Kaiten Sushi

Hello! So last night was much tamer than the previous two. No Year End parties to attend (which was kind of a relief). As you can imagine, Casey and I slept in yesterday and were slow to get around. He called me shortly after he had gotten to work and asked if I could get ready and meet him at the train station so we could go to the immigration office to take care of a few things. We met up only to find out that they would be closed until January 3rd. So, Casey and I decided to go and get conveyor belt sushi at the place we have been to a few times. It is really good food (although a tad expensive) but it is also awkward sometimes because the chefs know us now, and they always watch us eat and wait for our reaction. (I have had to put my game face on a few times when they made me sushi that I was afraid to eat, and yesterday was no exception.) Luckily, the sushi they made for us was really good... but one of them looked and smelled like cat food so I just plastered a smile on my face and took one for the team. It was really good tuna, just in a different form than I had eaten it before. I was happy that I was able to eat it without any problems and it was nice to honestly tell the chef that it tasted good.
Yesterday I did what seemed to be endless loads of laundry, and I ended up running out of fabric softener. This is a no-no here, because if you don't use that, your clothes are basically like sandpaper. Sometimes my jeans are so stiff that I can walk out of them and they don't move very much, which is kind of frightening. Anyhow, I ran down the street to Konan (sort of like a Japanese-style K-Mart with a little more class) and realized that they were having a bunch of Year End sales. I had to weave my way through the crowds and grab a few things I needed, but then I saw a few things I didn't really need and got tempted to spend more money. For once, though, I was good and left the place without extra stuff. (We went back later that night and bought a ceramic cooking dish for making stews and other meals, and got it for ~$12! They usually run around $50 so it was quite a good deal!). Case and I were pretty excited about that. Then last night we went to dinner with Hara-san to another conveyor belt sushi place (he didn't know we went to a similar place for lunch, and we didn't have the heart to tell him...) but this place was ~$1/plate (where the cheapest plate at the other place is around $1.30) so we stuffed ourselves on even more sushi. The place was really fun- it had 2 conveyor belts running at the same time, with two different sides, and the food was continuously coming around and you had to grab it pretty quick before it would go flying by. The picture only really shows half of one of the belts, but the menu on the upper right should give you a pretty good idea of what all was there.
After dinner, Casey and I came home and watched Dead Poets Society. I like that movie more every time I watch it. It is definitely in my top 5. I love that Robin Williams is able to play so many different roles and do them so well... he may be a little nutty at times, but I swear he's a genius on so many levels, and it really comes out in the characters he plays. Okay, so One Hour Photo was a little on the psycho side, but if you think about it, he did a really good job playing a psycho guy, too... so the man has talent. Anyway, if you have never seen DPS, I highly recommend it!!
Finally, in my normal 'random picture' moment of the blog, I wanted to share this photo of one of the dogs at the pet store down the street- who definitely has some kind of issue with its tongue. I started laughing really hard when I saw this and had to stop on my way to Konan to get a picture. It was funny enough that another lady that was looking at the puppies in the window came over and started laughing at it, too. It really just looks like it's saying, "Duh, what are you looking at, George?" And the little companion dog was busy chewing on the window pane, which I got a funny picture of as well (but I will spare you the multiple pictures this time). :)

