Sunday

Sunday was a good day too. It was a four man live. (four people were playing) Nice.



Here are some pictures for your enjoyment. The guy in the white shirt sitting down is Shisshi. (prounounced kinda like CC) He plays guitar for the other band and sometimes comes to the street too. He's really good.

Then there is a picture of Harumi working while everyone else talks. She's awesome.

And last, Mako.

I won't be updating for a while. I'm leaving today to go to church camp (in Japanese) and then a prayer retreat (in English). I'll be gone for a week.
 

Saturday

Saturday was a fun day. Saw lots of foriengers. There was a cute litte Chinese kid, two Korean students and this weird American guy.
The first picture is with the two Korean guys. They are in the front middle. Nice guys. Cute.

The American guy was really annoying. He talked to me when I wanted to be talking to the band. More about him later.

Next picture is Kumi. She just decided to put down the chair while we were waiting at the stop light and sit down. She's cute.

Then the last two pictures are from the train ride home. Nice thing about going home lately is that Mayu, (the girl using the cell phone) ususally goes home by Taxi. Recently she's been giving me rides since my house is kinda on the way. Super nice.



 

Finally home.

So yesterday was Bethany's birthday, so we had a party for her. Bethany and I went to a type of "Japanese spa" (um yeah, don't ask if you really don't want to know.) Then we had some pizza and watched a movie. It was nice. But we and another girl stayed up all night, and by all night I mean until like 9 in the morning, talking. We took a short 4 hour "nap" and then went out to try to get forms to register for the Japanese Language Proficency test. Fun stuff. They were out, so I didn't get one. Then we talked more.

I got home right at 7:00, but then I only had 10 mins before I was to meet a student for dinner. I had a nice dinner of eel with my student, her neice (who apparently really likes me) and a former student who has been training with the Japan Self Defense Force. He wants to be an accountant, but he still has to do all the basic training stuff. He's really not happy about the hand grendade training. LOL.

Anyway, made for a really long two days. It's nice to be back home. I'm definately about to crash.

Anyway, these are two random pictures from my collection. The first one is a young bird taken around springtime. The second is a nice Japanese looking bell. There is really no point to either picture, but I just want to put pictures in my blog now. Ok, time to sleep. 

My new hat!!!

So today on my way home from a meeting, I randomly decided to go shopping. :-)

I went looking for a new purse, since my old one recently broke on me. (I seem to wear out my poor purses rather quickly) I found one. But in the process, I also found me a new hat!!!

Actually, I made the hat. I found the basic baby blue cap at the hundred yen shop (think dollar store). One buck. Add in cute blue flower hair clip, one buck. I've been seeing all these really cute girly caps lately, with chains and lace and stuff, so when I saw the hat, I figured I could make one for way cheaper than they sell in the stores.

Next stop, the 300 yen shop (three dollar store). There I found two cute necklaces. (total, 6 bucks).

Then, at home, I proceeded to dismantle the necklaces and use them to decorate my new hat. This is the results. It's actually cuter than the pictures show. So now I have a cute new hat. Total cost, some where around 8 bucks. If I tried to buy something similar, it'd be between 20 and 30 bucks. Hehehe... I win! :-D I really enjoy creative spurts! Guess what I'm wearing tomorrow! Hehehehehehehe. 

My House is Clean!!!!

Well, I've decided to change the way I do titles. I used to make them all so you could read them as "Reflections: of... whatever" But that's getting really annoying. So I'm just going to write titles however I feel like it from now on. :-)

So anyway, yeah, I had a home party. It was good. I am totally wiped. I don't think I'll schedule a home party after a live again if I can help it. I felt like a zombie towards the end. But it was fun.



So here are some of the pictures from the party. 13 people came, 14 with me. It was a good number. There were even some new faces. And this might be the first time I actually knew everyone who came. LOL. At least their names.

Everyone really enjoyed the food. I'm glad it turned out well. Although it was very expensive to make tacos. Maybe because of all the fresh vegetables. Oh well. I'll try to make it cheaper next time.

