Elementary Culture Fests

I have finally finished all my culture festivals. There was one for each school. The elementary school festivals were really cute and fun. The first one that I went to was in Chokai. The kids did skits and singing both as a whole school and as a class. They did little songs about animals living in the mountains.
As you can see cute animal costumes are a necessity.


The second elementary culture festival was in Kozuya. It was pretty much the same except that the fifth graders had grown their own rice and sold it. It was really good. They gave me a small bag of it for helping them divide it into bags. Also they had one of their plays was about the unification of Japan.

Overall I really liked doing the elementary culture fests. They were fun to watch and the kids were really happy I was there. However, I wish more parents had introduced themselves to me. I had been hoping to meet parents and see how they felt about English education. I goes since my predecessor didn't speak Japanese they assumed I didn't but I got a lot of smiles.

As a in general update it has snowed here for the first time. It mostly melted in the afternoon but it was cold in the morning. Today to winterize the house I moved the bed into the room right next to the living room. We are now using really just to room of the house. We also got out the kerosean heater because its too cold for our clothes to dry . We also insulated the house by putting bubble wrap on the big glass windows in the main rooms.

We'll see how long this lasts

There are two things I need to do more: draw and post on this blog. Seeing a connection, I decided to try making quick little doodles to post onto this blog. Today's is about my friend and hero, Kotatsu:


On cold days I have to struggle to leave it.

Also, I'd like to publicly thank Jon and Emily for mailing us a wonderful care package. Emily is currently pursuing her goal of becoming the most attractive and intelligent lawyer in the world, while Jon is well on his way to becoming an international nurse of mystery. Thanks guys, we loved it!

Images of Fall

Hey everybody!

It's been a while and for that I apologize. I thought I'd pop in and drop some photos I'd taken. These are mostly just odds and ends that caught my fancy.


First up we have my bike:

My bike is awesome. It has a basket so I don't have to lug groceries on my back and a bell so I can announce my presence to slow-moving pedestrians. Little one-speed bikes like this are called Maa Maa Cheri.

It only cost 3,000 Yen. ( About $30 US)











Next we have the little piggy pork buns.
















(Shown here are size reference piggy and dramatic lighting piggies)
I saw these at the store and snatched them up. For those of you that don't know pork buns consist of steamed dough wrapped around a little bit of delightfully seasoned pork. They're usually just round with a puckered top, but in this case they were adorable piggies. The color of the ears and nose were an indication of the type of filling. There was a piggy with blue ears and nose but I didn't get that one.

This here...

is denim wine. I never even bothered to call it by it's real name, which was conveniently in English. I bought it because it looked like it was wearing bottle-shaped blue jeans. ( You win again marketing) I lucked out. Inside this bottle was a red wine hearty as I could have ever wished for. C'mon admit it, you want to try Denim wine.


I was sorely disappointed this Halloween season to discover that Japanese pumpkins are small, green-skinned and hard. I had given up on carving, or even witnessing a genuine Jack-o-lantern this year when several shops around town displayed just that. I have no idea where they got the pumpkins. It was like magic. Most of them were pretty standard fare. Triangle eyes and a gap-toothed smile.




Some were a little more imaginative















This one was wearing reindeer antlers:



















The rest of these are just some shots of the fall colors. The orange tree grows outside of our backyard abandoned hospital.
-S.

Cold

Hey its cold really cold. We had snow flurries yesterday night and as I right this its 48 degrees in the living room. So its very cold and it will soon get.......you guessed it colder.