Gaelic Football weekend in Kurohime

So I am struggling to type as I can hardly lift my arms! This weekend me, Madz, Matt and Kat ventured to Lake Nokujiro in the north of the prefecture to take part in a weekend of training, water sports, drinking and bbq with the Gaelic Athletic Association......have you ever played Gaelic football?! I had never even seen it before....it is a mixture between football and rugby. The girls team didn`t play a match but believe me we trained HARD!

We arrived in Kurohime on Friday night and joined the Irish people from Tokyo at the chalets.....our chalet was amazing, it is supposed to sleep 32 people and there was only 5 of us staying there so we had so much space. It was set in a forest up the moutain so was also beautiful location.

A visit to 7 11 for some wine and beer and the first party started......we lasted until about 2am....enough time to get tipsy and meet everyone then decided to get some sleep before the activities the next morning.

At 8am we left the chalets and headed to lake Nokujiro for wake boarding.....I have never done wakeboarding before and managed to master it almost straight away!...second shot and I was standing on the board! I am hooked now.....it was even more fun than snowboarding! Luckily for us a guy called Tim (from Canada now living in Tokyo) had been wake boarding before so he could help us out with some instruction as the driver of the boat could not speak english.
This is a picture of me wakeboarding (stolen from Madz blog....check my links!)




After some sunbathing we headed to the pitch to train for Gaelic football.....OMG.....we got our asses whooped by the coach! It was really good fun though, I love trying new sports.

Saturday night was a bbq back at the chalet. There was about 40 people there for the weekend, most of whom were from Ireland (or linked to Ireland in some way even if it was just because their name was Shaemus!) and now live in Tokyo and work banks or in IT. It was so good to meet people who are not on JET (no offence JETTERS) just to hear about their jobs and lives in Tokyo and to think about what I will do after JET.

So at the bbq the drinks were flowing and the Irish were singing! It was a real good laugh but aching from the day I managed not to get drunk and get to bed at a respectable hour!

The next day was more wakeboarding followed by training.....as soon as they mentioned the training part I quickly pulled out my timetable and decided it was time for me to head home!

There is a Gaelic football tournament in Shanghai in October that we have been invited to go to....so today I am trying to work out how I will get the time off school!

Today I had a speech to the whole of Nishi high school and also my first lessons. The speech went well and I managed the first part in Japanese.
The first lesson I introduced myself and talked with the students and got to know them....my arms and back ache soooo much though I could hardly walk around the classroom!

This afternoon I have another class and it will again just be an introduction and getting to know the students....nice and easy!

Tonight I am going for dinner with a Japanese girl called Yomuri who I met in a clothes shop that I go to in Nagano. She speaks very little English so I said we could meet and talk so that she can learn and I can also learn Japanese from her......I have really got to start to learn Japanese soon....especially if I am thinking of moving to Tokyo next year to become a city trader!!!!