Overdue posts on dated events, part 1

(I wrote this a few weeks ago--honest!--and forgot to post it. Here it is, with relative times not adjusted.)

Last weekend the Tsushima JETs got together on the northern part of the island to celebrate Joey's birthday. (Joey's the one who reminds me a lot of Chuck when we first met.) Getting somewhere outside of my town without getting a ride from someone else is always an adventure, since I still stubbornly refuse to get a car. Thankfully, the island has a modest bus system, and it runs the same routes on the weekend as it does during the week. The plan for Saturday was for some of us to get together with Joey and hike Mitake, one of the many mountains around here, then have a barbecue and bonfire on the beach. So I woke up Saturday morning and caught the same bus I catch to my second high school. I made it there, met up with Mitch and Mike, who were driving up the rest of the way to Mitake. We hung out for a little while before taking off, and took our time getting there. Along the way, we found the best city park playground I've ever seen. Seriously, it was amazing, mostly because of its randomness: it's in the middle of Tsushima, which is very sparsely populated, even by the island's standards. The park features go-karts, a really cool playground, and two awesome slides. (Pictures)

We hiked Mitake, which is reportedly 492 meters tall. I've hiked about two mountains in my lifetime, so I had no idea how high 492 meters was. Turned out to be an hour or so up at a leisurely pace. Along the way we found a shrine beside a little brook, and several huge uprooted trees. The summit was adorned with little altars with stone figurines in them. The kanji written on them was apparently pretty archaic--Joey's Japanese friend from Fukuoka couldn't make out what they said. We found a more secluded outcropping alongside the summit that gave a much better view. (Pictures)

That night, we got together on the beach for a barbecue and a bonfire. We stocked up on hamburgers, hot dogs, buns, ketchup, and mustard, none of which I expected to find at a grocery store in rural Japan. Everyone brought various scraps of paper and cardboard which, combined with driftwood collected from the beach, made a toasty bonfire. Joey's little grill worked beautifully, despite having to use fireplace kindling to light it. (Nobody sold charcoal, and when our designated Kerosene Purchaser went to buy some lighter fluid, the grocery store staff talked him out of it.) Once we got it up and going, though, the whole setting was beautiful: roaring bonfire, cheeseburgers, hot dogs, fireworks, and anglophones, all against a backdrop of starry autumn sky, crashing waves, and fishing boats on the horizon. (Pictures!)

The next weekend was Evelyn's birthday. She's much more low-key than Joey, so we all got together for a relatively tame night of dinner and bowling. The lowest score in our first game was a 120--and that wasn't mine! I got a 135. There aren't many pictures, but here they are!

I also bought my plane ticket home! (You don't want to know how much it cost.) My flight leaves Japan at noon on Saturday, December 22nd, and arrives in America at 10 am on Saturday, December 22nd. I won't actually get to Springfield until 8:30 that night, so by then I will have spent 19 hours on planes, and a total of 24 hours traveling. Hopefully I'll get adjusted to US time before I have to fly back here on January 8th. I'm also definitely stopping over in Georgia, but it won't be for very long. Better than nothing, though! Woohoo!