Looooooong weekend

Yep it had to happen the end of my B day boooooo still I've managed to have rather a nice weekend, and one of those nice ones where everything happens by chance (although its actually a giant well organised scheme by T.O.H).
Let's see if we can go back over it in a scooby dooooo style .....
(Best if you imagine me staring up at the ceiling whilst the screen goes all funny.) blboboboboboboboboboobbobobobobo

Birthday Friday morning saw me surprise the other half with 360 folded cranes I had made for every day of marriage, I had intended to make a thousand but after the first 20 took me about 2 days I slightly narrowed my intention, although I can now fold cranes in my sleep and it has taught me that I will never mock my students paper folding abilities ever again. Click for more images of my folding technique

click image for the album Cranes

Friday night saw me, The other half and some friends go out for a nice meal at a local restaurant. Here's a picture of me admiring the giant golden egg outside. Although it does look more like I've just given birth to the one behind me...ouch.



Saturday we decided to stay in, cook a biiiiig bowl of ramen and watch Peep Show (The comedy series not some sort of weird B day present!!) well that was the plan at least... until we wandered to the local shrine to see why all the lights were on, only to find a group of very very old men sitting around the fire who shared their sake hmmm and dried squid ewww with us and then occasionally wandered off to beat a big taiko drum. Like everyone in my village they were very friendly although we did catch them making a sign that we recognised as "condom" (its like the okay sign but horizontal if you need to know) which I thought was quite funny. Anyway after that we wandered around the quiet empty streets before stumbling upon yet another party going on, this time almost everyone was under 50. As I've said before everyone in my village is a big drinker so I received a pint glass of sake and they stuck some lovely stomach meat on the BBQ ewwwwww (something that manages to look and taste horrible) a few people can speak English, one wasted guy ended up trying to get me and T.O.H to bring any female friends we had as he wanted to meet an international young girl, which I think sounds creepier than he actually meant. Anyway it turned out there was a big spring shrine event the next day that we said we would attend.
Sadly no burning for this event (the burning actually happened in the nearby town, but lots of cigarettes were smoked by the Japanese men... does that count??) still it was interesting to see lots of the towns children and several young men pull/ carry the holy float around the village, stop at a shrine, and perform a ceramony, if I can sort out a video site I'll post the videos on here so you can watch for your self in the mean while click on the picture below to see the album.

From B day weekend

The best bit was when we realised that several of the drunk men we met the night before were in fact the Shinto priests. Thankfully they didn't give us any more dried squid....
Best bit was probably T.O.H managing yet again to fool me by hiding my present under the table without me even realising, and the gift? A brand new DS lite WOO HOOO this afternoon I'm off to look for new games and funny things to hang off it....

so over all not a bad B day.. now whats tomorrow??? oh yeah school boooooooooooooooooooooooooo