This week it snowed. It snowed a little bit last week as well, but it didn't stick. This time, the weather decided to rectify that error.
It was snowing all day Tuesday, but it only started to accumulate towards the evening.
Wednesday morning, looking out my apartment window. It piled up a bit more throughout the day. Yeah, no exactly a blizzard or anything, but I liked it. I'm actually really pissed at myself, because I saw a scene that would've made a great snowy picture on my way to work, but I passed on the chance of taking it because of that whole embarrassment thing. Decided to use my self loathing constructively by utilizing it to browbeat myself into taking more pictures in the future. It's actually been working... hooray for using my shortcomings as weapons against my other shortcomings?
I had Thursday off, and although it had stopped snowing, it was still pretty cold. What do you do when you have freezing cold days off in the middle of the week? You go to nabe (hot pot) parties, of course!
Yuko (my coworker that invited me) is not in the picture :( but, from left to right, there's me (hah, bet you didn't guess that one!), Yuko's friend, and Yuri (also known as Jessica. She's of Japanese descent but is actually Brazilian. Yeah, it kinda confused me at first.)
The nabe was delicious! If you've never heard of it, it's basically a pot that you put on a portable burner on the table. You fill it with either water or various kinds of soup, depending on what kind of nabe you're making (ours was filled with water), then you add in meat, vegetables, tofu, and other stuff. You can either eat it plain or with sauce (that's what's in those bowls in front of us). We had two kinds of sauce. One was kind of like soy sauce with yuzu (the lemon-looking fruit I posted a picture of last time), the other... I have no idea what it was. It was a bit thicker, brownish, and had black specks in it. It was the better of the two, but they were both good. The only thing I didn't like about the nabe was the fried tofu. Between its consistency and its flavor mixed with the sauce it soaked up (it was like a sponge), it tasted like chewing on soggy bits of vomit. When I finished, there were about 5 pieces of it leftover in my bowl... Yuko laughed at me >< We also had donuts and shu kurimu (cream puffs). They were delicious. Especially the shu kurimu. :D
Friday and Saturday were pretty much just normal workdays. Of course, Saturday was Christmas, but that hasn't meant all that much to me for a few years now. Pretty much just worked, came home, drank some beers, had some chocolate, and watched tv. Ho ho ho?
Sunday was takoyaki (octopus ball. Octopus and cheese baked inside of some kind of batter in the shape of a ball) party time! :D
From left to right: Mika (the hostess. Well, her and her parents, but she's the one that invited me), Mika's friend (I really need to get better at remembering names. It's always been a weak point of mine), Tor (He's a Dane!), Yuko (the same one that had the Nabe party), and Yuri again. Pretty sure you know who the other dude is. Maybe. If not, you just hurt my feelings and now I'm crying. Jerk. This was actually towards the end of the meal, as evidenced by that massive amount of candy and sweets on the table.
The whole thing was really nice and well put together. First of all, Mika's family's house was freaking gorgeous. It was an older, Japanese-style home. The inside was full of amazing artwork and decorations, and the back yard was a beautiful garden with stone lanterns and everything. Mika's dad also showed us how the snow-viewing screens worked (two-part paper and wood screens that covered the back sliding glass door. You can pull the bottom part up to look at the snow.) The meal started with WAY more than just takoyaki. There was salad, noodles, hotdogyaki (my own word. It's like takoyaki, only with hotdog inside instead), rice covered with the fried tofu I mentioned earlier (not as bad when it's not soggy, but still not very good), and a lot of drinks. Seriously, hellsa drinks. In addition to the soda, grape fruit, and green tea we brought, they had coffee, koucha (black tea), and warm green tea. Mika's mom was really good at making traditional green tea. In fact, after I mentioned that I liked to try to eat salads without dressing because it's healthier, they all seemed to think I was a health nut and only served me various kinds of tea for the rest of the evening XD
This was their cat. It's 13 freaking years old. I don't think it looks like it. That's Mika's mom holding it up in the first picture, and it's perched on a space heater in the second. That second picture is what it looked like most of the time I was there. The thing was freaking hilarious though. It would jump down from the space heater, walk up to people, and meow then rub against their leg like it wanted some petting. The second someone besides Mika's mom petted it, though, it would meow angrily and run away. Crazy cat >< I mentioned to Mika's mom (oh, by the way, this isn't actually a case of me forgetting names. Mika's parents actually introduced themselves as Mika's "Otousan" and "Okaasan", aka her father and mother. Names are for people who aren't badass old Japanese people) that I liked cats as long as I didn't own them, because taking care of them is a pain. Her response? "You don't have to take care of cats. You just let them do what they want." O.o I'm pretty sure I just got wtfpwned by sage wisdom from an Asian elder. Guess I can cross that one off my "to-do" list...
Last night, my last minute plans were going over to Sarah's place with Seiji and having leftover ham and peas with turkey soup. Yum :D We also watched a crazy Japanese drama about a doctor from the present that got sent back in time to the Edo Period. I'm pretty sure he was sent back by an alien baby. Every commercial break it showed a really far away shot of it floating in a jar, and the dude hallucinated and saw it at one point. I got in the habit of yelling "ALIEN BABY!" every time it was shown. Seiji found this highly amusing. He also really liked this impersonating comedian we saw. He did a really extended performance/song where he impersonated a hundred different people for his 30th year anniversary of being a performer. Sarah and I were very confused by most of it >< Both of them were sick, which was something I did not know before going over... hope I didn't catch it ><
Sarah had these at her place. It might be hard to see, but they have smiley faces. In my imagination, this set also includes a knife, but the knife has a sad face. Poor emo knife, it can cut everything but itself :(
Random stuff time!
1.) This week my head teacher had two bandages on the sides of her face, near her eyes. I asked if she was alright, and she said they were "eulogy scratches" then apologized for being so ugly O.o o.O O.O ...I'm now scared of my head teacher.
2.) Christmas music here is... different. For example they REALLY love the song "Last Christmas" I hear it at least once a day. Hardly the cheery fare from America. I also heard a song made up entirely of pig oinks, and an entirely different song of dog barks... wtf Japan?
3.) I. Love. Engrish.
Wanna know the sad thing? I took this picture inside of our school. This was on one of our whiteboards. The picture is really cool though. Let's all make a wonder Christmas!
Toss away tobacco, toss away JAPAN!!!!
4.) In yet another embarrassing development that I have no idea why I'm sharing with you, I can't figure out the fucking garbage system over here. Everything has to be separated, but not in a way that makes any logical fucking sense. Some burnable things aren't allowed to be put in burnable garbage, and some things that I'm pretty sure aren't supposed to be burned are. If you get it wrong, they don't collect your garbage. Everything also has to be in specific bags, which I didn't realize until recently. It's been five weeks, and I haven't been successful in getting my garbage collected even once. Didn't even know for sure where to leave it until last week... collection again on Thursday... 11th time's the charm? ><
No food challenge this week because of all my other plans. Maybe some extras next week, but I'm not promising anything. Happy Holidays everyone! (Look at me, I'm politically correct!)
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