Old journal from July 2004

June 11th 2004 It has been a weird week. Kagoshima entered raining season a couple of weeks ago but thankfully, the weather has yet to get TOO disgusting!! I really hate raining season and having got terribly miserable because of the weather last year, I was dreading it this year! I am looking forward to it being over!!! I am really enjoying teaching at the moment. It wasn`t a direction I ever saw myself going in but I have to say that I am getting alot more out of it. It was originally supposed to be a temporary measure to give me something to do while I build up a translation portfolio but I have been surprised by how fulfilling i am finding it! I have several private students, and one in particular has made a HUGE amount of progress since I started teaching her and it has only been a couple of months. We are going away this weekend to an international camp. I am not sure what it is going to be like, but I will no doubt have lots to say about it one way or another!!! July 8th 2004 It would appear that I am as bad at updating this as I am at sending e-mails!! I don`t know what is wrong with me, I have been SO disorganised lately! I still have birthday presents to send to my friends, and both of them turned 26 in April! I am useless!! If you guys (you know who you are!!) are reading this, I am really sorry!! Everything else is trundling along as usual. I went to stay with my MIL last night, along with Rie, Daisuke`s brother`s wife (i guess that makes her my SIL?) and we had a really nice evening watching both our wedding videos and eating sushi!! Then Rie and I came back to the city today to have dessert at a great place called Ba Pica- the desserts there are divine!!! I am very happy that although it has been raining season for the past month, it hasn`t actually rained that much and it is only now starting to get really disgustingly hot and humid (roll on September!!) July 9th 2004 Looks like I spoke too soon about the weather! It is pouring with rain today and the thunder is rumbling like you wouldn`t believe!! July 11th 2004 HAPPY BIRTHDAY JACS!!! Raining season is officially over!!! YAY!!!! Statistically speaking, it finished 11 days earlier than last year and there was about a 60% less rainfall than usual. This is bad news for rice farmers but good news for the rest of us!