-Ashley

Year End Party #2

The Year End party last night was significantly more crazy that the one before. Oh, and a correction on the last entry- we did karaoke for 5 hours, not 3. Casey and I calculated wrong. I thought it felt like a really long time, but little did I know! Lots and lots of singing...
So last night we went to the Year End party for International students. We were the only Americans there- everyone else was from Korea, China, Singapore, Vietnam, etc., and everyone else was much better at Japanese than Casey or I were, so we thought the night might be a bust and that we wouldn't have as much fun. That's until the hosts of the party said we had unlimited drinks for the majority of the time we were there. Everyone in the room started drinking a LOT, and conversation was definitely not a problem after that. (If you are realizing a theme to these parties, you are right- drinking is very customary in Japanese culture during these sorts of things. We are not alcoholics, I promise!!) Anyway, many of the students wanted to know words in English, so they would ask us a bunch of questions. Then this one dude from Vietnam (who was a little loud and kind of wild, from my observation) started asking me very loud, strange questions in front of the group to be funny. Between his accent and his slurring I could barely understand what he was saying most of the time, but I tried my best. At one point he asked me something like "Do you eat dark meat?" and I was thinking... yeah... chicken, so I was like, "Oh yeah! It's good stuff!" Then he started laughing really hard and I was thinking that I had probably made some kind of ass of myself... then one of the other students (who was significantly less intoxicated) said "He asked if you eat dog meat" to which I responded "NO WAY IN HELL!!!!!!!" with a look of horror on my face, and the guy started laughing even harder. Of course this was the moment where I bust out the picture of our dog and tell him that we think dogs are pets, NOT food. He said my dog looked very big and that he would have a good meal out of him... and I had to consciously tell myself not to jump over the table and punch him in the head... He thought it was really funny to piss me off so he made sure to say this numerous times throughout the night. I guess it turns out that he was trying to hit on me (and doing a swell job of it, wouldn't you say? HA!) but then he said something about Casey being my boyfriend, and I was like, "Ummm... husband!" (while pointing at the ring) and the kid turned red and realized that Casey could easily break him in half, which shut him up for the rest of the night. :) Casey also managed to get in a few insults in Japanese and put the kid in his place. The mood was not quite as dramatic as it sounds- we were all laughing as we were saying this- but slightly drunken Ashley was having a hard time being nice to the guy when he's talking about eating my dog. Oh, and when I found out his name was Gwen (or something close to that) you'd better believe that I let him know, loudly, that that was a girl's name in the U.S.. :) Everyone seemed to find that pretty amusing.
After that craziness, we decided to go to Bar Orugan and one of the guys from the previous party joined us for about an hour. At the bar, we ended up sitting next to 3 people who were speaking English, and ended up drinking with them the rest of the evening. The girl, named 'Cori' (which is not her real name but it's what the guys called her) was Japanese, but was from Canada, and was here teaching English. I thought that was interesting. Another guy was from Hawaii and their friend was from Washington state. We had a good time hanging out with them and learning about their experiences here. Two of them have been here for 5 years or more, so they had some good advice about places to go and things to do. We exchanged numbers so hopefully we'll get to meet up again before Casey and I leave.
The walk home was pretty funny. I didn't realize how much Casey had to drink until I started talking to him and he was saying really strange things. By the time he was laying in bed, he started talking about LegoLand and building a cable converter(?). I asked him how to do that (because I always start asking him questions when he talks in his sleep, just to see where it goes) and he said "You take the electrons from planet Earth and...." then he trailed off so I asked him again and he said, "It's too complicated, you'll have to look it up." Then he pretty much passed out. That boy is pretty entertaining when he is sleepy or drunk, but a combination of the two proved to be much funnier than I had expected. And man is he going to hate that I put that in my blog. Sorry Case. Couldn't help myself. :)
I guess that's about it for now. We are going with Hara-san to dinner this evening. This weekend we will be doing something on New Year's Eve (still undecided) and then we will be going to Kyoto on Sunday for the New Years festivals. Should be a good time!
Thanks for listening to my rambling... more to come, for sure.

