(10/16) Friday- Ever since Eric and I got to Japan people have been asking us if we had been to Karaoke yet, and people are always shocked when we say no... well, we finally got sucked in! And we had a lot of fun! Karaoke here is very different, each group gets their own room, so you are
only embarrassing yourself in front of your friends, not the entire crowd. We had such a good time singing our hearts out with Katie and Hal! I was very impressed by their ability to sing songs in Japanese! I think my favorite part of the whole experience was that they don't use the actual music videos, they make up their own Japanese renditions, all of which were rather similar! We also had a few good "EngRish" laughs... like the song title- Killing me Softry! After singing hours of Karaoke, Eric discovered that Katie had an American frisbee in her car, so that led to some fun times in the parking lot, until we got rained out! We had yet another great night with some of our new friends!(10/17) Saturday- My friend Mika who works in the town office told me that the one thing Eric
and I could not miss out on in Ajigasawa in the fall was riding the Gondola at the ski resort to view the beautiful Fall leaves changing color. Since the weather was so incredible today,our plan for today was to go to the ski mountain and ride the Gondola with Katie and Karen! (They issued a heat advisory in our town today, afterall it was 72 F!!
unfortunately we got there at abour 2:45 to discover that they close at 2pm... not 5pm! While we were extremely dissapointed that our plan was foiled we decided to walk around and enjoy the view anyway. In doing so we found a great playground at the resort, that we later discovered has a cover charge because you need to clip onto the line to climb across and explore, 
well you don't HAVE to, but you probably should. Then we decided we would check out this really cool and very large slide we saw on our way up the mountain, also closed. 2 stirkes! So, we figured we could head to the go-karts at the sports complex/park I found last week... also closed! 3rd strike. 
On the bright side however, we had a blast playing on the playground at the sports complex... now that there were 4 of us, I was able to figure out this strange rope swing, and let me tell you, it was soooo much fun! Playgrounds in the US are so boring in comparrison.
So although none of our plans worked out, we still had a really great time! After playing the park we invited Katie and Karen back to our house for some tea, and we ended up looking at all of our wedding photos with them :) I love having a good excuse to go through them all again. I must say Eric was a very good sport about us being so "girly". As if we hadn't had enough fun for one day, Eric and I decided we wanted to go our for dinner... and now, our dinner date story! So about a week ago I got out of the shower and noticed that our house smelled very stranely like Pizza Hut, which was confusing on many levels but needless to say, it made me crave American Pizza!!! We had heard that there was a pizza hut in Hirosaki (about 45 min away) but no one really knew where. So, today after our park adventures Eric and I decided to set off on another adventure of our own. About 15 km down the back road to Hirosaki we realized we didn't have our directions to the city with us! We had only driven ourselves to Hirosaki once before (for the doctor) and we had never done the drive at night, but I felt confident that I could find it, and Eric was in good spirits about letting me lead the way so we continued on. We managed to navigate through the apple orchards (remember no street names, very few signs, and small windy roads) and we found Hirosaki!! Our confidence was now boosted and we just had to find this mystery Pizza hut in a city with nearly 200,000 people (which coming from Ajigasawa and 12,000 people feels HUGE). We decided we would search for about 15 minutes and if we didn't find it we would go to an Indian restaraunt that is right near the train station that is delicious, so our search began. We honestly had no clue to where to look, we just drove around. I passed a street that Eric said looked pretty cool and had lots of fancy lights and I really wanted to see it so I made a u-turn and went back for the pretty lights, about 5 minutes down this fun road.... PIZZA HUT!!!!!! I yelled, it's true. Unfortunately there was no parking on our side of the divided road and I was confused about where to go so the plan was to make a few left turns and get back to lot we had just passed... but I managed to not travel equal distances between my lefts and we lost it :( But Eric being the intelligent boy from NYC that he is, asked a cab driver for directions, in Japanese...all to find the pizza for his wife 
