Birthday Weekend

Three days without a post is much better than three weeks, don't you think? Even so, remembering three days' worth of happenings is no fun for my exhausted cranium.
So. Saturday I had planned to have a sort of picnic for my birthday at the park outside of Shinjo station, but I was worried the typhoon was going to make that rather difficult, so I cancelled that and instead made plans with Nishida-mama to go to Aya's school culture festival. Of course, come Saturday morning, the weather was bright and cheery--super windy and cloudy, but really no rain to speak of. The typhoon decided to change course last minute, it seems, so pretty  much missed all of Tohoku (the northern region of Japan). But that was okay--at least it was nice for Aya's school festival. We went and had some lunch, and watched Aya take part in a crossdressing show (I guess that's normal for school festivals to do?), and then Nishida-mama dropped me off, and I napped, and then went and met up with Sarah at the station at 4. Then the two of us walked around and went to the bookstore, bought some cute folders, came back to my apartment for water and to get Ben, and then we three went to Bulldog because I don't think Sarah had ever been to one before and she needed to see the epicness. We spent a while browsing in there, and bought some cute things (well, Sarah  and I did--Ben bought poo-shaped soap), and then we went to Nishida-mama's for dinner,  meeting up with Alyssa too. After dinner we went to Yamazawa to get dessert, and then came back to my place to watch the King's Speech, which is a great movie!


Sarah stayed the night since the last train back to her town is around 8:45 or thereabouts, and then when I left for the sports festival in the morning I gave her a lift back to the station. Then I spent the day at Hagino for their sports festival, which was amusing! I even got to take part in the centipede race, where you run in teams of five with your feet tied together. It was the parent/teacher association group versus the students' groups (red and white, of course), and I'm proud to say PTA won! Not without casualties though--poor Kakizaki-sensei took a nasty fall just as we were handing the baton off, and I found out later she had torn a ligament and has to have treatment for it over the next two or three weeks! She wasn't the only injury though--lots of students would come limping back to where the school nurse had set up shop between events with various scrapes and bruises. Japanese sports festivals are dangerous!
The festival wrapped up a little bit before 2, then I helped clean up and break down, and then I drove home,  showered, got pretty, and Yakuwa-sensei picked me up to take me to the nomikai with the teachers and the PTA volunteers from the day. That was fun--I spoke a lot with Taeko, the librarian, who I met last year too, because we share an affinity for Sailor Moon and shounen anime like Yu Yu Hakusho! She  is super sweet, and I've made her a promise that when I have nothing to do between classes, I'll come visit her in the library and we'll geek out together. I'm looking forward to it next time I go to Hagino!
The party finished at about 8 or so, and then Yakuwa-sensei drove me home (she didn't drink), and I studied some kanji and watched Weeds and went to bed.
Today I didn't have school (a break to make up for the sports festival yesterday), so I kind of vegged out. I made some (poorly) grilled salmon for breakfast and then took Amanda's bike that I had been borrowing since I lost the key to mine in Yamagata back to her apartment. Kakizaki-san had given me a spare key to my bike, but it was the wrong one, so I couldn't take my bike back from Amanda's yet. After that, I went to a shoe shop called Shoe Palace and bought two cute pairs of shoes to wear inside for school, and then came back. When I got back, a birthday card from Mom was sticking out in my mail slot, which made me happy because she didn't think it was going to get here for another couple of days. Then, around 3, Koseki-san and someone else from the city office brought me my big box of stuff that I had shipped to myself, and I spent a while organizing the contents of that box. After that was all stuffed away somewhere, I took a nap.
Nishida-mama came over for a bit in the afternoon to give me my birthday present--a box filled with cute earring and hair accessories--and then left, and then Ben and I went over to Kakizaki-san's for my birthday dinner. They had bought a small cake, and lit candles and sang to me and watched me blow out the candles, and then we had a great dinner! His daughters are so cute--they were playing Wii while Kakizaki-san, his wife, Ben and I were talking, and screaming and shouting and being adorable little girls (well, two of them are little; the oldest is thirteen or fourteen I think). Ben and I left shortly before 9, made a quick trip to Yamazawa, and then went home.
I go to Shinjo Elementary tomorrow. I'm not exactly sure what time I have to be there, but since my contract says I'm supposed to be at school from 8:30 to 4:30, I'm planning on being there by 8:15. I'm a little nervous about going to an elementary school because of what I remember from last year, but everything has been immensely better this time around, so I think I'm worrying for nothing. The students will at least be genki! And Japanese elementary schools kids are unbearably adorable, so that makes up for pretty  much anything else.
Then I think I might be having dinner at an Italian restaurant at 7 with Amanda and maybe Ben and Peter and some other expats Amanda knows, for my birthday. It's a little bizarre that it's my birthday. It's even more bizarre that it's my birthday, and I'm in Japan. Twenty-two isn't really an age to get overly excited about, and especially after my twenty-first birthday last year (which was epic--though some would say since I remember it all, it wasn't epic enough), it was almost anti-climatic. I had so much fun with Kakizaki-san and his family and Ben tonight though--they even gave me a present of a magnet to put on my car that's a little green chevron that denotes a beginning driver (Ben got one too, haha). That's a big thing here--chevrons mean you're a new driver, yellow tear drops mean you're experienced. I think there might be more, but those are the only two I can recall off the top of my head. Anyway, Tonks is super decked out now! I want to get a steering wheel cover, but Bulldog's selection is rather small and I'm not sure where else sells them. I was looking on Amazon and around the web for a Joker one (because I know I saw one at Hot Topic once), but they are surprisingly non-existent. There are Batman ones, of course, but I don't want Batman, I want Mr. J!
Well, anyway, I'm sure I'll find one to suit Tonks eventually. For now she's got all sorts of cute key chains and accessories, and I've even started keeping all my school supplies and books in the back in a basket so I don't have to constantly lug them up and down the stairs when I come home or change schools. I'm getting rather organized, I think!
More upcoming plans include Jomon Mura this weekend, where all us Yamagata JETs and whoever else comes camp out in a lodge in the forest and drink and be merry, and then the Uesugi Festival in Yonezawa on the 17/18, where I get to dress up as a samurai and fight in a battle reenactment, and then a trip to Sendai with Sarah the weekend after that! Then I think the next weekend or the weekend after (whichever is October 1), we're going to see a soccer game! I have a feeling September is going to go just as quickly as August, especially since it's already (pretty  much) one week gone.