Obon

This week it is Obon in Japan, that means that besides the fact that it is an annual Buddhist event for commemorating one's ancestors, we are also having some days off. Well, at least the most of us here in Japan. From Saturday morning we went to our Mayuko her parents (1hour driving), and we will stay here probably until tomorrow evening or Saturday morning.

Saturday.
On Saturday evening we played some Hachi-hachi a game where everyone will get 2 cards, and the highest card is the winner. You can bluff which of course works so now and again, and the bet is 100 yen a turn. We played it with 6 players so every time there was a minimum of 600 yen on the table, up to 3000 yen. It's a fun game.

Later on the evening Takuya and I went fishing from 1 until 3 o'clock. Which was fun because normally we go fishing in the morning, but again for the fourth time we didn't catch any fish.

Sunday
On Sunday we went to Shiawase No mura, (trans. Village of happiness) were we had a pick nick together with Frederic, Mayumi and Yoshi. We played some ball sports, and had a waterfight. After that we went to some Izakaya kind of restaurant chain, and had a small firework party together.

I'll be back with more.

Going for a drink

Yesterday evening we went out for a drink together with 2 friends of us; Frederic and Mayumi. We went to a little Izakaya near Sannomiya. Everything in the Izakaya was 350 yen, even the beer. We drunk some beers, had some chicken, akashi yaki, meat, udon, and more before Mayumi her brother Masa and his girlfriend Emi-san came joined us.


Ltr: Masa, Mayu-chan, Frederic, Mayumi, Emi

Later on the evening we went to Bar Trinity a little bit north of Sannomiya where Mayuko her work partner from last year was playing the DJ. It was a small bar, packed with foreigners (5 co-workers of Mayuko were there as well), and some Japanese as well. The music was splendid and I was wondering what this guy (Dee) was doing in this small place... He got some radio interviews on Ibiza, and is working on a CD with some big companies in Germany and The Netherlands as well.

We danced a bit, drunk a bit and well, just enjoyed our evening. The only thing was that when we came home we were both pretty dead so we jumped into bed after we took a shower.