It's been both a very relaxing and very strenuous past week. One of the highlights was going to Minamiawaji ( A city to the south) to play soccer with Atsushi and his team on Thursday night. After three hours of hardcore indoor soccer, in the middle of 80% humidity, we were all quite tired not to mention pretty wet. It was a lot of fun though, and I got to meet more Japanese people which is always great. The Friday prior I went to the beach in Sumoto with one of the JET's (English teachers) on the island, Jeff, who I met the first day. We met two of his friends there, Micah (An American) and Alex (A brit from outside of Oxford; all of them JET English teachers). It was pretty cool just hanging out and grilling on the beach. One of their Japanese friends, Yoshi, showed up a little later. After we finished eating we played Frisbee on the beach. I'll be seeing them again this Friday for another barbecue. I've also been spending a lot of time hanging out at Derek's house, and playing rummy with him and his friends. While I still have a long way to go in mastering the game, its been a fun experience. What I didn't realize is that the Japanese and English are hardcore gamblers, and when they play they play for keeps. I lost maybe 500 yen (about 5 bucks) over the course of a few nights, but it was fun. Otherwise, I'm getting along great here, walking Nappa everyday and avoiding the massive spiders who live in the house (One of the cats, Boogie, found one last night and was tossing it around and crushing it, kind of sad really). Big barbecue party coming up on Sunday, Atushi and a bunch of his friends, Jeff and his friends and some people from Tokushima are coming, it'll be a blast.

(pics top to bottom: Jeff, Micah and Alex at the beach in Sumoto, Derek laughing during dinner, knowing full well that he's about to singlehandedly beat me senseless at Rummy, The Spider in the house, a sunset from the vantage point of Derek's balcony)