Saturday night, Dave and I made lamb roast with mint sauce. It came out alright. I think I need to perfect the mint sauce though! We had tiramisu for dessert.
The barbecue in Shiga yesterday was a lot of fun. It sprinkled on and off throughout the day, but the temperature was more or less perfect. It was great to break out the grill and put it to use again. We played frisbee, petanque, soccer and American football. At the end of the day it got a little chilly and we went to a small Brazilian place by the station. The food hit the spot.
Today, Dave and I went our for lunch at Cafe Nainoa. We had hot sandwiches, salad and nachos. We are definitely going back there again. Afterwards, we went to Lipton Cafe for no-bake cheesecake, chocolate and banana tart and coffee. We are turning into foodies, me thinks.
And back to work tomorrow. I have an 8:30 tomorrow, plus a private lesson in the afternoon. I should also go to the gym. We're also going out to eat with Dai & Yuka Thursday. :)
It has been almost a year since I sat to update my blog; much too long and I feel like such a lazy philistine. I was simply not inspired to do so. Most of last year was spent preparing for the GRE and applying to grad school, and well working as usual, and traveling. 2007 was definitely an eventful year. During the summer I went to Guatemala! We created a blog with all of our journal entries and photos during the trip. See here. I also went home in the summertime, as well as in winter for the holidays, which was awesome. Among other things, I attended my grandfather's 80th birthday party! During that trip, I was also able to help Ely with her university applications and visit the newly renovated Griffith observatory in L.A., as well as Chinatown and Olvera Street with Dave!
Pics from going for famous traditional matcha dessert in Gion today.〓〓〓Erica
Tequilla!
They are seriously good!
I love Japan. I almost go this charm. (^_-)〜☆
How can I 4get you, El Pancho?!
Or Dark and Twisty?
I definitely watch too much Grey's Anatomy. So much so that I sometimes think I want to live in Seattle after Japan. The rain and grey actually appeal to me. I'm still catching up with Season 3 but making some strong strides. No, I'm not feeling in anyway elated about having to turn into a couch potato in order to make such rapid progress.
Technologically Challenged
It has been ages since I last blogged. I also have several hundred images to upload online at some point, since New Years. Life moves much to quickly for me to keep up with uploading! Part of the reason for this is the fact that my computer died last month in April. I'm kind of dependent on David's laptop, which can be frustratingly SLOW. Now and we are essentially sharing his laptop, which SUCKS! I plan to buy a laptop this summer so I just have to be a little patient. Unforunately, I also need a new phone and camera; and one for Dave since I broke his yesterday. I spilled coffee on it on my way to Costco with Bonnie and Adam. That was super duper BTW. They rock!
Anyway, getting back to a minor point I have officially declared this my "quarter (not quite a year) of technological difficulties", and now I am totally venting! This brings me back full circle to my blog. A large part of the reason I stopped writing in it regularly was because the script was on crack. That was a foreshadowing of the graver technol ogical difficulties yet to come, impeding on the horizon of 2007. OK, I was also super busy last winter, but aren't we all? Anyway, everytime I logged on to Blogger, it was in Japanese or in a bunch of incomprehensible characters. I switched over to Vox with the intention of writing more, but haven't quite managed it, also because my laptop died and because at my school, they've made it so much more difficult to go online and access anything I want to this year! So, yadda yadda yadda. I still love writing in this from time to time, but have been so caught up in my own mind and especially on what I want to do next after my time in Japan. I guess you can say that these last few months have been very introspective.
A Quarter Update
It is the middle of May now and I am thinking back on my year so far! My experience with PEPY was incredible and honestly, a climatic start
to 2007. I don't quite know if I can beat that experience. I have
blogged about how much of a once and a lifetime experience it was,
although I broke my camera on that ride. Damn. I spilled beer on it
the night we went to CCF, an orphanage in Phnom Pehn. I recently agreed
to go on a Habitat trip to Guatemala because I had such a fantastic
time with PEPY. I know that the Habitat trip will be totally different,
but I think it will be a memorable experience just the same. My major
concern is security. I am such a chicken and though I spent a lifetime going to and fro to Mexico, suddenly going to Guatemala seems so foreign. I hope that reports I've read about violent robberies are exaggerated. I know there is some risk, but I just want to feel safe. One other concern I have is that I hope I will be able to spend enough quality
time at home in Los Angeles with family and friends.
