ちいさのパーテイーです (chisai no party desu) plus some other things

This is the interior of my apartment. Recently I had a few people over, kind of by accident, a small dinner for Mel and Tiff's birthday turned into a night of goodtimes and laugter as a random eclectic crowd gathered for some drinks. good times though.

Dave and Dave entertained themselves with whistle pops, sent to me by the lovely Emily Weiss. Same with my beautiful, colorful, light up my day windsock. They got some good tunes out of them, but my favorite part were the cat calls definitely.

On Sat there was a going away party in Kashiwazaki were I said goodbye to many ALTs from Niigata who are moving on with their lives. Monday was a holiday, so I drove my car up Myoko to watch the Sekiyama Matsuri.

The matsuri had samurai fighting and sumo and was really cool to watch. I immediatly got frustrated however when I got stuck behind a mikoshi (portable shrine) and got out to see if there was a way around it. When I got back into my car, it wouldn't start. I decided to hang out and watch some fighting, made a I swear impossible call to my rental company (of which I think we both understood 40% of the conversation) and waited to be saved. So I paced the streets surrounded by men drunk on sake and waited. I asked around for some jumper cables, meanwhile, an old man stopped me and asked me for my keys. I gave them to him and he got in my car and immediately started it. He then said "Japanese Car! Ok. OK! Good Car! Nihonjin OK!" My only response to the starting of the car was "hontoni arigatto gozaimashita, wakaranai~!" I then drove down the mountain to home.

sekiyama matsuri

I also was in my local newsflier recently. It talked about how the kids had fun in my ekaiwa.