Falling leaves and Christmas lights

Here's a little of what I've been up to since I got back to Japan:





Photos:

• Top left: I made a short trip to check out Kawasaki, just a few minutes away by train, and got to see some beautiful fall colors.
• Top right: This is my Christmas tree--it's the first one I've had in two years!
  
• Middle left: Last night I went to Roppongi Hills. Known as a rather up-scale shopping district in Tokyo as well as for the $10,000/month apartments in the neighboring high-rise, they also have a beautiful display of Christmas lights every year. This photo really doesn't do it justice. The trees on this particular street just sparkle at night, and last year was just as gorgeous. Quite possibly my favorite lights display in Tokyo.
  
• Middle right: In the same area, there's a really nice viewpoint where you can see the skyline and Tokyo Tower. I absolutely love coming here after dark--any time of the year.
  
• Bottom left: Just a few minutes walk from Roppongi Hills is the newly-opened Tokyo Midtown, another shopping/restaurant/art museum area and also a very nice place to visit. This is part of their Christmas lights display.
  
• Bottom right: As we walked back towards the subway station, I caught a glimpse of the moon through the trees.
  

American Thanksgiving...and lots of Mexican food

For those of you that I didn't get to see when I was home last week, my apologies. There are a lot of you that I didn't connect with, and I wish I'd had time to see more people than I did.

Instead, I can offer the next best thing. Here are some pictures of what I did while I was in Portland:





Photos:

• Top left: had an early Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday night. It was soooo nice to eat turkey and cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes and stuffing...you get the idea.
  
• Top right: Two days later I followed it all up with the best Mexican food I've had since leaving the states last year.
  
• Middle left: Took some photos of Portland to show my students in Tokyo
  
• Middle right: came back to Oregon just in time to see the turning leaves.
  
• Bottom left: and here are those evergreen trees that I've been missing so much.
  
• Bottom right: took time to meet some of my friends for a cupcake party at Saint Cupcake downtown. I told everyone to act natural in the photo--and for the record, I think the result is pretty accurate. :) (Sometimes I miss you, Ted.)
  

Soccer practice and Japanese take-out

Photos:

• Top left: Take-out from a true Japanese restaurant: they bring it to you in real ceramic bowls, not styrofoam. And then when you're done...
• Top right: ...all you do is put them out in front of your house and someone from the shop picks up the tray later.
• Bottom left: this is from the youth soccer club that my host family helps coach every weekend. Yota and my friend Jake were having a lot of fun with the kids.
• Bottom right: the little ones are my favorite--they're so tiny!

This is YOTA

This is Yota, my host brother. He wanted to be the "model" for some pictures. :) The last one is of him digging for what he likes to call "nose treasures." Ewww....

Three weeks in a blog-shaped nutshell

Just a few pictures to let you see what's happened since the last post:

 


Photos:

• Top left: as I may have mentioned in a previous post, my school illegally evicted me from my apartment, but a friend of mine graciously offered me the extra room at his place until I could start my homestay with a Japanese family. This is the room I slept in for 3 weeks. Needless to say, I positioned my futon very carefully in case there was an earthquake. I didn't want the sword to fall over and chop off my leg. :)
• Top right: after we didn't get paychecks, most of my coworkers stopped going to work. Instead, we all took a day to sit around at my friend's apartment and play card games. I made taco salads for everyone as incentive to get them to come.
• Middle left: a few of my favorite students. We took this photo just a couple of days before my school closed. L to R: Yumiko, Ayako, Me, and Kiyomi.
• Middle right: later in October, I began a homestay with a Japanese family in Tokyo. Since my friends were still not going to work, I recruited them to come help me move my things. (They're so nice!) Here they are taking a break while we rode the train from Yokohama to Otorii.
• Bottom left: This is the outside of the house I live in now. It's way cool and modern.
• Bottom right: My new home is only a 15 minute walk from the Tama River (which separates Tokyo Prefecture from Kanagawa) as well as Tokyo Bay. In the distance you can see Haneda Airport. I love the view here!

Tokyo Disneyland!!

I finally made my first trip to Tokyo Disneyland last week. Two friends and I went on a weekday in spite of a forecast of rain. I imagined we'd have a pretty easy time getting on rides, but oh how wrong I was. Who would have thought there would be a three hour wait each for Space Mountain, the Haunted House, and Big Thunder Mountain on a day like that? I couldn't fathom how anyone would want to wait that long for anything until one of my students summed it up rather simply for me. "I'm Japanese. Japanese people like to make lines," she said. I'm not that patient, though. The longest we stood in line was 90 minutes for Pirates of the Caribbean. But anyways, here are a few pics from the adventure:






Photos:

• 1st row left: the castle. You may not have noticed right away, but a large portion of it is under construction. Those clever Disney people had the good sense to put a picture of the castle over the scaffolding. At the bottom of the photo you can get a pretty good idea of how crowded it was and nearby, you can see one of what I'm sure is actually thousands of pumpkins that are currently spread everywhere at Disneyland. Happy Halloween.
  
• 1st row right: This is Kim in the line for Small World. It was our shortest wait of the day: just over 20 mins. And for the record, yes all the rides at Tokyo Disneyland are EXACTLY like their counterparts in Anaheim.
  
• 2nd row left: We got to see the Halloween parade.
  
• 2nd row right: this is the Disney version of torture: a gigantic Pinocchio fountain right next to the world's longest line for the bathroom.
  
• 3rd row left: this is not only a picture of me eating food, it's a photo of me enjoying my first bite of turkey in over a year. It was amazing, just in case you wanted to know.
  
• 3rd row right: Laura and Kim also enjoyed the turkey.
  
• 4th row left: Furthermore, Japanese people enjoy turkey as well. This is a photo of the line for the street vendor whose only product was roasted turkey. Yet another brilliant example of Japanese people and their skillful Art of Line-Making. I think we waited about 15-20 minutes for ours.
  
• 4th row right: quite possibly my favorite picture of the day. Some kids just don't last as long as others, even in the "happiest place on earth". I had been watching his family and all of the sudden he just dropped and wouldn't get up. I also love how instead of helping him, his grandmother just took out the camera and started taking pictures of him.
  

I have such thoughtful students!

I was having a pretty rotten week: my boss called me on my birthday to tell me that my school isn't renewing the lease on my apartment and, consequently, I now have EIGHT days to find a new place to live and move out of my home. Add that to various other stresses (ironically also caused by my employer) and I was left in tears. The next day one of the students I have known the entire year I've been here heard the news about both my birthday and my apartment. She offered her kindest sympathies. At the end of our conversation, I went out to get some lunch. Not even a full ten minutes after I arrived back at school, the staff called me to the front desk. My sweet student had gone out and returned with this:

I couldn't think of a nicer way that anyone could have made my day brighter!