Forgot to publish this when I wrote it some time ago...

The end of another week, this one better then the last. Tonight I had Japanese lessons with my coworkers while we all tried to figure out how to make bread with my coworkers new bread machine. Exciting Friday night! I did have some really good ume shou (a shou jou and plum and sugar liquor) that was home made and it inspired me to try and pull off a little DIY. That will be my up and coming project next time I am avoiding learning Japanese which will probably be in about five minutes. Other possible procrastination tactics for learning better Japanese include: buying a keyboard, making some home cooked okonomiyaki, or buying a really cool Japanese to English translator that reads Kanji and can translate a real voice. The only reason I may use the aforementioned tactics rather then making ume shou is because you have to wait one year to drink the ume shou after you soak it. I feel as making the liquor would be more meaningful then signing another year long contract.
Something funny happened the other day, well... most of my students have chicken pox or the flu right now- we had about 9 kids absent everyday this week. Wait it gets better. There is this lil' guy in my class named Yoshitaka and he is so crazy small he can hardly walk. He just barely had his second birthday and he was deathly afraid of me for a really long time, but anyhow the other day he kept putting his hand on his forehead and saying he was sick. This little guy is always missing his mom and crying and gets really mad when he can't go home right after school and even his mom said he can cry on cue. She told me last week not to worry when he cries because he is a faker. There are many fakers in my class, those fake crying kids drive me crazy. I just laugh at them and tell them I know whats up. Anyhow, Yoshitaka was telling all the teachers he was sick and I was thinking yeah right he's just trying to pull this so he can go home. He often tries to escape from class and has made it pretty far out the side door a few times but, ACTUALLY he didn't say he was sick he said he had a fever. An hour passed and he was still saying he had a fever so we finally took his temperature and he was right! He did have a fever. Ohhh Yoshi.
Last weekend Tomoko and her friend Kumiko took Sarah and I out to Takichiho farm to see some real farm animals and to possibly milk a cow and try some fresh ice cream. It was an unusually sunny day-We went to the Kirishima shrine afterward which is one of the prettiest shrines I've seen so far and then ... she took us to this really cool sushi restaurant called Happy Fish. Sarah and I felt that we were ready to move on to the real deal after eating kaiten sushi (conveyor belt) every night for the past month or so. We have slowly acquired a working vocabulary of how to order various sushi dishes from chef behind the counter so Tomoko and Kumiko took us to do the real deal. Unfortunately the counter was reserved (or possibly they didn't want us to sit there because we were not Japanese) so we were unable to yell our requests for kappomaki (cucumber roll) or inari (tofu pouch with rice) to the sushi chef, but we got a really pretty private room instead. Tomoko and Kumiko were both really sweet because they wanted to show us a really good time and they let us stop at all the stores and pottery shops on the way out and at dinner they made sure we drank good Japanese Sake. It is really nice to be driven around in a car and see the forest area around Miyakonojo. In a few weeks there is a big St.Patrick's day party in town thrown by the local JETs (other English teachers) and the four of us are going to go to a flower festival in Miyazaki city and then go the the St. P's day party later that night. Ohh right, this week I also went to a yoga class. It wasn't too hard to figure out what to do or what was going on. Well I've written more then is bearable. Gotta go.