batteries)… Um… And other stuff I can’t remember.
I then found another shop where I bought a lot of adorable accessories for my pigtails. (Hey, if I’m going to be called “kawaii” several times a day by hundreds of teenage girls, I might as well give them more of a reason), oh, and I also bought a new pocket watch! I was so annoyed when I realised I’d left my pocket watch at home and I refuse to buy a wristwatch, they annoy me so much. I was so happy when I found a whole display counter covered in different, adorable watches. Even happier when I saw the selection of pocket watches. I was torn between three different ones; a silver one with a butterfly on, a smaller, gold version (about the same size as my pocket watch) and a silver one with a crown on. I decided on the one with a crown on, because it reminded me of Nana Kitade. Seriously, it only cost 1000 yen (£5 - ish). If I go back there, I may buy a few more as spares, they’re really nice watches.
Anyway, I didn’t really buy anything else that was too exciting.
When we got back to British Hills I sat downstairs and watched “My Neighbour Totoro” with James, Nora and sometimes Kenny, while I looked at all my new, exciting stuff. It’s a really weird film… And the voices of the girls in it are really annoying. I have yet to see a Studio Ghibli film that has lived up to all its hype… In my humble opinion.
That night I went down the pub and talked to everyone at the bar for ages. Then I noticed Yuta, sat on his own, looking all down. So I went and asked him what was wrong, and, glancing at his phone once again he was like “Ayano’s had a car crash…” Ahhh!!! I felt sick! He told me that Saito-san, Yasu, Tomo and Yuichi had gone to help. But I really wanted to go as well… Even though I knew it was stupid. Yuta got phone calls throughout the night updating him on what was going on. In the end we found out that she’d gone off the side of the road (originally we heard that she’d fallen off the mountain!!!) and got whiplash, so was spending the night in hospital. I went around telling all the gaijin staff I could… Nobody seemed nearly as upset as I was. So in the end, Yuta and I just sat next to each other, in silence, worrying. I decided that we needed to get our minds off it, so I told Yuta we should go for a walk…. In the snow… Falling heavily. We walked through the woods, towards view point. It was beautiful… The snow was completely untouched and glittered beautifully in the gentle moonlight. I then threw a snowball at Yuta and we had a good snowball fight. Ahhh, there’s nothing quite like acting like a child to cheer you up. I felt much better after this. In the end, all I could do was hope for the best, worrying about it wasn’t going to help.

Thursday was amazing. At work in the morning it was only me, Mel, Yuta, Helen and lots of snow. We did the work we needed to do… Then we played! James appeared part way through and started throwing snowballs at us and attacking us with icicles (yes, we have icicles! They‘re huge!). He then started attacking the passing school children with snowballs. Which gained him more fan girls. Damn him! There was general silliness all day really. Later on, I was going around replacing the flowers. I love doing this as it is… Because I get to play with pretty flowers. I decided to keep a few that weren’t pretty enough to stay on the tables, but still weren’t dead (they’re now taped to my door to dry them). Then Misaki-san was like “come here and try some wine”… So, there we were, sitting around, drinking wine, playing in the snow, admiring roses. Then I went home at 4 because I was on an early shift.

On Friday, work was normal, as far as I can remember... Something exciting probably happened... But it seems like weeks ago.
Helen had decided to do curry and cakes for Friday night. Oh god, it was so good. The oven in our kitchen has stopped working so apparently she had to go to the teachers houses and had to run from room to room stirring each pot on their single hobs and the cakes had to be cooked in the toaster oven. The curry was amazing… Helen’s a damn good cook! It was really nice having everyone sat around the table like that. Let’s see if I can remember… Me, Helen, Mel, Phil, Mansell, Anna, Bruno, Ingrid, Tammy at one point, James… Nolan… Um… Dennis? I’m sure there were other people there… Seriously, it was amazing, we were all sitting around, sharing dishes, making repeated toasts, everyone talking… We’re like one big, multicultural family. England, Holland, Germany, South Africa, Australia, Canada… Um… Yeah… I love everyone here. The mixture of cultures and personalities makes for very interesting conversations and interactions.
Anyway, after the curry, as everyone was leaving I suddenly decided to start building a snowman. I wanted him to be sitting on the chair in the smoking area. So, I got to work moulding his arm first, then his body... Then I realise that if I carried on, my hands would drop off, so I grabbed some gloves and snow boots. I then moulded the rest of him. At one point Yuichi and Noriko came out of the pub and were bewildered by me. Nolan decided to stay out and play in the snow too. He built a snow "mushroom". But yeah, once I'd finished my man, I decided to build a whole army of men. But by this point my whole body was starting to sieze up from the cold (I was only wearing jeans, a thin jumper, snow boots and gloves) so my second man kind of turned into a snow lizard, inspired by a huge one Owain did when I must've been about 8... Yeah. Then I went back inside. That was hilarious. I kicked off my boots and stepped into the house, then my legs gave way from underneath me and I spent about 5 minutes crumpled on the floor in the hallway, laughing to myself because I couldn't get back up.
Once I got to my room I turned my heater onto maximum and just sat next to it, letting it blast me with hot air... It felt good.
But I don't care about the amount of pain I went through, the end product is awesome! He's still there... Sort of... His heads fallen off and his legs are seperate from his body, but you can still sort of tell what he's supposed to be. Plus, a lot of people have commented that he's awesome and actually looks like someone has been covered in snow. I can see him from one of the windows at the refectory as well, which pleases me greatly.



Today is Sunday... (Well, sort of, it's 1:30am on Monday). I have a random day off tomorrow... And I have no idea what to do with it... I don't have enough money to go down to Shirakawa... Plus, I'm feeling quite tired... So I might spend most of tomorrow in my Kigurumi, drinking lots of tea and maybe tidy my room so I can take and upload pitures of it.
I should be caught up on blogs by tomorrow.