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!

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!