Have car, can't drive it:(

So I've have my car for a few days now, which would be exciting, except that I still don't have insurance, so it's sitting in my parking spot. In order to get insurance, I have to wait until the shaken papers have been transferred to my name, which is taking longer than I expected. It's frustrating to have to bike everywhere when I have a perfectly good car just waiting to take me places.
Meanwhile, the last week has been pretty eventful. My brother came down to Taki-cho for the weekend, due to the small problem of being temporarily homeless in Nagoya. We went to an izakaya with my friends and then to the castle for drinks. Then on Saturday we went to the Ise Grand Shrine to see a taiko festival. Apparently we saw the country's best taiko group, and they definitely lived up to the title. Fantastic! It made me really excited to play the taiko in my own festival, which is fast approaching. (Just a sidenote... the arcade at me local grocery store just got a Taiko Drum Master video game!!! Can't wait to play!) Somehow Jake and I got roped into playing four-touch volleyball game that night, as everyone on my friend's team was running late. I had intended to only watch and cheer them on, but ended up having an awesome time. Four-touch volleyball is this bizarre twist on volleyball where you play with a dodgeball and each player (four per team) has to touch the ball once and only once before sending it over the net. Since it was our first time playing (and the Japanese teams we played against were obviously pros) we came in last in the tournament, but we definitely improved by the end of the night, and even managed to score a few points!! I would definitely play again. Then we were off to a party, hosted by some friends that had just climbed Mount Fuji the night before. Don't quite know how they managed to pull off a party after that, butit was fun:)

On Sunday I got on the train to Nagoya with Jake, but got off in Tsu for a book swap. That's one of the perks of knowing so many other foreigners here; we are our own library of foreign books. I came away with many more than I'll be able to read before the next one though;)
I've actually had quite alot of work this week, between classes and correcting essays on world peace that some students are submitting to a contest. And by correcting, I obviously mean crossing everything out and writing new sentences while trying to figure out what they meant to say. It's much more difficult to correct essays in engrish than I thought. Luckily, Doug and I were in it together so we were able to share the really funny sentences.

Last night I was a guest teacher at an eikawa (adult English class), and after hearing horror stories about how difficult adult students are to keep interested, I was a little nervous. My class was amazing though! They were all really friendly and excited to have me there, and they're even having a welcome party for me! Ooh, and one woman said she's going to give me a used kimono (new one's are worth thousands of dollars, so it's very exciting to get a used one for free!)! So for an activity last night I thought of some questions about weird aspects of Japanese culture that I didn't understand and got them to explain them to me. I found out that the reason it's rude to eat/drink while walking is that sitting while eating shows that you are honouring the food and the person who prepared it. And even though fast food chains are making it easier to break the rules, people will still think I'm rude if I do it. I asked a mother and daughter pair whether tattooing and body piercing is accepted in Japan, and got two very differet opinions. The young girl is of the same mindset as many North American teenagers, that people should be free to do what they want with their bodies and shouldn't be judged based on their appearance, while her mother thinks that it's an insult to the parents for a child to mark up the body given to himher by their parents. I also learned that some bathhouses won't let you in if you're tattooed. Not sure what that means for me and my belly piercing (I've been to one and didn't get kicked out). Anyways, it was alot of fun, and I'm a little sad that I only get to see them once a month. They're a great group of people. Well, I'm off to class, so TTFN!