Nov. 28th

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I know its a bit late, but I decided to say it anyway :P. Braden and I didn't do much to celebrate it. I tried looking in the local grocery store for traditional Thanksgiving food but didn't have much luck. No Turkey, no cranberry sauce, so canned yams, or canned pumpkin for pie. And since I don't have an oven I can't cook most of those things anyway :P. We did get to eat some pumpkin pie this weekend though :). We visited an american friend in Izumo and he had just gone to Costco a day or too before, and one of things he got was real american pumpkin pie. So we ate some. Yum!!!! I wish Braden and I had our own car so we could go to Costco. Its a few hours away. It would be hard to just take a train over and carry all the food back. Maybe the next time Ed goes to Costco we can hitch a ride :). We had a really fun weekend. Not only did we eat pumpkin pie, we also sang karaoke with some of Ed's friends, played video games, watched anime, ate real Indian curry, and all in all just had a great time. Japanese Karoake is AWESOME. You can rent a room for just you and your friends, they have a huge catalog of music, you can adjust the volume and lights, and sing to your heart's content! You can even order food and drinks and have it brought to your room. The place we were at had tons of english songs in their catalog, so I was able to sing a ton (I even tried to sing a few Japanese ones but the words went by too fast and my rhythm was always off :P), and I got to hear some really fun Japanese songs that I'd never heard before. We sang till about 2 in the morning, hehe. The next day we just hung out playing an RPG called Tales of Graces that hasn't been released in the US yet, and watching funny internet videos. Oh, and we watched some cool anime, including a really good movie called "Beyond the Clouds". For dinner on Saturday we went to an Indian restaurant called Curry King. I got this really delicious curry that had a tomato and butter base, and it was served with a huge piece of tradional Indian flat bread. I ordered the mild, but even so, it was still kinda spicy! That's real curry for ya! Ed had the level 4 curry, which is the highest they list on the menu (but they'll make it even hotter if you want!). I tried some of Ed's and, yeah, it was pretty spicy :P. Braden and I definitely wanna eat there again some time :). The cooks were all Indian (of course) and their kitchen was open and we could see into it while they cooked. The main waiter, who was also Indian, spoke English (which didn't surprise me), but it was cool for me, cause I could totally order in english :). Anywho, all in all it was a delicious and fun weekend. Oh, and Ed had also bought a huge jar of Jelly Bellies at Costco, which Braden and I pretty much gorged ourselves on. Lol, I miss american candy ;P. I guess before I end this I oughta mention where the photos are from. I took them at the Adachi Art museum. My beginner's Japanese class went there for a field trip. They have a huge, beautiful, Japanese style garden. The route you take in the museum (the museum had a really nice layout) takes you in and out of various rooms and patios. The rooms have artwork that you can look at and the patios give you various view of the garden at different angles. It was really pretty :). If any of you ever visit west Japan you should check it out. Foreigners even get a discount ;).

Nov. 22nd

This weekend Braden's friend Ed took us on a tour of the Izumo Grand Shrine. It was a beautiful shrine. I especially loved the huge ropes hanging from the roof of the main buildings. One of the pictures shows me throwing a coin at the rope. There were lots of people throwing coins at it hoping they'd stick, I think it was for good luck or something. Looking up at the rope you could see tons of coins imbedded in the pieces of straw. It was fun, and I got my coin to stick, so I guess I'll have good luck, hehe. There were lots of other small buildings and shrines around, including one especially for students. It was pretty busy, there were lots of people paying their respects to the shrine that day, I think since this is the month when all the shinto gods come to the shrine to discuss the year. Also, it was a beautiful sunny weekend, the first really nice day we've had in a while. Before going to the shrine we ate at a really yummy yaki-niku place, where they have grills set into the table and the waiters bring you raw meat which you then grill yourself along with any veggies you may have ordered. The restaurant was owned by the Shimane Winery, and you could also order fresh grape juice or wine with your meal. We all got the grape juice and it was delicious :D. There were lots of pretty vineyards around Izumo, and lake Shinji isn't very far either, its really a very pretty town. Don't get me wrong though, I love Matsue too, I especially love the way the city lights reflect off of lake Shinji at night, its really beautiful :). Anywho, that's all I'm gonna write for now, I gotta eat some dinner and get ready for karate soon. For those who are on facebook I've posted more photos on there. Check em out :).

