PASSION of the Mills part one wine and dine time

Well into the second week of our spring break and the new teachers to our school have started turning up, I think my gifts from my weekend away at Koyasan( one of Japanese holiest sites dontyouknow) has welcomed them and my immediate follow up of "I DON'T SPEAK JAPANESE!" has assured them they don't have to speak to me for the next 4 months.

So yeaaah Kyoasan a place that I will talk about in my next posts as I've still got loads of photos to stick online although my visit to one of the centres or rather THE centre (yeah I am fancy pants you know) has meant I already feel more enlightened...wait an enlightened feeling is a slight warmth, rosey cheekes and light headiness isn't it? If not then that's a cold I got from being soaked for hours on end walking around. A proper case of ACHHOOO/Bless you indeed.

In the meantime should mention one of our last 3rd grade teachers trips ( shouts of NOOOOOOO/WAAALTTT ect ect) the other month. I really like our trips out as a usual school enkai follows the traditional Japanese food, get drunk, randomly promise to visit a teachers house, fall into rice field (see my first Christmas enkai for that one) pattern, there's nothing wrong with that and I really look forward to such things (well except for the rice field) but its nice to actually go to a non Japanese restaurant, or a weekend away with them. I think I've mentioned this before but for our first outing at one point I entered the room riding one of the other teachers who was dressed as a horse (and that was before the drinking) so you get the general idea (not about the horse riding...oh never mind)

Anyway this trip was probably the fanciest pantiest?!? trip we actually went on, well more or less, the first half was a trip to the Hilton Hotel in Osaka for a full ten course meal. I 've never really been to a very classy restaurant (all you can eats aren't classy..are they?) but this was one of the best meals I've actually ever eaten although I'm not going to bang on about the food, but should mention one thing. My teachers are all from around Shiga, but I think its probably the first time any of them have eaten in such an expensive restaurant, anyway during the meal our teachers decided to order drinks, we all agreed on a bottle of wine or two to share and so our group leader was shown a menu, at which point his eyes kind of bulged out as I'm not sure he was aware of the actual price of wine in the Hilton bare in mind you can get a nice drinkable wine from Heiwado for abbooouuuut 600 yen (about 3 pounds) or Mon frere for about 300 yen. So the cheapest bottle being 12000 yen kind of came as a shock so after ordering one bottle to be shared out we decided to order water instead. out comes the waiter with a bottle of water that he says has been distilled from pure Norwegian glaciers"OHHHHhhhh" says my teachers "ERrrr" whispers I, after mentioned in the ear of our leader that water made from thousands of years old glaciers shipped from Europe into handmade bottles miiiiiiight be somewhat expensive too, so one teacher in English (despite our waiter being Japanese) asks "How much is it?" at which point it turns out to be about the cost of 2 bottles of Heiwado wine (or 4 mon friers) at which point we'e already had 5 bottles. Lets just say we took our time on that one and didn't have brandy afterwards although one enterprising teacher actually took all the bootles home with her I presme to re seal and sell to her friends, and that my friends is enterprise.

Part 2 will be about the lights, the glamour the errr PASSION! Of Takarazuka!