The Big Snake Festival

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Originally uploaded by kristi-san.

Yesterday, the JET crowd hit up yet another local summer festival. This time it was the "big snake" festival out in Shitada, a fairly small city about 40 minutes away from Kamo. Rosalind and I drove out to Sanjo to retrieve Paul and also met up with Errol and Joel, two JETs from Niigata City. It was your typical festival - food, drink, dancing, fireworks... And lots of fun. :) I think the small festivals are sometimes more fun, simply because they're small. You can really experience things, versus just spectating.

Afterwards, we dropped off Paul in Sanjo and the rest of us came back to Kamo for some late night karaoke at Pinokio. All in all, a very good Saturday.

Friday was a pretty active day as well. I didn't have to go to school in the morning - instead, I took the train out to Nagaoka for a meeting with my Board of Education out there. We had a welcome enkai (party) for all of the new ALTs at a place close to the station, another one of the many all-you-can-eat-all-you-can-drink deals that Japan seems to be so fond of. I had to leave early to go to yet another party back in Kamo. Julia and Yamaya-san were throwing a party for a visiting German family at Pinokio and coerced me into playing the piano while Julia sang - an interesting performance indeed. But it's always in good fun.

It just never slows down here. I'm hoping for a relaxing day today though - back to "work" tomorrow.