Sayonara!

Wow. I can't believe how fast the last few weeks have gone! It is weird to think that we are leaving tomorrow...

This year has been great - a roller coaster ride that's for sure - but great! We have made a lot of good friends and done a lot of cool stuff. There are a lot of things that I will miss: friends, students, great customer service, the JR train system, cheap sushi, not having to get up before 9:00 am, karaoke rooms, and many, many other things.

I am sad to leave but also excited to go home and see my family and friends again!

We had a Sayonara party last night at Akashi park and it was a blast! We enjoyed some nice weather and drinks in the park and then went to karaoke one last time...

Very, very early tomorrow morning we will leave Kansai, make a brief stop in Seoul and then off to Paris. We'll enjoy a wonderful 5 days in Paris and then take a train to Munich for another 5 days before coming back to Minnesota. I am incredibly excited that we are getting to go to Europe on our way home!

Sayonara Japan!

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day!  

I know a lot of people say it, but I have the best mom in the world!!

She gave me my taste for good food,  good books, and good bargain shopping!

Thanks for always being so supportive and encouraging, mom!  You rock!

I love you!

Tokyo!

Wow - time is flying by super fast!  I can't believe that we're leaving in 3 weeks!

Last week we went to Tokyo and it was awesome!  We stayed with my friend Beth and her husband Shawn at their really, really nice house in Shinjuku.

We took the shinkansen (bullet train) up to Tokyo on Sunday night and wow, was it nice.  It goes over 200 mph and is an incredibly smooth ride.  We got in late so we caught up with Beth and Shawn and then headed to bed.

Monday consisted of a leisurely lunch in the park in Shinjuku and then off we went!  First to Shibuya to see the famously busy intersection and some shopping, then to Harajuku for more shopping.  I 

went to the MAC store in Harajuku and it happened to be a Pro Store which was really cool because there aren't any pro stores in MN.  We headed back to Beth's place picked up Shawn and had dinner at a really good Indian restaurant near their house.

Tuesday we went to the Imperial Palace, Ginza for shopping and then Meiji Shrine.  Ginza was crazy - so many high end stores.  Willard was extremely happy to go to the Ginza Apple store, of course.  After dinner we had to head back home to Akashi on the Shinkansen.

It was a short trip but a lot of fun!  Click HERE to see the pics!

This is us at the Ginza Apple Store:

Springtime!

Sorry I've been super lazy with posting for awhile...

It is spring here in Akashi and I love it!  For the past couple weeks it has been in the mid 50's and sunny most days.  Luckily the massively high humidity hasn't kicked in yet so it is enjoyable to be outside.  Sorry that you still have a lot of snow in Minnesota!  I have a feeling that a Minnesota winter will seem especially harsh next winter after I've been away for a year.

I can't believe that we're coming home in 2 months!  Yes, that's right folks, we'll be back home in MN in the beginning of June.  We've got lots of stuff planned for the remainder of our time here:

We'll be making a final (sad!) trip up to Omihachiman to visit Joe & Tiff next week.   On the docket is a Hanami party under the Sakura (cherry blossoms) in Hikone.  Hanami parties are very common in Japan once the cherry trees are in full bloom.  Basically you sit under the trees with friends and drink sake. Also we'll be taking a boat trip on Lake Biwa, visiting an Onsen (Japanese public bath - extremely popular here) then up to Nagahama for some Shiga pottery shopping and finally drinks and dinner at the micro brewery there.  Phew!  Lots of fun stuff crammed into one weekend!

Then a couple weeks later we'll be heading up to Tokyo to visit my friend Beth and her husband Shawn.  Beth is a friend of mine from Target where we worked on the same team.  She and her husband moved to Tokyo last summer too.  I'm excited to see all that is Tokyo!  My students tell me that Japanese culture in Tokyo is different than down here in Kansai and that the accent is different.  We'll see if I can tell or if any Tokyo-ans can understand my Japanese.

We're hoping to cram in a trip down to Hiroshima and Miyajima as well.  Plus we'll be hosting Joe & Tiff  for one last trip for them down to Akashi.  This will include either a Hanshin Tigers or Kobe Orix Buffalos baseball game, some yakiniku and going out in Kobe.

Wow, we will be busy!  

Yesterday I went to Kyoto to get some presents.  Kyoto has the best Japanese gifts so I made the trek up there myself to pick stuff up.  The cherry blossoms are starting and so it was very crowded.  I snapped a picture for you:

Back from Beijing

Ni hao!  We got back from  our trip to Beijing with Joe & Tiff on Thursday and it was awesome!  We saw all that we wanted to see and more!  I would say that we spent the right amount of time there because we had some extra left over to relax and wander around.

Our hotel was nice, and had a really awesome buffet breakfast.  It even came with censored BBC news.  Of course I knew that China is a communist country and that it censors media but dang, was it obvious.  We we're watching BBC news and when the anchorman said "China has been criticized..." it automatically cut to the next news story.  Wow.  

