Life in Wakayama has definately steamed up - whew. The temperature is now hitting the 30s and there is humidity to match. All that aside - it is definately now beach weather and I am totally living it up!
The last 3 weekends have seen me doing some more flower arranging (one more attempt which involved pretty pink roses), improving on my bowling score (I have now hit the 100 mark! The secret was finding a heavier ball!), getting a sunburnt face (it was fun getting it though) and sailing and dancing through life. Details, details I hear you scream.
Well bowling kinda explains itself so lets move onto the beach weekends. Went to go hiking on the 2９th on June only thing was...wind was a strong 42 km an hour so the ferry (to where we were planning on hiking) was cancelled. Instead, the day found us in Kada, looking at the doll temple (I found a HUGE pile of phallic symbols and they truly were made to be penises, there were veins and EVERYTHING!) so that was an eye opener! The doll temple is for fertility and children's health so I shouldn't have been surprised I guess! Then is was off to Isonoura beach for some 'body-surfing!'. It was pretty chopped up but fun anyway. Then it decided to rain - lets just say, the poor guy on the beach who had been dry - wasn't so dry by the end of it! I spent the day with a fellow Melbournian and 2 Japanese folks.
That evening I had a dinner invite at my teacher's house (flower arranging and tea ceremony). It was a fun filled evening filled with LOTS of food, great company (Japanese, American, French and Chinese people all in the same room - including 2 very friendly Mormans!) and a bit of embarrassment. When you are used to hanging around with poeple that aren't native English or fluent English speakers and are polite, you tend to say things that can have a double dodgy meaning!! One should not say 'are you tasty' to a French guy! Not wise! (I was talking about mosquitoes but he only heard the are you tasty bit - I was the colour of my red shorts after that little episode!).
To finish that weekend off, I ended up at another beach on the Monday - Wakaura beach. There is an awesome little cafe there called Bagus (pronounced Bargoose) that makes delicious chai lattes. Yumm and then we went to a restaurant called Colours. Talk about a food stuffing weekend!
Last weekend I went on a yacht cruise. This was organised through the volunteer people in city hall for foreigners and Japanese to meet and have fun together. There were about 10 yachts in total. My friends and I all ended up on different yachts which actually was kinda good. We all met and made new friends. I ended up on a yacht with a high school student and the skipper. We had fun talking in broken English and Japanese. The skipper was lovely - he has even invited my friends and I back to have another cruise. Yeh, I love the friendly Japanese over here! I got to steer and we managed to put out the main sail and the jib. Very relaxing. The bbq afterwards was great. Everyone met up again and we all chatted with each other. I managed to meet the Indonesian boys that had been heckling me (it is kinda nice to be told 'I love you' as you are riding to work), they were quite nice and lets just say young males - wanting to find any female... and to educate my Japanese friends on the meaning of horny.
We then ran around and did some Awaodori dancing. I managed to drag a few people up and so we all danced around in the hot sun and yes, I managed to get sunburnt for the second weekend in a row. I did reapply the sunscreen too. Anyway - hoping for no further repeats of sunburn - its painful!
That evening we all went to my Canadian friends house, went out for delicious sushi and then played frisby until it got too dark to see. I then got to watch a Miyazaki film called Kiki's delivery service which was lovely. I like his films.
Monday, I rode to the beach, went swimming, went walking with a Japanese mate (female for all those wondering!) and then found a nice cafe to sit and chat (beside the beach of course!). She left and then I hung out at the cafe a little longer (its attached to a surf shop) and chatted with some of the people there for a little bit. Then is was swimming time and then back to my house for a snooze and some study.
So lots of fun had!
