Kanshasai (Thanksgiving)

I had Wednesday off this week for Japan's "Labor Thanksgiving Day," some day to give thanks to all who work by taking a day off to not work, I guess. That's nice and all, but I've been trying to pump up American Thanksgiving in my classes lately. Which doesn't always go that well since NO ONE here knows about that lame holiday that just happens to be sandwiched between "candy, candy, costumes, and CANDY" Halloween and "Strawberry Covered Cake and KFC" Christmas (I'm still trying to make them understand that that's NOT how we do Christmas... slowly but surely).

So at the beginning of the month, one of the English teachers I work with (who is a good friend of mine here - we're always recommending TV shows and music and whatnot to each other) at the junior high approached me about the Thanksgiving bulletin board I had set up. She loved looking at all the food pictures, and wondered if we could do a Thanksgiving dinner party at my house some weekend. "Sure!" I said, enthusiastically accepting the chance to celebrate Thanksgiving for the first time in 3 years (I missed it while studying abroad, too).

Little did I know how much work goes into these darn holiday dinners. Family, friends, anyone who has to go through this ordeal every Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, whatever... you have my utmost respect.

Originally we were going to tell the whole office about it (that is 21 people, not including me, by the way), but especially at the thought of the women bringing their kids and basically having to make all this American food myself for such a big crowd, we decided to scratch that idea and go for a more intimate, friends only Thanksgiving. She invited her sister and 3 of her friends, and I invited 2 of my ALT friends. 8 people total... not too bad.

But being an insane perfectionist, I still freaked out over this for weeks. And also learned a few things about myself in the process... namely that I DO in fact pay attention when my family hosts this kind of big gathering type thing, as I apparently picked up a few party planning quirks from my step father and sister-in-law. From my sister I apparently picked up some of the the "Everything must be planned PERFECTLY" quirk, as I even had one of those "Put the marshmallows on the sweet potatoes at exactly 4:35" type timetables written up and was checking it every four seconds as I ran around the kitchen in a "everything must be done at the same time!" panic (This kind of freaked out my teacher friend, as she didn't know I'd take this so seriously).

Meanwhile, there were 8 people to feed, due to a misunderstanding I thought there would be 9, and so of course I made enough food for 18. This is the trait I picked up from my step dad. Thank God I persuaded my friends and teacher buddy to take home a bunch of leftovers (though I was still left with an inhumane amount of sweet potatoes to eat... but we'll get to that).

So let's talk about my first real Thanksgiving in Japan! It was a cold, November Saturday in Hokkaido...



I tried to go all out. Set up lots of chairs (and most people just sat on the floor anyway) and put up a few random fall themed decorations (that just kind of got in the way once the food part rolled around, but whatever). After all, no Thanksgiving table is complete without...



Ta da! A centerpiece! Complete with a fake, flickering, battery-powered tea light candle. Classy.

That pumpkin is real, and WILL be eaten one of these days. I just haven't done anything with it yet. I just got it after all. My neighbor, the vice principal, left it wedged in my mailbox last weekend since I mentioned how much I love pumpkin, and he apparently has many to spare. (I just wasn't home to accept it, so I had a fun surprise waiting for me when I got home. Not the first time that's happened - my past supervisor knows how much I love corn too, so I've come home to a big bag of corn hung on my doorknob before as well).

I could take a minute here to introduce one of my best Japanese friends: Daiso. I don't know how many times Daiso has saved me when I needed cheap, awesome stuff for any and all purposes. (Daiso is a chain of 100 yen shops, so it's basically the Japanese dollar store. Very handy when you're like me and need to make constant runs out for construction paper and glue sticks... or you need fall decorations or a big bowl to serve mashed potatoes in and don't want to spend more than a couple bucks total).



I persuaded a friend to make a dessert for me (she had originally volunteered to make something, after all), so I got ready for dessert time by prepping all the fixings for after-dinner coffee. My teacher told me it looked like I was getting ready for a business meeting, what with the tray and all...



At one point when the guests arrived someone took all these drink bottles over to the fridge to keep them cold. Yeah, buddy, that ain't happening. Now get outta the kitchen and go put those drinks in my alternate fridge, aka my bedroom. (Fun fact: If you went into my room that day you could see your breath, so it was perfect for storing drinks. It's cold here and I never use the heater in that room except like 10 minutes before I plan to go to bed.)

And now... WE DINE.







It's not pictured, but I had printed out a little menu and left it on the table for the guests to see before we set everything out for dinner. The menu was as follows:

Appetizer:
Deviled Eggs

Main:
Chicken Drumsticks

Sides:
Garlic Mashed Potatoes and Chicken Gravy
Sweet Corn
Green Bean Casserole (Oooh, baby)
Sweet Potato Casserole
Jellied Cranberry Sauce
Turkey Stuffing
Bread Rolls (from an AMAZING restaurant in my friend's town)

Dessert:
Apple Pie and Vanilla Ice Cream
Pumpkin Muffins



As a certain American family might say, "Commence shoveling!" (I had to watch the "Mom, it' broken, mom!" episode online while doing my prep work... just to set the Thanksgiving mood.)



And at last... THIS. This is why I fretted over this for weeks and ran around like an idiot for 3 days. It's been 3 years, Thanksgiving, but at last we meet again. (After this was taken my friend with the bread rolls showed up, so unfortunately they're not in the picture. Just imagine them there to complete the image.)

Just to explain who did what, the teacher I work with brought her little toaster oven, a bunch of chicken drumsticks, and her and her sister thankfully took care of the meat for me (My local grocery store, for whatever reason, actually was selling Butterball turkeys this week... but the bird is bigger than any Japanese oven I've ever seen, so I don't know what they expect any of us to do with them. Hence we had chicken, since it's still a bird and close enough in my book). I made my friends handle bread and dessert... and I did the rest. I know it's not too hard to heat up a can of corn, slice up a can of cranberry sauce, or dump a bag of stovetop into boiling water, but this was my first time making casseroles, gravy from scratch, and getting a crap ton of stuff on the table all at the same time (in a tiny Japanese kitchen with two burners, a microwave, and an oven the size of a shoebox). It was quite the learning experience... but heck yeah man, I can do anything now.



But first, DESSERT. My friend made apple pie, we dumped ice cream on it, and everyone took home a muffin because we couldn't move (much less eat anything else) by this point (I know we didn't need the muffins, but we needed SOMETHING pumpkin on the table... and boy do I love that pumpkin bread recipe. So I made muffins in the middle of the night on Friday).



