Karaoke Montage

Almost every weekend we end up doing karaoke, not only because it's all you can drink for 2000 yen for 2 hours, but also because it's so much fun. I've stopped taking photos of it now, but here are some older ones.

Matt swears that they were singing Slayer:

And here's proof that you don't need any sense of tone or pitch, or timing to be awesome.

Okayama Weekend

A while ago we had a long weekend, so we went to the nearby city of Okayama, which we discovered was much cooler than Fukuyama. We stumbled across a taiko performance at the castle, walked through the beautiful Korakuen Garden, and found a cafe that does cafe latte as good as a flat white at home. (Although that is hard to know for sure - I'm pretty sure my taste buds have lowered their standards since I've been here.) Anyway, here are some photos:





You may notice some Aussie prick's made his way into the taiko group:
























We watched this little boy walk past the turtle, unaware. When he saw it he screamed like a little boy, and ran to get his Mum and little brother.




He really screamed. I wish I'd got a video of it.




Suddenly feeling brave, he got in a few pokes...




Before the turtle escaped.





See this is why I don't give Simon the camera.




What a guy!

Sports Day: Quite Strange

Here is a video montage of Daimon High School's Sports Day. Highlights include boys cheerleading, the sun-salute dance and the head-master's major wedgie. There is also a sport that involves students getting on each others shoulders and trying to push each other off. If only they'd offered that sport at St Cuths, who knows how my sporting career might have turned out...





And for those of you who are technically challenged, here are photos:






















This is Adrian, an exchange student from Te Awamutu. He teaches my classes with me, which is great for me. But sometimes it's hard for the students to understand him when he says 10 "tin" instead of "tan". The girls all think he's really cute, and the boys try to molest him before we start the classes. It's quite disturbing.
















I was forced to do a 50m run, in my work clothes since they didn't tell me until the day. Luckily that wasn't captured on film.

After sports day, I saw some of my naughty students huddled around, so I said "what are you doing?" The worst one, Yuuichi, thrust his fingers in my face and said "smell my fingers, smell good."

Me: "No, smells bad"
Him: "Georgia, don't you fraid me"
Me: "I'm not afraid of you"
Him: "I practice every night"
Me: "Yeah, alone"
Him: "With left hand, is small, but with right hand, iss biiiiiig"
Me: "Great English Yuuichi, see you"

Here he is on the right with his friend, perving with binoculars.

Hiroshima Weekend / Sake Festival

We headed to Hiroshima City for a night, and enjoyed some deeeericious tempura. They were kind enough to give us full aprons, which Simon managed to get filthy.





The chef cooked it all in front of us, and told us exactly what to put with sauce or lemon or salt. We both agreed that strangely enough the prawn leg tempura was one of the best. I finally tried sashimi, but the texture wasn't so great.





It's just a shame that those Dutch got in the way. Damn tourists.







This is just for you Stevie...




Stevie's Wonder Bar was in full boogie mode, but it was a bit cliquey.




So we headed into the streets.






Simon's trick:




We went to see Aba Shanti, a Jamaican reggae guy. The poster said it started at 10.00, so that's when we went. They said come back at 10.30, so we did. Then they said come back at 11.30, so we did, and they finally let us in. They said he'd be on at 12.30, then 1, then 2. By 3am, after we'd spent a fair bit of money at their bar, we went to the door and both threw a joint tantrum in broken Japanese, saying "Aba Shanti wa arimasen!" (you don't have Aba Shanti!) We argued for a good 10 minutes, but had no break through until Simon grabbed their sandwich board, jabbing his finger at "10pm", and knocked over the sandwich board which was holding the door open. They finally refunded our 4000 yen to get rid of us.

Simon clearly managed to have some fun though. These girls are cigarette dispensers:




"Here is my handle, Here is my spout..."




We saw Julia Reccordon there too. She left at 4, and he still hadn't gone on, although she had seen a black guy walking around backstage, so maybe they did have him.




The next day, it was off to Saijo for the Sake festival. But first, we headed to the electronics department store to recover from last night.








This is "rodeo pilates". It's seriously weird.





Off to the festival...








Unfortunately this is water not Sake.




I got a bit excited about the architecture, after being in Fukuyama so long.



















Then off to the park for some Sake. This is our friend Priya, from Wellington.




Kampai! (cheers)









Then it was back to Fukuyama for karaoke!