What a week!

Kari Writes:

*phew* my first (almost) week of living in Japan has been omoshiroi (interesting)!

Thursday we met up with Ellen and Mark (two other ALT's in the area) and enjoyed a wonderful meal at "Joyful".  Joyful is a great restaurant for many reasons - the one I am most grateful for is their menu - every single item has a big ol' picture!  So even if you don't speak a lick of Japanese you can't go tooo wrong when ordering.  They also have amazing shaved ice for dessert:

On Friday we had our first welcome party.  This was hosted by the Board of Education and included notable guests such as the Mayor of Kotoura and the Cattle Baron!  The food started out a bit sketchy aka: mostly raw choices.  But oh my goodness the beef was delicious (and cooked)!  Ian and I both gave little speeches and received a HUGE bouquet of flowers and some handmade ceramic cups.

 The best part of the evening was that we were home by 8:30pm!  Even though it was Friday everyone actually had "school" on Saturday.  Ian's Junior High was celebrating "Diversity Day" even I got to join in on the festivities and watch the students put on a play!  The gist was: boy and girl are in love and want to get married, boy is from a lower class than girl, girl's father objects, her grandfather convinces the father to change his mind, boy and girl get married.

So Saturday night was our SECOND welcome party.  This one was hosted by Akasaki Jr High and the attendants were Ian's fellow teachers at the school.  We went to an Italian restaurant.  Italian?!? Yup, you heard right!  It was a super small place (our group of  2 dozen filled it to capacity) but the decor was decidedly Italian.  Japanese Italian food was quite interesting. The salad came out first . . . and it had little octopus tentacles and other various fish bits on it! The next dish was squids covered in some sort of tomato type sauce. Definitely a twist on traditional Italian there!  We also gave speeches and then did some Q&A which was quite amusing at times.  After dinner we went to KARAOKE!  In Japan you don't do Karaoke in front of a bunch of strangers - you and your friends rent a room and get your own private karaoke machine (you can even bring your own snacks!)

Typical woman - always fall in love

So all in all Saturday was a great time!

Sunday we took a road trip to Yonago (~1 hr away) to check out Aeon (the big mall).

All in all it wasn't terribly different from an American mall. The food court even had McDonalds and Baskin Robbins!  Sunday was mostly a "running errands and shopping" kind of day.

Tooodaay aka Monday was probably the most interesting day of all so far!

We started the day by taking a walking tour of the neighborhood. We walked down to the Sea of Japan (a mere 10 minutes from our home).

These are the Wave Breaks all along the shore

Next we hit up Ian's favorite restaurant in town: Mos Burger. 

Generic MOS Burger storefront

Our specific delicious MOS burgers (and fries!)

While we were inhaling our wonderful burgers (Lettuce, Tomato, Mayo, and Teriyaki sauce) it started to rain. But we didn't let that dampen our spirits.  We were on a mission to drive around the area and find one of Ian's more remote Elementary schools he will be visiting once a week.  So we took a rainy drive through the Tottori country side

Mt. Senjosan!

We came across a pretty sweet looking Shrine right off the side of the road and stopped to check it out:

ooohh cooool

Unfortunately this pit stop ended up causing this:

Apparently the keepers of the Shrine (aka super angry hornets) were not too happy to see us and took it out on poor Ian!  He got stung three times - once in the ear and twice on his shoulder blade.  It clearly wasn't an enjoyable experience!  By the time we got home his whole armpit area was red and swollen PLUS he had welts on his wrists and other various spots that had not been stung.  This was a bit worrying to us so we decided to walk to our local clinic and check out the Japanese health system first-hand.  $15 got Ian a shot to help the swelling plus some sweet bandage action!

He is currently sitting next to me playing Madden 13 and feeling genki (happy/healthy). So not to worry!

See, I told you this week was omoshiroi!