A very blustery day

It's been a very windy day today, which means that winter has finally arrived. It hardly ever snows here but Hamamatsu is famous for its wind. Today the wind is at about 8 metres/second or almost 30 km/h. It's enough to blow our house (which is on stilts) back and forth a bit as well as form some good whitecaps on the water:
But to get the full effect, you need to hear the wind whistling by the house, and so for that, I've provided you with this video...enjoy:

Don't worry though, we are warm inside sitting under the kotatsu table with a nearby heater on as well.

Christmas dinner

We went over to Christine & Sam's place for Christmas dinner this year. Christine and Rory were busy in the kitchen all day preparing the turkey and the rest of the meal. It was my first time to see Matt & Momo's baby girl, Ume. Here is Ayako with Momo and Ume:
And here's Matt with Ume:
The other youngster there was Rory and Julia's daughter, Indi. Here's a shot of her in the kitchen, from her level of view:
Here is a shot of the wonderful turkey before it was carved up:
And here we are after opening the Xmas crackers and putting our hats on (done before the meal, which was a first for me):
Here's a shot of almost the whole group (sorry Momo & Ume):
There was some delicious gravy for the turkey, fresh from the gravy cow:
And here is a plate full ready to be eaten:
After dinner, we were given some small musical instruments, which started up some small tunes:
And at the end of the night, we had Ayako's Christmas pudding. Here's a shot of it after being doused with brandy and lit:
Sorry, there isn't a shot of the cake afterwards. It was eaten too quickly. Ayako was happy that all the Brits there thought it tasted fabulous. I thought it was great. Maybe the richest plum pudding I've ever had. Ayako also found out that it was a bit too rich for the Japanese who were there. We had a wonderful Christmas and a delicious dinner which left us all very full...hope you had a Merry Christmas too.

Heather & Stef's Going Away Party

On Saturday, there was a sayonara party for Heather and Stef who will both be returning to their home countries (U.S. & N.Z.) for a bit and then travelling once again (Spain & England). Here are some pictures from the party:
Here's Stef with Megumi:
And here's Ayako and I with Heather at the end of the night:
Bon voyage and good luck with the next adventures!

Making a gingerbread house

Ayako decided to make a gingerbread house for the Christmas season this year. She did very well baking the gingerbread into the proper shapes to make the house. She was hoping that I could help put the house together, but since I have never actually made a house, I wasn't a lot of help. You can see the house coming together below:

Almost finished house:
All done:

While we were making it, we thought it be a disaster, but it turned out well in the end.

Interview & test

It was a busy weekend last weekend, so I didn't get a chance to post anything.

On Saturday, I visited the next prefecture, Aichi, for an interview at a university there called Aichi University. Since I know a few friends who work there, I had heard good things about working there. As for the interview, it was similar to others in that I was well prepared, but still nervous, and so answers came out not exactly as planned, but my main ideas were still there.

I guess my answers and ideas were alright, since I was offered a job there as an English lecturer starting in April. I'm looking forward to visiting the university a few times before I start to see what the school and the students are like.


On Sunday, I took the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT), level 3 (level 1 being the most difficult and level 4 being the easiest). It was my first time trying the test, but I had been studying for a number of months beforehand. I had tried a couple of previous years tests and got 80% on both of them. On the real test, I felt it was at the same level of difficulty, and so I'm guessing i got about 80% again. Since you only need 60% to pass, I should be fine.

There were about 2000 people taking the test at the test site in my city and so it was the most foreigners I've seen in one place in Japan. In the classroom where I was taking the test, there were 50 people and I was the only one who was from an English-speaking country. The majority of people were from south-east Asia. Since more than 80% of the foreigners in Hamamatsu are from Brazil, I was surprised that there weren't more from there.

I'll find out my results in February, but I'm not too worried. I'm glad I did some hard studying before, but I'm glad it's finished. I can now read simple Japanese books and watch simple Japanese shows. When I visited Japan 6 years ago to visit my cousin, Jeff, he had just received his results from taking the level 1 test. Now I can realize how high that level is and that it will take a long time before I reach that level.

International cooking with Ayako

It was a stay-at-home weekend, mainly catching up with stuff that had to be done. In Ayako's case, this involved catching up on recipes that she had been meaning to make, but hadn't gotten around to. And so I was treated to many delicious international dishes this weekend. We started off on Friday night with the Russian dish of beef stroganoff:
For brunch on Saturday morning, we had French crepes. First starting off with galette, which is buckwheat crepes with ham, cheese and eggs cooked inside:
We followed this up with plain buckwheat crepes that we got to top off with some maple syrup:
For dinner, she baked Mexican (American-style) tortilla chips that we ate with salsa sauce and some humus:
On Saturday, she was busy mixing up some Christmas pudding:
It sat until Sunday and was steamed for three hours. It has now been put away until Christmas:
And for dinner on Sunday night, we ate Middle Eastern food, consisting of chicken kebabs, pita bread, and humus:
It was all very yummy but my immediate requests to have again were for the crepes and the kebabs. I'm looking forward to them.

Japanese Thanksgiving dinner

It was a holiday here on Monday, Labour Thanksgiving day. Since the day is pretty close to Thanksgiving day in the U.S., we had our annual Thanksgiving day dinner, this year at Eric and Tomoe's apartment. Here are some photos of everyone who came:
And some of the food we ate:

Viewing the leaves in Shirakurakyo

On Sunday, our friends Eric and Tomoe came over for a visit. Actually, Eric and I will be taking the same level test in Japanese in two weeks, so we had a study session before lunch. Hopefully we'll be okay for the test. After lunch, we went for a drive up north to see if we could see any of leaves changing colour yet. Ayako and I visited the area two years ago, and it wasn't very busy at that time. This year though, the narrow road leading to the area was quite busy:
Anyways, we could see some trees changing colour:
There were also nice walkways to get to some nice streams and waterfalls as well:
Here's a picture of me trying to set-up the timer and having trouble:
And here's a shot once I had figured it out:
On the way back home, we decided to try and avoid the crowded road, and so we found a long winding road through the forest going back. Still though, there was some nice lookouts along the road:

Visiting the nephews

On Saturday, Ayako and I went to visit her sister, Sumiko, and her two kids, Neo and Rio. We went for lunch and had Ozoni (Japanese soup with mochi rice cakes in it). The mochi was very sticky as usual:
rio wasn't so hungry at that time, so he was off reading books (or more accurately, looking at the pictures in comic books):
After lunch, I played with the boys by pulling them around on a blanket. I could pull them pretty fast on the tatami. They thought it was great fun and we continued till I was exhausted. Rio was up for having snacks afterwards:
Here they are with some cream-filled Santa bread:

Lunch party & Birthday party

On Saturday, we had some friends over for lunch. Ayako worked hard in the kitchen making lots of tempura:
You can see some of the dishes we had here:
Sarah came with Hiro, whom we met for the first time:
And Kathleen and Heather came as well. Here we are trying some yummy tofu-pumpkin pie that Ayako made:
At night, we went out to a birthday party for Sam, who turned 30. He had a good turnout:
Here he is before blowing out the candles:
And here he is with one of his wonderful gifts:
Some of the other guests that were there were Martin, Chris (whom I met for the first time and has his own blog on living in Hamamatsu here) and Pete:
Here's Ayako and me with the birthday boy:
Heather and Ayako with Sean:
and us with Christine and Keiji: