Still festival season. Last Saturday was Aboshi festival. I've wanted to see it for 1 year. Though I was in Aboshi, I missed it last year. Brady invited me to go to Aboshi festival that night, but I didn't know his place and I couldn't understand "Sanyo Aboshi station". ( I knew "San-you".) So I went to JR staion first, then I realized I had a mistake. I went back to Himeji and got on Sanyo train. When I got his place, it was almost 9 pm. We still have a time to see the festival, but Brady and his friend Mac was already drank, so we gave up to go to the shrine. What a sad story. So I was excited to see it this year.

 

The festival was nice! I had never seen such a portable shrine decorated by electric lights. It was good for dark. Chochin-wari (breaking lanterns) was cool, they broke lanterns by a stick of banboo and squished each other. It looked so interesting. I wanted join it. The festival lasted until 10 pm, it was nice time to see many lanterns in the dark. I like Aboshi festival.

 

  

 

Next day I went to Otemae park to see Shell, it was YMCA festival. I went there a bit late, so tacos was sold out. We had kimpa (Korean makizushi) instead of that for lunch. It was nice but hot! On my way to mandoline practice I was thinking I needed something sweet!!

 

I went to China on October 16th to 19th for business trip. It was my first business trip, and going to abroad for business trip was one of my dreams. I got free travel and had a oppotunity to visit other office and see chinese workers. I was so excited.

 

My first impression of China was "it's not neat." The air and on the road was dusty. Some buildings were so nice, but most of others were not good. I knew that because I had been to China. My colleagues went business trip togather conplained about it all the time, it was their first trip to China, so they didn't know well about China. On our way to the company I saw GuangZhou Station, I could read 広州站 so I could find it. It was fun to read signs from a window in a car. I didn't study Chinese for a long time, but I could still read some Chinese. :)

 

We visited our company in China. My job was to teach how to make specification sheets for assembly lines to Chinese staff. First I met one girl and one guy who came to Japan and visited our company in August. A girl was a general manager and a guy was a head of the section. To my surprised they were still 28 and 24 years old. When I saw them in Japan, they seemed to be quiet and nomal young people. But in their company they looked like really a general manager and a head of the section. I thought a situation makes people who they are. (Does it make sence??) I had a meeting with 5 Chinese staff, all of them could speak Japanese and understand what I explained in Japanese. I was so impressed. They were also in their early twenties, smart and work well. I was afraid China would beat Japanese economy someday.

 

Every night we went out. First day Japanese staff in China took us to take massage. We went there with 10 people, most of them were men, and we were in same big room. We sat on big comfortable sofas and young girls wearing short dresses gave us massage. It was wired to take massage seeing other people were taking it, especially old guys!! I didn't want to see their grinning face. :( Next day Japanese staff went to some local party, so Chinese staff invited Japanese girls to have Chinese food. 10 Chinese girls came. It was like a girlie party! At a restrant we sat around a circle table and had really nice Chinese food. I really enjoyed but was scared Chinese "kanpei"(Cheers!). Because if someone start to say "kanpei", we should drink all of our glass. They did it after and after (sometime they called my name and said it. I couldn't escape.), so my face became red as usual. They smiled and said my face was red in Japanese. aww I was embarrassed in China!! After dinner we went to karaoke! I was so excited. Karaoke in other country sounds nice. They had many Japanese songs and it was so populer. I sang Kiroro's song in Japanese, then they sang another Kiroro's song in Chinese. Sometime they tried to sing Japanese traditional song, Enka. I also sang an English song with a Chinese girl. It was really nice time. :)

 

The night before the day we left 3 Chinese girls invited us to go shopping. In the office they asked us "...Do you like...shopping??". It was so cute. We walked around the center of the city. It was not so big city but nice. Shops opened untill midnight. We went to Chinese tea leaf shop and had some tea, then walked down the street. I was surprised everything was cheep! Under 300 yen clothes and shoese was everywhere. I think the quality was not good, but it was enough to wear it only in this year. I found many fake stuff, like bags, clothe and make-up stuff. One girl told me she had worked at a factory made fake stuff. That's so Chinese. haha