-Ashley

Year End Parties

Last night, Casey and I went out with the Kaneda lab members to dinner for the Year End celebration. We had some amazing food- and it seemed like it was never-ending. We just kept eating until we couldn't eat anymore. It was fun to see the group outside of the lab. Sometimes they seem so serious about work that I wasn't sure how to interact with them on a social level. They proved that they know how to have fun! After dinner, we piled into taxis. When I say piled in, I mean it literally- one of the students, Nose-san, asked if I would sit with him in the front seat to make room for a few of the others in the group. We ended up sitting together in the same seat (good thing he's small, too!) and went back to the school. The best part was when a few students got out of the back seat and Nose-san and I were crammed in the front seat still... so there were us and the taxi driver in the front, and one student remaining in the huge back seat. We must have looked pretty funny. Anyway, a group of us decided that we wanted to do karaoke, so we all rode to Ishibashi Station and did what Casey and I later called a Karaoke Marathon- we ended up singing for 3 hours! It was crazy. All of the students we were with were really good singers, so it was a bit intimidating. I was actually too scared to sing by myself. I sang 'Bohemian Rhapsody' with Casey and Hara-san (who knows a TON of American songs and was singing them all night... he has a great voice, too!), and then 'Dude Looks Like A Lady' with Casey... then I eventually worked up the guts to do a John Mayer song by myself and I totally jacked it up. Sorry John! They said I did fine, but they are also known for being ultra polite so I think in reality it was pretty bad. Hara-san requested me to sing later, but I didn't know he had chosen a song for me until it showed up on the screen and he handed me the microphone. It was 'Can't Take My Eyes Off of You' and at first I was like, "I don't know this! Can't sing- sorry!" but as the song went on, I realized that I did know most of the words, and Casey and I ended up doing this duet where we danced around together and sang to each other... it went really well! It actually renewed my confidence for the evening! So directly after that I sang 'Great Balls of Fire' and dedicated it to Hara-san... which was hilarious. I think I embarrassed him (it was dark but I think he was blushing) and the others were cracking up because Casey pretended to be jealous. The Hetricks ended up being pretty entertaining for the evening. I think a few may have taken video of us on their phones when we were dancing around (oh man I am going to regret that!!!). Casey did an awesome version of 'What a Wonderful World' in a very good Louis Armstrong voice. The crowd seemed impressed! My favorite moments where when one of the students (who is learning English) sang a few songs and didn't know some of the English words and when they would come up he would sing what he knew and then go "lalalablahblah..." and then pick up right where he left off. It was so funny to listen to- the English he knew was really clear, but then suddenly you'd hear mush and wonder what the heck he was saying. It was a really good time and I hope to do it again sometime soon. I think next time we should make a rule that everyone has to sing English songs... that would be too much fun, though.
Anyway, on the way home from karaoke, Casey looked down and found what is equivalent to a $100 bill on the ground! The group members told him he was lucky and should keep it. (People are so polite here that when they find things like that, they normally turn them in... but it was also 1:30 in the morning so we couldn't really do that.) The awkward thing was that the group had chipped in for the evening and paid for everything, so we had not spent any money at that point, and then we found some on the ground. Casey and I both felt a little bit guilty, but I think he might take some of them out to lunch or something. Still, crazy stuff! Who finds money like that on the ground in the dark? And especially THAT MUCH? Weird. So yeah... we had a very good evening, to say the least. Tonight there is another Year End party- this time for the International students. It starts in about 2 hours. I will surely update about that tomorrow.
Think that's about all for now, but it's plenty, I'm sure! Here's a picture for the heck of it.

-Ashley

Christmas in Japan

Hello again! Casey and I had a wonderful Christmas here in Japan. Our day pretty much went like this:
We woke up at 6:30 on Sunday morning to open presents and get awake enough to talk to Casey's family when they were to call at 7:30. We enjoyed opening presents together, and got some fun things. Casey got me a few shirts with 'engrish' on them (because I always wanted clothing that had weird translations, and it turns out they are fairly easy to find here!). One shirt says "Heart of Queen... Who wins the queen of the heart? Selfish capricious queen's evidence" (?!). He also got me some socks that I asked for, and he topped it off with a little wind-up E.T. figurine (I believe I used to have one just like it when I was a kid...) for kicks. :) I got him a coffee maker that he had wanted and some things to go along with it. We also opened presents from his family, which included movies (Phantom of the Opera, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and Dead Poet's Society), candy, and other various items from the extended family as well. It was nice to be able to open presents on Christmas morning even though we were here. I made pancakes for breakfast and we had hot chocolate and chatted with various family members in Kansas. It was nice talking to everyone! In the afternoon, we went to a mall called Diamond City and shopped for about 4 or 5 hours. We were pretty shopped out at that point. Casey got some CDs and coffee, and I got some earrings. I was on the hunt for a hat but had no luck. We decided to go back home and then go out for a nice dinner. We walked to a place not too far away from where we live and had some great steak! We then came home last night and watched The 40-Year-Old Virgin. I thought it was really funny (although the sound on our laptop was acting weird and we had to hold it on our laps to hear it at all, but I think we caught most everything.) Steve Carell is hilarious!
So that was pretty much our Christmas in a nutshell. I am posting pictures on my website photos.yahoo.com/lilbitfromks and the should be in the "Japan: Christmas" album. Check them out if you want! There are too many to post.
It has been decided that this is probably the last Christmas that we spend away from family for awhile. It was pretty rough on us at times, but it helped to talk to people on the phone and receive e-mails as well. We are happy that we were able to at least be together for this holiday, and it was nice to be 'stranded' on this island together. :)
That's about all for now...

-Ashley