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:

Soba restaurant

On Saturday, I went with some other teachers to visit our Japanese teacher's house. On the way there, we stopped when we saw a cute baby being pushed in a grand stroller by his grandmother. He seemed like an emperor when he allowed us to take his picture. Our teacher lives north of Hamamatsu with lots of nature around her house. We went with her and her husband to a famous soba (buckwheat noodles) restaurant in the area. Her husband has been recovering from a stroke over the past few months, but he can walk and speak fairly well now. It was nice talking with him since he spoke simple Japanese to me and due to the stroke, he is much more affectionate and care-free than other Japanese. The soba we had was made fresh at the restaurant.

On our way home, we stopped at an old resturant which was 150 years old and used to be an inn. Up until 35 years ago, geisha used to work there and before that, samurai use to visit there. The ceilings were low to make sure samurai couldn't fight inside the inn. We stopped there to have green tea.

I was hoping that there was going to be another post for this weekend about the sake festival that was happening at a local sake brewery. Unfortunately, I could not sleep a wink on Saturday night, and so I wasn't well enough to get to the festival. I was super disappointed about this but my friends told me about it and brought me back some sake glasses from there. I'll just have to wait till next year to go to it.

Live House

I've had a pretty relaxed weekend. I did get to go see some live music today. Another teacher's student was in a band that was part of a small rock festival downtown. We got there late, so we only saw 4 of the 9 bands playing. It was fun to see quite different bands playing.

The first band had a guy playing a electric clarinet (it looked like) surrounding by a regular band playing both mellow tunes and some rocking ones too. the next band had a small following of college kids. the played quirky short tunes with too much talking and antics between songs. the 3rd band was the one with the student we knew. All the guys were in their 40s and liked playing older English artists like Bob Marley, the Eagles and Eric Clapton. The last band was also a younger band that sounded a bit like Mighty Mighty Bosstones. There were 7 members in the band which included a trumpet, band drums and calypso drums.
Overall a fun way to spend a Sunday evening.

Futsal

I went last night to play futsal with another teacher. Futsal is similar to soccer but is played on a smaller pitch and players are 5 on 5. It was on astroturf which I didn't mind playing on. I liked it quite a lot and hope to play again each week. They play 3 times a week and so I hoped to be able to go each Tuesday. Unfortunately, I found out today that I'm getting a new class on Tuesday nights at the same time as futsal. There is also a Sunday evening time, so I hopefully can get to it occasionally.

Jen's birthday

On Sunday, I went with some other teachers to an amusement park in Hamamatsu, called Pal Pal, for Jen's birthday (one of the teachers). It rained a bit during the day, so it wasn't too busy. At first we took a cable car up a hill that overlooked Lake Hamana.

Jen was even lucky to win a ball of Chupa Chups:

Even the ticket booth for ride tickets was amusing with its use of English:

Cards

Yesterday, I went with a friend to the one of the public libraries near my house. There are actually 11 public libraries in the city. So I signed upand got myself a library card and took out 2 books already.
And here is my card for the supermarket, which lets me collect points there, but more importantly, it gives me free filtered water:

Birthday party

I Saturday, there was a big birthday party for 3 people whose birthdays were close together. It was at an apartment 3 floors up from mine. Lots of people came:

The party had a Latino theme, so there was a Latino hall of fame:

And a Latino hall of shame (in the bathroom):

For food, I made cerviche (for the first time). It was pretty easy although lots of cutting of fresh cod, onions, & lemons and then mixing them together and letting "cook" in the fridge for 6 hours. It turned out well:

Since there were 3 birthdays, then there were 3 birthday cakes. My roommate, JP, made 2 of them with the best probably being the Mr. T cake:

The cake he made for his girlfriend was a rock garden cake which was also very good.

I also helped blow up lots of balloons for the party:

Overall, a very fun party.

All kinds of surfing

On the weekend, I had a try at both surfing and windsurfing. On Saturday, I went with another teacher, Jack (an expert surfer) to the beach. He gave me some good tips on getting started with surfing and then I had a go. After many attempts, I could get up on my knees and a couple of times on my feet, except the board would be a little underwater or the wave had passed by me. Jack said the board wasn't really the best shape and weight for me, although I thought he was just making excuses for me. The spot where we surfed is only a 10-minute drive from our apartment and there were about 30 guys surfing there. They were all experienced and had wetsuits. I wasn't cold in the water, although I found out that the wetsuit also helps save your skin as I now have rashes all over my front from rubbing against the board. Since wetsuits are expensive, I might try to find a rash-guard shirt which won't keep me warm in the cold weather, but will save my skin. Even though I wasn't totally successful surfing, it was still fun, so I'd like to try it again.

On Sunday, I went with a Japanese friend, Keiji, and tried windsurfing. We went to Lake Hamana which is in our city and connects to the ocean, so it's a salt-water lake. Keiji also brought along a friend who was new to windsurfing. We rented beginner boards and wetsuits from a surfshop and Keiji gave us a good beginner's lesson. Windsurfing was much easier than surfing, and it wasn't long before I was trying to perfect both kinds of turns, tack and jibe.

Later on, I tried using Keiji expert board which was very narrow and had a huge sail. It took me so long to get balanced and get the sail up and by that time, I was always turned the wrong way, so I could never get going. I found out that I would need more experience before I could use Keiji's board. It made me realize that maybe it was true that the surf board I tried on Saturday was wrong for me and with a more appropriate board, I could maybe surf easier.

Anyways, I enjoyed both experiences and hope to do them both again.

Camping

Last weekend, I went camping with friends. We went an hour north where there was a free campground. The location was on a small river which was nice to swim in. Unfortunately a huge bridge for a highway has been built across the river which kind of ruins the effect of being in nature.

The highway hasn't been opened yet, so I was thinking that this time next year, it will be really noisy to camp there. But then I found out that the highway isn't complete yet, and no work has been done on it in 2 years or so. It was a make-work project and now the government has decided not to finish the highway just yet.

Anyways, after swimming, we had dinner and made a campfire. We cooked weiners over the fire as well as making smores.

There was only one other group that were camping there that night, although they decided they wanted to sing karaoke that night. So they brought speakers and microphones, so that people could hear them for miles. So it wasn't the quietest night.

The next day, our friend, Vicki, joined us and we went for a walk to a nice waterfall:

and saw some realistic scarecrows:
and went to another bridge to look down the river to where we had camped: