Tales from the Weekend

Today SO and I went for a looooong bike ride to the Echizen coast and back. I finally got to try out Mare, a little seaside restaurant that has been beckoning me for the past 4 years. We had a bacon and egg toasted sandwich -- and by bacon, I mean an oblong slice of ham as thick as my finger. I can't figure out why they won't just call it ham.

I got some clipless pedals for my bike (another name I don't understand since they have, um, a clip) and I did pretty well on them. Just once, I was in a tunnel, trying to turn around and I had one foot out for safety, but that doesn't do jack when you are falling the other direction. I managed to throw myself to the side of the free foot, preventing a total splatter on teh sidewalk, but not avoiding a heavy collision with the bike and my entire body weight on my calf. My leg is about nine shades of purple and blue for a good 6 inches. Woo-hoo. At least it's the kind of bruise you can proudly show off -- it's not like I have to admit that I fell down while drunk or fell on my ass in a parking lot or anything...

The weekend was actually quite nice -- Friday night one of the JETs here had an amusing party called Edward Sake Hands -- everyone had to bring a bottle of sake and then the host taped it to their hands until they had finished it. I brought a couple of cans of beer because I didn't think people were seriously going to drink an entire bottle of sake by themselves. I was wrong. After everyone quickly got pleasantly social, we went to a bar that was waaaay too far for someone to suggest walk to it, but whatever. It's lameness kept me from staying out too late. It didn't stop me from trying to give a 200 pound dude a ride home on the back of my bicylce, however, which was interesting...

Saturday, our Japanese teacher took us to a Mongolian restaurant for a kind of good-bye lunch. The owner was her friend and our teacher had been to Mongolia with her, so they were able to give us a tidy little education while we ate. Afterwards, our teacher took us to her husband's office (he's retired, but still does some kind of agricultural work, so his office is a little house in a rice field). I'm not sure why we went there, but I think she just wanted to have us talk to him one last time and show us where he worked. Then she had us drive her by her house so she could show that to us too. She's cute. I think she wanted to do more stuff with us outside of class, but her invitations were always sort of half invitations -- she would mention something, but then it was like she was too embarassed too go on. We weren't always sure we were understanding her Japanese correctly, so we didn't want to be like, sure! we'll go! and then , come to find out she was just telling about her plans. I'll miss her.

Then Saturday night, we went to a Malaysian place for our friend's birthday and after that, I happily fell asleep. Talked to Mom and my sister this morning, went for a bike ride and now I'm typing in front of the fan. Good weekend!