Don't forget the coffee.



And of course, pictures. Everyone was having fun taking pictures... and taking pictures of people taking pictures.

I'm not sure how enthused my teacher's friends were about all this odd American food I put before them, but everyone else seemed pretty excited about the whole experience, and I think everyone had fun in the end. I'm just glad it all came to a close without any problems (and Japanese people are AWESOME about being invited to parties, since the guests always leap all over the clean up and have everything washed and put away before the host can even blink. Yay!) And after everyone left my teacher friend and her sister stayed for another couple hours just to get in a good healthy dose of English conversation, which was a good way to wind down after the festivities (I like talking to them, they're cool people).

Now I can just sit back and relax for a little while in my clean house (I hate hate hate cleaning when having people over... but boy is this clean house nice).

Now to panic about my proficiency exam next weekend. Or not. I had a busy October, a busy November, and December's going to be a mess too... so I pretty much haven't even seriously thought about (or studied for) this test recently. Guess I'll be taking it again in July. Oh well! Some day, SOME DAY, I'll pass it. I swear. Hold me to that, if you must. But until that day...

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Fish and chips and bears (oh my)

Hokkaido has bears.

No, let me rephrase that.

Hokkaido has a bear problem. Seriously. This year has been particularly full of bear reports on the news. In the past week a bear was seen wandering into the Sapporo city area for some reason (and promptly gunned down, I've been told), which has caused all sorts of hubbub for the worried city folk. Then the other day a train hit a bear which understandably brought everything to a halt for a bit. It's pretty common here for trains to hit deer, since those are also so prevalent that they've become a problem too (I hear there's talk now about bringing in wolves to deal with the deer problem), but I guess a bear collision is a bit more out of the ordinary and therefore news-worthy. On numerous occasions this year I've even come in to the faculty room at the junior high only to be greeted by another map on my desk of the neighborhood with a big "X" on it all "A bear was spotted here - you might want to be careful." No kidding.

My eikaiwa (the group of adults I teach every Tuesday night) tells me about these bear incidents since they know I don't always catch the local news (or the news in general, since they use some pretty high-level Japanese in those reports), and it's always comforting when the conversation goes something like this:
"The last bear was seen just behind the elementary school."
"Oh, so you mean... right next to where my house is?"
"Oh, well... yes."
Beautiful.

So anyway, I'll talk a bit this time about a recent day trip a friend and I took out to Shiretoko, a big national park up here known for being THE place in the area if you want a good healthy dose of nature. I told my office I was going there and got panicked looks of "But... there're BEARS out there!" I told my friend about their panic and she rebutted with "Well yeah, that's kind of the point." She then told me of our plans to take a boat cruise around the edge of the park to see some waterfalls and, hopefully, some bears, so my mind was put at ease after learning about our plans and how they didn't involve hiking into bear-infested forests. My office probably thought that's what we would be doing, and probably don't think me smart enough to stay out of the way of scary forest creatures. And they're right, of course, I haven't been too savvy at hiding what an airhead I can be at times. They probably think I'd try to go give it a snack to make friends or something. (Nah, they don't really think that... I hope. I swear I'm smart. Really. What?)

But to get back to the point, it was a nice little road trip. I'd probably like to go back to try to see more of the park if I ever get the chance, since we really did just skim (or rather, boat around) the surface. The morning of our scheduled trip, I got up early and took a rather calm, 40 minute drive on twisty, hilly roads through forests and farms, followed by a panic as my car decided to be an absolute jerk to me again as I entered the town where my friend lives (I'll get back to this), I met up with her at her house and we began our trip out to Shiretoko (in her car that... you know... actually works). The trip there was kind of cool too, not only for the reason that we got to stop a few times to gawk at the clear weather, beautiful seashore, and random Ainu statues we found along the way, but because we were able to stop at 4 michi no eki throughout the course of the day.



A michi no eki ("Station on the Road" I guess you could translate it as... it's kind of like a pit stop) is a pretty big thing in Hokkaido. Hokkaido is nowhere near as densely populated as Honshu (or any of the other big islands in Japan), so everything is spread out and most people have their own cars with which to travel or even just get around in daily life. Because of this there are many michi no eki on these well-traveled roads, providing a place for people to stop, rest, use the john (one of my English teachers LOVES that I taught her this term for some reason), grab a bite to eat made from local foods, or buy region-specific souvenirs. They're really quite cool. And of course, one other reason why people stop at these places is to put that specific station's stamp in their stamp rally book.

I bought a book at our first michi no eki as we made our way out to Shiretoko, so I officially started one of the stamp rally books. Kind of a bummer since my less than reliable car kind of keeps me glued to my town out of nervousness, but at least when I'm out with others I can join in on the stamp rally fun and keep track of where I've been. So, after grabbing my first stamp and a sweet potato tart we once again hit the road.

Not too far outside of the official bounds of Shiretoko is a pretty big waterfall called Oshinkoshin falls. We stopped there to join the many other tourists in picture taking and gawking at its beauty. The weather was gorgeous and the waterfall was right next to the sea, so you could get a double dose of aquatic scenery. It really was gorgeous. Boy do I love the sound of water.





After that we headed into Utoro, which is the big town next to the park. We bought our boat tickets, which was interesting as all the places to buy them are on a far too narrow, far too crowded side street (and you need to pick a place to buy from before you can park in their parking lot, so the two doofy foreigners were stopped in the middle of this road talking to a flustered woman from our car window about which boat tour we wanted so we could move out of everyone's way. Good times.) We decided on a two hour cruise that included a chance to admire a hot spring waterfall and then a chance to do some bear spotting. And then with that out of the way, because it was past noon by this point we decided we NEEDED food.

I have no problem eating Japanese food pretty much all the time, but a lot of my other foreigner friends really love tracking down the foreign foods in new places. (Indian food is absurdly popular with them, so that's usually what I expect to eat any time I go out with the other ALTs in Sapporo or any other city that provides such a selection.) This day we happened to stumble upon this little hole in the wall pub that served fish and chips, complete with malt vinegar. I had no objections.



They brought it out to us with chopsticks. Sure, why not.



After chilling out there for a bit, watching the more hardcore tourists with their fishing and diving gear and whatnot, we headed to the ticket place where they ushered us, single file like elementary kids, out to the boat dock. They do this mostly since we have to cross that narrow busy street to get to an area full of trucks and cargo crates and fishermen tending to their fishing boats. But we got to walk past cool things like this dried fish vendor, drying out their fish by clipping them to this whirligig thing and letting them spin spin spin until they become ready to sell. Note the tentacles. Whee!



