Japan Week 18

December 3-9, 2009

Things have been pretty quiet at work for Eric. The student's currently have exams and therefore only have 1/2 days. Eric gave the English exam to the freshman over the past week so now he really doesn't have much to do other than lots and lots of reading to enjoy.

We skipped out on tutoring on Thursday because I haven't been feeling well. We were also supposed to go out on Friday night to a benefit art auction in Hirosaki but passed on that as well.

Saturday morning we did make it to the pottery open at house at Pole Pole (which means slowly slowly in Swahili, in reference to dreams coming true) to see Miyo and Shu's work. They had so many impressive pieces and even gave us a tour of their studio, which was the size of a house! Miyo made Christmas cookies to share :) including 'snow balls' and gingerbread men. We loved their work so much that we bought three pieces for ourselves:

This is a tea mug made by Shu, the handle was inspired by a horn. It has a great thumb nook!

This is also a tea cup made by Miyo, the exterior surface is not flat, it has dips about the size of a quarter randomly throughout.
This is a very unique 'vase' for a single flower, made by Shu.

This is Eric and Shu in front of a very large brick kiln.
Tonight we are having our first couch surfer! For those of you who haven't heard of this wonderful website, we are members of www.couchsurfers.com which basically allows you to view profiles of people who live in an area you are traveling to and register to stay at their house... making travel much more affordable. Our guest is on a long journey home, from another long journey. He is currently biking from the Northern island, Hokkaido all the way through Honsu to get home to Tokyo. We are very excited to meet him and I will tell you all about our experiences with him later.

On a side note, I wanted to share with you a silly experience we had earlier today. So I love this little ice cream treat called Panapp. It is vanilla ice cream with blueberry sauce in the center. It normally looks like this:

but today, I opened it up and it looked like this!!! I think someone was having fun at work, it's just too perfect to be an accident! It was especially funny because when I first opened it, I noticed it looked a little abnormal because the top was smudged and looked like a frown and I commented that I had to eat it quick so it wouldn't look like a sad face... then 1 bite later, it was a perfect happy face :)

Yosuke, or couch surfer, has come and gone. So far he has biked 29,000 km (18,020 miles) and he has about 1,000 km to go. He biked from the East - West coasts of Canada then through the West coast of the US, then South through Mexico, Central America and all the way to the Southern tip of Argentina. Then he flew to Sapporo, Japan. He has been gone from his family for our 2 years, but will see them in 2 weeks. He had many great stories to tell and we enjoyed getting to know him as he reunited with Japan. On Saturday we took him to see the castle and museum in Hirosaki (which we had not yet seen) and we took him to Kantipur, the Indian restaurant we love so much. We also got to teach him a few of our favorite things like: Phase 10, Yahtzee and he tried Chocolate Milk (made with syrup) for the first time! Last night for dinner we made Thai Spring Rolls and he loved those too. He stayed for 2 nights because the weather was horrible yesterday. We had heavy rains in the morning which turned into continuous snow :) With very large beautiful flakes! I hope he enjoyed his stay as much as we enjoyed having him.This is my first snowman of the season! It was really dark outside and I was in my PJ's so I didn't want to actually go outside, but I reached out and grabbed a little snow off our balcony and made a tiny sowman on a plate :) There will be more snowmen in the near future :)

Monday night we drove up to Mt. Iwaki and played in the snow in the parking lot of the hotel. We wanted to go up and see how much snow they had so that we would know how much longer until skiing. The slopes have a 40cm base.. it's getting closer!!! The first of many :) This one is for you Mom!