From where I last left off....snow festival and such

Sorry no pics in this post, I'm typing this up during my break at work.  Ok so let's see...I left off somewhere in February....Sadly there wasn't much going around for the setsubun (bean throwing festival) in my town and I wasn't sure where to go to see things, so maybe next year I can see some festival stuff for that holiday.  Setsuben, btw, is a festival where they throw beans at people dressed as demons to symbolize driving away demons/evil spirits so the new year is free of bad spirits/luck.  The stores around me did carry little paper boxes with beans and a paper demon mask that you could buy, so I got to see some fun/weird cartoon demon masks ^^.  Oh, and in winter here (by the coast of the Sea of Japan) it is very very windy, there are signs warning of strong winds causing waves to come up onto the road, and a lot of Nami no hana (波の花), or “wave flowers,”which is where the sea foam forms en mass and blows around like snow/flowers  :). It's pretty cool, when I post pics I'll try to find a video of it as well for you to see.  And as cool as it is to see, it is freezing out when it happens and the wind is really strong (almost pushed me over a few different days) and if its icy it's especially fun b/c then you get pushed around the ice. 

Ok so snow festival.  There was a local snow festival/wedding in a small town about 10-15 minutes from me. I knew some of the people setting up (Kamimura-sensei, Chika-sensei, Nakagawa-sensei, and some people from the BOE) so I joined and helped set up.  I helped work on the giant snowmen that were at the entrance and stamp down snow to make pathways and so on.  In the bigger spots were we had to stamp down the snow I showed the people there a much more fun way to do it.  They were just marching around and literally stamping it down, I went and grabbed one of the giant snow shovels...they have really big ones like this:

And I sat down in the shovel part and had one of the guys pull me around to flatten the snow that way :).  Everyone was rather impressed and had fun doing the same ^^.  Oh, and people were also very impressed with my Pikachu hat that Donnie sent me for X-mas (thanks Donnie! :) ).
So it was a lot of work and very tiring, but also a lot of fun getting things set up.  After stomping down the fresh layer of snow (a good 1-2ft) we shoved a long pole down to where we think it finally hit bottom and we were standing on top of at least 5-6ft of packed snow 0.o.  The snow in that town (it's at the bottom of a small mountain) was high enough to cover the entire first floor of a house and start going onto the roof of the 1st floor, there were snow banks taller than me along the roads and sidewalks.  I've never seen so much snow before!! Even with us digging out steps and making a giant chapel out of snow I never did see the ground lol.  So, to the day of the festival, I worked as the staff and helped man the drink-booth and helped monitor events. I got to wear an armband that said ''snowman staff'' ^-^.  A decent amount of kids and parents showed up to build snowmen throughout the day. There was a tent full of oba-chans (old ladies) next to the one I was in, they were rather entertaining to watch ^^.  They played American music all day (Lady Ga Ga, Maroon 5, etc.) which I found rather interesting lol.  Oh and it snowed aaaallllllllllll day, big snowflakes that at times were a bit blizzard like....I felt kinda bad for the kids/families that showed up early to build their snowmen for the contest because by the time of the contest their snowmen had a good 1/2+ foot of snow on them if they didn't get a chance to brush them off.  Luckily it wasn't too freezing out, but at the same time with being warm in you coat the snow melted when it hit you and so by the end of the day everyone was drenched, especially your gloves....so next year I might bring a pancho to wear over my coat and definitely more gloves.  Just before it started to get dark we went around and placed tea candles inside little pockets/holes in the snowmen (people dug out the spot where they wanted the candle to go) and we lit them. We also made little snow blocks with a hollow center and put candles inside them to create a lighted pathway for the bride and groom. Once it got dark the bride and groom came and walked down the path (we had spotlights to provide light) and to the chapel's stage. The wedding is a bit different in Japan, rather short, and the bride and groom do a lot of talking rather than repeating after the priest-guy. But it was really cute, they were a bit embarrassed to have that much attention and it took a bit of encouragement to get the groom and bride to do kiss...they just did a really quick peck on the lips and wouldn't really do more than that...they really couldn't do much more b/c  they were laughing/giggling too much over the whole thing lol.  Then they cut a slice from a very small cake, and kids came on the stage and said stuff to them (idk what happened to the cake :P), and then there were fireworks from behind the chapel and that was that. People would get up and take pictures on the chapel's stage and look around at all of the snowmen. The volunteers sat around for a long time, eating and sitting by the small fire pits and taking pictures and goofing around. Then we cleaned up and took everything down and packed up, and some of them were going off to a bar but Kamimura, Chika, Nakagawa-sensei and myself voted to go home and sleep seeing as we got there around 7:30 and it was 10:30-11 by the time we got things stored away. Overall it was a lot of fun and I look forward to going again next year ^-^. 
So that's all for now, lunch time ^^......hmmm, next are pictures and graduation and stuff, and then we'll be all caught up to now ^^. 

