The Worst of Time, The Best of Times

Well, it looks as it has been a little over 10 days since my last blog entry so here we go!

Last weekend, I decided to take it easy and relax at my apartment in Moriya as I had spent the following 2 weeks in Shinjuku Ni-chome and was completely partied out! The weekend was great, but come Monday, when I got a payment warning slip from my car insurance company, everything turned for the worse. I started thinking about my financial situation in Japan, and the economy and how I was so stressed about always been poor come the end of the month. On Tuesday, I had Daryle come to my place and explain the warning slip to me and I freaked out about my life/financial situation/etc. Luckily, Daryle (being the awesome friend that he is) helped calm me down. So, I have made the following decision: Starting November 1st, I'm cutting my expenditures to the bare minimums so I can save money and take advantage of the increasing low value of the Canadian dollar (which is a great thing for me as I earn Japanese yen).

I'm going to do this by:

1. Not going out at all (not for coffee, dinner, movies, parties, etc etc etc)

2. Selling my car (which in all honesty, I don't need and costs me a crap load in expenses every month).

3. Doing anything and everything else it will take to save as much yen as I can over the next year.


OK! On to brighter pastures for a moment... On Saturday morning at 11am, I met Anna in Moriya as we had decided to go to Mount Tsukuba for the day. I was really excited as I have lived in Ibaraki Prefecture for 4.5 years now and had yet to visit it. We left Moriya around 11:30am and got just a little bit lost getting there! (I'm being sarcastic!! We were LOST!) We finally made it to the mountain, and had about an hour to look around. It was beautiful and I took alot of pictures. There was even a gaijin (foreigner) girl getting married to a Japanese man at the shrine at the top who had her family from her home country there as well. It was a real surprise to see that. We left at 3:00pm and got so ridiculously lost on the way home as well. It is quite true that maps are not my friend and I'm directionally challenged! We finally arrived back in Moriya around 5:30pm. My friends Jenn & Mike from Canada who've been living in Hitachi-Naka in north Ibaraki were coming for dinner & a visit but were late leaving and arriving in Moriya as well, so even though I got lost and was late getting back, I still beat them. Anna, Mike, Jenn & I went out for dinner at the really nice Italian restaurant in Moriya and had a lovely dinner.

After dinner we grabbed some beers from the grocery store and went back to my apartment. Jenn & I drank 10 beers between the two of us and 2 tumblers of Ume-shu (Japanese plum liqueur). We were drunk and had such a great time talking about everything! Jenn and Mike couldn't stay the night so they left at 1:40am to head back to Hitachi-Naka. I've woken up this morning with quite the hangover but thought I should update this blog, so here it is! Next week will be ALS Halloween Week so I will be doing Halloween themed lessons with my students for the week and I will have the big Halloween party for my students on Friday night from 6:00-8:00 p.m. It should be fun and I'm looking forward to it!