We then set off for our 2 hour boat cruise on a fairly tiny boat that bounced about on the rather bumpy water. Definitely not for the weak of stomach, but fun if you like to be tossed around a bit. We sat inside on padded benches, so we were protected from the wind and spray and all that... but we were also looking at the scenery from water-splattered windows (and we sat on the wrong side of the boat at that). Luckily there was a doorway on the side of the boat that was left open (with a wooden baby gate sized thing to keep anyone from falling out, like the few of us that were out of our seats taking pictures from this lone opening in the side of the boat). From there we got to see some gorgeous cliffs, rock formations, forests, the aforementioned hot spring waterfall, and eventually we stopped off a rocky shoreline to do what we paid to do: look for bears.







The sun got in my eyes as my friend tried taking my picture...



The boat people say that something like 95% of the boat cruises see bears, but we were at the very tail end of the bear-sighting season so we were worried we wouldn't see any... especially since quite a few minutes passed with no bear activity. But at long last one little brown bear came stumbling along the rocks on the shore, and though we were kind of far away and couldn't get a very good look at the little guy we still got to see a real, live, wild Hokkaido bear. Followed by another. Followed by a family of three. Bears everywhere! They weren't kidding. Even at the end of the season we got to participate in all this bear watching stuff.

There are no pictures of this though, sorry. My camera's not all that hot to begin with, and so trying to get a shot of a little bear on a coast a fair ways away while swaying around on a little boat didn't exactly produce results.

After getting back to shore and making our way passed all the fishing equipment, we stopped at the Utoro michi no eki again to pick up omiyage (souvenirs) for our offices. Any time anyone goes anywhere they're pretty much expected to pick up a box of small, individually wrapped sweets or crackers or something local to the area they visited, and as such pretty much anywhere you go has tons of these boxes with their own regional specialty. They had lots of cookies and dumplings and whatnot, but my friend and I both decided on what was obviously the clear choice: bear cookies. And not just bear cookies, but bear cookies that came in a cookies bus (complete with Engrish and everything). My office got omiyage, which they never actually seem to expect me to get and are always kind of surprised I remember, and I got to keep the cookies bus tin. It's totally a worthless trinket, but it makes me chuckle.



On the way back to her house we stopped in a city along the way at their Pizza Hut to get some double cheese pepperoni pizza. As I said, the other ALTs like to hunt down the not in any way Japanese foods in the area... but boy was it good to have pizza (normal pizza at that, not squid or mayonnaise or potato or something... not that those are all bad, exactly, but this pizza we got tasted like home).

I spent the night at her house and then made my way home the next day. In... THAT car. That car that made it through a little over half my short journey home before deciding it wanted to be a jerk and just stop on me. Luckily I had made it to a not twisty-turny part of the road so other cars could see me, and I ended up calling my Japan-mom on a bright sunny Sunday morning begging for assistance. After hanging up with her I decided to give my car another try (or seven) and eventually it puttered along... for a little while... before giving out again on me (but again on a straight bit of road at least). After a half an hour or so of waiting, admiring the onion field to my left, my Japan-dad and his wife arrived to take me and my half-working car to the local garage. Again. Boy, do they know me well there. Me and that stupid car of mine. Seriously, Donut (I named him), I absolutely hate you.

But then I was glad I bought everyone bear cookies. Again I had to bother everyone on their time off with my car problems... but that could be saved for a different (and what would be a very looong post) about my various car trouble stores in Japan.

But anyway, this ties back in to my main point, because as I told my eikaiwa about this one Tuesday night (they know my car and can tell immediately when I come to class in a car I had to borrow from the garage) they looked at me all "Oh, that's where your car broke down? There're bears out there."

Big surprise, Hokkaido. Big surprise. I'm just glad I didn't know (or at least think about) that while I was stranded out there.

I'm kind of back, I guess

Good evening, everyone.

...

Yeah, I know. "Who the heck are you?" Fair enough, I might have neglected this thing for a wee bit too long. But hey, I'll try to be better about it. To be perfectly honest, several months ago I wrote a blog post of monstrous proportions about pretty much everything interesting that's happened to me since coming here, but after figuring out how many pictures I'd have to resize and upload to make it happen I pretty much just set it aside and, of course, forgot about it. Until, of course, I headed back to America for summer vacation to catch up with everyone and received an earful from everyone about my lack of blog posts.

So let's just start over. I'll get around to telling you guys about my adventures here, but I'll do it in smaller increments so as not to overwhelm myself to the point of just lazily dropping it entirely.

So I got into a discussion this morning with my mom about strange (or what I used to think were strange) Japanese foods that I now thoroughly enjoy. At the top of the list are umeboshi, the incredibly salty, incredibly tart pickled plums that Japanese people love to pair with rice. You can find an umeboshi on top of the rice portion of pretty much every bento box (box lunch, often easily obtained in the convenience stores you see all over the place) you find in this country, and they're also a popular filling for onigiri (rice balls). Here you can see it on the top left (this is a sampler bento I got from one of the department stores here. So pretty!)



First time I had on it was like getting punched in the mouth, but I actually really enjoy them now and always put a couple of them in my genmai (Japanese brown rice, much tastier than regular brown rice) any time I have to make a lunch box for myself for work. It helps keep the food fresh too, which is an added bonus. That may be why pickles are so darn popular here, since it is quite a traditional food from long, long ago. And they pickle pretty much everything. Takuan, these bright yellow daikon radish pickles, are also pretty tasty. I didn't like them when I first got here either, but now I appreciate a good, crunchy takuan with my meals. I even buy bags of them at the store now to eat with my giant bowl of evening miso soup.

Good heavens, miso soup is good. I especially love it when it has potatoes in it. Seriously. It's the easiest thing in the world to make and it's so good. Go make yourself some.

Chikuwa is also pretty tasty. They're these little hollow tube looking things made from pureed fish that has been wrapped around bamboo and then grilled... or steamed... or... I don't know. Cooked somehow. It's a pretty cheap, healthy way to add protein to a meal, so I usually cut it into little rings and chuck it into my giant bowls of soup in the evening (but you can eat chikuwa as-is if you so desire). They get all puffy when they've been in the soup for awhile, so I use them as a way to tell me when my food is done. I owe kyuushoku (school lunch) for this, as my first real introduction to this food came from it's appearance in my school lunches. Plural. As in it usually takes a few appearances of a new food in my meals for me to actually remember the name of these foreign foods that I'm repeatedly eating.