ヽ(ﾟДﾟ)ﾉ It's March!?!?!? ｏ( ><)o

(シ_ _)シ I'm soooooooooo sorry. I have been such a bad llama about updating TT^TT.  I hope you aren't too upset, I have absolutely no clue where the time went, I think it just ran past me one night, or I walked through a wormhole or something o.0....but man...March 15th.....

Ok. So there is obviously a lot to update on.  I have been a busy bee, and hopefully I can recall all of it. Let's see....ok so Christmas.... I got some lovely packages from my friends and family so that was a really nice surprise. I also bought myself a few things. I had a Christmas party with some of my co-workers at the Elementary School (Kamimura, Nakagawa, Chika (senseis) and Chika's husband...sadly his name escapes me at the moment...and Kamimura's bf Koji. We went to Koji's house to eat yaku...or grilled...styled foods. Basically there is a giant hot-plate thing that you cook veggies, meat and such on and you pick off what you want when it's done. I got to try piece of pig heart that night...the flavor isn't that bad but it's really chewy. Koji's grandmother is a hoot, I couldn't understand everything she said but she was very funny.  One time she came into the room and opened the side door-- it lead to outside but they had a makeshift plastic mini add-on-closet\room which created like an outside fridge/freezer--and she pulled out a big scotch tape dispenser (like the big metal ones you see on teacher's desks).  When everyone saw that she pulled a scotch tape dispenser from their outdoor freezer everyone cracked up and she did too, and said something about 'it's as good as any place' to keep it (I'm paraphrasing that quite a bit lol).  We watched a Karaoke competition on TV and had fun just talking and what not. We also got to eat some Christmas cake (I'll put up a picture later, I'm not at my own compy right now), which was really good, and sang ''Happy Birthday'' but I really have no clue as to why we sang that....and wonder if other people sing it too....We also had a gift exchange and I got a comfy pillow and everyone wrote a small note in English that way if I got their gift I could read it :) so that was super sweet of everyone.  I also went out to eat w/ Sadae-san.  So it wasn't super crazy, but it was still a very nice Christmas Holiday, skyping with my family was also very nice ^^.

New Year's Eve I went down to see Adele and Natasha in Murakami, what was going to be an evening of movie watching turned into an overnight movie-marathon. We watched the super hero movies that lead up to Avengers, and then woke up early to watch the Avengers. Just before midnight we took a break to go see the shrine at midnight, so that was really cool to see everyone gathered there and making wishes and buy good luck charms and burning special straw wreaths from last year.  I put in some wishes of good-stuffs for everyone ^-^.  So that was a fun outing, but very tiring to stay up until 4 and get up at 10 lol. And the drive back home was really scary because it snowed quite a bit over night (Adele had to leave for a meeting so I couldn't stay there) and I got to drive around 20 kmph (12mph-) back home so a 40 min drive became a 2-3 hr drive. But I made it safe and luckily no one else was speeding or riding my butt so that was a big relief (people here have a bad tendency to ride your butt to try to make you go faster...and if they rear-end you it's your fault too xp). But yes, I was sooo happy to get back home in one piece and to rest up.

