The Lighthearted Wanderer

12.28 A great going away present/last meal in Japan's Kansai International airport

12.29 I lazed away most of my repeat Dec 28, and slept most of Dec 29th away. Pretty much all I've done is sleep, watch tv, and play with my parents' doggie Chelsea :) Isn't she a cutie?

12.27 Okay so I totally missed the last few days...But it's been an amazing last few days, simple and relaxing. I'm totally in the wintery holiday spirit, and heading home for a New Year with the family an new doggie :) sending love to all my buddies, close and far away.

12.24 Christmas Eve found me in a bunch of unexpected places. We started the day bright and early after a fun-filled birthday celebration to hop a couple trains to Daito-shi in Osaka. It was actually rather surreal to be walking around at 9am on a Saturday...and no one was around... Anyways, we went to Daito for a Super Smash Brothers Tournament (wait, what Elaine? you play Smash?). No of course not ;) So the tournament was during the day, and afterwards we decided to swing by Osaka Hikari Renaissance near Osaka City Hall. There were so many beautiful light displays...I know Kobe's Luminarie is supposed to be the best one in Japan...but in terms of Christmas-spirit inducing, I think Osaka wins. (To be fair, the Luminarie began in Kobe as a remembrance of the Great Hanshin Earthquake in '95, so it's more a remembering than a Christmas celebrating). If you've got some time tonight (Christmas Day here in Japan) head over to Yodoyobashi station on the Keihan line ...

12.23 Thanks so much for an epically awesome birthday celebration ^_^

12.22 The Umeda Sky Building in downtown Osaka was having a fun German-themed Christmas event. Lots of beer, wine, sausages, hot chocolate, nuts, gingerbread cookies, and other fun Christmas reminders :) Yesterday afternoon, we made it over to Osaka for some Christmas merriment. It was pretty cold outside, and for some reason we thought cold beer would remedy that...it was still really cold haha. It was cool to see a both internationals and Japanese families enjoy Christmasy things. I will say, even though Christmas this year is quite a bit different, now that school is out and I've got my special visitor ^_^, I'm feeling much more ready to celebrate :)

12.21 Spreading Christmas cheer in some small ways. My English club girls and I had lots of snacks, decorated little ornaments, and listened to Christmas music. I love their little ornaments...aren't they so creative?? :)

12. 20 Sorry for all the food posts, but I haven't been taking any other pictures lately...and yesterday was a particularly funny assortment of foods... First, I found myself in Chinese class with some 3rd year students for a "tea party"...seriously it was like we were inspecting drugs, passing around ground up dried leaves and smelling them. The flowers were so cool though, they start out as these little dried up balls and then when they're put in the hot water they start slooooooowly blooming into something that actually looks like it used to be a flower. This one here is a jasmine that had THREE flowers in one little ball! Who would have known? The students all skipped out around 12 again...seriously I don't quite understand this modified holiday schedule...why can't we just have 1 or 2 days of regular class schedules, and then have more break time? Oh well, knowing Japan, if that were the case the teachers would probably still have to go to scho...

12.19 Question: How old should someone be before she buys jewelry for herself? And I mean the fancy, someday I'll pass this on to my daughter/daughter-in-law, type of jewelry. My mom has a box full of jewelry that she insists will be mine someday and so I shouldn't bother buying anything of my own lol...which is cool and all...but I was wondering...when in the world did she start that box? I remember playing and looking through them when I was a little little girl, which definitely means that she already had them sometime in her 20s. Isn't that kind of funny to think? When do you think parents start having the keepsakes that their children will look through and think of as practically antiques? Anyway, it's my bday in next week (O_O) and so I will admit, I was looking for some treats/fancy things to gift to myself. These are from online, but for some reason buying online doesn't seem as fun as picking out one in a store? I don't know...part of me stil...

Planning ahead for next term (I know, whoa what's gotten into Elaine? Planning ahead??), I have 4 classes left with my beloved boisterous 3rd year/senior class. I want to leave them with some "real life" English knowledge! So this is what I've been throwing around in my head... - Giving Compliments (I did this lesson already with my younger classes so I might make a modified version to make my life easier with less new lessons to plan) - Impromptu speaking, because I think it's fun to make kids squirm and putting them on the spot, not that I actually do that all that often...*wishes she could be that kind of teacher that mercilessly puts students in uncomfortable speaking situations for no reason* - Class discussion on an article or topic that's easy to talk about. Hearing from my Japanese college friends (at least the ones at the foreign studies university), it seems like in college there IS a level of class discussion/participation that is expected in ...

