English Hike

So the weekend has come and gone once again, and I decided I should share a bit of my activities since it wasn't an event-less couple days.

I kicked off my weekend early by inviting another assistant English teacher to my place to make okonomiyaki. Fortunately my cooking abilities passed the test. I thought it was pretty delicious anyway.

Saturday was a volunteer day for me. Since I am still trying to meet locals I decided to volunteer for an "English Hike" around Omihachiman City, a city about an hour away by train from where I live, Hino. I actually went there not knowing much except that we were going to walk around the city and go to some places like museums, shrines, etc., and then we would have a short quiz in English afterwards.

I woke up at 7AM and made my way to Omihachiman by 9:00. I signed in and joined with a few nice people from Shiga Bank. Unfortunately it looked like my group wouldn't really lend me to my peer group age since the average age seemed to be hovering around 40 with maybe the youngest being two girls in their late 20s or early 30s (I find the age of Japanese women hard to gauge sometimes). Either way, they were really cool and after a while I realized I lucked out.

The first place we went was up a ropeway to a mountain top where an old castle use to stand and saw a great view of the city. Before volunteering I was told I would have to pay for all my entrance fees and whatnot, but my group was paying for mine. I guess it pays to volunteer to speak in English to bankers...


It isn't the ocean, but a huge lake. Lake Biwa

After a few more wanderings at about 50% English capacity we stopped for lunch. To my surprise we were going to eat Omi-beef. Now outside of Japan Omi-beef isn't really well known, but I am sure most have heard fo Kobe-beef. Omi-beef is basically the same grade of beef in Japan which also translates as EXPENSIVE! For about 10 small thin slices of beef to throw on your individual grill along with a few other things like a salad and miso soup the cost was about $40. So besides getting a free tour of the town I scored a lunch that I otherwise may have never eaten in my life! I was also given the advice by the 55 year old-ish banker (far right in the picture below), "I would recommend Japanese women." Which I found to be a bit of awkward advice, but nonetheless good to know I guess...


My group, minus one guy who had to leave early.

All in all, although I was hoping to find a few people to hang out with on the weekends during this hike, it was pretty interesting. Better than my Sunday which consisted of laundry, sleeping, watching the movie "7 years in Tibet," cooking dinner and watching confusing Japanese television