more karaoke, a spot of j-league and my first japanese lesson

well well,
although its felt like a pretty uneventful week, looking back there's been some good times, SO good in fact that you will now spend the next few minutes reading about them.

Monday night i did karaoke again, this time with my crazy mates from work. The place is very cool, u get your own room with a huge table and u sit around, have dinner, drink and there just happens to be a TV, two microphones and two of the heaviest books you will ever find, chock-a-block full of songs to inspire good times. Karaoke was MUCH more fun in a bigger group and also with wiser song collection. Radiohead and stuff doesnt really go that well in karaoke but hotel california, layla and bohemian rhapsody do. IT was also cool b/c the japanese staff that we work with came out too and it was nice to see them belting out some j-pop classics instead of seeing them stressed, serious and overworked.

Yesterday I had my first japanese lesson. It's a sweet deal here, there's these volunteers who teach lessons for free once a week so I signed up and met Yoshi, who will be my teacher for this year. He is 70 year old who can speak 4 languages, wears a top hat and has an aura of authority and sterness about him. He was really friendly and we spent more time chatting about his life than actually learning japanese. I have quite a lot to learn for next week, im not sure what ive got myself into to. But i get the feeling that if i dont learn everything he told me too he will strike me with his cane (if he had one)

Last night I went to my first j-league game. I was anticipating this since the weekend as I was very keen to see silly japanese crowds first hand. And they didnt dissapoint although Ive been told that jef united (my team) has one of the quieter sets of supporters. They were very colourful and loud and fully sung from 30 mins before the game until afterwards! The game was extremely entertaining, the stadium is really small and close to the pitch so the view was excellent. The standard was pretty good, probably quite a bit more skilful than the a-league but still prone to the brain explosions that you see in australia. Apparently this was one of the better games my friend had seen so maybe the standard isnt always that good. The most humourous moment was in the reading of the team. Jef has this gimpy austrian called mario haas and the stadium announcer announed him as "super mario haas." There is even a fan u has a haas flag with number 10 on it (his number, duh) and their is a little mario hat on the 1. All in all thoroughly enjoyable and I also got to meet a couple of japanese lads who are very cool. THey are organising a japan vs the rest of the world futsal game in a couple of weeks so i will get to show off my silky skills.

alrighty, that has been my week, i hope ure weeks have been filled with similar excitement. Not oodles planned for the near future so i might need to do something stupid so i have something to write about.

booyakasha