Anyway, let me think back on this year. At the beginning of this year, I also started taking a Japanese class every Friday with two fu JETs, that I truly got a lot out of. We're on hiatus now, but that will start back up at the beginning of June. For a while, I was also religiously studying for the GRE. After the scheduled format change was postponed however, I changed the date for mine to October 14th. I hope to somehow be able to help my sister as she applies to schools this winter.
In March, Dave and I spent our spring break in Hong Kong and China. Going to Hong Kong and southern China was a dream come true. I'd always seen such amazing images of it on TV and never imagined the moment that I'd actually go there. It was such a sweet treat to meet my friend, Ma Ling after so long. It was also such a pleasure to meet David's friend and I know that sounds cliche, but I mean it. What were the chances of both of us having such cool, intelligent, close friends in the same city in China? I don't know, but evidently not so slim. Travelling to China was exciting. I enjoyed the sense of chaos and the vibrancy of life there. In this sense, it is so very different from Japan. I was pickpocketed in Shenzen though. After having bought a cheap pair of shoes that have already come apart.
We had a funny story from our last night there, when we spent the whole day thinking we were in Macau, when really we were still in some other random city in southern China. Ha ha. We should have realized it of course, being the only foreigners and all and not being able to find the casinos or any other place on the map that we wanted to see, but we didn't until having spent alomst 24 hours in the wrong place. Finally, after finding someone who could speak English, at a random English School, we realized our mistake. Our bus had not stopped in Macau, but rather in a border city and we still had to take another bus to the border to get through customs and into Macau. We finally made it, getting to see the old portuguese ruins and city beautifully lit at night. We walked all throughout Macau for most of the night and had delicious Guacamole and ham and turkey sandwiches in one of the many casinos. We took the ferry back to Hong Kong like at 3am in order to make our 8am flight back to Kansai.
A few days after coming back, I went to visit my sister in Yokosuka for a week. It was nice to be with family, sit and watch movies, read, watch TV and go out to dinner with her. We also went on a river cruise put together by her school on Ikego base, where I got to eat all the sashimi I wanted to my hearts content! Most of the other Americans on the trip, didn't like the suchi much. The next day we headed to the Kawasaki Fertility Festival. There were a lot of foreigners there and several large penises being carried in a procession throughout the city by the transvestites and crowd. It was definitely a unique sight. It was after that trip that my laptop died and I think it is DNR.
The school year starts in April in Japan, so that is well under way now. A lot has changed at my school. I was very disappointed because my two favorite teachers left. It is odd because I think all of the changes have greatly affected me and that is ironic because I actually thought I was good with coping with change. I think this is not the case though. People think that because I have travelled a lot this is true. Always experiencing change, but perhaps even when you travel a lot; there is a lot of the same things, the same rhythm, as uneven and erratic as it may be. Still, there is the sameness of being somewhere different and having to adjust. It is the the more subtle changes in life that I think I often find surprisingly difficult to adjust to.
Life in Kyoto has been great mostly. The weather is sometimes too warm, but it is still breezy and rains a lot. David and I have seen several movies at Toho cinema including Sunshine and Blood Diamond. We also watched a Scanner Darkly, Capote and Apocalypto, which was actually especially interesting for me as it is set in Latin America during what appeared to be the time of the waning Mayan empire. We often go out to eat just the two of us, or with friends. (^o^)
Golden Week really crept up on this year and we decided to go to Himeji for a day trip, then to Fukuoka for a longer 3-day trip. Himeji Castle is beautiful and it was a lovely sunny day. There were too many other tourists though and we felt like cattle herding our way through the castle, especially on the way back down. I especially liked the side part of the castle that used to belong to some princess. We also visited the gardens there.
Our trip to Fukuoka went awry! We found out the hard way that when going to Fukuoka in Kyushu, one should ask for Hakata. We made the best of this unexpected (really!) blunder and head to Toyama for a day, then to Wajima to see the coast, to Wakara Onsen to bathe in 1200 year old hot springs, then to Hakui for a visit to the local space museum there and finally to Kanzawa for Mexican at El Torito restaurant before heading home. Despite the blunder, we made the best of it and the silver lining was that we spent the weekend in sunshine, when what seemed like the all of Japan, was covered with rain.
The day before yesterday, I went out for drinks with Jean. We went to Denen then to Bar Montebello. Then like I said before, I went to Costco finally after ages of wanting to go! It was also strange to be in Tsukaguchi for the first time since April 2006, four beautifully contrasting Japanese seasons later.
Anyway, that's my update! Signing off,
