The photo incidentally was taken in one of my most favourite establishments "Festa Gardens", ahh such a wonderful place.  Saturday evening.  Finish work at 5:40 pm and get to Festa at some time around 6:15 pm (all depends on the traffic).  Enter the Festa to drink the beer and eat the chips! (Dam articles!)  After copious quaffs of ale and plates of nibbles one realises that is after 10 pm and that one has consumed enough beer to start a microbrewery.  And the price I am sure you are wondering.  3000 yen for all you can eat and drink for almost 4 hours.  In the currency of my mother country that is about fifteen quid! 

 

There are some amongst my friends who are not of the same opinion, they believe the food is not that delicious, I have to agree!  But in a country where one is not entirely sure if everything is dead ne`ermind cooked.  Festa exhibits the greatest trait of English cuisine, it is functional, filling and fattening!  The three F`s of English cooking!  Wonderful!

 

Garlic munching surrender monkeys lose!

 

Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?  Yes,  that is it.  The day the English beat the French in the Rugby World Cup Semi Final!  YOOOOOOOO!  A bloody great game and a fantastic result!  Here we can see `mes amies` (comedy value) David, Leanne, Adam, Mitsue and Rachel.  Where are they located?  In my local!  Twas a wonderful time.  People stopped by my apartment, drank beer and watched as England beat the French!  I`m not sure which was better actually; the beer, the conversation afterwards or the beating of France!  Who knows, it was a grand day.  Shame about David`s expression in this pic, but it is how he looks most of the time!

 

The 23rd of November - a typical YouMe Town gathering, in that we were saying goodbye and hello at the same time.  Yoshiko left soon afterwards, we know not where to.  The Japanese staff in most branches are a blur, they are in and out in a matter of months. 

 

Yukiko on the other hand has been in YouMe Town longer than all of the teachers bar 4.  She`s been there for over a year now, and I personally am glad she is.  I hope `the company` let us keep her - her leaving will be a very sad time.

 

However, such wonderful outings do occur.  The venue was an izakaya whose unpronouncable name has escaped my memory, but I could take you to it tomorrow, if you were here and I probably wasn`t working.  The food, well, a law of life in Japan could be, unpronouncable establishment name = inedible food (well for Northerners like myself), on the table you can see pots of Nabe - yummy.  And the crowd?  Well from left to right - Mark, Leanne, Peter, Jon, Pam, Russel, Jamie and Billy.  Workmates at the YouMe Town coal face.  Maybe there will be info about them later.  I don`t know.  If you want more information now please feel free to head over to Peter`s website at http://bakabuddha.tripod.com/work.htm which details the people he worked with (it is a little out of date) TUT TUT

 

I don`t recall what those particular drinks were, it was a night of citrussy alcohol, I suppose from the colour they could be cassis orange but I don`t recall completely. 

 

January seems such a long time ago, with `the company` one can experience terrific burn out, it probably does drive many people to drink.  That and the fact that Japan is expensive and a cheap fun night out is an hour or two at the local, knocking back the beer or kahlua vodka milks or spumonis or shochu or sake having a bit of scran and just trying not to talk shop!

 

One is called Krista and one is Lacey and they are indulging in a lesser known Irish sport (it was St Patricks day) called "shoot the hole", I can`t recall who was the winner, although maybe the pose betrays said information.