This past weekend was a long weekend in Japan, so I didn’t have to work on Monday. It was really nice to have a day off. I studied Japanese all day Monday, and then my Japanese teacher came to give me a Japanese lesson. I am studying Japanese a lot now because I am taking the Japanese Proficiency Test on December 4th, and I don’t want to fail!! I am going to be taking level 4, which is the lowest level. If I can pass level four, it means that I can have simple conversations in Japanese . . . but I wonder who I will talk with in Japanese . . .

I had a pretty good Sunday as well. I met some friends of mine from Canada on Sunday, and we all went to an Indian Restaurant for lunch. The restaurant is called “Aruna”, and it is so good!! It is in Umeda, and it is close to the EST shopping mall that is below the train tracks in Umeda. Kind of past HEP 5. Anyway, it was really great, but be sure that you don’t get your curry too spicy! My friend Ryan ordered the spicy curry. I tasted it, and it was so hot it almost ripped my head off! I had the lunch set for 850 yen, and it was excellent – nan bread, chicken curry, rice, salad and a piece of roast chicken – yum yum!

After lunch, we decided to go to Mino for a “mini-hike”. It such a beautiful day, that we really wanted to go and walk around somewhere nicer than Umeda. In Mino, we walked to the waterfall and we ate “momiji no tempura”. I had eaten it before, but it was fun to eat it again. Making tempura out of maple leaves is such a good idea. I think I will try this with Canadian maple leaves when I go back to Canada. Maybe I can become rich!

The only sad thing about our trip to Mino was that we saw a sick monkey. At first I was really happy to see him, because I love monkeys, but then my friend Kathy noticed that his arm was badly injured. It looked like he had been in a big fight or something. The poor monkey. I hope someone finds a vet to come and help him. I hope he’ll be okay.