Happy Easter!

I hope you all had a lovely Easter and made the most of your 4 day weekend.

As commercialised as it is, it felt kind of weird not seeing all the usual Easter decorations around the place with chocolate eggs, easter bunnies and hot cross buns in the stores. I guess it's these times of familiar festivities that make make me miss home.

Good Friday was spent at school and saturday was the usual cleaning, laundry and chill out day.

The cold and rainy weather doesn't quite motivate me to leave my place but Easter Sunday was a beautiful,sunny day. I met up with Claire and Cheryl at 7.00AM for a walk around our area. We're trying to get into a routine of early morning walking. Why? It's crazy early yes and I am still asking myself, "Why exactly am I doing this again?"

But with the gorgeous weather, I didn't mind. After that I did some odd jobs around my place then went to Harbourland to meet 2 girls from ESS club. They had asked me to meet up with them during their Spring holidays so I agreed, a bit hesistant and not knowing what to expect.

We went to The Old Spaghetti Factory for lunch. It was really nice with good food and atmosphere. I'd heard about it before from some other JETs and I'm definately going back again. We then went for a cruise around the port on the boat "Roman 3." After that we went to take Purikura Club - Yes, I felt weird taking them with my students but it was all good. This place was the first one I've been to that has CosPlay outfits that you can hire for free when you take your picutres. Crazy!

The place was packed out with girls, young and a lot older, and also with some mothers who were waiting while their daughters and friends got dressed up and took photos. It was a really interesting experience into the female culture and fascination with CosPlay and Purikura Clubs.

The outfits were crazy - from cheerleaders, Snow White, waitresses, nuns, flight attendants, chefs to even a Nazi police woman! That one was way random. There were also little outfits for children. I politely refused as one of the girls chose a Japanese female temple staff outfit and the other chose to hire a prop instead. She had a pink bear puppet with sharp white claws and I had a frog with a big mouth puppet. Random - yes.

After meeting up with the ESS club memebers, I headed to Sannomiya and went to Kobe Bible Fellowship for their Easter Sunday afternoon service. They hold bilingual services and there are quite a few international people, including JETs, there too. A Japanese lady, who had lived in New York for seven years and attended the Harlem Gospel Church, gave her testimony and also sang with some backup singers. Her voice was amazing, powerful, convicting and full of passion, prayer and praise. It was amazing that there were so many people in this little church from all over the world celebrating the true meaning of Easter. The worship was in English and Japanese - good practise for my Japanese, and the message was just what I needed.

They had a potluck dinner fellowship afterwards which I stayed for a bit and met some really nice people. But I was way too tired so headed home shortly after, had some leftover Thai Red Curry I made yesterday then called it a night.