Date Night with Bunny

Like I've mentioned before, every Wednesday is what Boris and I like to call 'Date Night', where we simply spend the evening together going to various restaurants, or catch a film at the cinema. Last Date Night, we decided to drink our hearts our at Syzeria! Not my first choice, (or second, or third...) but it is without question a cheap place to drink and eat. And not everything on their menu is putrid like most of their pastas are!

It was fun!

feel gross

Whew!. My diet, which has been laden with alcohol, oily izakaya food, and junk from Lawson, is taking it's toll on me and I feel sluggish and contaminated! There have been 8 drinking events since entering December, and I'm glad to finally be able to say that there are only 2 more to go before I leave for fresh and crisp Nasu to celebrate Christmas with my family.

It's definitely a festive time, and I sincerely enjoy drinking and talking with my students, but it's far from relaxing! Having to always watch what you say, making sure that you're not offending anyone, smiling, being generally happy, and listening and acting like you understand can become quite exhausting, even if all of this is done sitting down with a drink in hand. I, for one, desperately need a break! Thankfully, I've only got 4 more working days before my first day of a long vacation! Yeeessss!

It's been a good year of experiencing and learning for me, and I feel like I've made a lot of progress in so many areas of my life. Although it wasn't always easy, I can honestly say that it has been a great year. I can't wait to celebrate how great 2011 has been for me with best friend Boris! Let's rock it, hun!

Below is a picture of me and my 'crazy women' student group! 

bounenkai 1

First bounenkai out of the way! It was a big, lively one of 38 members and was held at an izakaya which we had booked for the party a month or so in advance. The fun  began at 8:00 after our English discussion, and went straight on through the night, past last-train time, and into the next morning. For the party, The bounenkai's official cut-off time was 10:00, but seriously, in who's twisted world is two hours of drinking and partying enough? A lot of the members stayed until much later, reluctantly excusing themselves from the party  to catch their last train. I briefly considered catching my last train as well, but the fun was on, I was with good company, it was my first bounenkai of the year, and I HATE rushing for my last train (Really, the excuses were endless). So I ended up sticking around till the first train with a handful of members who, like me, didn't want the partying to end with midnight. We wrapped things up with an hour and a half of surprisingly energetic singing at karaoke! And by then, believe me, I was exhausted! That's 10 hours of partying straight with no breaks in between! No more, thanks! I had quite enough!

And oh, damn! I definitely drank too much. It's Japanese etiquette to pour each other's alcohol, and also to make sure that each other's glasses are full or that they have enough to drink. The student sitting directly in front of me was a very polite man, and made sure that my cup was always full. This was very nice of him, but it also made it difficult for me to estimate exactly how much I was drinking and at what rate. But I do remember exactly what I was getting drunk on: lot's of beer, umeshu nihonshu, and sake! It was the perfect recipe for a smashing hangover! Thankfully, I had my head screwed on properly that night, and I was very conscious of the need to keep my drinking at a moderate pace at a year-end party with students. I also didn't do or say anything embarassing, and was able to keep a good conversation up with the members that were sitting at the same table as me, despite feeling the affects of alcohol quite strongly. I'm very proud of myself! Well done! Oh, and love the fact that my face doesn't change color when I drink! Yay!

But despite drinking too much, and the long night, and feeling exhausted the next day with a horrible hangover, I had so much fun and don't regret a thing! Looking forward to the next one, on the 13th!

Our first CTP

Eiko says...

We made onigiris for the homeless! I honestly thought that we wouldn't be doing any CTP activity this year because of the inconvenient timing of our move and all that it entails, but where there's a will, there's a way!
We all rolled up our sleeves, and made many triangle rice balls for the homeless with Christmas songs playing in the back ground. I distinctly felt Christmas that day. It just isn't Christmas without those shows, performances, CTP activities, etc. It was righteous!

Puppies!!

Nozomi says...

Just recently, Dad, Chibs, Akari, Jun-kun and I went to see puppies that were born to one of Dad's friend's dog. (The puppies we went to see will be trained to be guide dogs for the blind.)
Those puppies were just soooo.....CUTE!!!!!!!!!!!
There were 8 puppies, 4 of them were black, and the other 4 white. We got permission to hold one puppy each, after we disinfected our hands. I think that was the first time I held a dog just by myself. As you can see in the pictures, I was quite happy and pleased to get to hold a puppy on the day of my birthday. I always wanted a dog, but with the financial state of the home, and knowing how expensive a dog is, the fact that I got to hold a puppy dog was quite special. :)

Check out da house!

Eiko says...

Last Tuesday, Mom and Dad and the teens went to the new house to start bringing our stuff over and also to tidy things up a bit. I was appalled to hear that there were, big, fat rats, and was equally disturbed to hear that my Dad stomped a baby rodent to death!!! Actually, I wasn't really disturbed. My Dad's known to have very little mercy on the like of rats, roaches, and mosquitoes. It was to be expected.

