It’s been a very busy week. I am currently in Tokyo, it’s 11.56pm and Bry is sitting accross from me also on a laptop. This last week, my family and bry came to japan to see me, and celebrate my birthday! Last saturday I met them on the shinkansen to Hachinone (I got on at Ninohe), and we spent the weekend in Kunohe. They got to see where I’ve been living for the last 4 months and meet all the wonderful people I knew out there.
Then we went to Kyoto for 4 days. And it was a super busy 4 days! We spent all day, every day walking around being busy. It was wonderful, but days in Tokyo seem to be proving similar and my feet may never ecover. But it’s worth it.
Here’s some photos taken in Kyoto.






We saw a lot of beautiful temples and shrines.

This is the Philosophers Path.

Along which, we bought an extremely tasty melon cream soda.

Kyoto tower!

A little oddity on the river.

We took a train out to Kobe on one day to see Tetsujin.
I made Bry play the theme tune on his laptop the night before to set the mood for the trip..


YEAH! So cool.

And some tasty peach juice.
We spent some time at harbourland too, and it was a lovely sun-shiney day. There was a pink ship in the hourbour!

It’s…. PINK.

It’s been a while since my last post! I’ve been keeping busy and enjoying my last weeks in Japan.
last weekend, Dana planned a good ol’ southern Hoe-down! This is something I neve rthought I’d experience, espeically not in Japan. But we line-danced and we wore our bandanas and cowboy hats, we drank and staged a bar-room brawl, then later on there was a bonfire on the beach and scary stories.

A few of the crew around the table, before things kicked off.

apart from partying, I’ve been working at three different nurseries in Kunohe. Little people are not shy about speaking english, so they learn fast, and we always make it a game so they have fun learning stuff. But some days we go on outings instead! Here’s a photo of the windmill in Karumai forest park, which we visited a few weeks ago.

I ate a persimmon(?) for the first time. There is no denying it, this fruit is square isn’t it?

And some more Franta flavours, Fanta World New Zealand. Because New Zealand is Cassis flavoured!

delicious.

Kunohe Pumpkin Festival!
For the last week, the streets of Toda (the south district of Kunohe, where I live) have been lined with various displays of pumpkins in anticipation of the Pumpkin Festival.
Here are some of my favourites;

















See them lining the road? amazing.
yesterday, lots of people got together to help prepare for the festival that was to be held this morning. But there weren’t enough pumpkins for the festival! So, Fumiko-san, hareyama-san and I set off on a walk up the road to knock on doors and ask people for pumpkins we could take for the festival.
Soon, grahame, sakanoue and okadaira-san all came by and joined us. We had a team of Pumpkin Snatchers assembled, and the kindly villagers donated us enough pumpkins:

Then, or task was to hollow them out to be turned into Jack O Lanterns at the festival.

This morning, the festival started at 9.30, so our group from the english club got together at 8.30am to set up our stall at the festival!


…”When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?”
“and would you like some pumpkin soup?”

It’s not a festival without tradtional dances! see the line of pumpkins in the background? They were being measured for the heavyest pumpkin competition.
Within an hour, we were sold out of trifle and sandwiches.
Within two hours, we were sold out of soup too!
What a successful morning

This weekend I made the epic jouney to Tokyo to see Andrew, who was visiting japan. I very nearly didn’t go, because the walk to the bus the bus to the train and the train to tokyo seemed like a very stressful journey for a two-night stay in tokyo. My better judgement decided that it was worth it! And it absolutely was.
On Sunday we went to Akihabara in the morning, and Harajuku in the afternoon. We met outside Gamers in Akiba, mostly becuase it’s easy to spot. It’s so easy to spend all day shopping! And I must say, I picked some fantastical things for a lot less money that I’d expected. Yatta! I felt quite star-struck by all the familiar names and brands in harajuku, I could have spent all week shopping if I could have (and all my money! haha).
We ate fast food with melon soda for pretty much every meal, it was delicious.
On monday morning we went to Ikebukuro for more shopping and PURIKURA. The purikura place was women-only or men-only-if-accompanied-buy-a-woman. So we had to stick together. This particular purikura place had costumes you could borrow for free, just to wear while you take the photos. Who could resist such madness?!