I also hung out with my coworkers (Kamimura-sensei and them) and went out to eat and whatnot close to the start of the New Year.  I also tidied up a bit, but not too much b/c it was freezing in the rest of my house (33degrees at times X_x).  In Japan there isn't a whole lot of central heating/cooling, and my house isn' one of the few with it.  So if I want a warm bathroom I need to put a heater in there, a warm kitchen?　same deal....and the floors are always freezing because houses here are built off the ground to help air circulate and prevent mold and such, so there is a lovely space under my whole house which results in very icy floors in the winter.  It's nice in the summer, but not fun in the winter.  I eventually went out and bought fuzzy, hard-sole slippers (they are tan with little brown turtles on them ^^.  And it was a very very worthwhile buy. 

In January and February I had Kids' Night at the community center, it was an evening English class for kids to have more fun and less-textbook oriented English.  So I had fun coming up with lessons and activities for everyone. They were on Tuesday nights, and each Tuesday had a theme.  We had Magic (Science) Night, Cartoon Night, Game Night, and Food Night.  In the middle of planning these events I also had a big Mid-year conference with the JETs in Niigata where we had workshops and such to do. And then once I got back from the conference I got the flu :p.  I started w/ a fever Sunday night, called in sick Monday b/c I still had a slight fever (only about 99.5) and I drove myself to the doctors.  The flu test here sucks...I don't know if it's the same in the states, but here they have a long q-tip thing (like what they rub your tonsils with when you get strep) and they shove it up your nose and swirl it around >.o.....it was very unpleasant. But yeah, so I got my meds and they weren't too expensive, went to the bank and took care of my bills and went shopping to stock up on food ( I wore a mask the whole time so it wasn't that bad of me to go around, but if people had known that I had the flu I doubt they'd want me there mask or not :p) ......and come Tuesday I wasn't running a fever so I went to school................which about gave all of my teachers a heart attack. They were all wide-eyed and told me that I had to stay home all week because I had the flu. So the rest of the week I was rather tired, and ran a cold fever (either that or my thermometer is dumb) but I kept registering at 97.2 or 96.7 and such....but it really wasn't that bad, I just curled up and watched a lot of movies and tried not to get cabin fever lol.  Oh, and it was super sweet, my JHS principal stopped by with fruit and food, Sadae-san brought me a bunch of food and drinks, Chika-sensei also brought me a bunch of stuff and one of the people at my adult community center English classes brought me fruits and stuff too. I definitely felt very loved and had a lot of fruit to last me more than a week. And getting sick was kind of a nice break from all the stuff I was doing, but come the next week I was so ready to get out of the house lol.

Also, around February  the principal at one of my elementary schools asked me to help get more English to the kids. She said that she wishes for them to be able to study more, as in study when I'm not there.....the lessons are pretty much all talking and no reading/writing. Not even the 5th or 6th graders read or write much despite having a book (their book doesn't have much written in it to begin with, Eng or Japanese).  So I have been keeping really busy trying to make more concrete lessons where the kids can have something they can use to review/study when I'm not there.  So I'll make little books that say ''I have____. I have a family of ____.  I have ___ pets.'' and so on, and I'll write katakana English above the English to help them pronounce stuff, and if I can I'll write in the Japanese translation of the sentence....or I leave space so they can do it.  But it's best to have stuff made before you present the idea of what you want to do, especially since there is a language barrier...so I have to make all of the booklets and worksheets and stuff before I can run it by the teachers and then go back and alter it as need be. So it's a bit of work trying to set stuff up this way, especially the younger grades because the only lesson plan skeleton you get it: 'greetings'...say ''How are you'' homeroom teacher ansers ''I'm fine'' (ask kids). 'main lesson'....vegetables, carrot, broccoli, potato, cabbage, onion, green pepper, etc, say ''what's this?'' the homeroom teacher answers ''it's___'' (ask the kids sometimes too).  'game'....have the kids janken and the winner asks ''do you like___'' and the loser answers ''yes I do/no I don't''.  'end'...say ''good-bye, see you'' ~end~......................so yeah not much to work with most the time lol. But as I've been here and watched the other teachers, and researched and experienced it's getting easier to come up with plans from these skimpy lesson plans, or from scratch b/c the lesson plan just flat out stinks.   Also, I'm putting together a picture English/Japanese dictionary (+some phrases) book for the kids, I can base a lot of lessons around what words I want to add to their dictionary that day and by the end of the 6th grade they'll have a complete dictionary that they've been piecing together over the years and they can draw in their own pictures if they want...there will be katakana English to help them and the homeroom teacher pronounce it and Japanese and English in trace-able font and a picture.....so I'm hoping that with the dictionary and the little booklets/worksheets that the teachers can/will help the kids practice English throughout the week and not just when I'm there....and/or the kids will take it home and show their parents/siblings.  Luckily I've gotten a few other people on board who are helping me put the dictionary together and once it's together I really hope it works out. .........ok that's enough for now, more later (snow festival + wedding ^0^, and pictures).  I need to get ready to pack up and go to the post office.  Please forgive any and all spelling errors, I'm on a Japanese computer and their keyboards are squished and some keys are in different spaces (not the letters but the other stuff are moved around a bit) but the letters are more to the right and a bit closer together :P).  Ok well, that's it... I'll post more soon I promise!!!!! And sorry again for the lack of posts the past few months :(. I never was the best at keeping a journal/diary/planbook, even if it was a school assignment.  

