Friday!

Argh! I just got the most wonderful email from Josh, who is having a wonderful time visiting all the local schools in the area with his supervisor and interacting with the office staff. Hopefully I:ll get to go into my school on monday. Normally JETs go into their schools for the summer, and sort of sit around for awhile not doing anything in particular. Well, my supervisor told me he wants me to take all of my vacation days (paid and non-paid days) now, as in immediately, as in, when i don:t want to and am unprepared to take them. as in, i get 7 summer vacation days, and 23 *nenkyu* or paid vacation days and he wants me to use up about 17 days now. At any rate, its kind of upsetting and I called him up and sort of demanded he take me to my school, or someone does, so hopefully I:ll be going at the start of next week.

when i called him he invited me to aikido class tomorrow night, which was very nice. so i hope he doesn:t kick my ass for harassing him. he:s a fourth degree black belt. if that:s not motivation to behave well... also, i:m having dinner at one of the :aussie:s: apartments tonight, which should be good.

I biked to the 100 yen shop today, picked up some household stuff and what not. then I thought I:d try to bike downtown. I accidentally took this winding back road, going through all these residential buildings and stuff and all of a sudden I came upon this big shrine\temple. It was really beautiful and unexpected. I walked around to the side of it, and there was an enormous steep staircase going up this big hill. so i started climbing it and turned around so I could see over a nearby wall and there was this big cemetary with all sorts of graves crammed together. so i turned around and started climbing again. I got halfway up and a little dirt path shot out from the side of it. i followed the path, and it took me to another temple,with a small note in english introducing the temple. it was built in 1716 by Masaｋuni Sakamori, or something like that. it was really really beautiful. the roof and sides had all of beautiful. the roof and sides had all of these buddhist carvings. I have pictiures, will get them up once i get internet at my place. anyway, i got to the top of the hill, and there was the most stunning vew of the city and the castle in the distance. I walked up all these stairs thinking that there would be a great shrine or something up there, to ｍｅｒｉｔ　ｔｈｅ　ｈｉｋｅ，　ｂｕｔ　ｊｕｓｔ　ａ　ｓｐｅｃｔａcular view of the castle. oh well. so i went back down and biked back to the castle, biked around the outside grounds, came upon some more little shrines. there was a big buddhist looking temple, and right next to it, two smaller shinto shrines. the shrine in the back had all these red torii gates leading to it. (i have pictures). all these places are completely empty too. no one has been at any of them. not even a monk or nun or anything. just empty. so on my way hｏｍｅ i went back to the same internet cafe Iwas at yesterday, and am there now typing. this keyboard keeps screwing with me.
oh, hey, i have my phone number! 0792-955-387. I hope that works.
do you want the rest of my address too? how nice.. It:s, #205 shirasagi residence, 3-8-1 shinzaike- honcho. 670-0092, himeji, japan.
I think once i settle in and get to school things will start picking up. or at least i hope so.
got to run, internet cafe time is up!
love,
allison