Nov. 14th

The last two days Braden and I have learned alot. We learned how iron used to be made, and how tofu is currently made! We went on a field trip with 9 other International Students to Unnan City, famous for its Tatara Iron Forge museum. On Friday we went to the forge and watched as workers heated it up and filled it with iron-rich sand and charcoal. We slept in cozy little cabins that night. The girls shared one cabin and the boys shared another. I didn't have Braden with me to keep me warm :P (Thankfully the cabins had heaters). The next morning we went back to the forge and they used a crane to lift the forge off of the fire, and then they used rakes and shovels to move away all the hot coals and reveal the large, rough lump of iron left behind. It was pretty cool. One of the ladies there told us that this forge is one of the few old forges left in Japan, and that Hayao Miyazaki and his team of animators came here to make sketches and gather reference material for the movie Princess Mononoke. The Iron Town in the movie is apparently based on the historic town of Yoshida, which also used to be an Iron Town, but is now a museum in Unnan. This lady also told us that, back then, the forge still had the old bellows that were man-powered. But when they decided to actually start holding iron-making demonstrations they replaced the man-powered bellows with mechanical ones, and they installed a large fan and ventilation system where the chimney used to be (all for safety reasons I'm sure). After leaving the forge, we went to a kitchen where tofu was made and made our own tofu. It was delicious :). First we used a grinder to grind up the beans, then we put the resulting paste into a big huge pot of bowling water. We boiled it for a bit, then scooped the mixture into a bag that caught the big chunks and let the liquid soy milk through. Then we added something to the soy milk to make parts of it solidify. Next we scooped it into a small crate that had some cheesecloth like fabric in it. The water all came out through the cloth and the solid bits of tofu stayed behind and stuck to eachother in a big block. Then the tofu was removed from the crate and put into a large sink of water where it was cut, then put into plastic containers. Then we ate a big delicious lunch, which included tofu of course :). We even got to take some tofu home with us. Braden and I ate some for dinner last night, and we'll probably eat the rest tonight. Anyway, it was lots of fun, even though I had a nagging cough for a lot of it. I sucked on cough drops almost constantly during the whole trip cause I didn't bring any masks and I didn't want my coughing to bother anyone :P. I'm getting pretty sick of cough drops though. I really want to buy some peppermints now and suck on them for a change.

Nov. 12th

My poor laptop. I love it so much. It was a gift from my parents. It was waiting for me on the family dining table the moment I came home from my mission to Chile. It served me well through the last two years of college. So much artwork was lovingly crafted on it. Grade A papers were written on it. It suffered a hard drive failure soon after moving to Ellensburg, but with a new hardrive and Windows 7 it was back to being as good as new. But now... well the display has developed terminal problems. It looks like I may not be able to fix it myself this time, like I did with the hardrive. I may actually have to take it to a computer fix-up shop. I have no idea what the cost will be, and whether or not we'll be able to afford it, and I don't like the idea of leaving my dear laptop in the hands of strangers... Ah, how sad. Its really too bad that technology has a way of becoming old so quickly. I guess my laptop, though its only about three and a half years old, is feeling its age. Right now I'm using the computer in the lab to write this post. This computer is old, but it works all right. Its main flaw: whenever I try to use facebook it freezes. I miss facebook :P. Oh well, at least Braden still has his computer. It overheats sometimes, and it freezes quite a bit, but it still works. Anywho, not much else is new. This week has been pretty boring. I caught a cold so I haven't been out much. Its starting to go away, and just in time too, cause today Braden and I are going on a field trip with some other International students to Unnan City, to see their old fashioned Iron Forge. We will also see how tofu used to be made and eat a fresh tofu lunch. I'm really looking forward to it, and will be sure to post pictures on facebook when we get back. Its an overnight trip, so I won't be able to post anything about it till tomorrow night or Sunday. Till then!

