Mm..shiitake mushroom...good....

I picked em myself!

sado4

sado3

sado2

sado1

Ahhh blogging in Japanese!!

So I just opened up the blogger page to add a new post and was surprised to be reading everything in Japanese...well, okay, so I wasn`t really reading the Japanese. It`s still a concentrated effort to read katakana, and kanji looks like an alien language to me.

I`ve been trying hard to post some pics from the last weekend at Sado for the Peter Pan Rehersal. As I might have mentioned before I`ve left the pirates and become a lost child, which is gonna be fun...still gotta find a school girl skirt...but I did find those great red and black striped leg warmers! I also bought some Converse high top boot Chuck Taylors this weekend in another great shopping expedition with Victoria. We just spent the weekend gathering up Christmas presents and necessary stuff like groceries and watched a really stupid funny movie called `Sorority Boys`....and yes it really is stupid. Then we ended up talking so late into the night that it was silly to try to drive home so I just stayed on her extra futon.

I also decided to rearrange all my furniture maybe Friday night? I got rid of my bed and put the mattress on the floor and I like it alot better! I got a little tiny Christmas tree at the Hyaku en store and some lights and some shiny paper to make origami cranes for the tree. It`s beginning to look alot like Christmas..... Yeah yeah, one holiday at a time...In Japan they celebrate a labor Thanksgiving...obiously not about pilgrims and indians and turkey like America...but still a day off, and 2 days earlier than in America. So a group of us are planning a little Thanksgiving party on Tuesday night over at Okada sensei`s apato. It should be fun. I haven`t gotten my package in the mail with pecans so the pie is probably out (though I did find Karo syrup at Ichiko grocery in Joetsu)....so I`ll be doing spice tea instead....hope I remember the recipe right. I could make bread,,but I already have a ton of things going for Tuesday.

So I`m getting really excited about the upcoming holidays and Phil will be coming soon...Yay! He`s taking planes the long way around the world......I went from Atlanta to Detroit and flew over the US to get to Japan....He`s flying over all of Europe and landing in Germany to get to Japan. I feel like you really know a man is worth his weight in gold if he`s willing to fly across the world just to visit with you. Well, I`m impressed.

So I`ve received that lovely little sheet of paper that says Oshima would like for me to recontract for the next year. The decision will not be an easy one. The due date is in February so I can mull it over for a bit longer. I know I can enjoy myself in either place...but it`s so hard to say barely 1/3 way into the stay here, how I`ll feel about being here after the end of 1 year! Sometimes time flies...but then it feels like I`ve been here forever.

This weekend I`ll go north again for more play rehersal and floor camping again. Yuki-san took pictures at Sado island and put up a bunch of us for the night there, so the pictures are at his house from the play. I also got some good ones on my 35mm camera if I can get em scanned in soon. I hope we do another massage circle this weekend...my fav!

me and tori

sado breakfast

Kouyou yama

Oshima pool

Kouyou

Just to let you know, I did try to post more recently than this, but for some reason the page didn't post and I lost everything I had typed and got a bit discouraged.

So now it is Autumn in Niigata....or Aki, as they call it here....the leaves are yellow and orange and red and just suteki here in the mountains!I taught my final Halloween lesson on Monday at Yasazuka, and everyone had fun, but I was kind of tired of halloween by that point.

Let's see things that I probably didn't get posted since last...Halloween night, actually Saturday, was spent at an open mic night Halloween party in Joetsu. Some of it was awesome and some of it was...well, it encouraged me to get up on stage at the next one and pull out my fiddle. The next one is in December. I've been getting along well with the new English teacher who is my neighbor, Shiga-sensei. We are the same age as me, and the same height, and yesterday we even both wore similear clothes...khaki pants and dark sweaters. We claimed we were twins. For the 1st grade Junior High students we made cookies together and cooked spaghetti for dinner. It's been pretty fun, and I have alot more input and work to do now that she's at school, but that is so much less boring than before so I'm happy. I worry sometimes because I tend to try to be constructive at home playing the fiddle, using the sewing machine, cooking stuff, cleaning...and the walls are real thin...I try to plan for when she's not there though....but either way at least we're still young and both tend to stay up a bit later.

This past weekend I was just too worn out and working on a cold to go all the way to Niigata for Peter Pan practice, so I stayed home. I did get together with Victoria though and we went to Mr. Books to rent some movies. We watched Big Fish one day, and then Cold Mountain, which made us both cry and me incredibly homesick. This month is a bad one for homesickness. Oshima has all the makings of NC and Kentucky put together in landscape, maybe even in spirit too, but it's still Japan and they don't have Jack O Lanterns, and they don't have Thanksgiving dinner, or Christmas Holidays. Now don't get me wrong, they have Santa and trees and xmas cards at Jusco department store, and they know some about Christmas (the christian roots, I'm not sure everyone knows), but it's not a national holiday like back home...but New Year's is. It does seem like there are alot of 1 day holidays scattered throughout the year though which is a nice relief sometimes.

As for events, it seems the earthquakes aren't quite over yet. We had another good one on monday, and a little tremor last night. They aren't really that intereresting anymore, just kind of annoying.

I'm at the Elementary today and I'm about to go to my first English conversation club. There are only 4 members so it should be easy to do all sorts of stuff. Tomorow I have kindergarten, and hopefully I won't get beat up again.. geez those kids are rough...but it's hard to explain that they can't do that when you don't speak the same language. Though tomorow I'm going to try wearing a big apron like the other teachers so there will be no more attempts to look at my underwear (of course underwear is just sooo funny at this age).

I took another look at Stephen's web page, one of my Laurens homeboys....he has been busy and up to really cool reenactment stuff..check it out: banjochicken.blogspot.com

Bonsai 2.

bonsai maple