I don't really have good A/C in my house, so we were doing with open windows and fans. Eventually a bunch of people went outside to smoke. It was actually cooler outside. So, Sing decided that we should eat watermellons outside. The bottom picture is everyone outside about to eat the watermellons.

EVeryone was pretty laid back for this party. They seemed to have fun, but most of us were tired. I'm really impressed at how hard Harumi worked. It's also really funny everytime I invite these people to my house. People like Kumi end up making theirselves at home. They do all the clean-up, and last night, they decided to make hot tea for Sing, and just helped themselves. It was really funny when they brought the tea outside and I was wondering what they were doing in my house. But I guess it means they feel really comfortable with me. And when I think about it, I have friends in America who would feel comfortable enough in my house to do those things too. So I guess this means I really have been accepted by these people. It's a nice thought.

But my home parties are always kinda bittersweet. Because there are so many people in a small space, it's kinda hard for me to have conversations. And there is SO much Japanese flying around my head. I think it was easier when I didn't understand as much Japanese. Now I can understand many words, but I still can't follow the whole conversation, so it's a bit more frustrating. But something I noticed last night was I've forgotten how beautiful the language is. Sometimes it's just nice to listen to the sound of the language. The more words you understand, the more you are trying to figure out what is being said. But when you just listen to the sound, it's kinda like music.

I probably could have participated more if I had tried, but I was really tired, so I just kinda took in everything. But each time I feel like I get closer to different people. So it's nice for that to happen.

The great thing about home parties: afterwards, my house is clean for at least a couple of days. And I always end up with food in my house. (usually I don't have food in my house. It goes bad before I can eat it.)

And Summer vacation is almost over now. I have this week left, and next week is a church camp all in Japanese and then a prayer retreat. After that is work. I was afraid I would be really bored during vacation, but it turns out that I was really busy. Partly because I agreed to keep meeting with my director during the vacation. But that's ok. I think I also had enough time to just not do anything either. It's a good balance, and a change from the normal. Good times. 

of waiting for guests...

So it's almost time for my party to start. But no one is here yet. So I decided to write here again. I forgot to mention this morning that I was given Sing's set list from the show. I know you can't read it. But this is what it looks like. I even got everyone to sign it. :-) I'm happy!!!
So this is what my house looks like right now. Still a bit messy, but cleaner than normal. I ran out of batteries, but I might try to get more and then take some pictures of the party. :-D

And Finally, the last picture is Harumi. She worked really hard today. She prepared all the vegetables for me and everything. She was a lot of help. It was fun to work together.

But we went to bed so late, she's really tired. 

of Annie Live...

Tonight was my fourth time to go to Annie Live. It was lots and lots of fun. Here is a picture of me with two of the girls. Notice how curly my hair is!!!! Cool! :-) My tie was a big hit too.

Here are some pictures from the live. This is Sing playing the guitar. It was a really good show.

This is the lead singer, Miho, and Shi-shi in the background. He is a really good guitar player. He plays really cool pickings and stuff. I forget the real terms. And of course Mako is in the background on the drums. You can't see Sing because he's not in the picture.







This is Haruna. She had all the band members sign her arm. It's really cool! :-D

I had a really good time tonight. Tomorrow, er, today... is my home party. Tonight Harumi is spending the night and she will help me get ready for the party. (She is reading this as I type it too!!!) We mostly speak Japanese, so it is good practice for me. But apparently she can read some English too! Maybe we should just write to each other!

Well, it's really late now. So, I should go now. But I've decided my blog looks much better when I use pictures, so I will try to use them more often from now on. :-) 

of Trash...

So I guess a typhoon came today. It messed up the weather. It was hot and humid. I woke up today with a headache, and it didn't go away all day. One of those headaches that advil doesn't fix either. So I basically did nothing today. I was supposed to clean my house. Didn't happen.

I should still have some time tomorrow... I hope...

But I did go out to see the band tonight. I figured it was pointless to be miserable in my house and do nothing. The music does seem to make me feel better.


It was a good set tonight. They had four members tonight and many people stopped to listen. They really are a good band.

