I saw the new Harry Potter movie yesterday. I made it down to the movie theatre about ten minutes late, but went in anyway. Harry Potter was at a Quidditch (? - does my spelling clarify how many Harry Potter books I've read?) game between Ireland and Bulgaria. To be honest, I really didn't understand a lot of the movie, which is great since it's probably made for 9 year olds. Like, are Harry Potter and Ron Weasley dating? I don't get it.

Movies are really expensive here. I was so relieved to see that my Harry Potter combo (popcorn & pop with Harry Potter box) was only 600 yen, but a ticket for a matinee show is $18 CDN. I guess this is good since it means I won't be wasting as much time watching bad movies as I used to, but still... this month alone I need to see at least two more movies (King Kong, Memoirs of a Geisha). And the popcorn is unfortunately of the sub-par level that it was in Hong Kong, so I'll have to find some kind of solution to that predicament as well.

I don't know if I mentioned this already, but Canadian Justin lost all his money. I think I did mention this, but to revisit it, he doesn't know what happened to his wallet, but by the time he realized it was missing, $7,000 was already charged to his credit cards. He doesn't have to pay for it, but he's lost all his ID and cash. So I mentioned this to the students of one of my classes. Immediately, one of the students had solved the mystery... "It must have been a Chinese thief!!" she said. The others all nodded in agreement.

Japanese people seem to hate foreigners, as they are the cause to all of life's problems. I still haven't been able to deduce whether I am grouped in with the Koreans and Chinese that they seem to hate so much or if non-Asian foreigners are in a different, suspicious category. I'm starting to hate foreigners too.

Yesterday at work I got a text from Zoe and Graham who were going to the bar Fly Over in Shinosaka (my neighbourhood) that night. I had already made plans for later on to do a language exchange, but decided to pop by after work for a drink anyway. I rode my bike around for about half an hour, but any directions anyone gave me were horribly vague and I never found it. It seems that most directions here will have to be shown, not described, since it's impossible to find anything purposely on my own.

Last week when I went to the working holiday visa office, I saw a sign up from a Japanese guy named Masa looking to do a language exchange with a Canadian since he had worked in B.C. for 9 months. I e-mailed him and we planned to meet up Thursday at 10:30pm at Mos Burger near my house (he works in Shinosaka).

Masa's English is OK, he was on the same working holiday visa as I am, but for Canada. He is 23 and works for a cram school (Japanese kids go to cram schools to "cram" schoolwork into them in their spare time). He lived in a hippy town called Sunshine Coast in B.C. for half a year and in Vancouver for a few months. He seems really easy-going and throws his head back in laughter for just about anything I say about Japan or Canada. Seriously, I was a little worried what the other people at Mos Burger were thinking because he was literally falling over laughing, but no one seemed to take notice. I'm actually the first person to get back to him about the language exchange since he put the ad up about a year ago, but he did a language exchange back in Canada and seems to kind of know what he's doing. I think it will probably be fun.

Tomorrow I'm planning on going to Kyoto with Steve and will probably have some beautiful pictures to update with later. Kyoto is known as the cultural capital of Japan. In ancient times it was the capital and people talk about it a lot and always suggest that I go there. That's about all I know, but I'm sure I'll have a lot more to say about it next post.

Ryan