And now the friends are gone...

So Sherbie, Kirk, Kate, and Keip went home to Minnesota last Saturday which is sad. We had a great whirlwind week with them! It was fun to see them, to show them all that we love about Japan, and cool for us to have something to do!

We've been a bit lazy getting pictures up, but between everyone's cameras there were over 1000 pics to go through.

Since Willard is a lot better than I am at putting funny captions to pictures, he will be uploading them. Click HERE to read all about it.

Friends coming to visit!

The Brothers Sherburne (Kirk and Sherbie) along with the Keipers (Kate and Keip) have made their way to our end of the world for a visit and we can't wait to see them!

They flew into Tokyo on Wednesday and are enjoying a few days sightseeing there before taking the bullet train (Shinkansen) down to Kansai (our area of Japan, around Osaka - like the Midwest) on Sunday.

We will be spending the first half of the week up in Joe & Tiff's neck of the woods showing them the sights in Omihachiman, Kyoto, Nara, and around Lake Biwa. Then on Wednesday we will head back down to our place in Akashi and hit up Himeji, Tarumi, Akashi and Kobe before they head back to the US on Saturday.

It will be a fun week filled with castles, shrines, karaoke, sushi, lots of walking, okonmiyaki, fishmarkets, tori gates, yakiniku, drinking, izakayas, Osho, and catching up!

Mark and I are heading up to Omi tonight to Joe & Tiff's so we can get up bright and early tomorrow to go pick up our visitors in Maibara.

What fun! Yay!

The Queen's Fool

I just finished The Queen's Fool by Philippa Gregory. My Aunt Lugene sent it to me because she empathizes with my fear of running out of books to read.

I am now addicted to Philippa's Tudor era books. The first one that I read was The Other Boleyn Girl which was the story of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn told by Mary Boleyn, Anne's sister. Sidenote: They're making a movie of it now with Eric Bana as Henry, Scarlett Jo as Mary, and Natalie Portman as Anne.

After I finished it I wanted to read another immediately. The Queen's Fool takes during Queen Mary's 5 year reign. The narrator is Hannah, a Jewish girl escaping the Inquisition in Spain who has "the sight" and becomes a close friend of the Queen's. I love historical fiction and this book was great!

Thanks Lug!

Thanksgiving in Japan!

Thanksgiving snuck up on me this year. I might have forgotten until the week of if Joe & Tiff had not asked if we wanted to come up to Omihachiman to celebrate with them. Maybe it is because the weather is still fall-ish and the leaves are just changing or maybe it is because I am not bombarded with holiday season commercials here or maybe it is because I don't work in retail now so there is not the focus on day after shopping or maybe it is because the Japanese don't celebrate thanksgiving (and rightly so)...any way it didn't feel like thanksgiving.

So up we went to Omi on Wednesday night. On thanksgiving we had chicken (it is hard to find turkey here), mashed potatoes and gravy, Sellner crockpot corn, stuffing, Eckberg Salad, and pumpkin cheesecake.

We had fun eating a lot, hanging out, watching movies, and catching up!

We have a lot to be thankful for!

Here we are, just about to dig in.

Mike & Emily's Going Away Party

So another disappointing thing about Nova going bankrupt is that a lot of our friends are going home because they were unable to find another job and ran out of money. Last week was a going away party for Mike and Emily at Donkey Pub. Trevor left the week before, James & Louise before that...sigh.

You've seen other posts of us at Donkey, it is a small bar in Akashi that a lot of Nova teachers go to to play darts and have some beers. The owners 'Mommy' and 'Master' are a couple about our parent's age and are super nice. They speak some English and are always very excited to see us. They have drinks with us and play darts with us too. They usually are closed on Sundays but last sunday they opened up especially for Mike & Emily's going away. (Mike has been going there for darts every Thursday for the last 5 years)

It was a lot of fun but sad too because our group of friends here is getting smaller and smaller. Mike and Emily are both from Australia so it will be quite a while before we see them again.

Click here to see the pics.

This is us with Mike - He doesn't normally smile like that, he just wanted to look weird so we would remember him that way...

Latest Reading...

So in the last 2 weeks I've read two books...

Geisha, a Life by Mineko Iwasaki. It is a memoir of a famous Geiko from Kyoto during the 60's and 70's. I enjoyed it, it wasn't the best book that I've ever read but it was interesting to read about Gion from an insider's point of view. Sometimes she seemed a bit full of herself but overall it was a good read.

The Zahir by Paulo Coelho. Tiff lent me this book and I really liked it. It is the story of a famous novelist whose wife disappears without any notice and the journey he takes to find her. There is a lot of philosophy in it about love and about life which is interesting. I really like his writing style and it makes me want to read more of his books.

Next I'm reading The Queen's Fool by Philippa Gregory

That's it for now!

