Four more days zip by
It's hard to believe that four more days have passed. The time is going by so quickly.
When we have spare moments, Bob grabs a Japanese text book and studies some more Japanese. He is happy that this book uses a lot of vocabulary that he already recognizes. I think he knows most of the first 46 words that Japanese students learn in the first grade. When he studies the grammar he is able to get clarification from our daughter. If I have spare time, I either read or play World of Warcraft (level 17 now).
Thursday was Moriyama day. Since we have to walk everywhere we go, we try to get an early start to wherever. We decided to go to the Italian restaurant called Olive Kitchen which is very good and hugely popular. Our best chance to get seated without a reservation was to be there when they opened at 11. At shortly after 10 we headed out the door. We arrived about 10 minutes before 11 and waited on the benches outside the front door. We could hear them ending their morning meeting with what sounded like a peppy cheer. It was cool. I wonder what it would be like if we began each day of work in a meeting where we encourage each other to have a great day and to do well. Bob and I had pasta while spacealien_vamp had pizza. It all came with a salad/side dish and beverage bar with lots of great options. Unfortunately, later we were too full to order desserts, though they really looked good.
Then we walked on over to the school campus where spacealien_vamp works. She gave us a great tour of the beautiful campus. We happened to arrive at approximately the same time as the Adrian delegation was due to be there for their "sister-city" event, so the vice principal invited us to attend a meeting with them. There we met a Japanese former exchange teacher who had lived in Adrian for three years, and we had a lovely conversation with him about his memories and how things had changed since then.
Then we ran some errands stopping at the post office and then city hall to finish some visa work. While we were there the Adrian delegation arrived to visit the city hall, too. We finished up with some shopping and then went back home. It sounds as if we do a lot of shopping, but here people shop daily for things like milk and other food. The refrigerator is quite small, so you can't store much. We tend to need milk, bananas, bread, and juice on a fairly regular basis. The largest loaf of bread we can buy has 10 slices of bread in it. That's only five sandwiches, and the three of us can go through it pretty quickly.
Friday was cooking day. We started early while it was still cool. First we made plum ketchup. While it was in the stage simmering off the extra liquid, we began our second project, the biwa tarts. For lunch we made some fried potatoes so we could try out the ketchup. It was quite good. We ate half the tarts while they were still warm. We'll probably finish them off tonight. They were so yummy! For supper, spacealien_vamp made us her invention, fried onion-camembert sandwiches. Delicious!
Saturday we left early for Shigaraki by train. It required several transfers, including going to a different train line. Unfortunately there had been an accident causing our first train to be delayed. It means we didn't make our next connection, so we had a one and a half hour wait. It was still a pleasant trip up a mountain. We went close to the Miho Museum which we had visited a couple of years ago. Shigaraki is a town known for its pottery and the tanuki (racoon dog). So there are tanuki pottery statues to be sold everywhere, in any imaginable size. There is also a lot of other beautiful pottery for sale. Everywhere we went we could see that people were preparing for a festival, setting up stands and tables and tents, etc. We were getting hungry but couldn't seem to find a restaurant that had vegetarian choices, so we ended up going into a Heiwado department store and buying some selections from their deli. They had some tables and chairs set up for us to eat, so we were just fine. We tried some of their pastries, too--one I loved had purple sweet potato in something like a donut hole. Yum!!!
We walked back to the train station and returned to Moriyama just in time to see them almost ready to begin their city festival. We went home and dropped off our purchases and went back to the festival site. There were a lot of people there, many wearing traditional yukata--lots of children. There were stands all along both sides of the street, many selling food and other things. Every little while there would be musicians performing, as big as a band, some duos, and even some singing and playing an instrument on their own. One guy was playing an Australian didgeridoo. They even had a two-hump camel upon which children could ride.
We tried some mango mousse, some mango soy pudding, and some churros. Most of the food contained either meat or seafood, so we couldn't taste it. There were lots of different kinds of okonomiyaki, like Korean style and others. But they all had meat already mixed in the ingredients so we couldn't request specific ingredients. While walking around the festival we saw members of the Adrian delegation with their host families again.
Today, Sunday, spacealien_vamp played in a five and a half hour "raid" with nine other World of Warcraft players. I watched, fascinated with her quick reflexes and the amazing teamwork of these ten players to accomplish their goal of overcoming all of the beasts trying to "kill" their characters. Each person had a particular function, and the whole party depended on each one coming through. They had to watch out for each other, helping as much as possible. It was definitely a case of "we are all in this together." They were successful at the end.
While she was playing, Bob took turns cleaning out parts of the house, doing laundry ( I helped with the laundry), studying Japanese, and studying "Vedic Math." Vedic math is something spacealien_vamp introduced us to. It is hugely popular in Japan where it is called "India Style Math." I want to practice it some more. We found some websites with some tutorials on it. I might be able to use it this year in my teaching. Bob got quite good at it right away. He naturally sees patterns in things, so this was right up his alley. This kind of math helps you do mental arithmetic quickly, or other arithmetic a bit faster than the way we were taught.
