Autumnal Equinox

Saturday the 23rd was the autumnal equinox. There was a sports exchange that day, so I spent the morning at work. In the evening I went to a barbeque in Kisakata.

For a long time now Sean (the Nikaho ALT) and I have been asking Jon in Kisakata to organise a party, because Jon has a whole family-sized house to himself that is near the beach. He finally got around to it. Unfortunately Sean could not come because of a sad occurence, so at the party was Jon and friends of his I had never met before and myself with my friends Jon has never met before. The two groups did not mix. Maybe they would have mixed under better conditions.

With me were Atsuko, Toshi, Miwa and (later in the evening) Saya. We had a barbeque near the shore but not actually on the beach. Now, it is well past barbeque season. It was cold, and dark because the sun went down quickly and the closest streetlight was broken. No one thought to bring any lights. One of Jon's friends ran his car to light the party area with headlights. If anyone wanted food from the table they had to use the light on their cellphone to find what they were looking for. The stars were pretty though.

This of course is the reason why the party stayed split into two groups: one set of people were huddled around the 'barbeque' (coals glowing in half a section of cement pipe) and the other half was huddled around Atsuko's portable gas burner that we cooked stew and Yakisoba on.

I guess we were just unprepared. It seems as if Jon forgot to tell his friends to bring stuff: some people brought some meat, but as for non-meat food, they were all eating the foods that Astuko and I brought with us (I took a lot). We couldn't eat Toshi's fruit because we didn't have a decent place to cut it. We all thought Jon would have paper bowls and stuff, but he didn't. We had to go to Max Valu to buy some.

I don't know what was with Jon. He wouldn't let us use his house, he wasn't prepared, and he cut the party short by going off by himself and crying. I don't know why. I kind of feel sorry for him, that he was sad, but I don't know why he was. The rest of us had a good time despite being cold and unable to see. Come to think of it, maybe that is why he was sad. Maybe he felt left out?

Anyway, after the party died, Miwa went home because she had an early start on Sunday, but Saya, Toshi and I went to Atsuko's house. We stayed there until 4am drinking red wine and soba (buckwheat) tea. About two or three o'clock in the morning Saya's friend came to pick her up, but he ended up drinking soba tea with us. Then he (whose name I cannot remember) gave Toshi and I a ride home as well as Saya. I live near Atsuko and Toshi lives near Saya, so it wasn't so far out of the way.

I had Monday off because I worked on Saturday, so I spent two lazy days doing nothing. At dance practice on Tuesday I finally received a DVD of my trip to Sapporo, complete with the actual footage of our team on the Yosakoi Matsuri TV coverage. We were on TV for about three minutes. I was at the back so there were no closeups of me, thankfully. If I figure out how to convert footage ripped off a DVD into a web-friendly format, I will see about YouTube-ing it and sharing it here. I also received photos of the trip last week. I really ought to see about scanning them up.

As yet I have no plans for the coming weekend, so I don't know if I will have anything to write about next week. Maybe I will go shopping.