Please come in.....

Well I thought I would share a little bit of my everyday life here in Japan with you. This is not only my apartment in Japan, but it is also my very first apartment that is completely my own. So please come in.....



Watch you step as you come in and please take off your shoes in the genkan (front entry).



Do you need to use the washroom or would you like a drink as we walk by...





How about a Starbucks coffee or maybe a shower....




Please come into my room and make yourself at home.....





Thanks for visiting and you are welcome to come back, the door is always open. Please shut the door on your way out, I am going to lay down for a nap......

DIET COKE or as they like to call it here NO CALORIE COKE

When Erika left, bless her heart she got me started on the necessities of food supplies in my apartment. She left me with Goma oil (sesame oil), sembai (rice crackers), Ice cream, Cabbage, and a diet coke. Just before she was leaving I was gradually drinking my 500 ml cokes slower and slower. I don't know why it started taking me a week to finish then two weeks, maybe because I was not always drinking it other places. It was also starting to taste sweeter and sweeter and I am not a fan of sweets. But I wrote is post on the sole purpose of letting you know, last night I finally finished the one she left for me 20 days ago. Don't let me lead you astray, I still love diet coke and can not wait to go grocery shopping and to buy a new one and see how far it goes. Thanks again Erika for the wonderful supply. Sorry about the pictures of my apartment I have not had a day off where I haven't been doing anything recently. I have saturday off and hope to get my life under control once again. Until then...........

Fighting a bush.....

This past weekend I got to experience something that not many foreigners get to experience in Japan. I went out in the mountains with eight other japanese people to look for Mountain Vegetables. After getting up at 4am, we finally got to the mountain around 7am. I thought it might just be a little walk on a nice path just picking them as we walked down it but, wow was I mistaken.

This is me after a couple of the ladies got me dressed up and ready to go. I look huge cause the pants were three sizes to big so I had them rolled up under my jacket and shoved into my boots. The boots we rubber so we could go through water and mud and the had huge grips on the bottom so I wouldn't fall. I had a backpack on my back that they had given me so I could hold all my vegetables. Then I had a baseball cap on and a sort of bandana on over top of it to cover my cheeks. Also in this photo you don't see my gloves but the blue and white gloves kind of finished of the whole outfit. At this point I was glad we were somewhere in the mountain and not many people would see me.


Silly me, I thought this was the nice easy path we would take.


But really looking at this picture you could say there was no path.


When we came to this river I thought 'oh well I guess we better turn around'. But they just hopped in and started walking so the adventure continued. There were definitely more rivers to come throughout the day.


There were like a thousand different kinds of edible plants to remember and I had to keep asking if you could eat this or that. If it looked good to me I thought you could eat it. Everyone was laughing at me. But here are just a couple of things you had to keep your eyes open for. The first one is bamboo this one was to big to pick but they hid in the grass and near trees for the most part. The second one, if you look close at the top of the tree you see some greens on the top of it, that's what we needed, after pushing the tree and three of us working together we finally go them and more to come.



These are all the veggies that three of us picked in about two hours, but I don't really count I was still trying to figure out what's edible at the end of the trip.










































Finally after all my hard work the couple that invited me decided to reward me by showing me how to make tempura and I also got to eat some. So this is what the stuff we picked looks like on the table. It was amazing, it always tastes better when you pick the food yourself!

Miss yah Erika!!!

As many of you know Erika has left. She has left me here in Japan with no one my age that I can talk to. But I will survive and get through it. But I thought I would take this time and reflect on good times(some not so good) Erika and I spent together. Hope you enjoy this buddy.

This is when the paparazzi took pictures of us. Which seems they can't get a good picture of us either!


Snowboarding in Japan, pretty much the best thing ever!


opps.. except for the fat in Erika's lunch!


We were the only two that were amazed with the push window.


I tried to convince her to buy these glasses!


Doesn't she look good in a head band!


We were just driving in a car and yet somehow Erika ends up getting her hair to look like this!


We were debating buying these glasses so we took this picture to see what they looked like on us.


I saved this one for last cause I wasn't sure I really wanted to put it on, but I convinced myself it was worthy, this is kind of a reflection on Erika's and my Valentine's Day!!!


These are only a few but they sum up why I am going to miss yah Erika!!

Relax, what's that?

Well as most of you know I am not a fan of sitting around and doing nothing. I think that is one reason God put me in Takanosu for the next year. My line of events started on Friday. We went with a couple of classes and some kid to Hirosaki to see the Sakura (Cherry Blossoms). Then Saturday we went and made glass beads which was so much fun not to mention we got to drive by the ocean to get there. Also there was one place on the way back with Sakura so we stopped, they had a kind of mini go cart thing and of course I got everyone into it. It was a beautiful day and a great ride. Saturday evening we went for honey bread with a bunch of friends then for coffee and got home around eleven. Then Sunday I taught sunday school for the junior high girls in Aikawa, it was good but also hard because of the language barrier. And for all of you who ask I am not fluent yet! Then back to our church for service, which after we quickly left because we went with most of the people from church up to Hirosaki once more to see the Sakura, not a big deal for me cause it was totally different from before cause we got to see them at night. Then monday up at the crack of dawn to go to a ladies convention about two hours away. Great speaker, but it gets tiring listening to Japanese and translation. After the convention was over we stopped Kakunodate to see more Sakura, which were all lined up on a ridge over looking a river, once again beautiful. That was my weekend of relaxation! Here are some pictures, if you want more please let me know.

This is a picture of are scenery on the ride to the bead making place.

This is Tomoko and I on the mini go-cart thing.


Here are some Sakura pictures I took many and it was a hard decision to decide which ones to put on my blog!