Day 74 in Japan - How much icrecream would an icecream eater eat if they could eat all-you-can-eat icrecream?

Today I want to tell you about  my morning routine at my schools. I have to rock up about 10 minutes before my actual start time, and then I say a big, loud OHAYOU GOZAIMASU (Good morning) to all of the staff that I see, and a HELLO to any students (English only to student). The students usually giggle, call me cute in Japanese and run away if they are girls, or pull out a hilariously-accented "HIHOWAREYOOOOO?"in Japanese if they are boys. The staff usually give me a nod and a slightly embarrassed smile or mumble back "Gozaimasu", then get back to doing whatever they were. When I actually get to my desk, I drop my bag, pick up a pen, my hanko (name stamp) and a mug. I stamp the hanko on the attendance book, use the pen to order my lunch bento, and fill the mug with water. If I mix these up, it gets embarrassing. If I forget any of these, I will regret it later, either at the hands of a cranky administrator, a dry mouth while teaching, or an empty stomach at lunch time.

OK, that's the standard routine. Today it was all messed up, because we had a famous person coming to give a lecture on Japanese history at my school! So there were people everywhere cleaning and preparing and looking busy. Unfortunately, the lecture was in 5th period, when I have a class, so I couldn't go. It's a shame, because I think it's kind of a big deal, and I would have liked to see it.

After school officially finished today, we had ESS club. We did the second last Show and Tell today, and it was awesome - today's student brought in a DVD of her electone concert from a few years ago and it was really impressive. Then we played a board game - it was my first ever time playing Settlers of Catan. It was interesting, as the kids had to explain all of the rules in Japanese. It was really fun in the end, and my partner and I ended up winning. I felt kinds bad kicking the students arses like that, but I really needed the club to finish on time, because we went out with Mai again tonight!

Outside Nanpuu - a moderatly famous okonomiyaki restaurant.
I think Mai thought we were crazy people for taking this photo.

The site of many fallen okonomiyaki brothers. Let us remember.

Mai picked us up at 6:30, and drove us to a restaurant in Futami - about 20 mins west of where we live. The place was a pretty famous okonomiyaki restaurant, and it was AWESOME! They have a special kind of soft okonomiyaki, called doroyaki, which we ate with pork. We also got negiyaki with cheese and mochi (i.e. spring onion okonomiyaki with cheese and rice goop), and a yakisoba/okonomiyaki hybrid, which is apparently quite "modern" (this was my favourite). The place was DOUBLE awesome, because they also had drink bar WHICH ALSO HAD ICECREAM. Yeah, all-you-can-drink (soft drinks and coffee and cocoa) plus all-you-can-stomach soft serve ice cream with chocolate syrup makes me a very happy person. Mai also showed us a few of her origami skills, and we made tables, chairs and balloons. Ended up being a moderately lat night, but well worth it.

My origami skillz are well mad.

Food Highlight of the Day: The yakisoba/okonomiyaki hybrid was my personal pick of the evening, but the highlight would have to be the doroyaki - the soft and squishy okonomiyaki which is the most popular dish served at Nanpuu. I wouldn't normally have ordered it, and it was nice to try something way outside of my textural comfort zone. The texture was like eating 3/4 cooked egg? Something like that, at any rate.