Well, it certainly has been a while since I posted a blog post on here! Whoops! I didn't mean for that to happen, but sometimes you have days where you don't do anything at all and you think it best not to post about that.
Today, however, I went out with a friend. Actually, it was the guy who took me to the ramen restaurant and the dam last week. He brought his kids along, and first he introduced me to an American(!) English teacher right here in town. Eric is from the southern U.S. and seems to be a pretty nice guy. He told me where I could get real cheese and tortillas, so I can make quesadillas! No wait, I take that back, he wasn't sure where to get "real" cheese either. But everything else was true.
We did get to talk at great length about how we often avoid "foreigners" in Japan, because so many of them are weird! And it's true! But luckily, we talked about "them" in the same way, which makes me think that both he and I are not weird, at least not in that way. So we might just end up hanging out.
I have a picture with Eric in it too, but I look terrible in it so I decided not to post it. But this is a picture of me and the kids in the English Conversation classroom. Kids of all cultures love blocks and plastic fruit! And poop jokes! These kids would get along with my kids swimmingly.
Then I went with my friend and his adorable kids across town, where there was a ridge-pole raising ceremony. That's when the first phase of construction of a new house or building is complete, and the construction workers climb up on the roof (or rafters, because the roof's not done yet) and throw candy and rice cakes and money down onto the crowd below and kids push and shove each other out of the way trying to collect giant bags full of the stuff. It all seemed very exciting until just a few minutes before it started, my friend's son fell on his face on the pavement. And hard, too. So I stayed with the daughter, and the dad took the son to the hospital, and the grandma came and joined us just in time for the candy-throwing. So we (the daughter-Kanna-and I) made a mad dash for candy and money to try to collect enough for 4 people since the dad and son had to miss it.
Here's the son (Kazuma) just a few moments before the fateful event. Actually, I had been holding him, and then I put him down and he came back and wanted me to hold him more. But then when he saw his sister playing with her candy bag, he wanted down. I guess I should never have put him down! But at least earlier in the day I had gotten a chance to buy Kazuma and Kanna some treats at the grocery store, so even though he missed out on the rooftop candy-throw, he got some chocolate and I got to run over him with a car some more. Plus, look at that cool jean jacket! So despite a bump on his noggin', this kid's still got it going on.
Here is a picture of my spoils o' war. All kinds of goodies in there, you can see. After the Great Candy Rain of '013, Kanna and I went back to the grandmother's house (immediately nextdoor) to compare and trade, just like an American Halloween. Then we waited and played "Donut Shop" with a plastic donut set, but in the end we weren't sure how long Sumihiro and Kazuma would be so the grandmother gave me a ride home. I would have been happy to wait, but I didn't want to be an imposition, either to the grandmother and her house or to the family with the injured child on their way home. So I accepted the ride and rode in the back seat, Driving Miss Daisy style if I were Miss Daisy and the grandmother were Hoke.
That's it for today. May this week bring many more joyous memories to blog about! And I do mean MANY, because I would hate to bore anyone who's reading this.
PS - Here's a sneak preview of one of many cameras that's been watching me.
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