that he will probably be dissapointed in anyway. So anyway, we got back to the Pizza Hut, parked in a lot that we think had reserved spots but ya know, sorry, we can't read that Kanji! So we make our way into the pizza hut- carry out only! That won't stop us, we ordered our Pizza to go, ventured around for a bit while it was cooked and bought drinks at the conveince store and then we ate our pizza in our car in the parking lot!! We got many funny looks from people passing by... but our pizza, although almost $40, was totally worth it!! After we finished our Pizza Hut car date, we turned around and drove back home! I never in my life would have guessed I would drive 45 min each way to a city without directions and any idea of where to find it, just for pizza hut... but we did. It was Eric's first time EVER eating pizza hut, can you believe that?!?(10/18) Sunday- Today was a bit of a tough day for me, my cousin Brian Taylor is getting married in Baltimore, and I am missing it, and missing out on a Taylor family mini vacation! We called him this morning and left him a voice mail... people tend not to answer our calls because it comes up as a crazy number, usually with a 000 area code, but anyway he will get the voicemail eventually, probably after his honeymoon! Although the weather was beautiful yesterday and I was able to pull out a skirt, I think it was my one last chance, today it is rainy and gross out, time to pull out the warm sweaters and scarfs! I was a bit discouraged by the gross weather this am because Eric and I had planned to re-attempt the gondola, but eventually the sun peeked out for a bit so we decided to head up to the mountain, and it was totally worth it! These photos don't quite do justice to how incredible the view was. The mountain looked like it was on fire with the leaves so many shades of red, orange and yellow, it was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen!! I also really appreciate the evergreens as they keep lots of the green around all year long, which is really wonderful to someone who is used to seeing mostly brown, all the time! As you can see from the photos, the ride down the gondola was a little frightening, but I still think I prefer it to flying down a snowy mountain on skiis with absolutely no control, hopefully with a little experience this winter, I won't be so terrified anymore :)
After our beautiful ride on the Gondola, we headed back to Ajigasawa Town for a small local festival. We really weren't sure what the festival was for but we knew that some of Eric's students would be there so we thought we would check it out. It turned out to be a small car show!! Our little town of Aji even has car shows! We were very excited! Unfortunately after about 15 minutes of being there some very very heavy rain hit so the festival shut down. Eric was absolutely wonderful and ran in the rain to get the car while I waited inside the nice dry grocery store.(10/19) Monday- Today Eric and I finally made it back to our Japanese class! It is really great to have the opportunity to study Japanese with Japaense tutors multiple nights a week! Class is always lots of fun, not only do we get to see several of our friends but we learn very valuable things; for instance, there is only a slight variation in the pronunciation of Takai (tall) and Takai (expensive) and that the tutors think it is really hillarious when you describe your wife as being expensive :) On our way to class tonight we were out running errands so we decided to go out to dinner. We went to Coco's which is very much like Coco's in the US, only the menu is a little different, although it had ENGLISH on it! We also discovered that Coco's is a great place for homesick nights, they have an absolutely delicious chicken quesadilla with salsa that was even more impressive. I was so excited I think I could have eaten 4 more! Mmmm mmmm mmm! Yay for comfort food that I don't have to scrounge up the ingredients for myself!
(10/20) Tuesday-Today I went to the town office to print off some things for our poster about America for our festival this weekend, while I was there I noticed that the woman in charge (Mika) was stressed about all that she had to do so I offered to help. It was so much fun to work for a few hours in the town office and get a sneak peak at what Eric see's everyday in his office, I did lots of fun projects and had a great time! Tonight Genny dropped by! We haven't seen her in a long time because she was doing a homestay with a Japanese family to force herself to practice her speaking/listening abilites more. It was great to see her again!
(10/21) Wednesday- Today we received from very hard news from home that we have lost a dear friend. It broke our hearts, and reminded us that life is short and can be very fragile. I hope you rest in peace Lisa.
Tonight Eric, Genny and I went out shopping in Goshogawara to get supplies for our many, many festivals in the next week. While we were out we went to Kappa Sushi (the convayour belt sushi restaraunt) to satisfy Eric and Genny's love for sushi, and then we went to Coco's so I could have another quesadilla, I love double dinner nights!! We also went to Baskin Robins and enjoyed some delectible ice cream!!
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