**With a lot of help from my fellow JETs, we've booked a trip to Hokkaido in February for the Snow Festival. We got some of the last seats/rooms. The excessive pre-planning done by the Japanese is a bit crazy, and I am sooooooooo excited that we're going. I will most likely be very cold the whole weekend, but it will definitely be worth it.
**I have made another edible dish following a recipe from the internet. This one was for a tofu marinade which I soaked the tofu in for a day and then stir fried with other veggies. Yummy.
** I bought a bed!! I was left a simple metal frame affair by my predecessor, but it collapsed under my wide American butt the first time I sat up abruptly in the middle of the night. So my futon has been on the floor, which has worked just fine, although I got into the habit of just walking on top of it to get across the room which made it feel more like a squishy carpet than a place to sleep. So with some intrepid digging at the local second hand store (thanks Allison for your help) I came across a real beauty of a bed that now takes up a large percentage of my bedroom. It has a real headboard and mattress, is more than 3 inches off the floor and has storage drawers underneath. The only drawback is that I now have to find some real sheets, but I think I can handle that. Waking up in the mornings has gotten much more difficult of late.
BEFORE:
AFTER:
**Last Friday, 9/14, the Kita-Chikugo Board of Education threw a welcome new ALTs/farewell old ALT supervisor party. It was at typical Japanese style restaurant at the top of a hotel downtown and was very nice. Also in the typical Japanese style, there was lots of alcohol, and the very serious reserved and hardworking people we were used to seeing in the office were slinging their arms around each other, laughing and much more talkative than normal. I was asked how my parents felt about me being so far away and told that if I was the daughter of one of my Japanese co-workers I would never be allowed to leave home, but if I was a son, I could go anywhere and no one would think twice about it. One guy also asked if I thought I got paid too much, because he thought the ALTs made out very well for the amount of actual work that we do. Maybe I do, but I am not going to admit it. ;-)
Dinner was sukiyaki style where lots of meat, mushrooms, cabbage, some tofu and noodles are cooked in a soy-based sauce right at the table. The Japanese then crack a raw egg into a bowl and pour the hot soupy mix on top. I tried the egg and was not nearly as revolted as I thought I would be. It was a tad slimy, but the the flavor was completely obscured by the sauce which was nice.
The crowning moment of the enkai was teaching our supervisor with the steel liver the art of sake bombing.
The regular party was followed by the after party, a much smaller English language affair and a trip to karaoke (of course).
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