Keitai fun

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Welcome to the wonderful world of taking pictures with your cell phone. For those of you who weren't aware, Japanese cell phones are truly things of beauty. Even the cheapest ones have some pretty nifty features. I accidentally bought a Japanese-only phone, instead of a bilingual one like all the other kids got, so I'm still discovering many of those features. :)

Anyway, this picture is of Grace and I hamming it up last night. I drove out to Tsubame to celebrate Paul's birthday with the usual suspects. We discovered that the izakaya (Japanese restaurant/bar) we wanted to go to closes on Wednesdays for some unknown reason, so we relocated to a yakiniku place elsewhere. It was *so* good. Yakiniku is my favorite Japanese food--I mean, what's not to like about self-grilled meat? Yum, simplicity at its tastiest.

We have two national holidays coming up next week (Monday and Friday), so most people are going on excursions around Japan or elsewhere. Grace is off to Kyoto, Nuria to Malaysia, Paul and Sarah to Kanazawa... ALTs are total jetsetters, let me tell you. After a few aborted plans to go to Osaka and Tokyo, I decided to buckle down and spend the two weekends studying for the GRE and working on my UK apps. I think life will be much better if I get this stuff done and save up some cash for my October travel plans; plus, it sounds like I may get a chance to do a few other things later on in the year. Maybe South Korea in November, maybe China in August.

Anyway, I just taught my last lesson til next Tuesday, which I'm quite happy about. I can't wait to relax... I mean, um, study. :) Going to a pottery class tonight with Rosalind and Aaron. We'll see how that goes.