My Birthday, My Lesson

Lesson Number One
- Completing goals based on vanity is really hard, it's easier just to be accepting.

Lesson Number Two
- Drinking vitamins, sleeping at 10, and going for a power walk at 6am should not wait until you NEED it.

Lesson Number Three
- Making excuses is a habit I need to break COLD TURKEY.

Lesson Number Four
- Depending on people to support my happiness- OK
- Depending on people to make my happiness- Not OK

Lesson Number Five
- Simple willpower can only keep me motivated for a month.

Lesson Number Six
- Friends, even short-term friends are important.

Lesson Number Seven
- Money can be made and memories should not be sacrificed because of it.

Lesson Number Eight
- I do the best I am capable of everyday.

Lesson Number Nine
- Doing things on my own makes me feel a lot better than people doing it for me.

Lesson Number Ten
- By next year, I want to stop making excuses, find what I really want to do, and do it.

The Kunino's

Our Tokyo family came to visit us in Tohoku and we had a great time showing them around, enjoying onsen, eating delicious food, and loving the cool June breeze.





Thank you for coming Fujinami's!!

Sports Festival!

3 days of no study and all play.

Around this beautiful time in June, students finish their vigerous exams and get to rest their brains with an all school Sports Competition. Softball, Badminton, Volleyball, Basketball, Dodgeball, Handball, and soccer are the games of choice. Being a teacher in Ichiko the number of female teachers to make up the female teacher team is quite slim. But this year, we managed to win at Badminton and Softball and win second in Soccer. I was goalie. I hate running. I had so much fun since the students would all be so happy to talk to me. I was having conversations with students the whole time. I felt the love. English, Japanese, they didn't care what language, but they were so willing to take their time to talk with me and I really enjoyed their company since they didn't have the reigns of education tugging on them. Last year, I only got to see one day. I'm so glad I got to experience beginning to the end. My body aches from so much fun.

My First Last Day

Yesterday I got a glimpse of what life will feel like in a couple of weeks. Yesterday and the friday before it, I made my way to another school, Matsuzono Yogo, a school that I visit for about two days while Ichiko has tests. So guess I've been to this school a total of 16 times in two years. But each time I go, I always leave with good memories. The initial smell of the school reminds me of tatami in the winter. The staff room always welcomes me with bright OHAYO GOZAIMASU. The kids in the first lesson are always incredibly shy, but by the end of the day, they are peeking into the staff room to get a HELLO from me. They like me. They want to talk to me. It's a very obvious affection which is what makes me love this school. After leaving Matsuzono Yogo, knowing that I wouldn't come back, it really bummed out my evening. If a school that I have only been to 16 times makes me so depressed, I'm worried about Mo Gakko and Ichiko where I've invested so much more time and effort. It's going to be a depressing three weeks.

Ramen Journal

A collection of delicious ramen over the past 2 years. Please hold a beer in your hand as you look at these pictures. Beer always tastes better with ramen.

My favorite...Local Morioka Spicy Miso ramen

Also from the same restaurant, Genkotsu(think butter-like meat) Shoyu ramen

Sapporo Miso Ramen

In Aomori, Takko Town's Garlic Ramen

Tokyo's Shoyu Ramen

Yamagata Cold Ramen

Kyoto Style Ramen

Fukuoka Tonkotsu Ramen

Nagasaki Champon Ramen

Okinawa Soba



And now, finish the beer!

Beer Party!

So, Ron and I promised ourselves that we wouldn't drink until after the Japanese test...but there are always exceptions to the rules.

Yesterday we met with my co worker, her husband, and his parents for a beer party. We have a local brewery in our city and once a month they hold a beer party in a local restaurant. 4000 yen will get you 6 courses of delicious food and at least 4 types of local and imported beers. We had our first encounter two months ago and we were looking forward to going again. So we spent the evening drinking with this new family and Ron and I were so tickled by all the cuteness of love that surrounded us. My coworker and her husband and his parents regained my faith in affection in Japan. The way they looked at each other and the soft touches I noticed the father giving his wife was so adorable, my cheeks hurt from all the smiling. They raved all night about their hometown an hour away from Morioka, which is renown for their onsen, so we made a date with all of them to have a last "onsen hurrah" the day before we leave.

I wish you could taste these pictures!

My Favorite Shirt

It's so funny how sad it is. Or it's so sad how funny it is.