They also played my favorite song and I was able to record it, so now I can listen to it whenever I want to. I'm happy.

And since I had my camera out, I took some pictures and I decided to go ahead and post some of them here. So these are some of my friends. They guy in every picture is Sing (aka Leader).

Anyway, I think I'm going to go to bed. Hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow.

OH, and random information of the day. It's really hard to find hamburger buns in Japan. But not so difficult to find taco shells. So the menu for the home party has been changed from Hamburgers to Tacos. Fun stuff.

Anyway, I'm off to bed now. Hopefully I'll manage to clean my entire house tomorrow before the concert. If not, I hope I can fake it. ;-) 

of "Street" friends...

So this is me(the one who is not Japanese and takes up half the picture), Mako (the guy in the hat), Haruna (the girl in the front) and Harumi (the girl in the back).

These are some of my friends from the band. (Mako's the drummer) If you look real closely, my hair's kinda curly. I'll try to get a better picture, but yeah, my hair's gone all curly thanks to the humidity. Imagine that!

I had fun taking pictures tonight. Maybe I'll put up more later. Now it's time for bed. I have an early day tomorrow too! ack! 

of summer "work"...

So today was a long day. Not bad, just long. I had a meeting with my director today. We were scheduled to plan a retreat together, but we ended up moving her office instead. It was good. Of course, I'm tired now. Then we went out to dinner together and ended up watching Pirates of the Caribbean 2 together as well. It was a great movie! I was so pleased. It was worth 12 bucks to see it. Anyway, it was good. I'm tired. Time for bed. I work again tomorrow. I have make up lessons. But oh well. It's all good!

of surprises...

God is pretty cool. So in a series of random circumstances (usually involving me procrastinating) I got a nice surprise today. I decided I should probably eat something other than dry cereal today, so I finally got dressed and went out to dinner. (cheap sushi, gotta love it) But before I did that, I decided I really needed a nap. So it was almost 8 when I left my house. Well, I ate slowly at the sushi place and they messed up my orders a couple of times and was really slow with my ice cream. (green tea ice cream, love it) Well, this all turns out to be a really good thing.

So the funny thing about living in a place like Japan, is you often run into people you know while you are out and about on your own business. It's a very small town/community feel. And of course I stick out more than most people too.

So anyway, last week, I decided I was going to try to fix one of my cheap fans (the cool folding kind that are really pretty) that was falling apart on me. Well, glue didn't work. But I had been fixing it in front of some of my students and their parents. There was a whole conversation about my fans in the process. Well, one of my students, Jun, studies kendo (think swords only bamboo sticks instead). Today he was competing in Tokyo. Well, apparently, while they were there, they saw a fan for the building they were in (a pretty famous building). Jun's dad remembered my fan problem (I don't think he knows that I have like 5 fans, but that's ok) and they bought me a souvenir fan! How sweet is that! I'm sure it was expensive too. (my fans all cost like a dollar). Anyway, they thought they wouldn't be able to give it to me until September when school starts again. But while I was walking home from dinner, they were driving home from Tokyo and they saw me walking! So they stopped the car, and ran to catch up with me. I'm sure it must have been something for the other pedestrians to see. I was wearing my headphones so I couldn't hear them so well, but they were shouting "Amber Sensei, Amber Sensei" to get my attention. (actually, it was his mom doing the shouting). So cute! So was that perfect timing or what? I got a really nice new fan from my student for the summer. I'm going to use it so much!

And today must be Jun day (in August no less {Jun-June}). I got an e-mail on my cell phone today from my friend Jun (Jun's a popular name). He got a new cell phone and was giving me the information. Funny stuff.

Anywho, that's my day. I talked to Marlo a lot. I washed my towels. I napped. I ate. I got a present. I came home. Ahhh, the joys of being on vacation. Fortunately, tomorrow and Thursday I actually have things to do. Come to think of it, Friday too. Then of course is the weekend with all the joys that brings. And I have plans for Monday as well. Horray! I really hate being at home bored all the time.