Update!

SUNDAY AFTERNOON -- I'm in the middle of a three-day weekend, so my current activity of sitting around the house at 3 p.m. seems about right. I have been out of the house for most of the weekend so far and I'm leaving again tomorrow afternoon, so I'm on a little break from my break.

On Friday, I went to a place called Cafe Brian, a restaurant that serves international food and caters to an international crowd -- and a lot of regular local customers -- near the Ise Grand Shrine. Two Fridays a month the place hosts an "international conversation dinner" or something like that. Up to seven foreigners can have a free meal and a few free drinks in exchange for speaking English to Japanese customers who pay a cover charge to get in. Obviously it's quite nice for the foreigners who get free stuff and have a chance to make local friends. And for Japanese people looking for a chance to practice their English or make new friends, it's also not a bad deal.

At Cafe Brian on Friday, myself and another area ALT sat down with a couple of women. Both were near 30, both were married, and both had kids. One spoke near perfect English because she's married to a New Zealander, the other hardly spoke a word. But we got along well enough that they invited us to join them the next night for some volleyball. Yes, volleyball. The one who doesn't speak English organizes via the Web what is called a "friends circle" over here. The meet for different events for time to time and we happened to cross paths with the circle in time for volleyball.

So maybe we felt a certain pressure to say yes, or maybe because we are living in Japan and have that sort-of "always say yes" attitude, we said yes.

The volleyball, on Saturday evening, took place in some kind of public gym much like you would see back home. There were several courts going at once in the big open space. The friends circle we had infiltrated was made up mostly of married people near 30 years old with children. The children -- maybe 10 of them in all -- were running around while the parents volleyed. Sure, it was fun to do something active, and obviously the people who invited us and the others were nice. At times the thought that it was strange to be hanging out with older people crossed my mind -- then I reminded myself that at 24 I'm not THAT far away from their age-group. It's just that they were all so far along in their life-making. Babies. Spouses. Mini-vans.

In the end it was quite nice to do something other than our normal routine of heading down to the same bar seeing the same friends. I love that same old bar, and my friends here are great. But it's good to mix it up a little.

So now that I've been well mixed, we arrive at Sunday. Monday is a national holiday ... respect for the aged day or something of that sort. In honor of that I'm going to Nagoya to hang out with some college students.

If you're reading this blog you probably already know that I worked with Japanese students for three summers at OSU. Each summer I stayed in the dorms with about 40 students from Meijo university in Nagoya. They were at OSU for a three-week language and culture program, and I did everything with them except go to their classes. So during the three-week program you become quite close with at least some of the students. So tomorrow evening I'll take the two hour trip to Nagoya to meet with about 15 of the students. I have no idea whether they're all from last year or if it's a mix. One of last year's students organized the whole thing, so it may be tilted toward the 2006 group. The 2004 group people have likely all graduated and some have probably moved on. I've lost touch for many of them. I'm happy to have a chance to see them again, but the downside is that it's going to have to be a quick trip as I have to work bright and early on Tuesday.

That about brings us up to speed. All is well at school, but more on that another time.