My mom then asked if I still hate squid. Well... kind of, yeah. I'm still not a fan of the raw stuff, but it's fine when cooked. It often appears at yakiniku, which is where everyone sits around a grill and cooks little pieces of different meats and vegetables and everyone just kind of helps themselves (this is pretty much the prefectural pastime of Hokkaido, by the way. They LOVE their yakiniku here). I then stated again that I still prefer octopus to squid, which made my mom present me with a face as if to say "you're insane." Well, maybe so, but octopus is good. So good, in fact, that I got the stick of octopus in my oden for dinner tonight.

Now, this purchase of oden is kind of a special thing for me, so let me talk about this. Oden is a type of nabe cooking, which basically means a type of cooking where you have a big pot of some kind of broth which you then fill with random crap and let it simmer and cook until everything has absorbed the tastiness and you're left with a big pot of awesome. This is understandably a big thing in winter (and parties even in the summer, as a big pot of food easily feeds many), so now that we're heading into winter the convenience stores are all advertising their oden lineups. And if you go to the convenience store you can choose from quite an array of ingredients to compose your single serving of soup, so it really is... well... convenient. Especially since oden is best when the food has been simmering for a rather long time to absorb all the flavors, which isn't always fun to replicate at home. Here are some examples from our friends at google image search:





The most popular ingredients are hard boiled eggs, daikon radish, konnyaku (a jelly-type block made from yams. It absorbs flavors really well and is pretty much calorie free, so the ladies love it), tofu (as-is or fried, sometimes mixed with chopped vegetables), and a variety of fish cakes (such as the aforementioned chikuwa). You can eat it along with a variety of condiments, but perhaps the most popular is spicy mustard. It really is good and perfect for cold weather (or nasty rainy nights, like tonight).

And, of course, since it's awesome and I apparently hate myself, I hardly ever treat myself to a bowl of this heavenly food. It kind of shows up in our school lunches from time to time, but there it's more like a bunch of oden ingredients on a plate topped with a sweet miso-ish sauce and less like a big hot bowl of delicious slow-cooked soup (don't get me wrong, it's still good, but the real stuff is better than the school stuff). Obviously we're just now coming out of summer so oden hasn't really been on anyone's mind for months, but I think I've bought convenience store oden maybe... once since I've been here? It was last year some time. It's a shame, really, so I finally got off my lazy butt and went to my local 7-11 to get a styrofoam bowl of tasty tasty oden this evening. (Which I paired with a big salad topped with umeboshi dressing. Those plums really have grown on me.)

So I went and picked 6 different things for my oden dinner tonight: egg (of course), daikon radish, konnyaku, roll cabbage (its got ground meat wrapped up inside of it, kind of like a Japanese gawumpki for those of you that know what I'm talking about), fuki (some kind of rhubarb-like vegetable), and, to bring me back to my original point, an octopus tentacle on a bamboo stick.



The octopus was by far the most expensive one of the bunch (over twice as much as the others, which are usually around a buck a piece), but I wanted to splurge and get something really Japanese. So, after my talk with my mom this morning I decided I needed a little octopus in my day. I mean, it's good stuff! Why doesn't anyone give it a chance?

And then a lone suction cup fell into my mustard as I was dining, and I remembered that, "Oh yeah, this looks pretty darn disgusting." Well, if you ignore that part of it, octopus is pretty darn good, and I'll tell you right now that I didn't let even that lone mustard-covered suction cup go to waste.

It was quite the treat, but I'll probably try making it at home next time, just to see if I can do it and to save some cash. You can buy oden kits in all the supermarkets here... or, if you've become a health nut like I apparently have, you can skip all the fried vegetables and tofu balls and just make it at home with the eggs, daikon, carrots, and konyakku you've got in the fridge (which is more practical if you're cooking for one and don't need a family-size bag of stuff). Can't be that hard... can it? At least I know where to go if I want some pseudo-gawumpki and suction cups if my at-home version goes bad.

All right, I'm off to finish off my meal with some of that applesauce I made last night. Since it's fall, apples are cheap, and I bought half a dozen of them last night and decided to make a boatload of applesauce with them at 11 pm. Since this country apparently doesn't know what applesauce is. In fact cinnamon really isn't a big thing here in the fall. Pumpkin cakes and puddings and cookies are all over the place, but they have no spices. It's really quite depressing... so I've been making a lot of my own fall pumpkin and apple foods to satisfy my craving for cinnamon-packed American-style fall goodies.

I think I've had a bout of homesickness lately, and I've been battling it by reminding myself how awesome this country is by enjoying its delicious cuisine. The oden just happened to be on my mind tonight, but there will probably be more food blogs in the future... just as a heads up. And I'll apologize right now. Sort of. This place has awesome food you all need to know about.

Speaking of battling homesickness with food, I've got a big Japanese proficiency exam coming up in a couple months, so I get to pretend I'm still a college student by finding cafe-like places to hide out on weekend evenings so I can study and drink lots and lots (and lots) of coffee (mmm). There aren't many places in Japan that let you do this, but good ol' Mister Donut, the donut chain here in Japan, is open late, has tasty and interesting donuts, is currently running a campaign with Snoopy related items that warms my beagle-loving heart, and, to top it all off, gives you FREE refills on coffee if you dine in.

Awwww yeah. This is what my weekends will look like for the next few months... textbooks and donuts:



They even have some interesting donuts. Not too long ago they introduced a line of baked donuts with such flavors at chocolate burdock and sweet potato spinach (you could totally taste the spinach... it was kinf of odd). Here we have a rice flour mitarashi donut (mitarashi meaning that thick, sweet soy sauce they put on the top of it). The dough is really chewy and dense like the mochi dumplings you get here, and it's really interesting and GOOD. Seriously, I do limit my Mister Donut visits to the weekend, and only one donut at a time... because I could easily eat a dozen of these. In about a minute.



It's still passably warm enough for me to go bike riding or jogging in the mornings on the weekend, so bring on more crazy donuts, Mister Donut!

OK, enough food, I promise I'll write about something else next time. And I swear there will be a next time. Not sure when, but I'll try to keep this up, even if it's just unimportant little tidbits about my life like this one was.

(And speaking of food, for those of you following me on facebook you might see more photo albums pop up on my facebook account with more Japan pictures, since posting pictures there is easier I think. I'll try to keep that up to, so stay tuned.)

Camping!

Camping trip in Hokkaido!!!

