Week 41

Another slightly delayed post today (but no where near as delayed as the post from two weeks ago.) I didn't have time to write this morning as I was out the door at the crack of dawn to go hiking but more on that later. Let's start where I left off last week...

Monday went by in a flash and led into a Tuesday/Wednesday "weekend" where I did next to nothing but play video games with friends and go out at night.

Another short work week this week and, as one might expect, it went by quickly.

Saturday night I went to see a few local bands play uptown with a friend for his birthday. It was a pretty good show with a mediocre band opening and one I"ve seen before for the second act that really rocked.

Yesterday evening I met up with my girlfriend and we made cheese-curry-nabe and vegged out to Japanese TV.

As mentioned earlier, I was out of the house by 8:00 this morning and headed to the "48 waterfalls of Akameguchi" in Mie prefecture with my girlfriend. Today's national holiday was "sports day" so we figured getting some exercise would be a good thing. After an hour and a half train ride we got off in the middle of nowhere and waited 40 minutes for a bus to take us to the base of the falls. From the base it was about a two hour hike up through a valley with sheer rock walls, following a many waterfall-ed river, to get to the end of the trail. When we couldn't go any further we stopped and ate the lunch boxes we bought in the village below before we headed back down. As is often the case, the hike back took only about 1/3 of the time it took going out. Both coming and going we had almost perfect hiking weather. It was sunny but cool and shady under the trees on the mountain. Back at the trail head we caught the bus back to the station and then hopped on a train back to Osaka (and managed to not get seats, having to stand for another hour and a half after walking 5 miles up and now hill. Excruciating.)

Back to a regular work week with nothing on the docket yet this week so we"ll just have to wait and see what opportunities present themselves.