Day 32

BBQ!

As it's Golden Week I wanted to organise a BBQ for everyone. We're the most unorganised group of people in the world so actually getting this together, in less than 24 hours, was quite an achievement. I liked the idea of drinking beer and cooking bits of random food in the Sunday
afternoon sunshine.

The night before at okonomiyaki we did a quick head count of who would come and I offered to pick up the food. We had 9 definites but we couldn't get hold of Ken so we just counted him anyway, cos he's cool and we knew he would come...

Sunday morning I get up nice and early and head off to Donki as I want to pick up some speakers for my ipod. Had a minor problem with money as the Lloyds TSB online banking was "in maintenance" so I only had 3000yen when I got there. It was fixed by the time I got back but it would have been nice to have a bit more cash when I was there as I wanted to pick up a baseball bat to play with in the afternoon. Still managed to grab my speakers for 1000 yen (£7.50...and you could tell they were cheap...) and some sausages and crackers and a couple of other bits. Dropped that off at home and went straight back out to Seiyu for the rest of the food. Bought chicken, vegetables, clams, prawns and some fish on a stick which I'm amazed that Katharina ate, spine and tail and head and all. Eww, almost as bad as drinking that soy/quail egg concoction at Mura O.o

At 14:00 I meet Rosanna-san and we head to the station (picking up bread on the way as I'd forgotten it) and we arrive at Kawaguchi Station at 14:30 exactly. We is the awesome-o! Shame the rest can't be on time :P Most people got there on time. Nino was late as always *hug* but once Daniel and I began the Nino chant he amazingly appeared. Nino! Nino! Nino! Nino! *omg there he is* A couple of Koreans from Jonna and Alberto's class had joined us too which made up for Alvaro and Ken not coming even if Choi didn't arrive until 15:10. But then I'd said to Rosanna-san earlier that I didn't expect to leave the station until 15:00 and then after we walk to the river and set up the BBQ and cook the food we wont eat until at least 16:00. It was a good estimate.

Apparently we'd gone to the wrong station because Akabane Station is the closest to where we were going but I wouldn't apologise for this because the person who knew were to go didn't bother showing up or replying to emails about it so what am I supposed to do? It wasn't too far a walk anyway. When we arrive we can't use the grills there as they are all in use so we leave the boys to construct and light the BBQ that they brought with them while some of the girls chop vegetables which the boys would later burn. Mmm....black vegetables.

So after much eating and drinking we do a little dancing and play a few games. I don't know the name of the game we played but it was one where you have to get to 'it' the quickest but when 'it' turns around you have to freeze. Move and you're out. The Japanese guys at the BBQ next to our joined us for a few rounds. They were cool and they had the cutest dog. You don't know how much I wanted to steal her. She looked so cute in her kilt thing. I think they said her name was Honya. We also did some dancing as I said. I tried to teach everyone the dance to Koi no ABO and Seishon Amigo but they were all rubbish haha or more likely, I was a rubbish teacher. I'll have to send them instructions from youtube. The highlight of the day had to be Nino though. He had 3 classic moments. 1. Dancing Nino. 2. Nino versus the vending machine. 3. Nino versus the bollard...ouch.

Fun day. Day 33 will be spend studying, doing laundry and planning a trip to Yokohama. I must also remember to have a look for a Japanese keyboard while I'm here so I can actually type the characters on this computer.