12.18 Sunday brought me to Miki (don't know what it means yet, but I do know that it's not famous for rice noodles like the miki noodles in the Philippines) for my friend's taiko concert. It was at a matsuri of some sort? There were piles and piles of FOOD everywhere! Strawberry tiramisu (above) was one of the many highlights of the evening :)

12.17 I went to Mass tonight (it's Saturday) because I wouldn't be able to go tomorrow morning. A 25 minute subway ride and a 10 minute uphill sprint and I slid into a seat with plenty of time to spare. In downtown Kobe, the church is made up of a lot of fellow internationals. It's a special time of year, the 9 nights before Christmas ( simbang gabi ), so there were a super high proportion of Filipinos at this particular Mass. I have to admit...it's really different going to church now. Like, yeah at Brown I was still technically away from the fam and went to church on my own, but I always had the FAmily to back me up, and the BRCC was awesome. There are nice things about the church in Kobe of course, the priests kind of remind me of the ones back home in California (one Filipino and lecture-y, one American and teacher-y), and there are beautiful stained glass panels and other decorations (like the Advent wreath here) that elegant and understated. And I also love...

12.16 Sometimes Friday nights are just that...

12.15 Hahaha...It kind of makes me laugh how I made my eyes do that. Since I haven't been doing any other kind of work, I've been reading adolescent literature and even ordered some online through Amazon. This book, Beautiful Creatures , is one that I was supposed to have read over 2 years ago, way back when I was taking Adolescent Literature (that's my old blog with some of the books I read for that class) with my bestie Sonia . Our class even had a skype date with one of the authors, to which I remember simply just hanging back and not contributing to the discussion (surprise surprise). Anyway, I finally got around to reading it this past week...563 pages in a little under 3 days! I love how young adult novels are so packed with descriptions and imagery and coming of age and flawed characters and magic and nonsense and everything. Think Twilight with witches instead of vampires and taking place in South Carolina instead of Washington state. I must say though, I...

12.14   Can you tell me what holiday this is supposed to be for? Maybe Kwanzaa, because there are 7 candles?    You know I wanted to come by and swipe those bears from the table.   Japanese: This notebook might be wonderful writing feelings for you.  Oh yeah, you know it.

12.13 It's been a rough few days for me...and for all my exam-taking, stressed-being, semester-ending, work-inundated, life-is-so-crazy-right-now buddies, this will probably rub you the wrong way. For me, the past few days have been...well, empty. Full of nothing (accidental juxtaposition). I go to work, and it might as well be like I am not there. I have nothing assigned, nothing to catch up on, I asked other teachers for help and they say no thanks, and so I go on my own merry way practicing Japanese, Christmas art projects I make for myself, reading. From 8:20am to 4:10pm. Every day since last Tuesday. And probably every day until school gets out. And as much as I would like to go into a full on rant about why this makes me feel so awful--I hear the other perspective loud and clear. Be happy with it. Be happy earning money while just about nothing. You're so lucky. Are you sure there isn't anything else you could be doing? Why don't you try doing X/Y/Z? I he...

12.12 There's really no shortage of characters, creatures, dolls, and figuringes here in Japan. A common idea is that "anything can be cutesyfied". Traffic signs, advertisements, school supplies, food packages...everywhere! When my mom visited, we always enjoyed spotting all the characterizations of the mascots for the touristy sites we went to. They even had a character that was literally a castle with a face! (I'll be sure to add a picture later on) Cuteness overload? So I met this little guy at a convenience store shelf. At first, I was like "aww Santa-san, how adorable!" And then I took a closer look...Santa-san has GOLD wings, a trumpet, and ANGRY EYES??

12.11 100yen from one of those gumball machine type things. Isn't it adorable?

12.10 I ventured up to the northern part of Hyogo called Tamba for two of my friends' birthday parties. It was a fabulous evening of Indian food and all-night karaoke, complete with all-you-can-drink. The drinks were on the weaker side and since we had so many of them...I guess we stayed hydrated? Mostly all of us were fine the next morning despite staying awake until 6 am haha... In Tamba, there are persimmon trees EVERYWHERE! Which is ridiculous, because at the grocery store here in my town, we pay so much for just one piece, but this tree in my friend's backyard had persimmons aplenty! So much of the fruit is pricier at the grocery stores, and certain fruits especially...melons are renowned for being $50+ though those are the ones you give as gifts when you visit people or something... Anyways, the persimmon trees made me think of Halloween and autumn-y stuff, and it was rather eerie that the bright orange fruits were "still surviving" as my friend said, b...

