So yeah, things have been pretty busy here. Now that I've been roped into doing the charity musical ( really seriously enjoying it, I swear! The traveling around every second weekend is a bit tough though :/) there's most of my weekends tied up.
I was able to do a weekend home stay with a Japanese family two weeks ago, and had a great time. The family had lived in the US for about 6 years, so their English was pretty good. What threw me off was the complete lack of personal questions that most Japanese people ask me when we first meet. And therefore usually have some sort of witty remark ready, so I definitely wasn't expecting this! It was fun though. My host mom (now to be referred as Kazumi), and her two children (Kenchi and Yuina) picked me up at the Murakami train station and then preceded to Sekikawa to make mochi. The ironic part of the morning was that we both already knew the main people in charge! It was with the same group who I had done the traditional rice harvesting with in October, so we had a nice little reunion. Even better, the rice we used was the stuff I had picked! and was able to buy some of it after :) Food always tastes better when you've worked for it, don't you think?
For those of you going "what the heck is this mochi stuff?!" let me explain. Mochi is rice mixed with water and beaten the crap out of with a heavy wooden mallet until its a gooey, delicious mess, and then topped with more or less what ever you want. My favourite is adzuki, or red bean paste. After we all had our way with the mochi, it was lunch time, which meant 6 different kinds of homemade curries. It was delicious. Not enough words to describe it. Personally, I'm a big fan of Indian and Thai curries, but that day the Japanese had definitely pulled ahead a bit in my books (sure that Thailand will inevitably put itself on top again :P). We eventually made it back to their house (really nice, by the way) after enduring a 45 minute traffic jam on the highway :/ and played almost a million games of Uno with the kids. I had also brought flashcards showing different things in Canada that I used for my self-introduction at my schools, so I explained a bit about my lovely country. Even though they had lived in the States for several years, they weren't able to get up to visit.
Dinner was amazing! Oh how I've missed real home cooking! Needless to say I pigged out. God knows when the next one will be hahaha Not at my house, that's for sure. Then the next day, Kazumi took me to her pottery studio. I've always wanted to try pottery, and was floored when I found out that it was a hobby of hers. In fact, all of the dishes we used at the house were made by her! She's really good too. So she let me mess around for a few hours,and I scraped together something that resembles a bowl. Surprisingly it takes awhile to complete, probably not until the end of December she said, so she's going to finish it for me. I'd like to try it again though, and was invited back again anytime. By the end of the weekend I was completely exhausted. I've been 'lucky' enough to have a cold that's been constantly with me for over a month now, and unfortunately it was still in full swing during that weekend. The downside to working with young children I guess.
This past weekend Murakami hosted the musical practice, in which Bryan and Nicole readily lent out their apartments for people to stay the night. I had offered my place initially too and have the most space out of everyone, but the almost hour drive back and forth seemed like a little much. Apparently it was American Thanksgiving this past week, so we had rented out a local community centre to have a dinner party. I'm still a little bitter on the whole topic. Canadian Thanksgiving, which was in October, wasn't given a second thought to. Nicole and I were kind of upset, but then again, I believe we're only two of a very small population within the JET community here in Niigata; everyone else is either American or British. Then a bit of irony set in..Nicole and I ended up cooking the turkey, stuffing and all. Granted, we were in Murakami territory, but it was the stressing ordeal. (To those of you other musical people reading this, don't be offended, I just like to complain). There was a lot of excess running around to try and have the turkey both unthawed and cooked by the time the dinner started that night, and there was even location confusion where the place we thought we had booked for the evening wasn't the place we ended up being able to cook the turkey in, even though that was the REAL community centre we were led to believe we had booked and the one we had actually booked was called something else. Long story short, everything worked out. The turkey was excellent and the food everyone made was delicious. Then came the best part..nomihoudai! whoo whoo! (all you can drink)
Nicole, my Japanese friend Shigeko, and I went to see Harry Potter during the last holiday off. Best one by far! If anyone hasn't seen it yet I highly recommend it.