 

China also has its own search engine instead of Google, Yahoo, etc.  It doesn't allow you to go to sites that that the government doesn't approve of.  I went to the business center to check email once and wanted to see if Pete and Katy had their baby yet, but it wouldn't let me go to Katy's blog.  Hmmmm, maybe I'll try going through our website since we have a link, nope, not possible.  I tried a few other ways and I'm guessing that any personal website or blog is blocked.  Frustrating!  I was definitely happy to get back to Japan where I can look at any website that I want to.

We had some great food, wanton soup, gyozas, candied crab apple with walnuts, Peking duck, and spicy chicken lettuce wraps (apparently they do have them in China and PF Chang's didn't just make it up!).

I was impressed with all the history that we saw, it was pretty amazing.  From Tiananmen Square to standing on the emperors stone at the Temple of Heaven.    We saw Mao in his mausoleum looking very waxy.

In my mind I would find a super cool jade bracelet to bring home.  Little did I know that nice real jadeite (the higher quality jade used in jewelry) bracelets are super expensive!  So I ended up getting a simple jade ring, but it's still cool.  

Willard is doing a day by day summary of what we did as well has his clever and witty picture comments - click HERE to check it out!

Beijing, here we come!

Bright and early tomorrow morning we are heading off to Beijing for a 5 day vacation! We will be meeting Joe and Tiff at Kansai International Airport and then we will be on our way! We will be taking in the usual sights of The Great Wall, Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, and shopping around at the markets. I'm hoping to eat some Peking Duck and many other Chinese goodies.

I am super excited! We've been watching some History and Discovery Channel specials to learn a bit more about the places we'll be seeing. There is so much history to see!

Whooohooo!

New Email

OK, so I've been a bit lazy about changing my email...Since we just had our first anniversary I figured I should get off my butt and do it. So here we go - please start emailing me at emma.willard@gmail.com

Phew, that wasn't so hard.

And to make this not incredibly boring, here is a picture of a shrine near our apartment.

Awesome New Coat!

I got an awesome new coat! This is the first cool, fashionable thing I've bought since moving here in July. Mostly I've just gotten, shorts, fleece zip ups, and long sleeve t's.

I've been longing for a cream wool coat all fall and winter. Up until now, all the ones that I like are way too expensive...Until yesterday. I was walking past a store called Honeys (I laughed the first time I saw it) and there was a beautiful cream wool coat that was part pea, part sailor, part trench coat....AND it was on sale for $19! Score!

Of course I wore it out to dinner last night in Kobe. We went to dinner at a Turkish restaurant called Midnight Express. The food was good and even the owner complimented my coat as we were leaving.

To make it even better - Uniqlo had some cashmere scarves onsale for $19 (apparently that's my lucky number) so I got a chocolate brown one to keep my neck warm.

Here are some pics - one with the scarf and one without. Whoo!

New Years Eve

We rang in the New Year in Kobe this year which was a blast!














Earlier in the day we met up with Joe and Tiff and Tiff's family who was visiting. We went to a Sake brewery and unfortunately the tour was closed because of the holiday but we still got to do some tasting. I made a mental note for us to go back again sometime and take the tour.

We then wandered around Harborland, the Earthquake Memorial at the port, Nankinmach (Chinatown) and Sannomiya shopping. The Eckbergs and Sellners headed home around dinnertime and Mark and I went to the New Munchen Club which is a German style microbrew bar. We didn't think we would make it to midnight after walking around all day in the cold but after a few beers we were going strong again. It was great to have a weiss beer and a dark Newcastle-like beer for once!















We then decided to hit up another bar called the Hub for a few more drinks before midnight. Our friend Akiko joined us there before we went out to join the crowd waiting for the countdown outside Ikuta Shrine. Ikuta road leading up to Ikuta shrine is kind of like Times Square on NYE only in Kobe. At midnight people get let into the shrine to make a wish, listen to all the taiko drummers and grab some good street vendor food.


It was a blast! There were a ton of people but it was really organized, they let us in in waves and so there wasn't a mad rush. I had Japanese fried chicken, Mark got a Gyro and Akiko had takoyaki...Ok - I had 2 large things of fried chicken which Mark enjoyed giving me crap about, but he did help me finish them!

Hope you all had a great New Years!

Here are a couple more pics from the night.

Holiday Season in Japan

I hope everyone had a wonderful Holiday Season! Thanks so much to all of your Christmas cards and fun packages!

What was Christmas like in Japan? Well, it didn't really feel like Christmas. Christmas for the Japanese is purely commercial so everyone goes to work like normal except they get a cake and KFC for dinner...not really sure why. So we worked Christmas Eve and Day (which is a bummer BUT it is good to be working again - even if it is only cleaning the school). It was sunny and in the mid 50's so the weather didn't help much with the Christmas spirit. And on top of it all, we were away from family and friends which definitely detracted from the festive feelings. I missed you all!!

After work we went over to our friend Vince's place for a Christmas dinner with what is left of our ex-Nova teacher friends and some of our Japanese staff that have become friends. We brought mashed potatoes, gravy and corn. Other people brought chicken, chocolate cake, gratin, sandwiches, chili, and many other random things.

Shoko and Tomomi thought the mashed potatoes were unbelievably awesome and numerous times exclaimed "oishi!!!" which means delicious.

Unfortunately we forgot to bring our camera so we don't have pictures until we try and get some from other people.

We ended up staying until 3:30 am because we were having so much fun!