I was there for two nights and stayed in a capsule hotel, I’ve read about capsule hotels before and sort of had an idea of what to expect which I’m glad of! It was a fun experience.

..yeah! Keep out, man. :p

HANGRY outside LaForet in harajuku.

And my train back home was rather special…

Special Pokemon Shinkansen! Awesome.

Last week, or maybe even longer ago now, (sorry! I should sort out my photos more often..) i got a fabulous thing in the post;

whats this? a Passport cover?

With space invaders?! AMAZING. Thank you Clare! After all, I AM a registered Alien aren’t I? I love it.

Last week when I was wandering around during my lunch break, I realised I’ve never taken photos of the route I like to walk. So I did, and now you can see where I go when I’m having a quiet day;

left here…

The long road. Also, I found some sure signs that it’s turning Autumn now;

Pumpkins and chestnuts!

next I have some photos taken with people in mind, this is for Gayle;

And this was for Fio;

These were both taken in Hachinohe a week ago, and made me smile!

Last week I started working at Toda Nursery school, I wasn’t sure what to expect, and I have learned a lot already! Mostly that kids always have more energy, and that they can and will run rings around you all day! Also I’ve discovered that I know a lot more japanese that I thought I did! so that was a nice confidence boost. Of course it’s not perfect, but the other teachers don’t know any english at all, and so far there’s been no trouble communicating important information (I think! )
Every morning involves a routine of games, and songs and dances, all of which I’m learning for the first time. Including “Anpanman”, which is stuck in my head. I think Anpanman is about a baker, or a person made of bread.. that goes about giving kids bread when they’re hungry, like a bread-based super hero! I can’t think if there’s something similar in the UK, I don’t remember right now.
Last saturday we went on a trip in the morning to the local primary-school, where the kids were to go up on stage and sing some nursery rhymes to the hall full of senior citizens for “Over 75 years old day”. It was really cute, and went down well. Straight after us there were some other older women in some amazing kimono and makeup doing traditional dancing, also for this celebration.
And interesting day!

Next weekend is a long weekend, and by co-incidence a friend from home is visitiing Tokyo, so I’m making arrangements to go hang out in Tokyo for the weekend. I’m looking forward to it! No doubt my next post will be photos of Tokyo

Sorry there’s no photos this time!

samurai!





A dalmation in a festival jacket! So cute.

there’s two girls on the op of that tower (in red jackets) can you see?

The dance at night, started with a big cube…

While waiting to hear about my potential new job (now that the pool is closed for the season), I had some spare time. During this time I kept myself busy, and as usual, ended up with a whole lot of photos that don’t relate to each other whatsoever! So here they are

First, is this beautiful blanket that came in the post from Mum! It’s so comfy, so soft. And so pretty.

This is Mount Iwate, as seen from the parking spaces in front of Aeon in Morioka.

These is the prizes inside a machine in the arcade inside Aeon.. I tried to win one for Bry but I couldn’t do it.

This is taiyaki. My new favourite snack food

This is a very steep downhill, taken from a quite high up a mountain road on the edges of Kunohe.

This is… a really flashy car infront of lawson in ninohe.
wait… what? lets see that again..

yeah, it is.

Here we have the most gigantic can of grape squash ever, and the tiniest bottle of blueberry stuff ever. I’m not sure I was supposed to drink the blueberry stuff straight, since it was really stong (in a non-acloholic way), but I did anyway and it was really nice!

And last but not least, “Fanta World”, because Italy is peach flavoured, apparently.

This morning I went to the nursery school to intoduce myself to the kids and teachers, I got the job there, and I start next wednesday! Sounds like it’s going to be fun <3

yesterday afternoon was the long-awaited annual English-Club party hosted by the fabulous Fumiko! This party was to involve a BBQ, American drinks, and english word games forboth the kids and adults. Ebun, Hayato and I were in charge of games.

The party started at 2, and we were to turn up around 10 to start preperations. I thought this was a bit silly at first, but it turned out to be a good call, we had a lot to do! Luckily we’d prepared the games already, last thursday night. I was in charge of Balloons for the morning, and decorated the garden with them. (Only a few didn’t survive, but I did hang them up next to a thorn bush.. oops).
We had an early lunch of deliiicious curry and rice, and watermelon for afters, then we were to start preparing the food for the BBQ. There was a LOT of food. I mean, a binbag full of aubergenes, a binbag full of peppers, a box of leeks, a box of scallops and squid (yeah). And so forth. My job was washing vegetables for Hiroko and Motoko to chop, haha, I took some photos to demonstrate how mnay there were;

Weird long thin eggplants called “Nasu”

“Piman”

yum yum. Vegetabubbles.

OH, and the customary Drinks Photo;

That is an ice-water bucket full of cans of root beer and cherry cola. CHERRY COLA.
Grahame and I took a few moments to lament the lack of Irn Bru.

Now, I had heard legend and song about Fumiko’s amazing house. And I can tell you, it’s all true, the house is gorgeous! Even though this was an English Club party, there was to be Tea Ceremony, and a Koto demonstration in the tatami room at the back of the house (near the garden, a very nice set up :))
You know your house is impressive when there’s seperate mens and woments toilets…

Also, Julia had her own house in a seperate section of the garden. Whats the big deal right? Most dogs have a dog-house in the garden right?

That’s Julia in her house. She’s so cute and so soft. I love Julia :p

I learned that Motoko is a licenced Master of tea Ceremony (or something to that effect). Isn’t that awesome?!
here are some photos of the tatami room of Fumiko’s house;

You can see the set up for the tea ceremony there and in the back is the household shrine for departed family members, there were photos of Fumiko’s grandparents and older brother at the shrine, and incense.
Most family shrines are much smaller than this.

In this room we helped set up the koto for the demonstration;

They’re very large, but surprisingly light.

Blurry, sorry, but here are two women playing the Koto.

And afterwards, we were alowed to try playing them ourselves!

The english word games we’d prepared went down well,

Kids game!

Adults game! (from left to right, Hayato, Kunohe’s official Photographer, Tomoka, Anna, Fumiko and Hiroko)

After all that, it was BBQ time. Squid, scallops and vegetables on the grill!
So delicious.

It was a long and exausting day, and so much fun.
There was one incident in which a lady fell on the stone steps and had to go get stiches in her knee, but we were assured later that she will be okay. Apart from that everything went smoothly.

I hope whoever is here for the party next year has as much fun as we did this year

Way back when I first arrived, I took some photos of my new place with the intention of posting them here on Sanguiscity.com to show the world what my new house looked like. (or to show people what rural japanese accomodation is like, whichever way sounds most interesting!).
But the photos were bleak, my house had no furniture, all my things were on the floor;

No shelves in that cupoard. No pillow. The bus and recycling scedule on the floor in the corner there.

The floor is just like a really big desk.. right? right?! Oh, and that TV doesn’t work.

Anyway, this is what the place looked like for the first month. But then, I got paid! I bought a table from Fumiko-san’s shop. And some kindly friends from Kuji knew a guy who had left and had left spare shelves and stuff fot the use of a new person! With these things, my new place is starting to look a little better;

My fabulous kotatsu. There’s a pillow on the bed! And there’s shelves in the cupboard holding my books.

The broken TV is still there, but it’s a bedside table now. My notices are up on the wall! And there’s more shelves (you can never have too many shelves).

The other room (through the screen doors there…) is the Kitchen;

My little gas burner and sink and cupboards combo.. there’s a small bathroom and toilet room  just off to the side aswell.
and that’s the whole set up. It’s small, but it’s more than enough for just me!