Please send me cookies from home

Here are a few updates...

• We're into the summer school stretch of work right now, which forces every native English speaker in my company into an eight-day stretch of work without a day off. At the end of this period, which makes the Japanese teachers quite wealthy because of the bonuses they receive for selling spots to the parents of the regular students, we do receive a couple of bonus days off. It's not really worth the grief of it though.
  
• For my first leg of the summer school stretch, I was sent on a business trip to the Osaka area where I taught in an area of Japan I hadn't been to. The company put me up in a hotel in Wakayama City, which I've only ever driven through before when I went to the prefecture during the Golden Week holiday. The city is quite nice and I found a little bar called Faces which is run by a man named Ricardo who is half-Japanese and half-Brazilian. Nice guy, and definitely a place I'll go back to if I ever go back to Wakayama city.
• My friend Jesse has returned from China only 3 months into his planned 6 month retreat due to visa complications. I guess in the time he was out there learning kung-fu he learned a lot and it would have been nice for him to stay to finish his plan, but stuff happens.
  
• I'll be going to Tokyo for the first time in the near future during the Obon festival. We had originally planned to party in Tokyo on the Saturday nights and head north to Nikko after that but everything is all booked up. Obon is one of the most popular times in the Japanese calendar for Japanese people to travel, because the celebration is held as a time when people are supposed to return to their home towns and pay respect to their elders who have already passed on. It's a lot like the Mexican celebration of el Di­a de los Muertos.
  

And nothing else is really new. Life is busy as usual, so why don't one of you send me a message or funny story that I can add to here. Your lives deserve to be written about, especially if there's nothing of note happening in mine! I'll try to find some interesting photos or videos to post soon. Assuming I can find something picture-worthy to capture. I might just be getting some urban-wasteland fever here in Japan.