Stuffs of stuffdom that catches you up to stuff ^^

Random highlights:

At the store a while back, I ran into some of my third year JHS students....who proceeded to hide behind the shelf in the row next to the one I was in and pop their heads up to see me then giggle and try to hide again......my only thought "if you're trying to be sneaky it helps if you aren't snickering so much, ya goobers"......so I said hello which made them gasp...guess they thought I didn't notice?....then they said hello back, two of them even peeked out from the end of the aisle so I could see their face and they said hello.....the rest of the time at the store they were giggling and trying not to be in the same aisle as me.......I won't lie it was kinda weird but entertaining nonetheless lol ^^.


All of the numbered things happened in one day ^^
0. got my package from my mom and dad in the mail (didn't think it'd come since it was sunday), and I skyped with my parents (and the dogs) for a bit :).

1. Soba noodle festival with awesome soba noodles in the small village next to mine. There were two news people there one with a camera for a Niigata newspaper and another one w/ a video-recorder....needless to say being the only gaijin there and with Sadea-san (an old English teacher who taught in this area and knew most of the people in the room) I had lots of pics taken of me and was interviewed and Sadae-san kept referring to me as a "star" or "movie star" lol. (a pic of the soba noodles and stuff is in the post about food)

2. after the delicious food and great people that I met, I went to Sadae-san's house where she gave me broccoli, potatoes, dakon radishes, peppers, coffee, creamer, and sugar....and she served me tea, coffee and snacks (all of which were delicious), and showed me her house. She also showed me a photo album of past ALTs of Sanpoku and an album from when she taught at the Jr. High and told me fun stories and pointed out who was married to whom and who had kids and how one of the people is a famous movie director and so on.

3. Went home to get stuff and then went out shopping where I got some neat pics of sea foam, the ocean, and the sunset....felt bad for the seagulls it was sooo windy they weren't going anywhere when they tried to fly toward the ocean.....had someone pull over to offer to take my picture with the sea in the background...at one of the stores I was offered hand cream by the cashier (since I mentioned it was cold and windy, she pulled out some hand cream and offered to give me some), she also gave me an extra coupon thing ^^... then at the door I had a bunch of people hand me free reflector stickers (one guy even put them on the backs of my shoe (guess he wanted to make sure I understood what some of them were for) and a little wallet thing and a reflector sash...in the store I ran into some people I knew which is always fun, and then I ordered some tsukune (chicken on a stick) and told the chef it was oishii (tasty) which made him really happy^^, then got home and ran into one of my neighbors and had a nice, short chat :).  Here are some pics of the ocean and the sea-foam stuff, it was blowing around a lot, but it's a bit hard to tell :p. 

