Rollin' and rockin'

I've got good news and not-so-good news.

Not-so-good news first: I didn't see the new Harry Potter movie because it was sold out. :(

But the good news is that I still had a great time in Hachinohe because we had fun bowling instead! Here's the crazy group I rolled with:

From left to right: Oliver, Julian, Greg and Tina. Greg and Tina are new to Japan and live in nearby towns -- Fudai and Kunohe. Greg is from Colorado and Tina's from Scotland!

Go Tina, go!!

Ah, it's ok. Side note: I realize that you can't actually see Tina's face in any of these pictures, so I promise to properly introduce her next time. :)

Ok, so this is definitely embarassing to admit, but the winner of the game was Julian, with a score of...are you ready for this?...a whopping 80 points! That says a lot about the rest of us, doesn't it!?

After bowling, we headed to Ninohe--'til the wee hours of the morning--for a goodbye party. I've gone to so many goodbye parties/shindigs recently, but that's another story/blog post...

Writing of goodbyes, Mayla's last day in Japan is tomorrow! Craziness. So Sunday was her final church service in Kuji. There's a group of us who hang out after church, and as usual, we went out for lunch. And then we took group Purikura pictures:

The guy below me, Lou, is also one of the newer ALTs in the area. He's a ton o' fun. :)

On Sunday night, I went out to the beach in Noda, where I joined Jemma and her friends from New Zealand who are visiting. We made s'mores, did sparklers and looked at the beeeauuuuitful starry sky.

We were out late, (again) but it's okay because today was a holiday! Marine Day to be exact. No one seems to know exactly what Marine Day is, but several of us took advantage of the day off work to rock out on a Japanese-style houseboat! It actually was a very smooth ride and not rocky at all, but anyway... Seems like an appropriate thing to do on Marine Day, eh? Even though we were on the river, not the sea, but that's beside the point! :)

This was our boat. And here's our group in front of it:

Inside the boat was a long table with grills where we could cook scallops and squid! Like this...

Japanese friends Yoko and Kyoko grilling. I'm not so big on grilled squid (I actually prefer it raw, seriously), but the scallops were amazing!

As I'm reflecting on all I did this past weekend, I'm realizing how social it was! So many different group activities, including rollin' (a.k.a bowling) and rockin' (a.k.a boating). Good times.