Kari Writes:
Hello all and Merry Christmas!
The biggest news since my last blog is that I have a job now! I work for an English conversation school. It's
very part time but it gets me out of the house about once a week. There are 9 classes in 3 different cities that I visit once every two months. The fun part is that all the classes are close enough to their respective train stations that I get to hop on a (heated) train, read my kindle, and then go hang out with some kids. The students range from 5 - 13 years old. Basically I ask them questions, let them ask me questions, and then we play some English games.
Around Thanksgiving Ian had a long weekend so we took a mini vacation to Kurayoshi (30 mins away).
We had our first KFC experience:
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| They had French Fries. Weird! |
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| Ian met the Christmas Colonel |
The thing about KFC at Christmas time is that everyone (and I mean
everyone) eats chicken for Christmas. The kids are shocked when they learn that Americans
don't. So KFC offers special Christmas meals that you can special order and they are super busy for the Holiday season. How's that for a great marketing strategy?!?
The other Christmas "must have" in Japan is a Christmas Cake. We got to make our own with the international group. Pretty fun even though our cake was a mess!
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| So far so good - our middle fruit layer was superb |
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| The finished product . . . a bit droopy |
The next week we got invited to a 'rock concert'. The front-man of the band is a teacher at a nearby school so we and a few other ALTs showed up to support him. They played some great 1960's American songs and some popular Japanese tunes. We got the whole crowd up and dancing not once but twice! The band was super stoked about that!
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| Average age - probably around 50! |
Ian and I took a trip to the big mall in Yonago to buy Christmas gifts and we finally ate at McDonald's! I had the teriyaki burger and Ian got a Big Mac. We shared fries and chicken nuggets. Ian's verdict was that it wasn't as good as Mos Burger. But he is a die hard Mos fan!
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| Look at that spread! |
On our way back into town we remembered that there is a huge lights display behind our neighborhood grocery store. Now in America this isn't too uncommon but here? It was very special! Check it out:
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| a little slice of home - there was even snow on the ground! |
Japan celebrates Christmas on the 24th so all the shops were closed. We had a nice day relaxing and listening to Christmas music. For actual Christmas we went out to our little mall and bought a tiny Christmas tree! I also had been wanting to take a picture of the Christmas decorations they had up. Good thing we went when we did because by the time we finished shopping they had taken them down! That's right! On Christmas day the decorations were taken down!
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| the last known picture of the Christmas arches! |
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| Our bitty Christmas tree. With an Eagle on top! |
In addition to the above mentioned activities we've also been to no less than 3 "end of the year" parties! So we've stayed plenty busy during this holiday season!
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| We took a trip to the sea on Christmas day! |
We are looking forward to all that 2013 holds for us!! And you can look forward to more blogs :)
-Kari
