This week

These photos are as follows: 

The picture on the left is in China Town in Kobe. This area is famous among all Japanese and it is one of the only China Town areas in all of Japan. Lots of festivals! :)

The next picture is of an awesome building that is randomly in the middle of Kobe. I believe it is a shrine, but I didn't get close enough today. I was in a hurry. The last photo is for all of my comic book and philosophy fans that know about Watchmen. I can't wait for the Japan release. Here is the awesome standee at the movie theatre. The Japanese trailer shows so much more than the American one. CHECK IT OUT! 

:)

This week was so incredibly busy at the school. I felt like I was constantly on the go and with two extra training sessions at home office and another school, I was exhausted! 

I have been keeping really busy with school and have been kind of stressed out due to the heavy load of classes and counseling due to the end of the school year. We are about to hit what is the new start of the school year here, in April. This means there are lots of people that are starting and also that we are starting a new book and new classes soon. So much to do!

This week at school, one of my students brought me a DVD he downloaded to show me about Mansai, a type of Japanese comedy. He had given a speech about this comedy the previous week and I was very interested, which is why he went home and searched to find a video that explains the type of comedy and characters in English! How sweet! I haven't had a free moment to watch it, but I can't wait until I can. 

For this weekend, I made plans with a sweet student of mine to go to the movies. I wanted to see a movie and she had a Sunday off, which is a rarity for her due to her part-time job at McDonald's.  

OH!! SIDE NOTE: McDonald's just released the Quarter Pounder and Double Quarter Pounder in Japan. The release of this burger is so huge that I can't even explain it to you. I honestly can't go a day, let alone a couple of hours, without someone referring to the NEW burger and how they ate the DOUBLE. Haha. It is so awesome! When I went to get mine, with a coupon that said student that works at McDonald's gave me, I even got a bumper sticker for the Quarter Pounder with some funny Japanese Slogan on it like "Don't you know?". 

So, back to the story of the weekend. I invited my student to come to the movies with me in Sannomiya. I let her choose the movie, which was between Benjamin Button and Changeling. (she loves American film, which is great, because the Japanese films are not subtitled in English). Changeling just came out this week and she was dying to see it so we decided to meet up at 1:30 in the lobby of the theatre. While I was waiting for her, I noticed that the theatre was very busy, and with Japan having assigned seats, I wanted to make sure we could sit together, so I bought two tickets. 

When she arrived, I told her I already got the tickets. However, she had already bought tickets earlier that day! OH NO. So we tried to return the tickets, but they wouldn't let us return them. They were about $16 each (1500 yen) and I really didn't want to lose out on over $30. We found a nice young couple who bought the tickets from us after a couple of attempts. People are so sweet here! I was Saved! 

We went to the movie, which was horribly depressing but also probably one of the best roles of Angelina Jolie's strange career, and then decided to walk around Sannomiya and look in the shops. 

We were getting hungry and I was exhausted from going out the night before with Miho to the Pub, so we decided to get some food. Everyone here is very concerned with me trying as much Japanese food as possible, which is funny because they always think that I won't like it or that I don't like it and I am just being polite. Usually I like 95% of what I eat here, which is probably a much higher percentage than in the US. 

She suggested we go for Okonomiyaki, which is famous in Osaka and Kobe. It is called a Japanese Pizza by some, but does not remotely resemble a pizza in taste or appearance. In fact, the only thing they have in common is that they are round. It is made of Japanese cabbage, flour, egg, some sort of meat or seafood, and scallions. There are lots of other ingredients you can get, but these are just a few examples. We sat at a table that had a griddle top and I let her order. Then the waitress came out and mixed together all of the food. She then put it on the griddle and made it into a circle. We let it cook then she came and flipped it, and finally topped it with some sort of fish flakes and mayo as well as some type of brown sauce (in Japan, they love their mayo...it's gross). However, this was very interesting and without the mayo, might be quite healthy.

We finished up and parted ways in Tarumi. What a full day!

Today, I woke up early and had a few errands to run. Then I met my friend Miho in Sannomiya so we could take the Port Liner to Port Island to go to Ikea. We knew if we made it before 11 am we would be able to take part in the 99 yen breakfast they offer, which was awesome. We made it at 1055 and got our breakfast. As most of you know, Ikea is a place where you can get lost very quickly. It smells of cardboard, and as a friend of mine once said, smells like America. Haha. 

I picked up a few interesting things for my place to make my life a little easier. After all, how can you beat a ironing board for 550 yen!? 

So, nothing too exciting going on right now. Basically trying to catch up on sleep and unwind. I want to get myself rested up before Golden Week because I think I will be traveling with a friend from High School that lives in Tokyo. :) I can't wait to see more of Japan.