Pingu mouthwash

One Xmas gift I got for Xmas was Pingu mouth wash. Actually, the small bottles you buy here for gurgling is more to clean your mouth to get rid of germs so you don't catch a cold from others. I've been told by my girlfriend to gurgle every time I go home. And so to help me do a better job, she got me this Pingu gurgle wash.

Xmas at the Flower Park

After making the wreaths, we went with Keiko and her husband to the Flower Park near the lake where they had special Xmas lights up around the park. Inside a huge green house, there was a large Xmas tree and a Xmas concert going on.

(as a side note, I was happy that these photos turned out well with my camera on my cell phone and that I figured how to transfer them to my computer using the infrared transfer part on my camera and my computer)

Making New Year wreaths (shimenawa)

On Saturday, Ayako, Vicki, Christine and myself drove up to our Japanese teacher's house (Keiko) and we went to a community centre to make New Year wreaths our of straw. You can see below some of the process and our finished products. These are put up at house entrances at New Years.

Toilet finds

Recently I've found a few funny things all dealing with toilets here. The first was a sign on a western-style toilet letting people know exactly how the toilet seats are suppose to be depending on what position your assuming.
The next was some great toilet paper with public safetly warnings on them. The first is watching out for members of the mob.
The next is telling you to watch out for perverts and to phone the police if you see any crimes.

Candle walkways

After going out for dinner on Friday with friends, we went over to a long walking street where they had lined with candles and had made pretty designs.
After the walkway, we made our way towards the bus terminal where there was a display of statues made with PET (recyclable) bottles. There was everything from animals to castles.

At the end of the night, we had some of this (not very clear) chocolate Christmas cake.

Last week of classes for the year

It's Friday Dec. 23, which means it's the Emperor's birthday, which means it's a holiday as well as the start of my Xmas vacation. All during December there are many End of Year parties for friends and companies in Japan. You often have to reserve tables at restaurants and bars well in advance. On Monday I went with my community class from the school to an Italian restaurant (or more specificaly a Sardinian restaurant) for our class year-end party. We had some good food that we shared with each other.
Yesterday, Thursday, I wanted to go to the library, but for some reason it is always closed every fourth Thursday. It was a bit cold and very windy yesterday, but I still decided to ride to the beach after I found out that the library was closed. Since the weather was very cold for Hamamatsu, nobody was there, but it was nice walking along the windy beach and seeing the birds playing over the waves.
Actually it was cold enough that there was some snow on the ground.

On my bicycle ride home, I was very happy to see a Japanese loon in the river I was riding beside. There are actually a great variety of birds in my city since there's the ocean and a river near my apartment and it's not a far drive to get to large forests and the mountains. I often see hawks flying about. One new year's resolution for myself will be to do more birdwatching around here.

On Thursday night, I had another year-end party with a company class (Roland DG who make printers). It was nice way to have my last class for the year.^^

After this party, I went home where there was a get-together of my school's teachers before they we all took off for different countries for our winter break. And so now I can start making more specific plans for my break now. All I know now is that I'll be in Korea with Ayako from Dec. 28 to Jan. 4 and then visiting my Canadian friend, Craig, in Osaka and seeing Kyoto for a few days. Many pictures to come next year...

Catching Up With...

Unfortunately, I haven't taken any photos lately, but I thought I should say what I've been up to lately. A new first for me in Japan (about a 10 days ago) was that I got in a car accident. A car tried to turn quickly in front of me, but I was already too close so we smashed up the corners of our cars. Actually, there was another accident about 5 minutes later at that small intersection, so I think they need a stop sign or something there. It was our of the city but close to a new shopping centre and so the road have all of a sudden become busier in that area. Anyways, I exchanged information with the other driver (a good test to see how much Japanese I could use) and waited for somebody to come from my school since it was the school's car. I had to go to the police station and explain the parts of my international driver's licence and later on, also show my passport. We also had to wait for awhile for a tow truck to come. In all, I had to wait around for about 5 hours. The police didn't need that many details of the crash, but the insurance company did so they could determine the percentage of fault for each driver. all in all though, everythng wasn't too bad and nobody was injured.

December has been busy for Xmas shopping and birthday shopping since there are a number of teachers' birthdays in December. So there's been a number of birthday parties lately. I also have two "end of year" parties with different classes this week. I'm happy that the Xmas break is coming soon so I can relax a little. Only four more days of work until the break. ^^

That's all for now...more pictures once the break is here and I'm travelling about (I'm off to Korea for 1 week during my break and also to Osaka & Kyoto for a few days after that).

Christmas tree

They have downtown all decorated for Xmas. The tree-shaped lights is not far from where I live.
Here's another shot i got recently looking at the tree up close. I was there last Friday and saw the tree put on a little 3 minute light show with music. It happens every 15 minutes...very Disney-like.

Chinese tea

One of my students returned from a business trip to China and brought me back some Chinese tea. It looks like a ball like a flower closed up. When you put it in a cup of hot water it slowly opens up and you can see three flowers inside (see below). It was a nice, slightly bitter tea.

Ogunijinja (a shrine)

On Sunday, I went with my girlfriend, Ayako, to a shrine about an hour north-east of my city. There were still some red leaves on the trees and so a fair number of people were there to view the trees as well as a few women dressed in kimonos to have their photos taken in the scenic setting.
There were also people who drove their new cars there to have them blessed by a Shinto priest. Actually, there were a lot of people bringing their cars. It was like an assembly line for the priest.

Girls on Unicycles

I just got back from doing some Xmas shopping downtown. Downtown looks really nice now at night with lots of Xmas lights up. I'm starting to get in the Xmas spirit with doing my Xmas shopping and Xmas decorations up in stores even though I still don't have to wear a coat outside during the day. It does cool off pretty good during the night though.
When I was going through downtown, there was a street performance of these cute girls dressed up Xmas outfits and all on unicycles doing routines to Xmas music. They were really good and some I'm sure were only 6 years old or so.

(This is the first time I've taken a photo with my camera and sent it to my own email address so I could post the photo. I'm pretty impressed with how well the photo turned out)

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: