Voila!

 

Last weekend there was an Iwaki Internation Association Bowling event.
In Japan you select your bolwing shoes from a shoe vending machine. Here I am, making my size selection. So fun!

 

It was time for a facelift!

So I gave my blog a facelift. Let me know what you think!!!

Fright Night Iwaki

This year in Iwaki we celebrate Halloween on Thurs Nov 2 (because Friday was a national holiday) at Bar Queen near the station in Taira. It was a super fun night filled with great music, lots of people and some super cool costumes. Good times! Can it be, do I actually like Halloween now??

I was Little Red Riding Hood

Jun and Logan
oops...I mean Scream Guy and Frankenstein

 

This is John, the Big Baby. John acutally enlarged a photo of his own baby sons head for this costume. Brilliant!!

 

My friends Masahiro, Ryoko and Mikako
They are in my adult English class

 

Shall we Dance??

Yes we shall! Tuesdays, 8:15pm-9:30pm at Princess I Karaoke!! yes folks, I am taking dancing classes. For almost 4 weeks now I have been learning how to salsa dance once a week and I love it!! There is about 20 people in the class and we rotate around and practice dancing in pairs for the whole class. It's still not totally natural for me, but I think I picked it up pretty fast and I really enjoy it. It makes me feel very feminine and in this land where I am double the size of most people (men and women) it is a very nice feeling. It's fun and something totally different then anything I have ever done. When I dance with our teacher (his name is ドニーさか本, Donnie Sakamoto) I feel like ive been doing it for ages and that i'm a pro. The Japanese people that are in the lesson are very friendly as well so I get to practice Japanese at the same time. I love new hobbies! YEH!

BBQ In Eda

The weather is still pretty nice in Iwaki. We've been lucky this last week and have experienced many sunny days with temps reaching close to 16 degrees. A group of us took advantage of the sun a couple of weeks ago and had a BBQ in Eda. Eda is the same place where the Potato Club met for their BBQ. I feel the Potato Club BBQ was a real learning experience because it taught me how to prepare for the most efficient BBQ ever. I precut all my veggies and put them in little baggies and prepared my sweet potatoes in tinfoil so perfectly. I thought of everything just like my Japanese friends had a month ago. I was so proud and it was a lovely day.

There were many other people at the campsite that day because once a year there is a sightseeing steam train that runs in Iwaki and that was the day. So as the train passed our site the Japanese people all lined up to snap photos of this train as it made its sightseeing journey. It kind of cracked me up at the time seeing people so excited about this train and decked out in the most professional looking camera equipment for it, but its all great. Good times!

Had to join the rest of the feasters in the photo fest!

Logan and Nina

 

15 minutes of fame!

I was on TV!! But it was more like 2 minutes then 15 and the show really didn't have anything to me, but none the less, I WAS ON TV! hehe

About a month back my Australian friend was asked to teach Australian cooking for a local TV show called SATA FUKU (short for Saturday Fukushima). She was keen but wanted to have some more people at the taping for support, so a bunch of us from the office joined her and her husband one weekend for some cooking. We cooked pasties (meat pies) and ANZAC (Australia, New Zealand Army Corps) biscuits. The filmed crew taped the whole process and finally last week the show aired. It was just a snippet of what was actually filmed but it was neat seeing myself on TV. They even posted my name and country of origin under my picture. FUN!

Say Cheese!
(from left to right Morris, Richard, ME, Heidi)

Yukatas

So when you think of Japan you probably think of sushi, sumo wrestling and maybe even kimonos. But in the summer it is actually more common to see young women in Yukatas. What are you yukatas you ask?? They look kind of like a kimono but they are worn during the festival season (July and August) mostly by young women. This year I was lucky enough to find a place that sold yukatas long enough for me so I bought one! I didn't really get to wear it at a festival but a bunch of us wore them to the Welcoming party for the new ALTs in August. Yukatas are significantly easier to wear than a kimono but even after the welcoming party I still didn't really know how to wear it properly. So, when my friend Nina and I were invited by a Japanese friend to take 'Yukata wearing' lesson, I jumped at the chance.

Nina and I met our friend and drove about 20 minutes to a small Japanese style community center (with tatami mat floors etc.). There, we met this older lady who taught women how to wear Kimonos and the like. She was very friendly and easy to understand. She gave step by step instructions for wearing our yukatas and taught us tricks to make the whole dressing process easier. We followed the little lesson with some green tea and some snacks. It was a lovely Japanese experience and I will definitely be more comfortable wearing my yukata next year.

Nina and I in our Yukatas and our teacher in her kimono. We put our yukatas on ourselves for this picture but I think it looked better when the teacher helped us tie our obis (the waist scarf part) .