MAC Holiday Collection is here!

MAC released its holiday collection last week! The theme this year is called 'Antiquitease' and as you can guess, the design has an antique feel to it. What is great about the holiday collections from MAC is that you can get eyeshadow, lipstick, lipglass, brushes, pigments, etc in sets for cheaper than buying them each individually.
















I always tell my friends that if you want to get some professional brushes from MAC then this is the time of the year to do it! You can get a set of 5 travel sized brushes in a cool travel bag. I still have mine from the holiday collection 4 years ago and I use them every day!

Unfortunately the holiday collection hasn't come to Japan yet so I haven't seen them in person, just online. But, Beth did and she said everything looked awesome!

Click HERE to check everything out!

P.S. Things usually sell out before before Christmas so don't wait too long!

I found the Osaka Aveda!

Friday we were in Osaka for the Leopard release party. See Mark's Blog for pics and a video of that.

The other thing that I wanted to do was find the Aveda. As most of you know, the other cosmetics company that I am addicted to besides MAC is Aveda. I found out that there are two Aveda Salons/Spas/Stores in Japan, one in Tokyo and one in Osaka. I tried to find the Osaka one last time we were there and couldn't. It is really hard to find new places in Japan because not all of their streets have names and the addresses are very weird.

So I figured I would try again this time to find Aveda while Mark was waiting in line at the Apple store. I walked around where someone told me it was, no luck. So I asked a lady in Daimaru (dept. store) if she knew. She called the Aveda and got directions in Japanese and then showed me on a map where it was. Score!...

I walked to where she put it on the map but it wasn't there and then I thought I was past it but again, Japanese maps are hard to read. So I'm standing there looking confused and this lady stopped and asked if I needed help. I told her that I was looking for the Aveda Store and showed her the map, she said she was going in that direction and took me there! Her name was Naomi (only in Japan they pronounce it 'Nowmee') and she was so nice!

Here it is!

Zorro, etc...

So I read two books in the last two weeks....

First, Zorro by Isabel Allende. I liked it a lot! It is the story of Zorro from the time he is a child until he becomes the legend. Isabel Allende is such a great storyteller! I really enjoyed this one!

Second, Water for Elephants. Wow! I read this one in 2 days it was so engrossing! It is about a young guy who joins up with a traveling circus in the 1930's. It got me all interested in old time circus stuff! The story is very intense with this one and it kept you reading to see what happened next.

I would definitely recommend both of these!

Latest book...

I just finished Never Let Me Go. It was pretty good. Although right now I am debating if I would recommend it or not... It was about a group of close friends who went to the same private school in England and realize as they grow up that they are "special" in a certain way (I don't want to say much more to give it away).

It kept me interested and it was an interesting topic, got me thinking...but I just don't know if it was that awesome.

Here is what the publisher had to say:

As a child, Kathy-now thirty-one years old-lived at Hailsham, a private school in the scenic English countryside where the children were sheltered from the outside world, brought up to believe that they were special and that their well-being was crucial not only for themselves but for the society they would eventually enter. Kathy had long ago put this idyllic past behind her, but when two of her Hailsham friends come back into her life, she stops resisting the pull of memory.

So now I just started Zorro by Isazbel Allende (thanks Lug!) and it is going great so far! Isabel Allende is one of my new favorites!

Fun in the park!

Last week a bunch of Nova teachers and staff got together in Akashi park for a little party. It was a good time, drinks and live music (courtesy of Willard, Trevor and Dean). Interestingly enough it was fun to sit on grass! There isn't much grass here in Japan, most parks are just dirt.

You will notice that I am actually wearing my hair down for this first time since mid July! It has been so incredibly, ungodly, horrendously hot and humid here (yes, even into early October!) that as soon as I got out of the shower I put my hair into a pony tail and never took it out. It has finally cooled down enough for me to not sweat buckets wearing my hair down. I didn't know what it was going to look like since it had been so long since I actually 'did' it! Luckily I still remembered how to do my hair so it worked out well!

Here's a pictures of all us girls:

Shopping!

So this Tuesday Willard and I happened to have the day off due to coming in on one of our days off for Follow Up Training. Our friends Joe & Tiff had the day off and were coming down to our neck of Kansai to take their friend Brooke to Himeji castle so they asked if we wanted to join them and we said of course! Willard went with Joe & Brooke to Himeji and Tiff and I went shopping in Kobe.

Tiff and I made a stop at MAC to get her a new fall lipstick. She ended up going with "O", a very nice plum color with a little gold shimmer. I got Midimauve, which has been on my list of lipsticks to get for awhile. It is a great neutral color with a bit of lustre to it and it is my new favorite color! I also got a great new eyeshadow from the Blue Storm collection called Stormwatch. It is described as a "deep teal" and it is super cool!

As a follow up to my last MAC posting, I am very much enjoying my new Smoke Signals quad and the 209 brush is perfect for the fluidlines!

Heres a nice pic of Tiff and I with the MA who helped Tiff pick out her lipstick.


Next we went walked around Nankinmachi, which is Kobe's Chinatown. We saw some people dressed up for some reason, we're not sure why, but they were fun to look at!

We then went to the huge Uniqlo store near the port. Uniqlo is a very cool store that I describe as a cross between H&M and The Gap. They have really cool clothes and they are very reasonably priced. I have only bought a pair of shorts there because I'm trying to not spend money on clothes right now. The only downside to Uniqlo is that I am the largest size they have! That is a bit trippy and kind of depressing, but oh well.




Here's a picture of some stuff in the store.



















Click here for all the picks from the evening.

Yay! Another package!

I just got an awesome package from my aunt Lugene! She sent me two books AND homemade caramels! Lug makes the best caramels ever and we are always excited to get them. I thought I would have to go a year without them but now I don't! Num!

Also she sent me Zorro and The Queens Fool which I am very excited to read!

Thanks Lug!

More Books...

Sorry it's been a long time since my last post! Nothing interesting enough has gone on for awhile, but now there's lots to report! So my first topic is what I've read recently...

Leap of Faith: Memoirs of an Unexpected Life: Loved this book! It is the memoirs of Queen Noor of Jordan. Queen Noor grew up in the states and met King Hussein of Jordan while she was traveling after graduating from Princeton. It is a great look into middle east politics from the mid 70's until 2000. I would definitely recommend it! Here's a mini synopsis:

"Born in 1951 to a distinguished Arab-American family, Lisa Najeeb Halaby became the fourth wife of King Hussein at age 27. With her husband being not only Jordan's monarch but the spiritual leader of all Muslims, Lisa was unsure what her role would be. This moving memoir provides a timely look at one woman's story against a backdrop of 30 turbulent years: the displacement of over 1 million Palestinians by the creation of Israel, King Hussein's frustrated efforts for peace, and the effect of Saddam Hussein and the Gulf War on Jordan and the royal family. Queen Noor offers intimate new glimpses of King Hussein, Saddam Hussein, Queen Elizabeth, Arafat, and many other world leaders. "

One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd. What a great book! Tiffany lent me this one and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It is the fictional journal of women who lived with the Cheyenne Indians in the late 1800's. The idea of the book is real. According to the author in 1854 at a peace conference a Cheyenne chief asked the US Government to give the Cheyenne 1000 white women as brides for Cheyenne warriors. The author says "because theirs is a matrilineal society in which all children born belong to their mother's tribe, this seemed to the Cheyennes to be the perfect means of assimilation into the white man's world - a terrifying new world that even as early as 1854, the Native Americans clearly recognized held no place for them."

In real life the US Government missunderstood this request and immediately denied it. This book pretends that it happened and women who volunteered to be Cheyenne brides were sent to live with them. It was very interesting and a quick read, it kept me interested the whole time!

What are you reading right now?

My Students are Funny!

A few funny things from my students this week...

Hiroomi (pronounced Heeroh-ohmee) was wearing a t-shirt with the following phrases on it in a nice cursive font. "What oneself should do. Meaning of knowing it." What?! What is that? We actually see a lot of people wearing shirts with bizarre English phrases on them that make no sense. Pretty much like all the shirts that Americans wear with Chinese or Japanese characters on them and have no idea what they mean.

Saki, one of my favorite students, is at my school to take classes about 3-4 days a week. She is 20 and lots of fun to have in class. She thinks a lot of the things I say are funny, even if I don't mean them to be. We were doing a lesson on talking about lifestyles (reclusive, lavish, cosmopolitan) and I asked them to tell me how their lifestyles are different from 5 years ago. Saki started by saying that her lifestyle is better now because she just turned 20 this year and so she can drink. (In Japan the legal drinking age is 20) She then says "yes, drinking, it is fun for me!" Yes, I guess that is one way of putting it. :-)

Then today another student of mine, Yongho, had me almost rolling on the floor. To set the scene, it is Yongho (about 40 ish), Yu (17), and Mana (16). I was doing a lesson on describing appearances. I asked them to think of their favorite movie star and to describe how they look and then the others try and guess who it is.

Yongho: "He is short. He has brown hair. He is about 40."
Emma: "How would you describe his build? Is he big, skinny..."
Yongho: "He is tight."
Emma: "Ok, we don't usually use 'tight' to describe how you look...unless you are a rapper. How about 'fit' or 'toned'?"
Yongho: "Yes, yes, fit"
Emma: "Ok Yu, Mana, do you know who Yongho is describing?"
Mana: "Johnny Depp?"
Yu: "I don't know."
Yongho: "No...........Michael J. Fox."
Emma: Bursts out laughing along with Yu and Mana.
Yongho: "What?? He is handsome and my favorite!"
Emma: "No, nothing wrong at all! That was just the LAST person I was expecting you to say. I was expecting some Japanese star that I didn't know."

