Back to life, back to reality

Yesterday afternoon, I said goodbye to Ritchie at the train station in Tokyo and made my way back to Kehi. I'm back at school today after working only intermittently for the past two weeks and it is definitely a change from the sleeping in and late morning coffee drinking that I've been doing. Ritchie and I backpacked around Kyoto, Nara, and Tokyo and saw over one thousand statues of Buddha (quite literally), learned more about Buddhism than either of us ever thought we'd learn, fed the sacred deer in Nara, and gawked at the Harajuku girls in Tokyo. My eardrums are still recovering from Carlton's rendition of 'Shot Through the Heart' at karaoke on Saturday night and my back is still recovering from sleeping on random futons at random Japanese inns. Now it's back to studying Japanese and leading the sleepy village life. It's tough to adjust.

Adventures with Ritchie

It's been a while since I've posted anything interesting and I apologize. I've been keeping busy the past week because Ritchie's here and we are having many adventures.

Adventure 1: Staying in the financial district of Tokyo where nothing happens and everything is closed on public holidays.
Adventure 2: Teaching the same lesson plan six times at elementary school on Tuesday morning to screaming/crying/running/jumping kids.
Adventure 3: Getting caught in Friday evening traffic on the drive from Kobe to Himeji. A one hour trip took three and a half hours - I blame Ritchie and his lack of a map.
Adventure 4: A night out in Himeji (or, as Ritchie's prefers to call it it: the Hi-minge) that resulted in a next-day vomit session in the McDonald's parking lot.
Adventure 5: Sending the wrong phone numbers to Carlton and Sindy so that they couldn't reach us and almost didn't make it into town. Luckily, however, they perservered and today I'm at school, wishing that I hadn't taken part in . . .
Adventure 6: Watching blessed shrines carried by drunk and exhausted Japanese men fight each other in the streets of Kinosaki to the beat of the Taiko-drum, followed by a traditional Japanese dinner and washed down with traditional Japanese beer and sake.

So far we've had a great week and there's still one more to go. This week we're going to Kyoto and Nara, and then meeting Carlton, Sindy, and The Crew in Tokyo before Ritchie flies back to Seattle. I will update with more adventures when time allows.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

"I want to be a pirate when I grow up!" the boy said.

"Really? A pirate?" Though taken aback by the creative answer, I inwardly laughed at the idea of this boy wearing a striped shirt and an eyepatch, yelling 'Aaargh!' while hobbling around on a peg-leg.

"Yes, a pirate! I want to fly in the sky!" he continued, enthusiastically.

Confused, I sneaked a quick peak at his paper. "Oh," I said. "A pilot. You want to be a PILOT when you grow up." Sadly, my hilarious image of the kid pillaging villages with his one good eye quickly deflated.

"A pirate!" he said again.

"A pirate!" the class echoed. "He wants to be a pirate!"

Maybe it's still funny, after all.

It's not all fun and games here, you know.