Nov. 6th

Melissa: Yep, alot of people at Shimane ride their bikes to class. A lot of the bikes look the same, so in order to find mine more quickly, I attached a cute bunny keychain to the handlebars :). Things have been going good so far. The weather warmed up a little thankfully. I seem to have caught a small cold, but its not too bad. I even went to the store and bought some of those facemasks that Japanese people always wear when they get sick. I haven't used it yet. So far I've just sucked on cough drops so I don't cough and let people know I have a cold :P. I started another Japanese class yesterday so now I have two Japanese classes. I still struggle to carry on conversations in Japanese, but I can make basic small talk now. In class the teachers mostly speak Japanese, which is great practice, but it can also be very frustrating at times. Sometimes the teachers ask us to do something and we don't understand the question. Or sometimes we have a question but don't know how to phrase it (By we I mean every other student in the class who, like me, speaks little Japanese :P). The teacher does speak a little english though. In fact, everyone speaks a little english. Not enough to form real sentences, but they all know a lot of vocabulary. Enough so that if the teacher says a word in Japanese and no one knows it, she'll say it in English and then most everyone then knows what she's talking about. So in a way, english is used as a tool in the classroom, which is nice for me. But although everyone's english vocab is pretty extensive, their english grammar, and sometimes their pronunciation, isn't very good, so I can't really carry on a conversation with them. Its interesting to see though how english is becoming a universal language, and how its being used as a tool of communication between other cultures that don't even speak it natively. It'll be interesting to see what happens to english in the next 50 years and how widespread it will be.

Nov. 2nd

Melissa: I love our rice cooker :). We bought it at a second hand shop called Off-House. It was only 5,000 Yen (about $60 I think, which is a steal for a large rice cooker here. The other big ones I've seen are well over a hundred dollars) and it works perfectly! The second hand shops here are called "Recycle Shops" and they're pretty great, you can find tons of stuff in great condition, at a fraction of its original price! I also bought a hairdryer and a toaster, and they're both awesome :). As you can probably tell from the picture, the buttons on the rice cooker are all in Japanese, which made it hard for me to use at first, but Braden figured it out. Now I can use it just fine, I just memorized what each button is for.

Braden: School has been pretty great so far. I'm doing good in all of my classes and gradually getting the hang of how things work out at Japanese Universities. First of all, things like assignments and their due dates are very vague. I don't even know how each class is graded. So far I've just kind of been coming to class and that seems good enough. Only this week have their actually been any real assignments due which I actually had to complete on time. For example, today me and another student from University of Arkansas named Zack had to give a short presentation on jobs which are either exclusive or traditional for your country. It was pretty hard for us to think of one, so we finally decided on giving a presentation on Quarterbacks for the NFL, and more specifically Brett Favre and his accomplishments. Karate has been pretty awesome. I learned a lot yesterday about how to make my punches a lot better. I found out that my punches push more than they punch, so I need to focus on pulling back as soon as I land a punch to make it more of a karate punch. I got to do a bit more kumite, which was also fun. I like their style of kumite here. They all go pretty hard and aim to kick the head most of the time. A couple days ago we were able to get our Japanese Pension waivers registered at the city hall so we don't have to pay for that. The church members have asked us to go to the missionaries English classes every Thursday, so we'll be helping out with that from now on. Tomorrow is a Japanese holiday "Bunka no Hi" or "Culture Day". I have no clue how the Japanese celebrate it, they probably just don't go to work. Well, I better keep it at about this length so everyone doesn't get bored. Until next time!

Nov. 1st

So Halloween came and went pretty quietly around here. But the spiders 'round here contributed to the Halloween spirit nonetheless, cause they are big and scary :P. I tolerate them though, cause i want them to eat the mosquitos. The cockroaches are way worse, cause they actually come inside the apartment (though as it's gotten colder I've seen them way less, so I guess the cold IS good for something! lol). As long as the spiders stay on their little (or sometimes big) webs outside I won't bother them. There's a doozy just off the edge of our balcony near our door though. If he built his web any closer to our door I'd get kinda freaked out o_0. But as long as he stays where he's at, I'm fine. Anyways.... Yesterday it rained again (big suprise), but one of the guys at church was nice enough to give us a ride home (and he actually had a car big enough to fit our bikes, lol), so that was awesome. Its still feeling kinda cold, though its not as bad as it was earlier last week. It'll probably rain again today, and according to Murphy's Law it'll probably start right before we get on our bikes to go to karate, lol. That seems to be how it goes around here. Right when we need to go somewhere, RAIN. One dark and cold night, Braden and I heard the strangest noises coming from the woods next to our apartment o_0. It was really loud, and it sounded like some sort of animal, but we couldn't tell what kind, we only knew it sounded like it was dying a terrible horrible death o_0'. At times we heard loud squaking, others times it sounded like a high pitched whining or yelping, and other times it just sounded like screeching. It was wierd and creepy, and we looked out of our window towards the woods but it was too dark to see anything. It lasted for about five minutes then suddenly stopped. Creepy. So now I really wonder what's living back there. Maybe the Yeti moved to Japan? Lol.