Matsuri Outfits!

Here are some of my students in their festival outfits!

Shout-Outs

So, the end of our Japan adventure is getting closer and closer and we are experiencing a whirlwind of emotions. I am excited to see my family and friends, nervous about getting back in the classroom, and heartbroken about leaving the friends I've made here. Like we did on our last radio show, I would like to give some shout-outs to the people that have made my time here special:

Ikuko, I will miss our hilarious and sometimes serious talks, and the fact that when Don teased you, you actually thought it was funny. I will miss your super-fast driving in your silent hybrid car and our Wednesday lessons. Thank you for teaching us so much about Japan and for spending hours with us cooking that turkey! I promise I will get that taco recipe to you soon! I love you!

Atsuko, you always had wonderful and wise things to say at our chat club. I will never forget your braveness, whether it was doing charades at the Halloween party, or getting lifted up into a tree! I will miss your subtle sense of humor, your sweet voice, and of course, the delicious treats you make.

Kayoko, you will be my crafting inspiration for as long as I live. I will miss your advice and your recipes and all the times you made me laugh. Thank you for inviting me to many many activities, for helping me get my classes started, and for researching anything I asked you about. You have taught me so much! I will miss the knitting club and nature club and our conversations. Good luck with your new job!

Murasan, I wish we would have met sooner! Our "japanese lessons" were always a treat every week. I really feel like I learned a lot about Japanese culture from you. Thank you for all of the delicious food and tea, and for helping me with my terrible Japanese. I hope you are able to travel to Spain this year, and to New York in the near future! I will miss your laugh and your independent spirit!

Alaina, how I loved our long conversations and your lattes! Thank you for all of the reading material, the recipes, and inspiring me to grow my own food! I hope to invite you someday to my own little farm. Good luck with your all of your hard work in Rumoi. You are doing great things here - the city is lucky to have you, and your family is lucky to have you!

Miki, you have been like a sister to me. I don't even know where to start...our movie nights, our karaoke nights, volleyball, kinball, studying for your exam, booking hotels, translating emails, yoga, snowboarding...I don't know what I would have done without you. I will think of you every time I hear or sing "a whole new world." It's our song! Or maybe "girls just wanna have fun" is more appropriate! I will never ever forget you, your smile, your honesty, and your friendship!

I really really hope to see all of you in New York some time soon...Ok, I'm going to start crying, so I'll end with this. To all of my friends here in Japan:

どうもありがとうございました！

Beautiful View

Don and I went for a walk the other day because it was so nice out and we needed to get out of the house. Our walk down to the ocean is usually more beautiful than the ocean itself. In the distance you can see the mountains in Mashike, still covered with snow. They look like they're hovering like a spaceship to the right, because of the fog and clouds. To the left by the wind turbines are the yellow rapeseed fields of Reuke Farm. Beautiful!

Forgotten Potatoes

Spring!?

We're back from out trip to Okinawa and settling back in to our routines. We had fun in Japan's southernmost prefecture, though the weather didn't exactly cooperate. Lot's of pics and videos coming soon! It was a pleasant surprise to come home to significantly less snow, although some mounds are being stubborn. We did some spring cleaning and are making some plans for the rest of our time here. Only 4 months left!!! There are still so many things we want to see, and there's a week of holidays coming up (I know, it's like we're on a year-long vacation) during which we might drive to the south of Hokkaido to see cherry blossoms. We're also trying to decide what to do about jobs and housing when we get back. On top of that, I have some fun knitting/felting projects going on. I'm planning on making more brooches like the one in the picture, to sell at a flea market in June. And I'm drinking 3 cups of coffee a day.

left: flower brooch I made for my mother; center: cherry branches from an orchard in Mashike; right: Fuji-san (Mount Fuji) peeking out above the clouds on our plane ride back to Hokkaido

To Do. (update)

Well, I'm happy to say that I'm actually accomplishing some of the things on my previously-posted list.

1 - sweater is getting close to finished. I've already attached the sleeves and I'm starting to decrease now up to the collar. Yes RR, this the same sweater you made from purlbee. It's so much more fun to knit this thing when I can actually see it taking shape.

2 - japanese is not one of the things, yet. :)

3 - teaching classes started last week with a group of elementary school students and their tiny little brothers and sisters. It was very cute and I was very nervous. We danced around, sang songs, played games, and no one peed their pants. Success! I even got to use a little rabbit puppet that I named "Judy," after my aunt. My Brooklyn teaching style (mean and scary) wasn't going to work with these little sweethearts, so I thought about how my aunt would teach. She's the nicest and most-patient person I know, and probably the only person I know who would be excited to have a puppet named after them. I'm adding an adult class this week, which should be fun too.

Snow Cave

So when I woke up this morning, the room was much darker than usual, and when I opened the curtains I found out why. The snow on the ground is about half way up the window now, but that's not a new development. The snow sliding off our roof from the heat in the house has stopped falling and is now just curling under into this weird lip thing. Out of the bedroom window (top pics) there are about 4 inches left between the roof snow and the ground snow. In the living room (bottom pics) there is a little more space, but not much. It kind of feels like being inside the mouth of giant whale.