…Ok, not going to lie, I wasn’t at all excited about it since I hate bugs/spiders/foxes that carry scary diseases/typhoons in the vicinity that bring gratuitous amounts of rain/sleeping in a skinny sleeping bag that doesn’t let me move my legs/etc… but it really turned out to be a fun weekend.

The place we went to is called Akan, which is only about an hour away from here by car. The party didn’t start until Saturday, but the people I was carpooling with wanted to go on Friday. Unfortunately, as I said, there was a typhoon somewhere close enough to our area to cause it to rain the entire day, so even when the carpool group came by after work to pick me up it was still wet and disgusting outside. And lakes apparently form in my driveway when that happens, which blows since they opened the trunk to let me put my stuff in and the mats we would be sleeping on dropped right into a muddy puddle. Ah well. Everything was going to be wet soon enough anyway with all that rain.

Before we left, though, everyone wanted to grab a bite to eat. There’s this burger place here in town that's pretty well known amongst the foreigners as having darn good burgers (and it’s close enough that I pass it on my bike everyday to and from work), so we went there to eat. The burgers were pretty big and quite tasty, and the guy who works there was super friendly and entertaining (he immediately picked me out of the gaijin group as that person that goes by on my bike everyday). After admiring the stickers all over the restaurant and stuffing our faces with giant burgers, we hit the road for Akan. And of course, since it was already after 6, it was pitch dark. I’m not looking forward to winter when I have to go home in the dark at 4…

After only mildly losing our way and slowly driving through some vicious fog we safely arrived at the campsite. We were the first people there. In fact, we were the only people there for the next several hours. This was a good thing since it took us at least an hour of fiddling with poles and stakes and giant yet hidden puddles in the dark before we could actually get a sturdy tent set up. It was nice to not have anyone else know about our group failure. Until of course I write about it on the internet.

After awkwardly setting up our tent and getting our luggage and sleeping arrangements all in order, we decided to go walk around the nearby town. Turns out the nearby town has a shopping area modeled after Ainu culture (the Ainu being the native people of Hokkaido before the Japanese settled here). Unfortunately because it was late a lot of the shops were getting ready to close, but it was really cool to stumble upon that nice surprise while it was all lit up at night. A number of the shopkeepers had their pets there with them, so a few people were walking their dogs while others were just letting them chill out in the store fronts… Next to giant stuffed bears and things so that you jumped a little when one of the furry things in the store actually started to move.

The town also has a number of hotels with onsens (hot spring baths), so there were a lot of other tourists walking around in their robes and wooden sandals enjoying the atmosphere. That was pretty cool too.

After grabbing some ice cream at a nearby conbini we headed back to the campground to relax for a bit after our battle with the tent. But then again around this time some other people started showing up and began to battle with their tents, so it wasn’t really that quiet or relaxing. Not that it was easy to sleep anyway – I didn’t want to bring one of my nice pillows camping so I brought along one of those plastic bead pillow things that I found in my closet. Everyone enjoyed making fun of my bean pillow, but really I didn’t love it enough to try to defend it against the insults… They’re really not comfortable.

Somehow with that nasty pillow that should never have been created and my coffin-shaped sleeping bag I got to sleep and woke up the next day ready for some more camping fun. Apparently though I didn’t sleep too awfully well (big surprise) since even though it was Saturday I woke up rather early with one of my tent mates. Since everyone else in the vicinity had arrived after we went to bed no one else was really awake at the time, so we took that opportunity to use the foot onsen while it was vacant. It was pretty nice. It was kind of like a gazebo that had a picnic table-type thing in the middle with places to sit all around it while your feet soaked in hot spring water. And boy, was it hot. I don't know how people get entirely into onsens if they’re that hot. After soaking my feet for an hour or so it looked like I had pink socks on since my skin went red from the heat.

People then started moving about and we headed back to eat some of the food we packed for breakfast (even more conbini food). After that we then headed back into the town to take advantage of the shops while they were actually open.





It’s a pretty small shopping area, but it was pretty neat with lots of cheesy yet cool souveneirs. There were some cats on a leash laying in the shade outside one store that we got to pet for a while, and there were also what appeared to be college students carving some totem poles there too. The shops had all sorts of neat things carved out of wood, and one store even had a number of life-sized wooden statues in the basement we got to go look at.



I think the coolest thing I got was this cheap little piece of bamboo with a couple of strings attached to it called a mukkuri. It’s an Ainu instrument that’ a kind of mouth harp. The shopkeeper had one out and demonstrated how it works to us, and it was so cool I had to get one. I didn’t take it out of the package until I got home, but I’m sure my neighbors are tired of hearing me play with it already. If only I had A/C I could shut the windows and save them the pain of listening me.

Around this time some of the people I hung out with in Sapporo arrived, so we met up with them and set off to do more activities. The first stop was lunch, where we went to an Ainu restaurant. I love donburimono (food served in a bowl over rice so the sauce or whatever seeps into the rice too), so I had the yukku don - yukku apparently being the Ainu word for deer. It was pretty tasty, albeit a tad chewy.



After this we set off on a lake cruise to see the scenery. Everything – the water included – was a very brilliant shade of green, so it was really nice to get to cruise around and see everything with the wind keeping us cool (the weather was beautiful on Saturday, just a bit hot in the afternoon).





About halfway into it they briefly dropped us off on a little island where they built a marimo center. Marimo are these algae balls that grow in that lake (which is why the lake’s so green), so it’s become the town’s and even Hokkaido’s mascot. They sell stuff with the happy green Hokkaido marimo mascot on it all over the place.



About this time it was getting later in the day, so we started heading back to the campground for the free dinner one of the Hokkaido JETs was preparing for everyone. It quickly got dark out, so we all stuffed our faces with hot dogs, salads, and falafels at a picnic table while huddled around a single mosquito candle to illuminate our dinner. The light from the area where the food was being prepared only carried so far…

After dinner a couple more party people wanted to head back out to the conbini after this for drinks, but I was yet again interested in the ice cream (Hokkaido caramel ice cream is amazing, by the way). While walking back one of the girls who hadn’t had a chance to look at the shops earlier convinced me to hang back with her, which was neat since we then got to see a big procession of people carrying torches led by a van blaring out Ainu music that walked by. We weren’t able to get out of the shop fast enough to go grab some torches and join in, but it was still cool to see.





