The Scene We're Looking At

So yeah, I'm obviously still very behind.  Let's see how much I can catch up with this post~  This is starting with last week, since my previous post went up until last Saturday.

SUNDAY


Busy, busy day.  We had church in the morning, then the young adults met for lunch, Bible study and prayer after church.  We had mochi that I imagine was left over from the mochi making event a couple weeks before.

I discovered that, as much as I love mochi, there is a limit to how much of it I can eat at one time...

After that was over, we went to the Center to prepare for that night's Crossroad, which was Talent Night.  Carol and I had already set up all the art and stuff that our students had given us, but there were some last minute things that needed to be done still, so I was pretty busy up until we started at 7.  Even though I felt a little stressed, things went fine once we got started.  There were various talents as part of our little talent show, including a lady who told a Japanese folk tale while also using sign language, a 12-year-old girl who danced hula (she's actually the number one kid hula dancer in the whole country of Japan- she was amazing! and she's actually one of my students!), Alicia and I performed a song, and a girl recited 1 Corinthians 13 in Japanese, English, and Albanian.  So yeah, some pretty cool stuff.

MONDAY

Mondays are our days off, and since Becky and I were free, we went to Bell City, a mall in Suzuka, the next town over (which is also home to a world-famous race track, the Suzuka Circuit, as well as the main Honda factory- there's your random trivia for the day).  First order of business when we arrived was naturally eating. So after considering some different options, we went to a bakery restaurant, which basically at this place, your lunch set comes with a drink and soup bar and a salad, and...people come around to your table frequently, offering you all kinds of fresh-baked bread!  It was kind of the best thing ever.

Cheesy omurice, corn soup, and you can see my first piece of bread, a croissant, in the background...

Melon pan, literally still warm from the oven, along with melon soda.  Double melon!

So after that we just shopped, and I bought a few articles of clothing, a couple of cd's, and some other random stuff.  It was a lot of fun, and a nice, relaxing day!  There also happens to be a Starbucks in that mall, so I got my third Starbucks drink in Japan.  An iced white chocolate mocha never tasted so good, you guys.

After getting back to Tsu, we met up with Carol and went to dinner at a Chinese restaurant.  It was kind of a family restaurant style, so it was nice and casual, and had a drink bar~

Sweet and sour pork, gyoza, mabodofu, and fried rice.  So good~

So yeah, it was just generally a nice day off.  :D

TUESDAY

I don't remember doing anything particularly interesting early in the day?  I worked on a couple of Center-related things, and then I came downstairs to have a salad lunch with Becky and Carol.  Later we had our normal weekly meeting, except we decided to hold it at Mr. Donut this week, because 1. we had coupons for free donuts and 2. unlimited coffee.  Best meeting spot ever?  I think so.  We did some grocery shopping after that, then went to eat.  My dinner set was actually kind of super amazing.

Udon, tenpura, sashimi, chawamushi (like a salty custard-y thing), miso soup, a couple other little things.  So good!

After dinner, Becky and I went to gospel choir, which was fun, as usual.  We started learning a couple of new songs and I really like them a lot.  :D  The thing about gospel choir is that the songs are simple and easy to sing, but they're also a lot of fun to sing, and everyone is super enthusiastic, so it's pretty great.  I don't think there are any groups quite like this in the States.

WEDNESDAY

Pretty normal early part of the day.  I started sort of babysitting/teaching a class for two little girls, ages three and (almost) six, whose mom is in Carol's Bible study at 3.  Little kids are not really my forte, but I think it's going okay so far!  After that I had my little boy for beginning English, then I ate a little something before going to my evening class with my two middle school girls, which is a lot of fun.  

After that was Alicia's going away party with the Mie University Bible study group.  We ate nabe (hot pot), and it was all kinds of fantastic.  We had a really nice time chatting and hanging out.  So much so, in fact, that the party moved into Becky's and my apartment for coffee and snacks and everyone stayed until like 1am.  It was pretty great.  :D  

It's making me hungry again, looking at this.  Those sausages were amazing.

