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Well I have had a varied couple of days recently. On Sunday, I went to Kobe with Reiko`s family and ate some strange dishes I had takoyaki which you make yourself. This is basically Octopus pancake balls. It is quite tricky to make as you only get a small coctail stick to swivel them around in their little hollows but was delicious. I have had these many times before as they are an Osakan delicacy but I have never made them myself. We did some shopping around and then in the afternoon, we had Kobe beef. When the cows are alive, they are given beer to drink so it makes their meat more tender (I wonder how tender my meat is) ooh err. The chef cooks it right in front of you with what loｏｋ like two wall paper removers but it was ｓｏ ｇｏｏｄ - definitely the best beef I have ever had in my life.

That night I didn`t sleep until six I just couludn`t sleep. I ended up finishing the Harry Potter book by reading about 550 pages. I finally got to sleep at 6 in the morning after listening to dogs and cats on heat, paper delivery people on motorbikes - Motorbikes in the morning I ask you - and the dawn chorus.

I learnt some more japanese words though. I took it upon myself to try and train their unruly dog with a ball and I learnt osuwari which means sit down you bloody bastard of a dog or I`ll……..

On Tuesday I tried looking for a job with Reiko at a job centre. I was told it would be better if I went to the city centre one as they would have more jobs for foreigners there as well as people who could speak English. It`s both good and annoying that Reiko has to pretty much communicate for me all the time. It makes my life easier but I do feel very powerless some times. The Japanese often start talking to me and asking me questions and I just ususally smile and point at her to do all the talking. We are going to the job centre tomorrow which is is a shame as I am on a working holiday visa and so the holiday part of this may be about to come to an end.

After the job centre, we went to the batting centre where you pay 200 yen which is a quid for 28 balls which get thrown at you by the mechanism and you try to hit the damn thing. Being brought up on football and cricket, baseball is quite a tricky thing to adapt to. I went on the slowest one and achieved I wopuld say a hit rate of about 30 per cent　a decent hit rate (where the ball actually goes high and far) of about 15 per cent.

i　am knackered more later aha