Here's a link to a video on youtube that shows the sea-foam floating around....and idk about the people in the video but when I was out it was freezing and super super windy xppp, but it was still cool to see ^^ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3abEsdg0jI 

What else..........I got to practice playing volleyball with a beach ball (indoors) with the teachers at Minami Elementary school and it was a lot of fun, they were joking around a lot and there were a few times when some of the teachers had to sit down b/c they were laughing so hard :D.  It was a lot of fun, and then we placed 4th I think in the community tournament (maybe it was 5th....there were only 6 teams, so we weren't too great, but it was a lot of fun and we came close in a few games^^). After the tournament we all met at a restaurant for some good food where I had fried rice in oyster sauce (I think it was oyster sauce, the menu said kakisa-su ) anyway, that was a lot of fun ^^.  

I had a nice Thanksgiving dinner, the night before I went to Chika-san's house with Kamimura-san and their husband and boyfriend (chika's husband and kamimura's bf) and we had a really tasty hot-pot meal and cake.  The hot-pot is where there is a pot of hot soup-broth/water in the center (with a small burner underneath so you can heat it up) and you put in bits of fish/meat and veggies and let them cook and then fish them out ^^.  It was really good and had the carrots cut into tiny hearts^^.  But yeah, that was a lot of fun sitting around and chatting with good food.  Then on Thanksgiving I had Sadae-san over and I made some chicken/turkey (one turkey leg mixed in w/ chicken), stuffing, spicy carrots and daikon radish slices, tomato soup, mashed potatoes, and chocolate pie ^-^.  Everything turned out pretty good and Sadae-san really loved my stuffing, which I gotta admit was very tasty :D, though I made it completely from scratch (boiled the chicken and turkey leg to make stock) and used Thyme, which really made it taste good^^.


I did some listening tests at the JHS.  The kids were nervous, so I let them practice/ask questions real quick before they started.....and gave them stickers....and that seemed to help lol :D. Most of them looked really relieved once it was done and were really chipper after class lol........though sadly I didn't move them along at a fast enough pace and so a few of them had to take it after lunch on Friday. :p.....but, oh well, I regret nothing ^^.  The tests were rather simple and it really seems to have helped the kids warm up to me more....it's been harder to click with them b/c of how little I do in the classroom and they do their own thing at lunch, where as at the Elementary schools I do a lot of the teaching and get whisked away at recess by the students....but either way^^ things are going more smoothly w/ the JHS students so that's a nice relief.  Though sadly, I gave some of them candy from America the other day (b/c it was close to winter break and b/c I wanted to share/give them incentive to speak English)...I also arm-wrestled some for the candy... but one of the teachers heard them talking about it and I was scolded (sorta, not a very stern scolding, but still) for giving them candy and was told that such things do not promote well for learning environments............and while being scolded all I could think was, "I wonder how much worse I would've done if I didn't have candy, it helped me study and remember and gave me incentive to get good grades b/c then I got candy or ice cream or pizza, and so on"....but c'est la vie, though I still can't help but feel bad for the students in Japan, such a strict lifestyle, it's no wonder they have a lot of issues with stress :p.  

I felt a tiny earthquake in the beginning of December....At first I thought it was the wind at first (the wind gets pretty strong, I've been almost knocked over by it), but then I realized more than my windows were shaking a bit....nothing major (though it hit harder elsewhere) where I was it just felt like bobbing a bit on a raft in a pool.  

The nursery schools had a dance festival where the students did dances, it was really cute, though sadly I could only make it to one of the nursery school's dance festival. But the students dressed up for various themed dances, like samurai, princesses, ninjas and so on^^.  The Panda class (the grade just before Kindergarten) had a dance about shrimp, and they had bandannas with a picture of crab attached to it...and one of the boys was very happy to do the dance and when he got off the stage he was walking sideways and crouched down with his hands up (in pincer position, pinching at the air) like a crab with a huge smile on his face lol. Needless to say the dance-thing was super cute.  The kids really seemed to enjoy it, though at one point two little girls were crying on stage, but they still said their verse in the song when their time came, but later on they cheered back up more^^.  