How hilarious is that? So then Yongho talked about how Back to the Future is her favorite movie and I agreed that it was awesome. What was then depressing is that Yu and Mana did not know who he was because they were born AFTER Back to the Future came out. Wow that makes me feel old!

Hi, my name is Emma and I'm a MAC Addict...

Take a deep breath, this is going to be a long post...

Today was a very special day for me...I finally got to go to see my beloved MAC! Oh yes, there are MAC's in Japan, EVEN one just a 15 minute train ride to Kobe + a 10 minute walk to Daimaru department store away. (I looked up all the MAC stores in Japan on MAC's Website)

So what did I get you ask? Well, my intention was to see the collections that I've missed: Flashtronic, Painterly, Blue Storm, and Smoke Signals and to get an eyeliner brush for my growing fluidline collection (as of now I have 'waveline' thanks to Erin, 'blacktrack' thanks to Brady and 'macroviolet' thanks to mom). I have been using my 266 angle brush in the mean time but it doesn't give as precise a line as I want.

I managed to ask the Japanese MAC artist which eyeliner brush would work best with fluidline using a combination of short English sentences and gestures while pointing at the fluidline display. She spoke some English and told me that the 209 brush would be best, so mission accomplished for task 1!

As I was checking out the Smoke Signals display (my MAC ladies - if you haven't gone to see this one yet, get yourself over to a MAC store now!) I fell in love with the Smoking Eyes quad and asked the MA (MAC Artist) to try it on me. It is a great combo of smoky fall colors so I decided to treat myself and get that as well! There is another quad with this collection that is more gunmetal greys with midnight blues that looks sweet online but it was sold out in the store, oh well.
As I paid for my two things she signed me up for a MAC frequent customer card - awesome! How come they don't have these in the states? I would have worked up a million points by now! AND she gave me the cards for both Smoke Signals and Blue Storm AND the cutest mini bottle of Studiofix Fluid foundation ever! I've never seen mini MAC products before, I wonder if they're just at the Asian stores...

Another thing that is awesome about Japanese MAC is that they have a collection called Lightful geared towards women with pale skin who actually want to have pale skin. Score! In Asia women value pale porcelain skin and focus on keeping it that way. In the summer most women carry parasols when walking around to keep the sun off their faces and there are a ton of commercials for lotions with large SPF numbers of 50 or more. So basically the complete opposite of the US where everyone wants to be as tan as possible. I didn't get any of it on this trip but I am planning on trying it out while I'm here.

Phew, that's it. I'm very excited to try all my new stuff out, yay!

P.S. If any of you get MAC postcards for various collections this year and don't want them for yourselves, will you keep them for me?

Running with Scissors

Very, very good book although disturbing...

It read really quickly and the whole time I was thinking, man, I can't believe someone had to grow up this way! Such a dirty house...weird people...and parents who didn't care at all. It was sad and funny in some parts too.

I think I'm going to download the movie that came out last year to see if it is any good.

Kris - which part are you at?

Let's talk books!

Ok, so one of the reasons I wanted to start this blog is so I could chat about books. Once you're reading a book of mine let me know and I'll start a topic about it and we can all comment back and forth until our heart's content.

Here we go....

Bizarre...

Saw a guy at the Akashi train station wearing a jacket that said:

"American Legion, Marshall, Minn"

How did that get here?!

I tapped him on the shoulder to tell him I was from Minnesota and see if he had been there but he had no idea what I was saying. Not even sure if he got that I was from Minnesota, oh well.

I'm a movie star! Almost...

So our area manager Mike asked if I would "star" in a little video about grocery shopping in Japan to post on Nova's website.

I can now let out my breath that I don't look like a complete idiot!

Check it out!

My first post!

Woohoo, I have a blog now!

I finally got around to setting up my own blog. Apparently some people think they are cool and have already taken 'emma' and 'emmainjapan' as the names for their blogs so I decided to show them and call my blog 'OriginalEmma'. Yeah, that's right! Take that!

My blog will not be as funny or witty as Willard's, he has an English major and I don't. Instead you will get my take on what's going on in Akashi along with info about books I'm reading. As you all know I am a HUGE book nerd and one of my favorite things is discussing books with friends. So if I talk about a book you have read, please, please leave a comment so we can chat about it!!

Also, to those of you who I entrusted with my library, you'll remember that one of the stipulations was to talk to me about the books as you read them, hopefully this will work!

Ok that's it...let the blogging begin!