thurrrrrsday

I tried to not pay attention to the news today. I saw continuing problems at Fukushima Daiichi and wanted to curl up in a ball and roll away and that's when I closed the tab on firefox. Some really stressful emails didn't help my mood today either..... I got a few nice reassuring emails though, one in particular that was all about how the whole reason I am here is for the kids. In club activity time I accidentally got waylaid by the ping pong kids and ended up playing with two of them for like 45 minutes, and I felt so much better!!! Also: why haven't I thought to join ping pong club before??

I am going to Kyoto for the weekend. This is sort of a spur of the moment decision. It's my friend Danielle's birthday so there will be a bunch of my close friends together in one place, and the national holiday on Monday makes driving there and back pretty feasible. Besides, as I've said before, "being in Japan means being able to do whatever you want!" So I'm driving down tomorrow after work, will crash at my friend Hayato's place, meet up with all my friends Saturday, stay at my friend Kojiro's place on Sunday, and then drive back Monday. When I saw all the buses were booked and trains are too unreliable and/or expensive right now, I realized there was always this other option to drive, and it seems like something just fun and/or crazy enough that it sounds exactly like something I would do. Should be fun.