I had a get-together with some ALTs, and their Japanese friends and their family in Murakami to celebrate Christmas, and that was a lot of fun. I made the delicious spice cake, it was so nice to bake again^^. But we basically had fun talking and catching up and eating and cooking good food, so it was a lot of fun to see everyone and eat good food and bake ^0^.  And then, on a different day, I met up with Kamimura, Chika and their husband/boyfriend to have a Yakiniku dinner xmas party where we did a secret santa thing.  I got a comfy pillow to sit on.  The yakiniku is were there is a giant hot-plate thing in front of you (kind of like the really big ones and you can make a lot of grilled cheeses or pancakes on them) and you cook meat and veggies on it and pick them off when you want to eat them. We had pork (a bit of pig heart too, chewy but not too bad) and mushrooms, onions and peppers, it was pretty tasty ^^.  And as always it was a lot of fun hanging out with them and chatting and such ^^. 

Lastly, the end of the year party, kinda of amusingly placed on Dec 21st lol.  It's the party where the teachers stay at a very fancy hotel/onsen and eat, drink, sing karaoke, and enjoy the onsen and basically party/relax the woes of last year away.  During dinner we did a game show thing where we had to guess the highlights of the past year and we got points for out team if we guessed a chosen highlight. My team placed 3rd out of 4 teams.  I realized that I am no good at karaoke without a wingman/woman...I need to hear the lyrics as well as the music to do a good job, though granted I wasn't drunk and it was my first time doing Karaoke....idk if being drunk would help, prob not, but it did seem to help the others get into it.  I chose YMCA which was a really good choice b/c all of the teachers stood up and did the dance and chanted the YMCA part lol ^^.  And then I got to go to the onsen with one of the teachers, the rest went back to the bar or elsewhere, and just sit around, relax and chat, so that was really nice^^. It's nice to have someone who would rather relax and chat than party a bunch.   And yeah that's pretty much up to date...........as per usual if you want more details feel free to comment......I'm trying to find a nice place to put up pics since some of you don't have facebook....though you can try to see them there and if it doesn't work just let me know by saying something in the comments https://www.facebook.com/mary.miller.587606/photos_albums.

Food

Here are some pics of food I've eaten and some that I've made while being here....first let's have the ones of food that I made :), if you want recipes then all you need to do is comment on the post and ask me there ^^, or send me an email. 

spaghetti and meatballs (super tasty)

super tasty mac 'n cheese (gouda and cheddar)

super tasty chocolate lava cake in a cup (cooked in the microwave for 1min) ^^

chicken, carrots, and broccoli in a chicken broth-y sauce thing (kind of tasted like pot pie)

another pic of the awesome cake in a mug ^^

grilled cheese (w/ mozarella) and tomato soup (made from scratch), also super tasty^^

Empress Chili (had to make my own chili powder too lol)

Chocolate cake (box recipe) made in rice cooker, with homemade icing ^^ (this was to celebrate Thanksgiving)

fancy cheese with blueberry jam-preserves-thing, a slice of a daikon radish (sweated) on a ritz cracker), rather tasty^^

The cake (w/ the hole where I stabbed it to get ready to cut it then went to take the picture) is an amazing, absolutely scrumptious spice cake XD!

 Food that I didn't make:

bento box meal for lunch at school, it was the weekend (school festival) so the teachers ordered bentos

frozen pizza with corn (a lot of the frozen pizzas come w/ it), green peppers, weird pepperoni (more sausage-y, like brat kinda sausage in a weird, but not bad way), and very little pizza sauce and a doughy crust.....not too bad, but def not as good as what I'm used to in the states.

another bento meal at school

Soba noodles and stuff, rather tasty and was for the Soba Noodle Festival that the small village next to mine was having (I'll blog more about that later)

chocolate-coffee cake w/ various layers of creamy cocoa/coffee/toffee stuff. I got it at the local cake-pastry shop^^

fish head, well half a fish head it was split down the middle so I had the right side. It was served at the school's end of the year party (blog more later).....despite the grumpy zombie look, it didn't taste too bad.

some of the food at the end of the year party.

 

Mail :D

Ok, so there are fun postcards and stationary stuff here so if you want me to send you postcards now and again or letters feel free to email me your address and I'll write you stuff ^-^. 

