Rolling sushi

My friends Anne and Keven (soon to be married in LA) and Gwen took me out to rolling sushi. The chef takes your order and sends it around on a small conveyor belt. Or, if you come at busier times you can just pick your fancy off the belt. Things are prices according to the plate they are placed on and they tally your bill by your number and variety of plates. I ate whale and some stuff that i have no idea what it was....It is customary to eat sushi in one big bite. If it has extra foliage then eat that in one bite and the rest in your second chomp. Enjoy! I love these ppl!

The decor

So Kelsey and Hope came over and helped me unpack an decorate. Hope Made dinner and we watched some movies. THANKS LADIES!!!!

Kelsey thanks again for the cowbell cake... amazing!
Um I still think some of these pics look super awkward. Hope you enjoyed my sweet outfit!

The Move

Here is the old to new apartment. Enjoy!

The sirens

So the video explains it, but there are vans that go by the residential areas occasionally. These vans have loud speakers that project music, sirens, or ppl's voices to let everyone in the area know what is going on. Have a gander...

New Years Eve In Sendai, Japan

Hope, Seth, and I went to downtown Sendai to on New Years Eve to see the lights. There is a whole street of lit trees up throughout the whole holiday season and Its beautiful. Take a look!

Christmas Trip to Tokyo

Hope's brother Seth Came into town just as everyone else left for the winter break. The three of us took a bus down to Tokyo and stayed in two hostels on our trip form the 25th to the 30th. We rode the night bus back and i rode my bick home and slept for most of the day on the 30th. In Tokyo we say the biggest shrine, a five story pagota, tokyo tower, Ueno park, a lot of subways, and much more. I have posed all of my pictures on facebook and have no intention of putting 300 pictures here. So venture on facebook if you want a gander. I am however putting all my videos here on my blog and not on facebook. So enjoy the walk back down from tokyo tower and the funvideos of the imperial palace as well as our luxurious second hostel.

Video 1: Our bud ride meets Tokyo at night. The adventure begins

Video 2: On our way to Ueno Park we saw an awesome advertisment for a raman resturant.

Video 3: In Ueno park we came upon a live preformance on xylophones.

Video 4: A night view from the first landing of the Tokyo Tower

Video 5: A walk down from Tokyo Tower. I just decided to take the stairs rather than the evevator. Its the longest video , like 7 minutes.

Video 6: A view from the base of the Tokyo Tower as we looked up after our journey.

Video 7: This is a journey across the world's busiest intersection. Or at least we think this is it It could have been the one down the rode that we crossed later.

The rest of the videos you can guess at.

Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas

We do a few activities to lead up to the winter break. One of which is making ginger bread houses with the second grade classes. Here are a few pictures of Aki, our translator; Masami our Japanese Kindergarden teacher; and I with our Christmas spirit. As well as Kelsea and Hope as we get ready for a Christmas party. As Christmas drew near, Hope and I decided to decorate my Christmas tree. Here is a picture of us sporting our coats with the fur.

Christmas Parties

Each Christmas each MeySen department has Christmas parties for their kids. We play games like Fill Santa's bag, Hit the Pinata, and Light the Christmas tree. The Kindergardeners' also preform skits or dances in more traditional garb. Here are a few pics and a link to MeySen's web site to see video clips of the kindergarden program. I helped the kindergarden classes but work on a daily basis with the immersion friends club program.

www.meysen.ac.jp/video/video.htm When you get there it is the second video on the left side and the first video on the right. Ignore the top main video.

Snow

Snow came earlier than winter by my apartment here in Sendai. This area of Japan does not get as much snow as the west or north but we had a nice inch or two. It was beautiful. Have a gander ....

Learn to cook Japanese food

Here are some videos of how to prepare some Japanese dishes. Our friends and co-workers Aki and Masami took one of their Saturday afternoons to teach us Immersion teachers how to cook Japanese style.

I have Bunnies

Although I recently had to return these cute critters to MeySen, I was able to keep them in my apartment for a few weeks and watch them frolic about. MeySen had loaned Regina (lighter colored) and Jovi (reddish one) to Hope when she asked for them in the Fall. She said I could keep them till Christmas when the school asked to have them back. I hear tell that the school has a deal with a pet shop owner that allows the school to borrow bunnies until they are breeding age at which time they are given back to the pet store. This allows the children at MeySen to see the animals and saves the pet store a lot of money on food and other animal care.

They were so fuzzy and really cute!