By the time we got back to camp many people had already clearly had a few to drink, and teams of people were playing bizarre party games. At least I got to watch the suika wari, a popular summer game in which you are blindfolded and have to break a watermelon open with a wooden sword. Kind of like a piñata, only the food you’re trying to get to actually gets dirt in it. Hm.

We roasted some marshmallows over a little yakiniku grill (no campfires allowed) and got to look on as a Japanese guy discovered in absolute amazement that toasted marshmallows are indeed better than plain ones. I think we foreigners and our crazy delicious s’mores blew his mind.

To raise money for the English camp the Hokkaido JET organization here organizes for students, there was a cake auction that night at the foot onsen. It was rather entertaining watching a bunch of tipsy, gung ho people bid up to $150 on a cake for the sake of the students. At least the program got some nice money from it… and many happy people got to victoriously snarf their expensive cakes (pies, cookies, whatever).

With all those people with food around though we started attracting foxes, so I saw my first Hokkaido fox that night. A number of people say they see them all the time while driving around, but I had yet to have the pleasure. As long as they stay away from me it’s kind of cool getting to see them. They need to stay away from my food too, though. They stole one girl’s breakfast for the next morning.

After some card games with a couple people I once again hit the hay with my bead pillow and semi-slept through the night. The following day wasn’t too eventful, as it was a grey, drizzly Sunday and a lot of us just wanted to get back home to shower/do laundry/sleep in a real bed. We took our time taking down the tent and packing up, but we left after all that was done.

However, on the way back we stumbled upon some sort of concert thing going on, so we quickly stopped there, had some fried festival type food, and listened to a couple rock bands. The crowd was pretty small, but one guy in a wheelchair was really getting into it, head banging along and occasionally swinging his hot pink fanny pack in the air to the music.

We all got our picture taken with one band from my city (in which the drummer wore a long blond wig and the guitarist enjoyed cowboy attire), and then finished the drive back to the city. We briefly stopped at a KFC for lunch where I got a triple sesame seed chicken sandwich, but after that I was home and free to do laundry and clean the house. And so ended my first camping trip in Hokkaido. Though if there’s going to be more I might need a better sleeping bag… and pillow…

And now I’m back in the weekly routine of going from school to school yelling over-enunciated English at people. However, classes keep getting cancelled on me. My junior high went to see an opera on Wednesday, so I had no classes then, and they have a marathon on Friday so I won’t have classes then either unless the weather is bad. And now for some reason at my busiest elementary school I was suddenly told that I had two class periods to sit around and do nothing since everyone apparently went… somewhere. I’m a wee bit left out of the loop. Oh well.

At least it’s finally starting to cool down. In fact, it’s been hard getting out of bed in the morning since it’s almost cold at that time (with the windows shut even!). I’m not complaining though. I’m not looking forward to all the snow, but I’m ready for the cold. Though I really am enjoying being able to ride my bike in a place that has sidewalks again… in the evenings when the weather is great and I can admire the mountains, onion fields, and kids I drive by that go “WAH, it can speak Japanese!” when I say hello.

Some junior high boys invited me to play basketball one day after lunch too. That was kind of embarrassing, as everyone in the gym got to watch as I failed to make a single shot (over and over again). I do believe I had mentioned before that I suck at sports though…

Some other boys really seem to get a kick out of watching me do this thing that I think my predecessor used to do, in which I strike a dumb pose and say “Konnichiwa” all loud and foreign-like. Perhaps making myself look like an idiot will help me get along with the students… or maybe it just makes me look like an idiot. Ah well.

Turns out the vice principal at my JHS is a big Blues Brothers fan too. That was a pretty sweet and unexpected conversation as we got to excitedly tell the other confused staff members about that film they’d never seen… while flip flopping between my broken Japanese and his broken English.

Not a whole lot else has been occurring recently though. Aside from me getting behind in my blog and emails… My bad. I’ll try to be more on top of my to do list from now on. But I do appreciate the emails. :)

Monkeys

So before I came I was told to keep my eye open for monkeys. Those monkeys that chill out in hot springs. Because Hokkaido is full of monkeys or something. So full of monkeys that they should even be found in the convenience store.

Well what do you know, I did see one in the convenience store. Attached to a Pepsi bottle. I bought it.



There you go, a bathing ape found in a convenience store. My mission is complete.

Sapporo and Such

So last week was my orientation in Sapporo. My supervisor came to pick me up and took me into the neighboring city to catch my bus. I had been told that the ride was very nice, and indeed it was. I got to see onion fields and onion fields and then some more fields (probably onions), and then got into forests and mountains. It was a very pretty drive, which is nice that I had something to look at for all that time.





The bus dropped me off somewhere in the middle of Sapporo, and of course, never having been to the city, I got lost pretty much right away. Quite a fail moment considering the hotel was only supposed to be a few blocks away. See, there’s this huge tower in Sapporo with a clock on it. Very big, very easy to see. Ah, must be the clock tower that is labeled on my map. But no. That is the TV tower. The clock tower is much smaller and hidden behind trees and is in the opposite direction I started walking. Awesome.



Either way, after dragging my suitcase all over Sapporo and looking on as the wind basically tore apart my map I eventually made it to the hotel. I wasn’t there more than a few minutes when a fellow JET from the area and proposed that we go get lunch. I had had coffee for breakfast that day and then sat on a 4 hour bus ride, so I was all for that.

We went to the station and ate some Italian food (after wandering around trying to figure out where the heck the restaurants are). After that we retraced our steps back to the hotel, grabbed some Starbucks (yaaay~~!), and waited to meet another girl from our area. She has been in Hokkaido the past 2 years, so she took us around to some stores in the area. There’s a foreign foods store in the station where I got some flavored teas and sharp cheddar cheese (didn’t realize I was missing it until I took a bite of it. Guess I’ll have to lead up when I go back in November). Then we went to the bookstore since they have an English/bilingual section where I was able to get some books for the new, revised JLPT exam. Luckily my old ones look like they’re still valuable for the new test, but more books (especially ones with some English clarification) don’t hurt.

Then we once again went back to the hotel and picked up some more people into our group. The herd of us walked down to an Indian restaurant where I had some butter chicken curry and garlic nan. It was quite awesome. I’d definitely go back.



Several hours passed there as we all rejoiced at being able to speak English with other people who understood our slang and faster speech and whatnot. It was a good time, but eventually we decided to get out of there and wander around a bit more. We stopped at a convenience store to pick up some drinks and ice cream (I got some delicious chocolate monstrosity called Black Thunder… or something like that anyway, but I think that was the name). After wandering around we ended up on the main grassy park area before the TV tower, where a couple of dudes were belting out tunes with their guitars and a harmonica. It was pretty cool, so we just sat there for awhile with the little crowd that had gathered and listened.

