Caffeine...

I had kind of a wonderful day today.  It started out with me sleeping in, taking a shower, and then talking to my family, plus my friend Mike who is basically my brother, since he was at my house at the time, on Skype for like two hours.  It's always nice to talk to my family, but I haven't talked to Mike at all since I came to Japan, so it was really nice to hear how he's doing.

The rest of the afternoon was nice and lazy too.  I did some reading, drank some coffee, and dug through the Christmas craft stuff we have to see what kind of fun stuff I can do with my students this week, the last week of classes before we go on break until after New Years.  I can't believe it's already this late in the year!  (Well, technically the last day of classes is next Wednesday, so a little more than a week, but.)  Plus it was rainy today, which anyone who knows me well knows that I love the rain, so I basically just felt really good.

So then, around five, Carol met us at the Center and we went to do some shopping at a supermarket that's a little bit far from us, but that sells some foreign foods.  I was able to get stuff like cheddar cheese and Hershey's syrup!  :D  And darn, Starbucks was on our way, so we had to stop there.  Since it's pretty far from the Center, I'd never been there before, so it was my first time having Starbucks in Japan.  I got the Caramel Eclair Latte, and it was pretty great!  (And maybe it's good that it's not closer because man, it was expensive...  Totally worth it of course, but expensive.)

From there, we went to the house of a friend of ours, Reiko-san.  She wanted us to see the Christmas lights on her house (she had a lot, which is rare for Japan), and we thought we'd just have dessert or something there, but she fed us a whole meal!  And a really amazing meal at that.  It consisted of sushi that we got to hand-roll, grilled Matsusaka beef (Matsusaka is the next town over and it's known for its beef), and some veggies and stuff.  Oh man, you guys.  It was so good.  And then she even served us dessert!  It was super nice of her to have us over for such a great meal, and we had lots of pleasant conversation.  And I took some pictures!  Yay!

Group shot!

The table set for dessert.  So pretty!  I loved how she stuck the chocolates on toothpicks and then into an apple.  So cute!  In the bowls was almost tofu and strawberries, a really sweet, light dessert.

Sitting at the kotatsu~

I got to wear these awesome slippers, haha.

So yeah, today was pretty fantastic.  :D  Now let's hope all that caffeine wears off soon so I can get to sleep eventually...