Pure

So last week it seems like I finally got over a cold that I seemed to have longer than two weeks! It is great to be able to breathe again. Unfortunately after the weekend I feel like I might be coming down with something again. Working with kids and riding public transportation isn't the best way to keep colds away. Not to mention Japan seems to have a fear of soap, so in almost all public bathrooms there is no soap! No wonder swine flu became a pandemic here. Glad I brought that small bottle of hand sanitizer from America with me.

Anyway the last few weekends haven't been too bad. Last weekend I went to Hikone to take a quick look at a candle festival where a street was lined with a bunch of different candle configurations.

Hiko-nyan (Hikone Cat) Hikone's Mascot

Overall a pretty relaxing weekend with a lot of time sitting in my apartment doing who knows what. Just relaxing, which was a pretty good idea since the following week was pretty busy.

Most of the time at work I feel pretty useless but this week I was super busy, which was a great change of pace but nothing I would want to do every week. I actually helped plan a class and make a worksheet which I rarely do for my junior high school classes. Not to mention during this class people from my town came to watch it. Afterwards my Japanese Teacher of English said to me that they enjoyed the class because it looked like the students had fun! Which is great, and hopefully will help keep my reputation up since I am not too involved with my local community. Thursday was a super busy day because a bunch of classes were added so I had the maximum amount of classes, which is 6, and taught seventh through 9th grade all in one day!

Although the weekend is only half over, I have nothing else planned for this weekend. Yesterday I went to Osaka to party with some other JETs that live on the west side of the lake and who I rarely ever see. So in order to put myself more out there, I decided to tag along since it was an open invitation event. The plan was to go to a couple bars and then to a club called PURE.

After going to a normal style pub we went to a place called Cafe Absinthe, where they obviously sell Absinthe and where you can try shisha. I am not a smoker, but I do like to indulge in new experiences and I would have to say this experience was very pleasant. I both tried a cherry flavored tobacco that was filtered through alcohol and a apple/mint tobacco filtered through water.

Our hookah.

After this we decided to head to the club called PURE. Honestly, at first I had my doubts about this place. It is known as a foreign hangout that can be pretty sleazy which really makes the club's name, Pure, ironic. Probably not a place I would go to by myself, but since I was with people I gave it a shot. Also since you only have to pay about $40 to get into the club and can drink all you want it didn't seem like a bad deal, especially considering I couldn't go home until after 6AM when my first train left Osaka.

Overall the music was good and although it was pretty crowded everyone seemed friendly, except for some other foreign guys who were obviously only there for one reason. Thankfully my height intimidates people, so I had no issues. Overall I think the night was a good learning experience, especially on how to be more social in a situation that I am not 100% completely comfortable with.