English Club Cooking

So after feeling huge guilt for not being an active part of English Club last year, I decided to go full force this year. Last year, they never really asked me to set anything up for them and I didn't want to intrude if they had study time. But I did make an awesome Halloween party and nade it to their end-of-the-year banquet, so I got some points there. This year, I get one day a week to do conversation practice with them. The past couple of times have been fun as we tried to get some short conversation out of this ridiculously shy group of girls.

The most fun though, has been the two cooking classes we had, the most recent being yesterday. Last month we made "American style" pancakes, which just meant making pancakes but with chocolate chips, sprinkles, and nuts in them. These girls love sweet food and gobbled it up. Then yesterday I decided to make Tacos, something these students will hardly get a chance to eat. So, I went to our local foreign food market and got a really expensive taco making set. Expensive because of the fact that imported prices are crazy up here. But they got to eat avocado flavored chips for a snack and each of them had a taco-making job and at the end, we made an assembly line of taco making. I could see the happiness in their faces. They were quite shocked with the meat oil dripping from the taco and freaked out when it got all over their hands. I just told them that "eating tacos is very messy." It was also really funny to see them contemplate how to eat the tacos since there isn't much Japanese food that required the tilting of the head. I had a great time. I gave them the recipe in English and sent them off as I heard "oishii katta" and "onaka ga ippai" exit through the doors.

Our Old Man

Ron wrote about this on his own blog, but I thought that I would write the translated version. About a month ago we went to the local bath house since our bath tub decided to turn off the hot water...again. So as I was showering up on the girls side, I heard the voice of Ron on the other side, not surprisingly talking to a Japanese man. Ron always comments about hating the foreigner attention when he is naked. So as Ron and I meet outside, he tells me that this man wants to take us out to sushi. He is a man over 70, whose wife is in the hospital and he as no children. So we decided to go on an adventure and hang out with this old man. We went with him to the sushi place and he destroyed us with the drinking. Beer and sochu were coming at every direction while plates of sashimi, katsu, and tempura were also being forced down our throats. We could barely walk back home, but we figured that our company made this man very happy. End of the story...so we thought.

About a week ago, Ron and I went to our donut shop to try and get some quality studying since we had been recently lagging. A phone call comes and it is our old man. He stops by the donut store and begins to talk with us (good Japanese practice?) When we get the chance to leave he insists of buying us some donuts, which we tried so hard to politely pass on. Finally when we tell him, "OK, 1 ko" He says "no no no 5 ko." We tell him that 5 will make us fat and he says "Don't worry, we will also buy fruit." So after buying us 5 donuts, we guiltily follow him to the grocery store where he buys us tangerines, cherries, and watermelon. I'm sure he would have bought us more if we weren't whining so much. Ron and I were feeling really bad about this until at the check out stand our old man goes to the check out lady and says,

"Do you see them? They are foreigners. They are my friends."

And the biggest smile was on his face. So I guess buying our company makes him feel good and he's not a bad guy. We have a tonkatsu date with him on Friday. Luckily, since that drinking night we've decided to give up drinking for the test. Hopefully, he takes our polite rejection for the real thing. NO MORE SOCHU!

Driving and Musicals

In our 48 hour weekend, we drove for 18 hours, and slept for 11 hours, which equals to 19 hours of being in Tokyo. Not a very long luxurious weekend, but filled with memories. We got a ride from a fellow coworker of mine who turned into our Chinese tutor. He drove us to Tokyo so he could also see his daughter who is a new university student. The first day was filled with driving, arriving in Yokohama, eating Chinese food to our heart's content, and making our way to Tokyo to watch Wicked...in Japanese. It was wonderful. The singing was amazing and since I saw it before in English, I could understand almost everything and it made it as breathtaking as the first time I saw it. Ron and I really enjoyed it.





The next day, we went around Akihabara on the mission of finding a DVD player so we could watch Japanese movies on our computer, no such luck, but we did manage to find some other nice things before we made our way to Yokohama once again. This time it was to watch our friend Kunino perform in Yokohama's 150th anniversary of their harbor being built. It was a surprisingly good performance. It was really interesting to see something historical from another culture. There was another part where they played out the bombings during World War II and it was really frightening to see what they went through. Very eye opening. Well, after the performance and the wonderful singing of Kunino's choir, we met our friend and made 8 more hours of travel until we came back to Morioka. I am so happy that we were able to make this journey, but the next time, we will definately use the Shinkansen.