my last weekend!

well, it's 9:45 Sunday evening and I fly out tomorrow afternoon, which means leaving here around 11am. I spent the entire weekend hangin out with super amazing fun people doing super amazing fun stuff and i have yet to pack my bags. Lets see...Friday Jessie from Scotland (previously blogged about) took the train in at the same time that Amy (David's friend from Hawaii) took the bus in and we picked them up at the station. Spent the afternoon at the beach swimming, frisbeeing, hurting ourselves and having a great time. After the beach experience we went out to dinner and had some okonomiaki, one of my favorite japanese goods. Kinda like a floppy omellete...but then at the same time nothing like that! hehe, it's good!

Saturday came and Amy's friend Kanoko (hope I spelled that right) came in from Tokyo to hang out too. We ended up back at the beach with the whole crew including the Andako (hope I spelled that right too!) family from Tokyo who was previously mentioned in my blog as well. There were a ton of us there that day and by the end most of us were sitting in the wet sand covering eachother in it and getting as dirty as possible! So fun, but so dirty! So, instead of coming back to the house with a bunch of dirty folks we decided that it was off the public bath for us! My first experience with the public bath...quite a good one indeed! For those of you who don't know, it's very traditional here to have public baths (almost all hotels have them) where you go get all cleaned up in a row of little sit down shower stalls and then spend a bit of time chillin with the guys naked in the hot tub; a really big hot tub with a few levels. Quite an experience indeed, one that I've very glad that I was able to have before I left. Then that evening everyone came over for a fabulous dinner made by David's lovely mother and Mrs. Kurata (the AMAZING cook). It was a spectacular spread of lovely food to feed an army, which is good cause there was an army of us here. Then, after a killer game of around the world ping-pong (if you don't know what this is we have got to play sometime), we all went outside and shot off some fireworks! Fireworks are much less seasonal here, or so it seems. Since there were a few friends of the family here David and I gave up our room and we spent the night at the Kurata's house along with Amy and Kanoko. Mrs. Kurata, the amazing woman she is, had some goodies for us when we got there and then we watched a few of the music videos and photos slideshows that David and I have done while here and stayed up tll 2am playing cards.

Sunday morning we woke up and had our first "real breakfast" since being in Japan, according to Mr. Kurata. Which means fish, rice, soup, veggies salad and pretty much a ton of other stuff, finished off with a breakfast dessert of a slice of peach, peach jello kinda stuff (homemade) and vanilla ice cream. Seriously, Mrs. Kurata is a machine when it comes to cooking stuff, she can make and does make everything! After breakfast we had a lovely cherry pit spitting contest which I took third place in, david second, and mr. Kurata first (he was the one that suggested the contest, now I know why). And the rest of our last day in Japan was spent just goofin around with friends, chasing monkies, playing badmiton, memory card games, eating more of Mrs. Kurata's amazing food, and goodbyes. It's amazing how easy it is to get close to people, even with a language barrier. I can't even express how blessed I was to be able to experience family in Japan. Thousands of people visit Japan a year and I am sure that I'm among a very small percentage that actually get to spend considerable amount of time with Japanese families, sleeping in their homes, eating with them, playing their silly games, and stumbling through conversation (not with everyone was it stumbling, some spoke good english). I wish that I could just bring some of these people that I met home with me so that you could all meet them and know what lovely people they are. Or maybe you guys just need to come here and find your own Japanese friends! They have all been invited to the states, so maybe someday....

Alright, well I need to go pack, this will be my last blog from Japan! Thanks to all who have read and commented over the past two months here. It's been soo much work, but sooo much fun at the same time! I'm not sure how to end this, so I'll just have to say "OPEN UP JAPAN!"

Gowda Mowrning Mista Neptune!

A Tribute to Mori-san, the gardener that comes around the Neptune's place a few times a week yelling "Gowda Mowrning Mista Neptune!!" repeatedly until someone comes to the door. My personal favorite was the day that he drove over here and woke us all up to let John know that he wouldn't be working that day because it was raining. He has three dogs of his own so he always shows up with pockets full of dog treats, so Coco and Pelle go craaazy whenever he shows up. Anyway, here he is!