Thanksgiving weekend

Last weekend, the teachers in my apartment had a Thanksgiving dinner to celebrate American thanksgiving (since there are many American teachers at our school). We had a potluck dinner and had 3 small chickens instead of turkey (but which were very tasty). The picture below is before we tucked in. (the pumpkin and cider soup you see is what I made for the meal)

Also on the weekend, I played tennis for the first time in 16 years. I was terrible at the beginning but slowly had better strokes as time went by.

Also, as a side note, I finally had a good view of Mount Fuji today. If the skies are clear, I can just see it from my apartment building. Today though, I was at a class that was closer to the mountain, so I got a good view of it as I drove over a bridge. It was still about 120km from where I was, but I still got a pretty good view.

Welding Rod workers

On Saturday night, I met up with my students from Nippon Welding Rod. We went to Japanese pub and had good food and drink there.
Afterwards, we went to a karaoke bar and sang for 3 hours. Since my students were a bit shy singing, I ended up singing every other song. Still, it was a good night.

Mt. Horaiji

I went with Jenny and Ayako to an onsen town called Yuya on Saturday. There was some good viewing of red leaves to be seen:
We had a nice climb up to the top and had a good view from there:
It was good that we got there early since by the time we got down the mountain, there was a huge line up just to get into the parking lot to view the leaves and go up the mountain. We then went into the town where there were about 10 onsen places. We found a good and had lunch there and went to the baths afterwards.

Auld Lang Syne

You will often here this song being played in Japan. If you work at a grocery store or bar, you'll hear it everyday. And as a customer, it's not a song you want to hear since when you hear it, it means that the store is closing and so please get out. ^^

Roland festival

Last Saturday, I went with Mel and Jenny (2 co-workers) to a festival at a company we work at, Roland. You probably know Roland from electric keyboards. They had some keyboards there that you could play if you liked. They also had lots of balloons:

and also a lady helping kids making balloon bears:

You can see Lake Hamana out of the window in that last picture. The head office is right on the lake and has beautiful views from it:
There were a number of bands performing including my boss's band along with guys dressed as "Hard Gay" who is some popular talent here or something:
It seemed like all of the employees there were fairly young and so that they all had young children or were expecting children soon. So we had good fun playing with the kids there:

Birthday party

On Thursday night after class, some of the teachers in my apartment building had a birthday party for our co-worker, Ayako.

World Cup of Street Performers

On Thursday, it was a holiday, so I went with another teacher, Jen & her boyfriend, Toshi to Shizuoka City for the World Cup of Street Performers. It was an hour train ride there and actually my first real trip out of my city so far.

We got there in the afternoon and watched some performances on the main downtown street and then went to a nearby castle where there were many performances on the castle grounds. There were so many people watching each performance, that it was hard to see. It wasn't till night time that I could get close enough for pictures, but by then the lighting wasn't the best.

There was lots of good international food there as well:
They also had a practice area so you could try juggling tricks: