We went to Kyoto last week during Thanksgiving (unfortunately no turkey in Kyoto) with Nick's parents who were in Japan for two weeks. This year I passed on the getting made up like a geisha, but did have a chance to see many girls dressed up. Last year Nick and I went to Kyoto during the Kouyou season (which is Japanese for the turning of the leaves and it was beautiful). So, we promised that we would do the same this year! It's seemed a little colder down in Kyoto as well as the rest of Japan compared with last winter as the leaves are already starting to fall off the trees and there is good amount of snow in the mountains. While in Kyoto we ventured to the different temples and shrines, including the Golden Pavillion (which is definitely the best), Kiyomizudera, the Silver Temple (which actually isn't silver at all) and a really neat one with 1,000 Tori Gates. These gates can be seen in the pictures. There was a hike up a hill that took about 40 minutes to get up, all lined with these redish-orange gates and amazing site to see. We just missed a huge market at one of the temples when we arrived, which was too bad as they had a lot of home made crafts, foods, etc. We commented as they were packing up, that no one uses rubbermaid totes or boxes to pack their stuff up, it's still very traditional with big sheets wrapped around all their goods. There's a picture of it in the slide show. Most nights we stuffed ourselves silly with different Japanese foods. Kyoto's a really nice place and has so many sights to see. Mostly temples, shrines and castles, but we again still didn't get a chance to see all of them...there's just too many. We got to see a just married couple getting a ride around town in a rickshaw as seen in the photos. The best part of Kyoto is how it is a modern city, but they have kept the traditional old areas.

Can't believe it's almost the middle of November!

We are busy busy busy...mostly studying right now for the Japanese Proficiency Test on December 2nd. Nick's parents have arrived and will be here for the next 2 weeks. We'll be heading to Kyoto next week with them, which I'm really looking forward to.

Yesterday I celebrated my 1-year anniversary at the school I teach at. As I just said 'I' celebrated and only I. I can't believe I've stuck it out for an entire year, longest job I've ever had. Thankfully these days are now being filled up with studying Japanese every single period I don't teach, which this past week has been amounting to around 5 hours! Plus the train ride to and from work, although I usually end up falling asleep.

Nick and I are both taking this Japanese Proficiency test which has 4 levels. 1 being the hardest and 4 being the easiest. I have been studying on and off for LEVEL 4 since March last year and was getting pretty confident that I would have no problem passing. Then I found out....

Well Nick singed us up for the tests and he is taking Level 3 (he will have no problem passing, he should be doing 2 but hasn't had time to study), but accidentally on my registration form he put me down for taking level 3 as well! Just found out last week that not only did he do this, but absolutely no changes can be made. I was extremely disappointed as I was really looking forward to kicking butt on the Level 4 and saying sayonara to Japanese (just don't think I'll be studying it much more after Japan...Spanish will be much more useful in the future). But now, while I was completely sure of passing, the magic 8 balls points to undoubtedly so :(

I have decided to take it, but that means I have been studying like crazy and will give it my best. I have 15 days to learn about 200 new kanji ( in addition to remembering the 100 I already know) and learning heaps more vocab...like 800 more words! Yikes. Never mind I am trying to get Nick and my friend Tara is help catch me up to speed on the grammar and verb usage. I've decided this isn't much fun, but gonna put in the time and hope for the best.

I guess in the end, I 'll have to look at it positively either way as I have learned a lot of Japanese while here and heck, I'll be taking the SAME test as Nick who has studied Japanese way longer than I ever have!

Ganbarimasho!

We went to Tokyo Disney Sea last week with Clive and Angel; Chris, Adrianna and their little Sophia. Starting Sophia early to Chris and Adrianna's addition (Disney!) she got to go on a few rides, but always seemed a little more interested in making mom feed her :)

Tokyo Disney Sea is adjacent to Tokyo Disneyland which is in between our house and Tokyo. Last year I ventured with my friend Cristina to Disneyland where all the original rides are, but this time headed to the other park. It was a great day filled where we experience a little bit of Europe on a gondola ride, New York and the Tower of Terror, the wild west and Indiana Jones, Ali Baba (It's a small ride like 'It's a small world') and the Middle East, etc. Every night they do a big water and fireworks show which was quite spectacular considering they do it every night!

We ordered it on Amazon Japan and two days later it was on our doorstep! Our small camera that we used to take around with us has been slowly dying so we decided to splurge, yes before Christmas and get ourselves a new one...an extremely practical one!

This camera is the Olympus 790SW and is Shockproof (you can drop it), Waterproof ( you can bring it 10ft under the water!), Freezeproof (-10 degrees Celsius), Sandproof...you name this is one heck of a camera. While we still have our big Fuji camera that we lug around for the great shots, we'll now have one to take some great photos while out on the ski slopes, in the ocean, out on our bikes! Pretty exciting, just gotta learn how to use all the fun features now!

This year I was at an Elementary school teaching English for Halloween which was fun for all the kids as they laughed at me dressed up as a witch. Halloween is growing in Japan, but definitely nothing like the US. It was fun for the kids to get dressed up in costumes and I got a bunch of candy and chocolate to hand out to the little trick or treaters. I was there the day before and got a good measure of who wanted candy and who wanted chocolate. So I went to Costco and got a huge bad of Dum Dum suckers and then a couple bags of chocolates as it looked like it would be half and half. Well Halloween came around and when the kids came to trick or treat, they all wanted candy (dum dums), no one wanted the chocolate. Something was seriously wrong with these kids! Needless to say, I ran out of the suckers as I didn't bring enough, oh well...one day they will appreciate chocolate more ( the much more expensive of the two) :)

Nick and I pulled off the Sushi Costumes this year! Nick going as a delicous Tomago (egg) sushi and I as an Ebi (shrimp) sushi. And again we managed to buy our costumes all at the 100 yen store as well as win Clive and Angel's little costume contest! We originally bought these clear suit bags and were going to stuff ourselves silly with polyester that we got from the store, but Nick's allergies started to act up and decided that a pillow for the sushi was going to be much easier and avoid some sneezing!