 

More about Chinese company, office staff and assembly line workers had big differences. Their salary was different, and wash room and the place have lunch was separated each other. I wanted to see that, but I didn't have a chance. Another interesting thing was they took a nap after lunch, got up 5 minites before work and started stretching with counting 1, 2, 3, 4. It was funny. They said it could prevent making mistakes after taking a nap. When I had a conversation with Chinese staff, one girl said to me she really wanted to come to Japan, but the problem was it was too expencive to travel in Japan for her. Her salary was 450,000 yen in a year. She is a chief and good at communicating with Japanese people in Japanese at business tho. I think her salary is higher than the average in her age, but still difficult to travel abroad.

 

Ok, that's all of my trip. I like china. I want to go there again. :)

Last weenkend I missed many fun things. Tennis practice, Jojo's lesson and Karaoke!! I worked on Saturday, I had been so busy because I would go to china for business trip next week, I had a lot of things to do before that. First I would finish working by noon, but it didn't finish, I mailed makoto to tell I couldn't play tennis, then I mailed Jojo to change my lesson schedule. My colleagues invited me to play tennis before the day, so I still have a chance to play tennis, but my work finished at 4:45 pm, I couln't play tennis. After work I went to see Jojo to borrow her suitcace. She was going to karaoke, I got a chance to have fun, but I was so tired, so I gave up to go togather. awww, I HATE working on weekend!! Sunday was a mandoline practice day, Jon joined us. Practicing was nice, and after that we had dinner. It was nice time and the only nice time in the weekend, thanks for having fun with me! 

I went to 2 festivals last weekend. On Saturday I went to Sakagura festival at Nishinomiya Shrine with my colleagues. It was Sake Festival, we could get free sake to taste at every different sake company's boots. We tasted 10 different kinds of sake on our way to the shrine, praied in front of the shrine, then came back the way tasting sake again. We chose some sake, our senior bought that, then we had that at "Izakaya place" in the park of the shrine. We started drinking at 3 pm and it lasted until 9 pm. Too long. haha One guy invited his Enghish teacher and his friends. First they were 3. Then they started to invite their friends to have sake, finally 6 or 7 gaijin were there. My colleagues were scared the situation, but for me it was not unusual situation, I knew what was gonna happen. They bought sake and beer after and after and got so drank, then... it was the same situation that we usually did. haha

 

Monday was a national holiday, I went to Shikama festival with Shell, Kyoko, Kyosuke, Ryuji and Kazumi. I hadn't gone to that kind of the festival before, so I was so excited. ( I live near Nada festival place tho.) The portable shrines were so beautiful and the fighting with that was so exciting! I like it. During the festival I saw many many guy's ass!! They were just in fundoshi, almost naked! I met Koki, Kazumi's husband and Daniel carring the portable shrine in fundoshi. I remembered my friend told me she was shocked when she first saw her classmate's ass at the festival. Now I can slightly understand her feeling.

Sunday evening I am home now.....any problem?? I would join mandolin practice today. But it startd raining right before I left home. I didn't want to walk in the rain bringing an unbrella, a mandolin, music and other stuff, so I changed my mind to stay home. oh, I'm lazy today.

 

Yesterday it was so fun. First I played tennis at Tegara court. It was a beautiful day, umm feel so nice! After tennis Makoto, Kyosuke, Akio, Jon H and I went to Japanese restrant near the court. It was a nice relaxing time. Then Makoto invited me to play frisbee. I didn't want to play it because I heard it was hard (probably from Shell. hehe). But I was late for tennis, so I still had a lot of energy, I decided to join it. Frisbee was fun! I enjoyed running around the park, catching and throwing the frisbee. Last time I played frisbee it was dark, I couldn't recognize who is my team, and to find out the rules was also difficult. (We played at the beach.) This time I could see everything and understand the rules. It was good. We kept playing it for over 2 hours. After that I was so tired, so I couldn't join drinking with Reza and his friends. So sorry Reza! And I got bruises on my arm to get a frisbee there. I hadn't gotten bruises since Jon M left here...It was true! haha Welcom back Mr.Bruise!