Then we went to the post office and came home by way of the supermarket again for more milk.
When we have spare moments, Bob grabs a Japanese text book and studies some more Japanese. He is happy that this book uses a lot of vocabulary that he already recognizes. I think he knows most of the first 46 words that Japanese students learn in the first grade. When he studies the grammar he is able to get clarification from our daughter. If I have spare time, I either read or play World of Warcraft (level 17 now).
Thursday was Moriyama day. Since we have to walk everywhere we go, we try to get an early start to wherever. We decided to go to the Italian restaurant called Olive Kitchen which is very good and hugely popular. Our best chance to get seated without a reservation was to be there when they opened at 11. At shortly after 10 we headed out the door. We arrived about 10 minutes before 11 and waited on the benches outside the front door. We could hear them ending their morning meeting with what sounded like a peppy cheer. It was cool. I wonder what it would be like if we began each day of work in a meeting where we encourage each other to have a great day and to do well. Bob and I had pasta while spacealien_vamp had pizza. It all came with a salad/side dish and beverage bar with lots of great options. Unfortunately, later we were too full to order desserts, though they really looked good.
Then we walked on over to the school campus where spacealien_vamp works. She gave us a great tour of the beautiful campus. We happened to arrive at approximately the same time as the Adrian delegation was due to be there for their "sister-city" event, so the vice principal invited us to attend a meeting with them. There we met a Japanese former exchange teacher who had lived in Adrian for three years, and we had a lovely conversation with him about his memories and how things had changed since then.
Then we ran some errands stopping at the post office and then city hall to finish some visa work. While we were there the Adrian delegation arrived to visit the city hall, too. We finished up with some shopping and then went back home. It sounds as if we do a lot of shopping, but here people shop daily for things like milk and other food. The refrigerator is quite small, so you can't store much. We tend to need milk, bananas, bread, and juice on a fairly regular basis. The largest loaf of bread we can buy has 10 slices of bread in it. That's only five sandwiches, and the three of us can go through it pretty quickly.
Friday was cooking day. We started early while it was still cool. First we made plum ketchup. While it was in the stage simmering off the extra liquid, we began our second project, the biwa tarts. For lunch we made some fried potatoes so we could try out the ketchup. It was quite good. We ate half the tarts while they were still warm. We'll probably finish them off tonight. They were so yummy! For supper, spacealien_vamp made us her invention, fried onion-camembert sandwiches. Delicious!
Saturday we left early for Shigaraki by train. It required several transfers, including going to a different train line. Unfortunately there had been an accident causing our first train to be delayed. It means we didn't make our next connection, so we had a one and a half hour wait. It was still a pleasant trip up a mountain. We went close to the Miho Museum which we had visited a couple of years ago. Shigaraki is a town known for its pottery and the tanuki (racoon dog). So there are tanuki pottery statues to be sold everywhere, in any imaginable size. There is also a lot of other beautiful pottery for sale. Everywhere we went we could see that people were preparing for a festival, setting up stands and tables and tents, etc. We were getting hungry but couldn't seem to find a restaurant that had vegetarian choices, so we ended up going into a Heiwado department store and buying some selections from their deli. They had some tables and chairs set up for us to eat, so we were just fine. We tried some of their pastries, too--one I loved had purple sweet potato in something like a donut hole. Yum!!!
We walked back to the train station and returned to Moriyama just in time to see them almost ready to begin their city festival. We went home and dropped off our purchases and went back to the festival site. There were a lot of people there, many wearing traditional yukata--lots of children. There were stands all along both sides of the street, many selling food and other things. Every little while there would be musicians performing, as big as a band, some duos, and even some singing and playing an instrument on their own. One guy was playing an Australian didgeridoo. They even had a two-hump camel upon which children could ride.
We tried some mango mousse, some mango soy pudding, and some churros. Most of the food contained either meat or seafood, so we couldn't taste it. There were lots of different kinds of okonomiyaki, like Korean style and others. But they all had meat already mixed in the ingredients so we couldn't request specific ingredients. While walking around the festival we saw members of the Adrian delegation with their host families again.
Today, Sunday, spacealien_vamp played in a five and a half hour "raid" with nine other World of Warcraft players. I watched, fascinated with her quick reflexes and the amazing teamwork of these ten players to accomplish their goal of overcoming all of the beasts trying to "kill" their characters. Each person had a particular function, and the whole party depended on each one coming through. They had to watch out for each other, helping as much as possible. It was definitely a case of "we are all in this together." They were successful at the end.
While she was playing, Bob took turns cleaning out parts of the house, doing laundry ( I helped with the laundry), studying Japanese, and studying "Vedic Math." Vedic math is something spacealien_vamp introduced us to. It is hugely popular in Japan where it is called "India Style Math." I want to practice it some more. We found some websites with some tutorials on it. I might be able to use it this year in my teaching. Bob got quite good at it right away. He naturally sees patterns in things, so this was right up his alley. This kind of math helps you do mental arithmetic quickly, or other arithmetic a bit faster than the way we were taught.
Then we went to the post office and came home by way of the supermarket again for more milk.