tonda owaraigusa! What a laugh!

Ah, good times! Good times!

I helped T-diddy clean up his apartment on Saturday. He had an *undisclosed* amount of dirty laundry. While organizing it, we found a few pens, some old receipts, a 5,000 yen note (about 50 bucks!), and this Halloween costume. I made him model it for me. He put it on and said something like, "It's kind of small, but I'm a ghost." I giggle when I look at this picture.

*He was not happy about me about putting it in terms of number of loads.

This weekend I also had a reunion dinner with some teachers I taught with on Ojika. We haven't all gotten together since spring of 2006! Three of them are still teaching on Ojika. One is in Tokyo working at a medical supply company. One is at a new school near Sasebo. And I, of course, am in Nagasaki. We were at Tai no Ie from 6:30 until 12:30 and made it through five bottles of wine! At one point, Ms. Yoshihara touched her cheeks and said that they hurt. She said she hadn't laughed that hard in over a year. I will never forget the amazing luck I had by being put on that island.

During a very random moment of my weekend, I ran into another ALT on the street. While we were talking, an old man walked by. He seemed to be very interested in us, so I said hello. He stopped to chat. I made some comment about a amulet he was wearing and he explained to me that it gave him power. He told us that he was 88 years old and still practices kendo. He said that he'd just been in the paper recently for winning a kendo award. He took the green stone off and put it around my neck. He put me though a small variety of strength tests while I was wearing it and while I wasn't. In the end, I gave him back his stone and he reached in his bag and pulled out a small, orange pouch. He told me he wanted to give me a present from Mexico! He produced this necklace and had me put it on. I accepted it after an appropriate amount of resistance and he bid us a good day. I just kept thinking, "Only in Japan!" Unfortunately, the clasp broke by the time I got back to Nagasaki.