Nice picture of me and Alicia.  :D

Saki loves nabe~

Not the best group shot ever, but yeah!

Juri-chan and Nao-chan giving Alicia her gifts.

Everyone wrote little messages to her~

THURSDAY

Ishikawa-sensei cancelled my Japanese class, so I was free to visit Carol's class in the morning, since I guess her students wanted to meet me.  It was a nice way to start out the day!  Then in the afternoon, the three of us went to coffee with one of Carol's students.  The coffee shop's name is らんぷ, and since it's kind of ambiguous about what that would equate to in English, we thought it was Lump, since that would kind of fit as a name for a coffee shop.  As it turns out, its name is actually Lamp.  Leave it to Japan to choose the option that makes the least sense.  Anyway, we had a couple of cups of coffee and dessert.  Their best dessert is evidently waffles.  I got the chocolate one, which comes with ice cream on top as well.

We then spent the rest of the afternoon running a few errands.  We had dinner at Mos Burger, and I had an awesome teriyaki burger that I failed to take a picture of.  I was also able to buy Arashi's new concert dvd, Scene, which, as I'm a huge Arashi fan, I was pretty excited about.  :D  (If you don't know who Arashi is, they're basically a Japanese boy band.  Wikipedia page here if you care.)  

Later that evening I had class, and after class Becky, Carol and I took Rieko-san and her husband Akifumi-san to Casa Mia for dessert to celebrate Rieko-san's birthday.  We had a really nice time chatting, and the dessert platter was, as always, amazing.  Actually, it was two platters, since there were five of us.

Probably the most amazing purin (pudding? maybe more like custard?) I've ever had.

FRIDAY

We went to lunch at the little French restaurant near us.  We walked since it was close, but man, it was COLD that day.  The coldness stands out in my memory I guess, haha.  But the food was amazing so it was totally worth the walk.

Some kind of lentil soup...and salad.  Yeah.

Chicken, breaded and baked in basil and some other herbs I think.  It was AMAZING.

I spent the rest of the day in class and working on setting up for the next day's Music and English Cafe.  The idea was that, by doing the work the night before, we wouldn't have to do it that morning.  Thank goodness we're all night people!  

SATURDAY

We ran a couple of errands in the morning and of course had a little more setting up to do, and then the Music and English Cafe, our monthly event, started at 1:30.  We had a pretty decent turnout, and it was a lot of fun! Carol served coffee or tea and a snack to everyone, and then Nao-chan and some other musicians from her Mie University band came to play music with us: three on the flute and three on the French horn.  The music was really cool!  So we started out with music, then shifted into English conversation time (which was more difficult for some people than for others lol), guided by our little Table Talker conversation starter cards.  We then played Bunko, which we unfortunately had to cut short due to lack of time, but I definitely want to play it again sometime!  And then there was some more music, and that was it.  It was a really fun event!  And I took some pictures, yay!

The final setup, before people started arriving.

I also took the opportunity to take pictures of our students' artwork that we posted around the chapel.  This is the photography section.

Traditional arts, like calligraphy and sumi painting.

My talent was this blog, lol.

One person made all this stuff.

The food room, pre-food.

Later, with food.

Everyone listening to the music.

After the event ended and we got everything cleaned up, Carol had class, Becky went to a friend's concert, and so I decided to go see a movie.  I don't usually go to the movies by myself, but I wanted to see a Japanese movie called Gantz and I wasn't sure if anyone would want to go with me, and since I had time, I went for it.  I really enjoyed the movie, and I actually didn't feel weird at all being by myself.  Afterwards I went to McDonald's for the new limited time sandwich, the Idaho Burger.  It was pretty fantastic.

Yes, that is a hashbrown.  Hence, Idaho.

After that, I met up with Alicia, we picked up some ice cream, and then we headed back to my place, where we chatted and watched my Arashi dvd together.  (I'm in the process of attempting to convert her into a fan.  I think I'm succeeding.)  Saturday was a really, really fun day.  :D

So, once again, I'm ending this post without being caught up.  But at least I'm getting closer?  :D?