Fireplace Fun

Friday night Cristina and I went to my favorite place for dinner, 100-yen conveyor belt sushi. The rest of the night was pretty low key. We rented Kill Bill Vol. 2 which we saw once we got home. We also were able to see and tape Shrek that was on television that evening as well. The following morning we headed to Koyama to meet up with Kaz, Alex and Mike (from Aira). We all went together to the Nejime ferry about 1 hour Southwest of Cristina's house on our peninsula which links to the southern part of the other peninsula at Ibusuki. Ibusuki is actually pretty well known in Japan for its hot sand baths. I believe that there are only 2 onsen in Japan that can claim to have hot sand baths, one of them being Ibusuki and the other being in Northern Kyushu. Basically, you go to this place where some old Japanese ladies bury you in sand that is heated with the aid of seismic activity. However, this is not what we went to Ibusuki for. We went there and met up with Lauren, the Ibusuki ALT, and some other ALTs and Japanese people to go to a party that was originally set to be on a boat, but later changed to this rich Japanese man's cabin. Aki, the rich Japanese man who I was speaking about, enjoys hosting these parties where he usually makes some Shepherd's pie for everyone and treats you to all the beer you could want (even though we did run out and have to go on a beer run). We enjoyed ourselves much and ended up crashing there for the night. As a very funny side story, Alex, who passed out a bit earlier than the rest of us, woke up from his slumber while we were all winding down talking around the table and suddenly crawled into the fireplace. I thought that he was sleep walking, but in reality he was finding a place to throw up and could not make it to the bathroom in time.

The next day, we took the ferry back to our peninsula to go to Tashiro to meet up with Fergus at a farm that was having a fundraiser. After we ate and were entertained by how funny some of their song and dance acts were, we went to his house where we saw a very frightening movie -- 28 Days Later. Afterward, he treated us to some home-cooked Japanese dinner including mushroom tempura, an amazing soup and some noodle dish. We left and the night was over. Well, before heading to bed, Cristina did call Laura who had been to a Costco in Fukuoka and purchased for her a huge container of Tide with Bleach (enough to do 78 loads) which Cristina was desperately longing for.