After that I headed back to my hotel room to crash. It smelled like cigarettes, but it had AC. I cranked that thing up about as high as it could go, finally happy to not fall asleep sweating because of the heat.

Monday started orientation.


(The building orientation was in.)

I ate some stuff I had gotten at the convenience store the previous night for breakfast and then met a bunch of people in Starbucks for coffee (since I have yet to find a really effective way to make coffee at my house and have been too lazy to get a real coffee pot, I’ve been drinking these “meh” instant flavored things on weekday mornings). Then I went to several hours of orientation and heard lots of info. I just wrote a report on it all for my BoE and don’t really want to repeat any of it, and it’s not overly fascinating for this blog anyway. I heard a lot about Hokkaido, the winters, community events and clubs, etc.

Then a bunch of us walked to a Subway for lunch. Yay avocado shrimp sandwich and French fries covered in basil.

Then more orientation! Yadda yadda…

Then we were free around 4. I had found a fellow anime geek and we had a small group go with us to some geek stores not too far from the hotel (not surprising, everything is in the center of town and it’s not that awfully big). I picked up a couple small nerd things (which I can actually use: one is a mug for my many coffee and tea breaks, and the other a dispenser for my conditioner since I’m too cheap to buy the ones in the bottle, only the bag).

After buying nerdy things we took the elevator up a couple floors to a cosplay shop (costumes and wigs and whatnot). It was fun to look around, but the best part was all the costumes they had ready made which you could try on and get your pictures taken in (rather, purikura, or print club… basically those photo booths you go in, pose for pictures, decorate, and then print out as stickers to put on your cell phone/notebooks/whatever). We did that (and somehow I managed to fit into one of the outfits even though it was in Japanese sizes), which was lots of fun.

Nerd:



After that we got in touch with the other half of the large group that seemed to be hanging out together a lot, since one guy knew a local who directed us to a famous ramen restaurant. It was pretty small and our large group of gaijin basically took up the entire counter, but the butter corn miso ramen there was indeed quite tasty. Sapporo is known for miso ramen, after all.

Sapporo at night!



After that everyone seemed to split up again. I ended up with three other girls, one the anime fan who went shopping with me and the other two the two girls who live near me, and we went to karaoke… where I once again tried to avoid singing alone as much as possible (singing along when everyone is doing the same thing isn’t as bad). After that we picked up snacks and beverages at a convenience store and hung out at the hotel before sleeping… in AC.

Tuesday involved… more orientation. Started off with getting lost trying to find the one room separate from the others for a Japanese class, followed by seminars for teaching at different levels.

But the real fun was going with my anime buddy to the Pokemon Center for lunch. You don’t need food when you have a magical store like that. I tried to resist but that store took some of my money away, and while rushing back to the conferences we quickly grabbed some convenience store food for “lunch.”

Then more orientation, etc, etc…

That afternoon I ended up travelling along with the two girls from my area… and we ended up back at the pokemon center since one of them was sad to have missed out on the fun. This was followed by more purikura picture-taking fun (as there was an arcade-type thing next to the store), and then more wandering around the city.

That night we happened to stumble upon an event for the Bon festival, which involved stands of yummy things to eat and a large collection of people doing the bon odori (bon dance) around a decorated, raised stage full of singers and taiko drums. It was fun to watch everyone for a while (including this one middle-aged dude wearing a pink wife beater and dancing to his own dramatic version of the rather simple dance), and before leaving the two girls I was with and I danced a lap around the stage (if you can call it that anyway. I was trying to follow the lead of the woman in front of me but kept stumbling at parts. It’s a simple dance too…).

After that the three of us wandered over to a restaurant chain called Freshness Burger. It was indeed pretty good, and my burger had loads of onions on it (yay!), but the burgers in Japan just miss some of that deliciousness that makes me adore certain American burgers. I’m looking at you, Portillo’s. Still, while the regular burgers are good, so far nothing beats the katsu burger at Mos Burger for me. It’s tonkatsu on a bun and is therefore pretty hard to beat. I grabbed one of those while I was in Sapporo since I have none within walking distance here.

Then we finally got in contact with the people who knew where the ice cream bar was located. Unfortunately there weren’t enough seats when they called our massive group in, so me and the three other girls I’d spent most of the time with waited a little longer but got a nice table in the corner of the restaurant next to a bunch of Christmas decorations. Now, I don’t like bars since I don’t like booze, but this place was pretty darn cool. What you do is order a set, which generally comes with a mug of ice cream (with a free refill!) and your choice of 2 or 3 liqueurs. The sets we got also came with little crepes, crunchy thingies, and piecrust bits to add to our ice cream, as well as a little sample of some amazingly rich yogurt. So, with the 4 of us ordering the set with 2 liqueurs and the additional topping things we were able to pick 8 liqueurs to share. They deliver your ice cream and topping things along with a spoon with a notch on the handle designed to rest securely on top of the mug. This is because the tiny liqueurs you are given have itty bitty ladles that you use to drop a little on to your ice cream-filled spoon, followed by toppings. Then you taste your concoction. The ice cream looked vanilla but had a rather fruity kind of taste to it, which went well with our choices since a lot of what we got was fruit flavors: peach, pineapple, coconut, blackberry, mango, passion fruit. We also had chocolate and caramel liqueurs, which of course didn’t suck with ice cream.

Then they give you a handmade animal shaped cookie and coffee to finish everything off. It was pretty cool.



Once again, more convenience store snacks and hanging out at the hotel before sleep. With AC.

Then there was the last day of orientation, which was a “scavenger hunt” around Sapporo. We had to ask people on the street where certain places were and then walk to them, which would have been more enjoyable if it wasn’t so darn hot out. At least that was quite a break from sitting in presentations.

Then came the end of orientation, where I dragged my suitcase across the city, briefly into a Mos Burger, and over to the bus station. Four hours later I was back in my home city.

So that’s Sapporo for you! I enjoyed it, looking forward to going back.

The next Friday I had my formal introduction at the junior high, where I got to stand awkwardly in front of 200 students by myself and talk to them both in English and Japanese for a few minutes. And… that was pretty much if for that day. Afterwards I went to a meeting with the teachers at one of my elementary schools, but after that I was free to go home and stress about my upcoming lessons. As in I basically made dinner and went to bed early because I was pooped. Whoo party animal, that’s how I roll on a Friday night.

