Megan's 23rd Birthday

Well the rain here in Kitakami finally gave up its relentless downpour and the break allowed us to celebrate my next door neighbor Megan’s 23rd birthday in the sunshine along the banks of a river that runs alongside Iwate Park. A Japanese teacher named Yuki and I decided to travel into Morioka by train with her five year old son Kuga. The usually boring fifty minute train ride seemed a lot more enjoyable with him sitting beside me trying to poke me in the ear with one of his little action figures and the two of us fogging up the windows with our breath, much to the disgust of the other passengers on board at the time.

Along with the other teachers from my school that lived in the area I had the chance to meet a lot of new people who worked in other schools in the Morioka area. I was also able to finally put some faces to the names of people I had heard so much about but had not yet met. We spent the whole day sitting by the river as Bryan took charge of the small charcoal barbeque that Tom had brought along and cooked for us all. The amount of meat that we cooked I think was equal to that of a small farm yard of animals, but we somehow managed to finish it all off before we left.

As night began to fall and the city darkened around the mosquitoes turned their undivided attention towards us. We packed up our rubbish and everything else we had brought and decided to head out to Karaoke and sing our little hearts out while drinking as much as we could for two hours. The greatest thing about karaoke is no one gives a damn what you sound like as long as you sing as hard as you can. If you ever do Karaoke in Japan a good song to sing is ‘I don’t want to miss a thing – Aerosmith.’ It really seems to go off and is a favorite among the Japanese and foreigners alike. It is always brilliant fun, but I really enjoy listening to the Japanese girls sing, they put so much effort into the songs and I can appreciate anyone who can sing in Japanese… Considering I’m yet to work out how to say ‘Australian’ in Japanese correctly.

It was only early when we finished karaoke… Well for a night on the town anyway, so while most people headed back to their apartments for a good night’s rest about six of us continued onto the next bar where we stayed until it was light outside and then headed back home. My favorite part of the walk home was buying some freshly made Melon Bread. It was so damn good.

I stayed at Bryans for the night and when we woke up it was like we had been sleeping in sauna for six hours. It was insanely humid so we got out of there as quick as we could and with his girlfriend headed down into the city to get some ramen for lunch. We parted ways afterwards and I caught the train back to Kitakami on a train packed with school kids. On a humid day where you haven’t had a shower, you stink and all you want to do is get home as soon as you can there is nothing better than a Japanese train in peak hour to push you closer and closer to the edge of reason.

So it was back to quiet little Kitakami, slightly more sun burnt then I was when I left the previous day, and I couldn’t help but look forward to that night’s sleep and think “I’m glad that I live in a place where nothing every happens.”