I broke my glasses!! I can’t believe I broke my glasses. I am very depressed because I am almost blind without my glasses. On Saturday morning I was cleaning my glasses when suddenly they just broke. Now I am wearing my “emergency glasses”. My “emergency glasses” are an old pair of glasses I have from a couple of years ago. The prescription is old, so I can’t really see out of them properly. Now I need to buy new glasses. I hate buying new glasses . . . . it is so stressful.

Anyway, my weekend wasn’t too terrible even if I did break my glasses. I discovered a really great cheap chicken restaurant. I was in Umeda on Sunday, and I went to a chicken restaurant that is beside HEP 5. It was so delicious and cheap, and the portions were HUGE! I could barely finish all of the food. I had the special healthy lunch set. It included chicken miso soup, rice, pickles, cabbage salad, lots of fried chicken and a huge bowl of fresh tofu. I got all that food for only 780 yen. Can you believe it? I highly recommend that everyone go to this restaurant if they are hungry.

Talk to you later!

Hello to all the people that are reading my blog! I wonder how many people are actually reading this every week. Anyway, this past weekend I went to Kobe. I never knew that Kobe was so great! I felt a little bit like I was in Europe while I was walking around the city. However, for me, the best part was visiting Chinatown (Nankingmachi). I ate the best dumplings in the entire world. Seriously, I have never eaten such wonderful dumplings in my entire life. There was a huge line up in front of this dumpling shop, and I had to wait about 20 minutes in line before I could get some dumplings. However, they were definately worth the wait. Just look for the big long line, and you have found the correct dumpling shop. I can't wait to go back to Kobe and eat more of those fantastic dumplings. Each one was like heaven in my mouth! Gosh, I'm getting hungry writing about it. I think I will go and get a snack . . .

No one will every guess what I did this weekend. I went bowling! It was a real cultural experience for me, because I had never been bowling American style before. In Canada, we usually play five pin bowling, but here in Japan they do it “American style”. That means that there were 10 pins instead of five. Also the bowling balls were much bigger than in Canada. In Canada, our bowling balls are only about 15 centimeters in diameter, but these bowling balls were huge. In fact, the bowling ball I used on Saturday weighed 13 pounds (I think the number 13 stood for pounds). The pins were different too. In Canada, our pins are much smaller and they have a blue rubber band around them, but these pins didn’t have any rubber band. Anyway, it was really fun going bowling in Osaka. However, I was just terrible! I guess I am going to have to go bowling again sometime to practice because my total score was only 48 points. I guess most people usually get about 150 points. I must have been the worst bowler in the entire bowling alley! However, my excuse is that I am Canadian, and in Canada we only have five pins, not ten!

I saw a really great movie last weekend in Osaka. It was a Canadian movie. I was so surprised to find a Canadian movie playing in Japan, that I just had to see it immediately. The movie is called "Les Invasions Barbares", and it is a French-Canadian movie, so the dialogue is all in French. However, Japanese people can enjoy this movie too because there are Japanese subtitles. In Japanese, this movie is called "mina-san sayonara". If any of my students are also studying French, they definately should go and see this movie! It will be good practice for their listening skills.

Besides going to see a movie in Osaka, I haven't really done anything too exciting lately. I have had a terrible cold, so most of the time I have been just resting and trying to get better. I hate having a cold!

Golden Week is over! I can’t believe that it is over already. I wish I could have a longer holiday, but I will be happy to be back at school and see all my students. I hope they had a better Golden Week than me. I was sick for most of Golden Week with a terrible cold. However, I did go to Kyoto last Thursday. I did some sight seeing, and I went to a couple of temples. At one of the temples, I got to see a Buddhist ceremony. The priests all came in and started chanting the sutras. It was very interesting. Then I went to another temple with a huge pagoda. This was Toji. I was amazed at how beautiful the pagoda was. Kyoto has many beautiful places. I think I could go sight seeing in Kyoto every weekend, and I would never be bored!