A Contest to be Proud Of!

Well, what a game!! Only a point to decide it and those tense final minutes were thrilling. It took me over three quarters of the game to find the pub to watch it in, but it was like walking back into a pub in Australia for a blissful 20 minutes. The place was packed with Aussies and you could barely hear yourself scream - let alone your order being heard at the bar!! ;)
I`ve spent the last half hour reading the commentaries and match reports on The Age website. It was certainly a memorable match and one worthy of a great game of football. No other code quite compares in minute-by-minute excitement. Still, I`ve been getting into a sport I never would have anticipated while here in Japan... You`d never guess, unless you`re switched on to popular sports in Japan.... MLB - yes, Baseball!! Its one of the few programs regularly screened in English, so consequently I`ve been tuning in pretty regularly.
At present I`m tuned into the Js - its great to hear new music and the Aussie accents of the announcers - there are many things that are hard to find in Japan - decent music on the airwaves and Aussie accents (wide-open spaces..) just a few....
Still, I continue to enjoy my days here, particularly when I punctuate it with moments like the one I had a Murphy`s Irish Pub in Osaka. Plus, to add a bonus, I found Club Quattro - probably the only decent live music venue in this part of the world - not really any such thing as Pub rock round here... The only drawback about Murphy`s was that they didn`t serve any decent Aussie Beer (VB!?) so I had to content myself with a Kilkenny - still, there are worse things, I suppose!!
Today I failed to transfer funds to my new bank account - can`t seem to decipher the BSB - it doesn`t help that my passbook is entirely in Japanese!! And I had a meeting at the English School - the teaching staff gather on the first Monday (though yes, this is the second) and pray and chat about how things are going (well at the moment). Was a good time. I am slowly getting to know my students and am really enjoying classes - Japanese people tend to be fairly reserved so takes a while to get to know people. It is not the friendliest place, always polite, but there is a difference.... Still, no complaints, I`ve been made to feel very welcome and haven`t had any significant problems.
I did have a bit of an adventure on Saturday evening though... I dropped a few coins in the pub so I didn`t quite have enough for my fare back to Sakai. I caught the train about 3 stops from home and thought I`d just be able to follow the train line home, but of course, being me, I followed the wrong trainline!! I walked for about an hour, the sky getting darker, and passed several train stations, not recognising any of them. I finally gave myself up as completely lost about 7-ish and called my lifeline (AKA Tomoko). She had never heard of Kintetsu Yata either!! ;) Still, she came by and picked me up, I wasn`t too far away, only about 10 minutes drive from Sakaishi, but still... I never would have found my way home. I also spotted a couple of homeless people. Poverty is not so obvious here as in Oz.

Well, I`ve probably blogged on long enough now, can`t let you get bored....

Ciao for Now - Jyamatane!