Lost In Translation

Ok, sorry, I had to post this one too. I don't think anyone would buy these leg warmers if they understood what was written on them. But I'm not sure what is worse, the "girlly loose" part, or the fact that they "age flesh."

Lost In Translation

I feel like I should have titled this entry Great Expectations. Either these really are the most amazing notebooks, ever, or the advertising people just didn't feel like being subtle.

"It is our hope that this item will become your good friend and help to make your life enjoyable all the time."

"This is the most comfortable notebook you have ever run into. You will feel like writing with it all the time."

Don's First Snowboarding Experience

I don't know about you, but I think the best part about this picture is his hat.

Fun with Fabric

A friend of mine here is always making me things like hats, bags,
pins, pickles, etc. She is the crafty-est person I have ever met. She
knows how to make just about anything. When I first showed her the
knitting needle case I made a few months back, she whipped out her
measuring tape and started writing numbers down. However, right before Christmas I asked her if she had made it yet and she surprisingly
hadn't even started. So I told her not to bother and to let me make
it. I bought plenty if fabric so I made a lined zipper pouch to match.
I hope she likes it and I hope her expert-seamstress eyes don't look
too closely at my seams.

It's a New Year

We just wrapped up the holidays here and are settling back in to our normal everyday lives. After sorting through and labeling the hundreds of pictures we took since late December, I've made these two photo albums. The first is our Christmas experience in Rumoi, which includes making mochi (basically pounding steamed rice into goo), cookie decorating with my chat club and the English club in Rumoi HS, and a gift exchange with Jim and Dave. It was really fun, but both of us felt a little homesick, having to open presents on skype with our families.

The next slideshow is of our Tokyo and Kyoto adventure. This really made us feel like we were in Japan. So many beautiful, crazy, weird, and hilarious things! This is a long slideshow, and the captions explain a little, but here were our highlights:

• lots of women in kimono
• beautiful temples and shrines, all of which have been burned down at least once in their lifetime
• eery bamboo forests
• scary statues of gods that we're sure moved when we looked away
• the biggest buddha I will probably ever see in the biggest wooden building (50 meters high) I will probably ever stand in
• sushi on a conveyor belt
• quiet cobblestone streets with little bridges to doorways of tea houses where geisha might be entertaining
• ridiculously-detailed roofs
• a whose whole second and third story are covered in gold plating
• hilarious signs everywhere
• several people pushing dogs in strollers
• transvestite being photographed by a homeless man with a disposable camera
• a rare sighting of Mount Fuji

We Found (or lost) Wisdom in Japan's Dental Services

Christine has been having a toothache for the past week or so and she finally braved going to the dentist to find out what the problem was. It turned out that one of her wisdom teeth was rotten and she needed it pulled. So they numbed her up and did it right there. They didn't tell her to make a second appointment in a week or something, just right there on the spot, which was good because if she had time to think about it she would have chickened out. She is feeling OK just a little sore, she is taking a refreshing bath right now with bath salts she got from a Christmas gift exchange.

She got x-rays (by a machine that played music), the tooth pulled, pain medication and antibiotics handed to her by the dentist (no run to the pharmacy) all for 40 bucks. They have some good dental insurance here. She asked to keep the tooth and you can see that she is still taking good care of it. (my appointment is next week, wish me luck).

It's just a little chilly.

This is just to give you an idea about how cold it has gotten in our house. Don, the human furnace, is under there somewhere. And yes, we really like blue plaid.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Or Antarctica! It's too bad the snow isn't really piling up. That's
probably because 40 mph winds aren't letting it land. Oh yeah, and I
can see my breath in the bathroom. Who wants to place bets on when
the toilet water freezes?

Holiday Time

I love the smell of pine around the holidays, and there's no better
way to experience it than by getting sap all over your hands. I went
hiking with a forest group here and collected some fallen branches and
flowers to make this. Let's see how long it withstands the wind!

Grocery Store!

I snapped some shots at the grocery store tonight. My favorite is the octopus tentacle. If you're wondering what product is on the bottom, maybe you should guess. . .?

Baby Gifts finished!

Please notice that I said baby gift, meaning that this is not for my
baby, because I do not have a baby nor am I expecting to have one any
time soon. Ok, glad we cleared that up!

I knit this combo for the wife of Don's coworker who just gave birth to a boy last week. The new parents were the ones that picked us up from the airport when we first arrived, so I really wanted to make something for the baby.

Lost in Translation

Ok, so basically the entire back of this eraser package was pretty funny. The pic is a little blurry so here are some funny quotes:

"Please roll it lightly on the object willing to be erased."

"Object may not be erased under the following condition: the tool written force was over strong . . . it has passed a while like one whole day since it is written . . . lead that is made in foreign countries."

An Excellent Excuse to Buy More Knitting Supplies

My stash of knitting needles and other various equipment was getting a little hard to manage in a former cosmetics pouch, so I opted to upgrade. Due to the wide variety of adorable fabrics available here, I decided to make my own. I loosely followed this pattern and ended up with this:

untie and unroll it, and TA-DA!