Well, Akari was going to take a picture of the rat Dad stopmed on for all you blood-thirsty readers, but unfortunately Dad didn't let her. But she did manage to photograph something else, which may not match up to a stomped-to-death-baby-rat, but which is equally disgusting in my books. Check out the picture below! See all that black weirdness on the floor? That, my dear friends, are dead ants!! Ew!!


Nande~? Kimochiwarui wa~!

We're going to have to do something about all this before we move in!

But what do you think of the house??




I was hoping for a few more good pictures to post, but Mom likes 'close ups'...and close ups aren't too helpful when you want to get a good idea of how the structure of the house is like. PTL! We'll try to get more for you laterz, but to give you a general idea of how the house is like, it's small, and very woody.

And I've gotta study now. My last Kousotsunintei test is coming up soon.
Mata atode ne!

Nozomi's first post!-Talk Time

Talk Time.
Doesn't the term, "talk time" make you stiff and maybe a tiny bit scared?
Anyway, let me introduce myself. My name is Nozomi, younger sister of Eiko and Akari Matsuoka. I just had "talk time" with Eiko, and just to let you know, talk time is fun and usually yummy.
Eiko and I decided to have some real fun together, and we dressed up a little, (it's quite fun) and off we went to Maruetsu. I decided get some ice-cream, and my older sis, (being a big fan of anything nutty) decided to get a small pack of mixed nuts. What I thought funny was that she would chose nuts over ice-cream!
After buying our snack, we went to a nearby park and ate our snack while we talked about Yuriko and how we though she was so funny, about the changes in the home, and so on. And then when I was just about to finish my ice-cream, older sis said, "Does a piece of bread still sound appealing to you now after the ice cream or are you already full? My reply "Maybe..." Which usually means a "yes". So off we went again to Maruetsu to buy a slice of garlic bread. And as you can see in the pictures, I am trying to stuff down the garlic bread in five seconds, which is quite impossib.e.
Well, the bottom line is that when Eiko asks if you want to have talk time with her, to not refuse 'cause you're going to miss out on some real fun!

The Summer Festival

Eiko says...
Once again, the HCS held a very exciting, successful Summer Festival which we all enjoyed. The last Summer Festival I went to was 3 years ago when Hiki was still the JT counselor and we, (Boris, Yasu, Hiks and I ) had stayed over at the HCS for a week or two before the Festival to help out.
"Helping out" included scrubbing Lydia's house inside and out, preparing food, and setting up and manning an ice-cream crepe booth. The ice-cream crepe booth was a bad idea. I'm sure you get the picture. There was a stack of crepes on one tray. On a cutting board were unpealed bananas that needed to be peeled and cut before serving with each crepe. There was melted chocolate for decoration and I think we had some sprinkles and/or whip cream to make the crepes look more attractive and sexy. Then there was the ice-cream. There were 3 flavors in one container with no divider, and being that it's summer and all the ice-cream would not stop melting! (like duh) Sure there was a cooler with ice in it which we'd return the container of ice-cream to after serving each customer, but apparently the crepes were good-tasting and we had a perpetual line up of greedy customers wanting more, MORE and MORE. This of course meant that the ice-cream would stay out of the container for long periods of time and be subjected to the naked heat of the summer. After only 30 minutes, the ice-cream was melting bad and before we knew it, there was no chocolate, vanilla and strawberry. Instead, we had a new flavor which I'll call chocovanillaberry, and it was a very difficult mess to work with. The strange thing was that people kept coming for more. I kept telling them that we only had chocovanillaberry, and it would probably taste quite different from what they were expecting, but they really couldn't care less. They wanted ice-cream crepes, chocovanillaberry or whatever!
By the end of the day, my hands were gooy with banana slime, chocovanillaverry, the sprinkles, and whip-cream. Yeah...ice-cream crepe idea wasn't a good idea. Everything else was though. And so everything else was laid out once again for Summer Festival 2009. The curry, yakisoba, pop-corn, kakigori, the American dogs, the baked yummies and beer were all still here. And it was awesome! So were the bands. Kando-Bando did waaaaaaaay better than the last time I heard them play, which would be 3 years ago. Heart to Heart was perfect as always. The kids circus was a brilliant addition and I loved it. It was a hearty summer festival, and I'm sure everybody there really enjoyed themselves thoroughly. Good job, HCS!

Check out the pics that were taken at the Festival below!









It was also Yasu's first time on the Highway, and he did a spanking job! I was so proud of him! I mean, my navigating sucked big time, but he managed to get us there all in one piece, and for a new driver, Yasu drives very smooth. It's smooth like nama beer! Well, will blog again soon. So keep up with me! Loves, hugs, bye. ;)