Spirited Away

Ok, so I wasn't really spirited away in the same sense, but today I had a surprise visit and outing, so close enough ^-^.    I unfortunately slept in, thanks to me 2nd alarm not going off, so now I have to wait until Wednesday to take my trash out -.-........for those of you who don't know in Japan you don't put your trash outside, you wait until designated trash days where you take your trash to a dump site where it is picked up and taken to wherever. So I can only take my trash out on Wednesdays and Saturdays.....seeing as I live alone it's really not too bad and I can go without the second day....but sadly I have a relatively full bag, and now I get to wait and hope it doesn't start to stink xppp.   Anyhoo, that aside I was just sitting in bed trying to decide what to eat when the door bell rang, so I scrambled up and tried to look as awake as possible and it was the delivery guy with my snow boots that I ordered.  Less than 2 minutes after I closed the door and took the package in the doorbell rings again and it's Sadea-san (the older lady who helps me run the adult teaching class at the community center) and she wanted to go out and eat lunch and chat and stuff.  So I quickly threw on clothes and such and was whisked away to a nice small restaurant and then to her house for some mini potato-things and coffee and tea.  The mini potato things are really cool, they are the size of a half dollar to a quarter and look like, well, mini potatoes, and you can easily peel them with just your fingers. And then you eat them and they taste kinda of sweet, not quite as sweet as a sweet potato, maybe more similar to a red potato in a way.  Anyway, it was a lot of fun hanging out and she showed me pics sent from the first ALT to her of their family and kids, and we just sat and chatted ^^. 

The day before that I was asked to join a last-minute get-together with two of Kita Elementary's teachers, Kamimura-san, Chika-san and their friend at a nearby restaurant.  It was a lot of fun, their friend teaches English in a town nearby and can speak it really well and he was talking about watching the Little Mermaid in English and having to look up the phrase "take it from me" in the song "Under the Sea" because he wasn't sure what it meant.......it's always fun to have phrases like that pointed out, because you don't really realize how many things are said but aren't easily understood by foreigners until you spend a lot of time with foreigners.....though I guess here I'm the foreigner lol, but ya know what I mean ^^.   Anyway, it was a lot of fun hanging out, I got to eat some of a 'century old egg' which wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be, definitely expecting a more fermented nasty taste, but it didn't really taste all that bad.  And the oyster sauce (kakisa-su) fried rice at that restaurant is really really good ^-^.  Anyway, this is a short post, but more are on their way shortly, figured it's easier to separate the subjects and put them in different posts rather than one giant blob. So on to the next post ^^. 

Looooooong time no post

Sorry for the lack of posting, been busy and lazy and neither of those things lead to updates on a blog.  Anyhoo, I'll probably have to blog stuff in chunks to catch everyone up, and winter break is almost here so I should be able to spit them out rather quickly.  Ok, so I don't have my camera with me so I'll do the posts that don't really need pics first.

~ The other day I was greated by a Kindergarten student running up to me yelling ''Mary-sensei, diasuki!'' which means that he loves me. So that was a sweet way to start the day, and then the teacher let me color and decorate my own xmas tree with the class which was sweet of her, though I still hit a bit of a language barrier with this teacher so it's still a bit rough at that school, but hopefully it won't  be for too much longer, I'm getting quite a bit better at Japanese. 

~ People in Japan like soulfull early 90s, late 80s music, especially 'xmas' music, like ''Last Christmas'' and ''Winter Song''....I find this rather amusing, the teachers were talking about how popular the songs were though I maybe only ever heard them once or twice prior to coming here.  Though you can probably imagine how surprised I was when they said, ''We're going to sing and listen to xmas music today'' and then those songs came on.  Also, I saw some stickers with Alphabet letters and a picture for each letter, like A and a pic of an apple....and the letter X had and xmas tree lol. ....well this is a short update, more will be posted this weekend and I'll try to get pics up.  I gotta get ready for an office party type thing with the JHS teachers....so I'll report on that and the rest of the stuff later.....also I may have to start designating some posts to just food lol, I've had a lot of fun cooking ''American'' dishes from scratch.