December Challenge

So blog challenges seem to be pretty popular among my blog-friends, and so I've decided to do one as well--it's pretty simple but something I've wanted to do for a long time :)

I've been thinking a lot lately about photography...I've self-dubbed myself as a paparrazi, and I pride myself many random photos that are surprising fun, candid, or just plain look pretty. But do I really have any basis for thinking that my accidental artsyness? So I'm going to do a photography/blog challenge. One a day, with a short description (which will be great also for prompting me to write about more random thoughts and happenings here in Japan)...I'm thinking that the pictures are going to come from everywhere, my phone, my camera, some edited, some not...who knows? So here we go!

(Oh yeah, I'm going to cheat already and have a picture from November. I'm going to be travelling on December 28 so I figure I should have an extra one for that day. Btw, I'll be in California in time for the New Year!!)

Okay, so here we go, for real

11.30
Guess what...that's FAKE food lol. Made by one of my first grade high school students for art class...I think it definitely looks appetizing enough to eat! If I saw that in the display of a restaurant, I would definitely want to go in and try it.

It's actually really fortunate that Japan's restaurants use so many of these food and picture displays. In a way, it makes ordering food a lot easier..."Kore wa (This)...Hitatsu kudasai (1 please)" but at the same time, whenever I end up in a restaurant without these nifty taste bud incentivizers, I find myself simply picking something random out of the list...

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12.1
School lunch anyone?  

This is real food though, I promise. My lunch from yesterday - my school cafeteria is one of those places where I just pick food at random...many times the lunch ladies try to tell me what the specials are, but if I can't figure it out, I usually go with my go-to "katsu curry" or "tonkatsu ramen" lunch The lunch ladies at both my schools are real sweethearts, always trying to tell me in English what the lunch is. I told them that I am trying to practice listening and understanding, especially numbers/prices, so I've been trying my best. I have to say though, the lunch ladies definitely know their numbers in English a lot better than my students do lol.

Yesterday I was extra hungry, so I bought a bowl of friend chicken bits (karage) before receiving the rest of my lunch. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the set lunch already came with more karage, and I had more food than I could stuff down. I decided to give them to some students, and sitting nearby were the infamous 3rd year crazy boys from my 20-person class.

I think it took about .5 seconds after I said "Hungy? Please eat," for the 6 boys to fight over the pieces of chicken on the table. It was such a quick moment and in the next blink, the victors were happily chewing on their free food. I couldn't believe my eyes, I had never seen my students move that quickly before.

So now I know, if I want them to move, offer limited quantaties of food for them to fight over ;)

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I promise this won't be all about food! Here's to hoping that I'll be able to keep this up every day...
Happy December! <3

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