Random Happenings

Today I was in a Japanese home-ec class. There were twenty five 15 year old girls holding cucumbers in one hand and giant kitchen knives in the other.

Dirty Manga

A few weeks ago, Andy found these two lovely examples of Japanese comic book animation, or "Manga", in the stairwell outside our apartment building...


We think some teenage boys must have stashed them there. It appears that the young lady on the right is eating a hot dog on a stick...

Merry's Bar

We were walking home from a friend's house last Friday and decide to stop off somewhere downtown for a drink. Of course when we saw a sign that read "Merry's Bar" we couldn't resist! We ended up have a grand old time with some locals and drinking and eating a bit more than we'd planned.



Our hostesses, Mi-chan and Kumi-san



Andy's getting some complimentary Nihon-shu (Japanese sake)



It's polite to keep drinking glasses filled throughout the evening, so this is the ultimate in etiquette --- a brimming sake glass with a catch-all box for overflow




Kanpai!!!

And on the 12th of September, God said, "Let them have wheels!"

We have added a new member to our little family here in Japan! We call him "Shorty". Shorty is a Mitsubishi Pajero Junior, and we love him very much.

This past Saturday, we woke up early and hopped on a train to Aomori City, about 2 hours away. Aomori City is slightly larger than our little town of Hachinohe (approx. pop. of 350,000 versus our 250,000), and it has a more metropolitan feel to it. It has become a stopover point for people traveling to Hokkaido, as it is a port city at northern tip of Honshu, and there are ferries and bullet trains that depart for Hokkaido daily.

We had scheduled to meet up with another JET who recently moved to Aomori City from a more remote village and discovered she didn't really need the car she had purchased only months ago (In fact, she never even got her license and hadn't really even driven it). It's a 1992 Mitsubishi Pajero Junior (two door) - in the States they call it a Montero. It runs on diesel and sounds like an 18-wheeler when it idles. Quirks aside, it's a great little car and it should (hopefully) get us to the mountains for some snowboarding this winter! It even came with racks!

Before picking up the car, we fueled up (our bodies) with some delicious Vietnamese food from a little restaurant downtown called Saigon. We got there just as they were opening and had the first entrees of the day. Andy got yellow curry and I chose the green.







Andy cemented his status as a member of the Clean Plate Club...



When we finally hit the road back to Hachinohe, I was a ball of nerves. Andy repeated the mantra, "Stay to the left, stay to the left," at every turn. I constantly adjusted the wipers in lieu of putting on my turn signal. It's amazing how strong the physical memory of driving a car can be. Now try turning that memory around 180 degrees in your brain while you're in a foreign country, you're slightly hung over, and it's raining.

The drive back was slow but scenic.





Amazingly, we made it home in one piece.

Hey y'all,

I started writing stuff for this blog a month ago, when I had newly arrived in Japan. Sadly, I'm just now getting around to posting it, so you'll have to scroll down to the bottom, start from the beginning and read up! Anyway, I was quite long-winded for the first few entries, but I plan to restrain myself going forward. Only the important stuff, I promise! And there will be photos. And The Mr. will weigh in. Enjoy!