Saturday I was roped into being on staff for the town’s fireworks. A week or so prior I had gotten a break from mindlessly sitting at my desk doing nothing to go with my supervisor to try making potato dumplings for the fireworks.



That was fun and they were successful, so I was called back again for the real deal, where a number of volunteers gathered to make hundreds of the things, as well as an onion/fish flake salad. Making the dumplings was simple and entertaining enough, but good heavens did my eyes just about give out on me when everyone in the room started slicing onions. It was kind of embarrassing really, and I kind of got shoved out of that activity since I could barely see the knife/onion anyway. Luckily they had other stuff for me to do.

Then, despite how busy she had been the whole day, my supervisor took me aside to dress me up in a yukata (basically a kimono for summer) that a woman from the library let me borrow. Unfortunately she didn’t have the shoes for me, so I walked around in a beautiful yukata and my nasty old sneakers for the evening, but it was still pretty cool. I handed out dumplings and salad for a while and was then relieved to go spend my tickets on festival food.



Or so I thought, I hadn’t gone very far before someone recognized me and pulled me away to sit with a bunch of others on the grass. I knew these people, it wasn’t like some random dude just dragged me off, but it was just kind of surprising how quickly I got pulled into the fun.

Eventually a woman from my eikaiwa walked around and got food with me, and then we sat back in time for the fireworks. It was indeed quite a nice show, and I really enjoyed it. Afterwards I found my supervisor who appointed someone to help me figure out how to get out of/appropriately put away the yukata, and then sort of got dragged to an after party despite being so tired. There some very outgoing guy (who can’t remember my name so just keeps yelling “Catherine!” every time he sees me) struck up conversation about whatever American things he could think of (“Americans hug ALL the time, yes?” “Sort of…” “Do you hug your father every night before bed?” “Uh?” “WHAT DON’T YOU LOVE HIM?” He’s pretty much the town comedian and is quite vocal, hence he was the announcer at the fireworks). But alas, I pooped out quickly and another girl who was feeling the same took me back home. After all, I had to be up bright and early for the following day’s sun festival!

So, the next morning I walked on over to the community center (since, to be social, I had like half a beer with the people at the fireworks… which therefore made it illegal for me to drive my bike home, so I just left it at the community center for the night). At the festival I got to don some festival attire and meet up with the mayor and, uh… vice mayor and… well, I don’t actually know who all of those guys were, I just know that I was at the bottom of the list but I still got to go up on stage and fling tiny bags of mochi at the crowd. That was fun.



After that I pretty much just got to walk around with my supervisor and enjoy the festival. They had an event that lasted most of the morning involving a log over a pool of water, where two people straddling the log had to knock each other off with big inflatable bat things. That was fun to watch. Some local student brass bands and little girls with dance routines took up the stage for most of the morning, but then I got to see the city’s yosakoi dance group do their thing. I hadn’t heard about yosakoi until I went to Sapporo, but I guess towns and cities all over the island have yosakoi dance groups that prepare routines for a big event/competition in Sapporo. Their outfits were very pretty and it was a lot of fun to watch.

We continued to watch all this from the grass while cooking up some yakiniku, the summer meal of choice. I also had some more salt yakisoba to go with it. Good stuff.



After a while of that the woman from my eikaiwa found us and we joined up with her group. More yakiniku, yay! Around afternoon though I headed back home since I hadn’t really had any time to prepare for my upcoming lessons. Unfortunately somewhere between me leaving my bike and me picking up my bike somehow the chain fell off and it’s completely enclosed by some screwed-on metal case. So I got to go for a walk home with my bike. It’s fixed now, but for a couple days I did a lot of walking.

Monday I had my first class with the junior high students. That was pretty terrifying since it was my first time actually doing any teaching. The classes were really quiet (Not that I blame them, I was a pretty darn quiet student), and even with explaining everything in Japanese first I think the puzzle I gave them to do during my self-intro was too hard for their level. Doesn’t help that the teacher suddenly decided “Everyone remember this puzzle since I’m putting it on your next exam!” They must love me for that. Thanks for the oodles of candy, mom, I might need to use it to make friends with a few dozen first year students now… (At least walking around some students were able to do it all, so it wasn’t impossible or anything…)

However, yesterday I went to one of my elementary students, and that was actually a lot of fun. I kind of like that the kids were loud and energetic, and it was easy to laugh off any loud interruptions. I had lots of doodles and stuff to show everyone, so I think even in English they understood some of what I said. Then we pretty much just played games. Some related to new vocabulary, while the other classes just played heads up 7-up. Then I was done by 2, and my supervisor just let me go home. It was awesome.

That night I had my first eikaiwa. There are three members so far, and so for an hour and a half it was pretty much just the four of us introducing ourselves and whatnot. I didn’t really have anything cool planned, I just brought a bunch of stuff with me (especially my laptop since it’s full of pictures) and talked about anything to fill the silence. Hopefully I’ll be able to think of something more interesting for next week.

Today I had my health check. Lots o’ fun. My exam wasn’t until 1 and I couldn’t eat anything for lunch, and then they got my blood taken (at least they got my vein in one try. I always dread the needle thing), got all wired up to an EKG machine, and then out to a bus for an X-ray (yet another chest X-ray. They’re awfully popular here it seems). I also talked with a doctor who knew very good English, which was kind of cool since unless anyone else there spoke English my exam was the only “private” one. The doctor’s office was basically a sheet held up by some clips.

They also spelled my name wrong on all the forms so there was a scramble to fix it followed by many apologies, and I hit (read: barely tapped) my forehead against the vision exam machine, which made the nurse all panicky and start looking at my forehead asking me if I was OK. Occhokochoi, yes.

Oh, also I had my welcome party with the BoE a couple weeks ago. HAd some amazing fish/sashimi/tempura/other stuff I didn't know but liked, and then went to the second party where I ended up singing Beatles songs with one of the guys from the office. Here's a small sample of what was for dinner:



What with deliveries from America and not having a weekend to just clean everything yet, all I've got pictures of are my bedroom. Ta da!







And am I eating properly...? Well... I'm not good at cooking, but I have managed to make omuraisu (omelette over fried rice):



And katsudon (fried pork, onions, egg over rice):



And then I just sort of make whatever else I can concoct. But it's ok, because I have the help of some nice garlic.



And… yeah I guess that’s about it. Finally got a cell phone, but my electronic dictionary still hasn’t shown up yet. I really miss that thing.

Off to think of more lessons…