Sun, Barbecue, and X-Men

Today was a very busy and good day. First I met up with another teacher, Eric, in the town adjacent to mine and we hung out at the lake for a couple hours, just chilling and soaking in the peaceful atmosphere. At one point we walked past a big group of elementary school kids, and they all wanted to say hello to us as they went by. XD So cute!!

Anyway, we got some soft serve (I had vanilla & green tea) and then met up with another teacher, Brendan, in Okaya (yet another town adjacent to mine). We went to a yakiniku place for dinner. Basically yakiniku means grilled meat, and that's what you do there. You grill meat on a barbecue in the middle of the table. We had so much meat!! Garlic chicken, Kobe beef, basil fondue chicken, harami (which is apparently like abdomen meat off a cow), and of course some rice as well as a salad. It was all really tasty, although very expensive. Definitely want to go back there some day. :)

Then we went to see the new X-Men movie at one of the only two movie theaters within easy distance of where I live. =_= I thought the movie was pretty good, although a little too much action and not enough down-time. :P It was cool to watch it with Japanese subtitles, because I could understand a lot of them, but very distracting. :)

Tomorrow I'm hoping to go the firefly festival with the same peeps, so that should be a lot of fun! This is a long weekend for me because my school is taking Monday off, so I'm really looking forward to having Monday to rest and recuperate from being really busy lately (and having a slight cold). If I do anything fun tomorrow, I'm sure I'll have pictures to post on here. :)

Lake Suwa looking towards Okaya

At the yakiniku restaurant

Cookin' up some chicken!

I think this was the restaurant's signature beef.

"Harami" or "skirt steak"

In the theater behind a couple foreigners, haha.