12.9 The Year-end (bonenkai) was delightful! I didn't have nearly enough food :/ but we did play bingo...and I won a calculator! Kind of random, I must admit... Anyway, the female teachers and I went back to Luminarie, and while in my tipsy tipsy state, I really needed to find a bathroom, and in my searching, I found another light display that my group had missed when we went on Tuesday! I must admit, lights are extra trippy when not in complete sober state...

12.8 Okay, not so creative with this one. I've been pretty much at home, school, or the grocery store for the past few days. Since applications are on the rest for the moment, I actually get to relax at home, which is pretty sweet. I finally started putting up some decorations, and my house is definitely more Christmas-y. On Friday I'll be going into downtown for my school's "Year-end Party" and I'm definitely going to get more decorations then. I made the little stockings with glitter paint pens, and I had so much fun making them that I'm going to make some for some friends here in Japan. All the decorations came from the 100yen (approx $1.30) store, a.k.a. Decorating on a Budget :) Like I said, Friday is the year end party, and I'm really excited for almost all the teachers to be there...looking forward to lots of food and drink and merryment!

12.7 Thanks for the flowers love, and thanks for a year of wonderful adventures together <3 

12.6  This picture is from Kobe's Luminarie, a memorial to remember the Hanshin Earthquake 17 years ago. A little section of the city center in Kobe gets transformed into this light display reminiscent of It's a Small World in Disneyland. The lights are beautiful and entire buildings are covered in these displays. I thought it would be cool to show a zoomed in version of one of the displays here. It's funny how easy it is to make something 3-D look so flat, and how easy it is to make something massively large look rather small.

Okay so it really isn't that much terrible Engrish and I saw loads more terrible things at the store haha. But this sweater had a comfy/semi-oversized feel that made me feel really dancer-y :) I'm going to an Engrish-themed party on Friday, so I'll be sure to find more! "It is all the girls' common sense*" Wonder what that's supposed to mean... "I enjoy talking with friend very long time!" On a totally random note, I ran into one of my students while I was buying this...can I say, awwwwwwkward! When they aren't in their uniforms/and are actually dressed up, they can look older than me! It was really cute that she recognized me and called out my name to say hi, lol I think we were both shocked to see each other...we'll see how it is in class today ;)

12.4 The sky seems so big here sometimes. Like the same clouds that look like bites of cotton candy in the US look like massive cotton islands. Many times when I'm walking home from the grocery store, I find myself looking up at the sky and feeling very very small. My suburb is a small place, and already I feel small in it. Riding the Ferris wheel with my friends tonight, the buildings keep going on and on until the sea stops, and still the sky feels so big. I guess the sky feels big wherever you go, but I think the clouds here have this tendency to lie at just the right height that they make the sky feel really big and also like it's about to engulf the land below it.

12.3 Photo-booth/Purikula pictures are super popular here. My kids have their purikula stickers all over their school supply boxes and such. For 400yen, you get to choose 6 backgrounds and add a variety of effects...everything from bigger eyes, adding accessories, writing words, etc. I wasn't really into it at first (the photobooth part is always fun, but the decorating part was always stressful as I like to take a lot of time to add stuff to pictures), but this weekend I took it twice and had a baller time just doing whatever to these silly pictures. Here's one from today: It's just a bundle of ridiculousness...I probably won't be doing purikula every weekend, but I'm so glad to have these silly photos :)

12.2 There aren't that many wintertime reminders here in Kobe...even though it's December, the weather can hop up to the 60s, and it probably won't ever be cold enough for it to snow here. This tree I pass on the way home from school, I realized all of a sudden it had lost all its leaves (not that we had that many red leaved fall trees here anyway) but that it was sporting these cute little red berries. It kind of made me think of holly ("Deck the halls with boughs of holly fa la la la la la la la la") and yes I realize holly should have those funny shaped green leaves, but I'll just be satisfied in the reminder the yes, winter and Christmas are coming and it's about time that I get into the Christmas spirit :)