Itai! Part Two

"Itai!" is the Japanese equivalent of "Ouch!"

So today I am incredibly sunburnt.

I went to a beach. In Japan. And got Sunburnt.

Yes.

I also discovered that water in Japan has the temperature of a meat locker. But after minute you can't feel your legs, so its okay.

Swimming in the Ocean is probably not going to become my favourite pasttime here.

Saturday we got to Iwaki about 15 minutes after Hanabi finished. Actually we arrived in Izumi, a southern part of Iwaki, whih might have been useful to know was our destination before I bought my ticket all the way to Iwaki.

We then spent about 10 minutes at the end of a txi trip searching for what we thought was an apartment bock, which in fact was a children's school. Luckily the taxi driver was nice and stopped the meter when we got to the area he thought we should be in.
By this point Helen's bad day was catching up on her - and she was almost ready to pack it in, but we pushed a bit harder and found the party, and then proceeded to have lots of fun.

I also tried a very nice vodka based drink called ZIMA (my last name phonetically at least) - and it was very very good. But I shall have to invest in a bottle opener to drink to more often.

My part of the party at least continued until 6*00am - playing drink and dare games (JanKen and Osama chopsticks game) in Japanese - which was loads of fun. Jan Ken Po is Rock, Scissors Paper. Osama-game, is a game where everybody is given a chopstick with a number - one is labelled Osama or "King" (lit. venerated one) and this person can command any numbers to do anything - drink, kiss, dance, tell an embarrassing story or anything. I had seen this on TV before so was very happy to play it now.

The next day (or a few hours later that moring) we went to a pretty large and exciting Taiko Fiesta 2005 in Onahama - in which the girl, whose party we went to, was playing. Afterwards we went to a beach - in which previously mentioned sunburn and freezing water swimming happened. Then we watched some movies and decided to have a BBQ if it didn't rain. Although the storm missed us - we couldn't get the fire started and the meat, which was a few days old looked very very suspicious. So conveyor belt sushi became the meal of the day.


All in all its been an exciting weekend - or in fact an exciting week --- now with a concert tnight, Mexican party tomorrow, and hopefully Hanabi (fireworks) on the beach on Wednesday, before leving for Kyoto on Thursday --- I can defintely say I'm starting to feel more like I'm getting a wnderful foreign experience in Japan.

So Injuries aside, its all going very nicely.