At the party sushi (us), a Baker and his 'Bun in the Oven', Kids and their teddy bear, a Magic 8 Ball, Fall, a doctor, a devil, an 80's rocked out in Halloween style and "Julie" could all be seen roaming throughout the nite.

Check out the slideshow below and remember to look at FLICKR for all of our photos (although we still haven't gotten around to uploading them all)

On a very clear day, like a day after a typhoon has washed and blown all the clouds and pollution away, we can see Mt Fuji from across the bay. Here is a pic at sunset.


On the same day, we ventured into Shinjuku, the "center" of Tokyo. There is a free viewing platform and we took the following photo of Fuji again.


And other random city photos

This is not an isolated incident as I have seen around 10 separate, mainly old housewives, people doing this. So Japan recycles, Japan recycles aluminium cans. They put the cans out once a week and every morning before pick up, the old housewives squat beside the recycling bin and proceed to take off the bottle tops AND pull off the ring tab, the aluminium ring tab off the aluminium can... Do they just have nothing to do or are they so uptight that must take that frickin ring tab off??

...and that's my unravel of the Japanese society for today.

After a week of avoiding answering my phone to which a particular number was showing up without leaving a message (I was sure it was the old contract company which I was working through), they finally left a message and in English! It was the Police! Of course, I wasn't in trouble, but they had been trying to call me all this time to tell me that they found my bike!

Back in the beginning of June when Jackie and her friend Julia came to visit, I accidentally left my key in the lock (the first time) and that night it was stolen. We went to the Police Station and filed a report and really thought they would never find it again. At the police station Nick did most of the translating, but they really wanted me to have a Japanese 'Honko' or name stamp. This is the official signature of Japanese people. They don't sign their names on anything, they all have a stamp in which to make documents official. Since I didn't have one (actually I do at school it's says 'Jen' in katakana, which they made me get) they made me sign my name about 6 times on one sheet of paper and then stamp my left finger on the paper next to each place I signed. They do go overboard sometimes, seriously who needs six signatures and fingerprints on one A4 size piece of paper.

Anywho..we left it at that and thought on a few occasions that I saw my bike around town, but it never was until now. I headed to the police station and they were very helpful, the guy even spoke English pretty well. They had me of course go through more paperwork. After another set of signatures and fingerprints, I finally got my bike! It's not in the best shape, but with a little oil it is as good as new, I think. I have been riding Nick's old bike which has a pretty wobbly wheel and probably not the safest bike. For the record, we now have two sets of bikes. Bikes for riding far and 'going on bike rides' which are our new mountain bikes and then our shopping bikes with the baskets on the front.

It was funny because when I got home the English speaking police officer called again and guess what!? They needed my fingerprint, no joke, one more time on the page. Again, I had stamped my finger 6 different times one the first report, 6 different times on this latest report and they really ....really needed one more. So they sent out an officer to our apartment to have me stamp one and final time!

Now I stamped it in the correct place and the officer reached out his hand at the time, here's me thinking that he was going to shake my hand, showing a little cross cultural gesture (Japanese people don't shake hands!)So I reached out with my hand to shake his and actually did so...when he suddenly jerked away and grabbed the tissue he had given me to wipe off my finger and was holding in my hand. He just wanted the tissue! He wasn't going to shake my hand!

I find this extremely amusing as this is about the 3rd time I have been in the presence of Japanese people (older people) where I have gone to shake their hands because it seems as if they have put their hand out to do just that, only to moments later be extremely embarrassed because they never had such intentions. Usually it has been a gesture to sit down or to motion to something. And each time I do this I laugh and remind myself that Japanese people don't shake hands, no matter how much I want them to. :)

I'll have to put up a picture of the before and after pictures of my bike a little later.

The leaves are starting to change color (hopefully not too quickly), there's a cool wind in the air, the days have been gorgeous and sunsets like these...

Our good friends Chris and Adrianna had a baby girl, Sofia, in July this year. Being good parents, they only teach Sofia the good things in life; only educational toys and DVDs, only positive music and language around her and only actions befitting of a lady. Just look at her hands, they are trying to communicate something with us...

"Bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride my bike
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride it where I like"
Queen ~ Bicycle Race

Two attempts later, we finally rode our bikes all the way from little Okubo to the massive Dutch windmill, some 2.5 hours each way alongside a small river. The ride was fairly tough but made easier by some good weather and lack of people making a nuisance of themselves along the track by the river. Our legs were sore at the beginning of the day as we both had busy weeks and while riding they were ok but as soon as we got off our bikes for a break, we were walking like little Japanese grandparents with bent backs from planting rice.
The windmill at the end of the ride was cool, it was big and circulating clockwise. Why would you want to know that? I don't know. The funny thing with Japan is that when Japanese people get interested in something, they get obsessed by it. And that is exactly what has happened here. I think the lady selling sweets was wearing wooden clogs. Also, we saw these guys with fishing boats, not row boats suiting the very narrow and shallow river, a high tech boat that people use in fishing competitions, the ones with a seat in the middle and the high tech fish finding radars. They sit on them, looking at the water intently, waiting for the bite... of nothing.
Up and back in about 6 hours including lunch. It was a great run. But at the end of the day, sure enough as the sun has set today, pain has set in as it hurts to walk, it hurts to use our muscles.