Japan Week 30

February 22-28, 2010

I had my first midterm for my online Chemistry class on Monday. With the way the course is structured it is actually the hardest test of the whole semester and I must say I am happy to have it behind me! I think Eric is glad it is over too because now I can be a little more fun :)

On Tuesday I registered to take the MCAT, again. The first time I took it I was a little silly in the fact that I hadn't taken all of the courses that are tested, by the time I took the exam. That said, I did okay, but now that I have taken said courses and I have the time to study, I figured I should retake it. So in June I will be making a trip to Tokyo to sit for the MCAT for the 2nd and FINAL time. I was a little nervous about registering to take it in a foreign country but the process was exactly the same as at home, I just get to pay extra this time :) I am quite relieved that it is all settled at set up. I spent the rest of the day on Tuesday preparing for our dinner guests. A few weeks ago Genny taught me how to make Gyozas (Japanese Pot Stickers) and I have practiced a few times for me and Eric and I finally got it down so I made them for our guests tonight! I sauteed the spinach and garlic and stuffed them with the spinach and cream chesse, and folded them all ahead of time and put them in the fridge. Then I fried them up fresh when our company arrived. I was pretty happy with them, but next time I would actually use more cheese!

The main course for dinner was Un-Stuffed Pepper Soup, that our friend Rachel recently introduced us to. It is so delicious, and filling and warm. It's perfect for a cold winter night! Hal brought Nachos with salsa and Guacamole (YUM!!) and Genevieve and Katie brought Salads, Rachel brough drinks and some snacks, and Karen brought delicious chocholate for dessert. It worked out perfectly and everything was sooo good. During dinner we watched pairs ice skating in the olympics, it was quite fun and we were all so impressed. They really make it look so easy, and that's just not the case! I really love the olympics and I will be sad when they are over. After dinner and the Olympics Hal taught us how to make paper cranes out of origami. It was quite fun to learn. I have been trying to figure it out from directions online but it wasn't ever coming out right, now I've got it. We each made a couple of cranes so that we could memorize the directions, so now I have lots of paper cranes and I don't really know what to do with all of them.
We always love having friends over for dinner and games, it makes it feel a little bit more like home :)

Over the past few days Eric has been mentioning how loud it is in his office right now, they have been in the process of installing new fire escape slides from the 3rd and 4th floor windows of the high school. On Wednesday, Eric came home at lunch and said that they were having a drill later this afternoon when the students were gone so that the teachers could learn how to use them. High school teachers jumping out of the 3rd/4th floor windows onto escape slides, now this was something I had to see. So at 1:30 I grabbed my camera and "went for an afternoon walk" and surprisingly enough I happened to walk right by the back side of the high school just as they were about to start. Ok so I planned it perfectly, I even scoped out the houses I could stand between to see the school perfectly without being seen to easily! At first I wasn't sure they were still doing it because I didn't see anything and I figured it would be hard to miss, but then out walks a man with a giant plastic tarp and a broom, he began sweeping the snow and laying down a tarp and then out came the slide. Now, I was expecting giant yellow slides, like airplane evac. slides, but this was more like a laundry chute made out of fabric! Oh, and can I just mention that I think it's hillarious that before jumping out of the FORTH floor window, they made sure they wouldn't get snow on their clothes at the bottom ;/ hmm priorities I guess! Anyway, the teachers proceeded to jump. The technician went first and somehow managed to control his fall so he could check it out on the way down, I was really impressed. After he went several of the teachers went, they climbed out the window through the frame of the slide and jumped down! It was pretty funny to watch. Eric refrained and decided it was something he would rather do only if necessary! Smart decision! Although I should probably admit that when I thought it was an actual slide I strongly encouraged him to do it!
During my walk around the neighborhood I saw this: I think it was just a garden shack but it appears to have been destroyed by the snow! I really enjoyed my walk, the weather was quite a bit warmer today, it was almost 40 degrees!!

On Thursday the weather was incredibly strange! If you haven't been following the blog take a quick look back at last week and notice the weather. . . Today it was 53 F (12C) and the sky was clear blue! I even hung laundry up outside to dry! I couldn't believe it! Look, there is no snow on the balcony anymore.
In fact, it was so warm, I opened up all the windows and doors in the house for a few hours and let the fresh air blow through. We didn't use the heater at all today, and only for about an hour yesterday. Although it's a nice change I'm very, very sad that winter seems to have ended so early. I didn't ever build a good snowman, maybe if I drive up to the ski resort there will still be enough snow there. Personally, I am hoping winter isn't over yet and mother nature just had another hot flash. We shall see.

Here is something we recently discovered that I have to share with you...
Yes, it is in fact a square of white choclate that is pancake flavored, and I must say. . . it tastes EXACTLY like a pancake, there is even a tiny bit of real maple sryup inside! They have other flavors too, Eric tried the cheese cake, and much to my surprise, he said it tastes just like NY cheesecake. Coming from Eric, that says a lot. By the way, we bought these at Circle K, so maybe you can find them at the circle K in America too, but I bet it's wishful thinking.

The best day of the week was Thursday because, drumroll please. . . Eric's parents booked tickets to Japan!!!!!!!!!! They are coming for 1 whole month towards the end of the summer. We are SOOO excited for them to come visit. We started making a list of places to take them and foods to introduce them to, etc. I was worried about making sure we have things to do with them for a whole month and after about 5 minutes of list making, we have a 2 page list!!! Now I only hope that we can fit everything in while they are here! I am so excited to see Glenn and Patti, and even more excited for Eric to get to see his parents (by the time they come it will have been 51 weeks for Eric!), and I really think they will love Japan. YAY!!!

Unfortunately Thursday night I mangaged to give us both food poisoning :( It wasn't really my fault though because it came from packaged tomato sauce, but I still felt bad. Eric stayed home sick on Friday and we both slept the day away, which was definitely for the best because being awake certainly wasn't any fun. Needless to say, Saturday was a pretty quiet day too. We had actually planned to head to Lake Towada for their Winter festival, we really wanted to see their Igloos, but with the strangely warm weather we have had we figured they might not even still be open for people to go inside, and we weren't feeling well so we skipped out on it.

The week ended with all too much excitement. Don't get me wrong, I love exciting days, but Tsunami warnings are not the kind of excitement that I like. First thing in the morning I got a message online from Kris Brenna asking if we were alright because she saw the news about the Tsunami warnings in Japan. I immediately responded that there were no more Tsunami warnings and they had only lasted about an hour, I assumed she was talking about the Tsunami warning for the southern part of Japan from the previous day when the 7.0 earthquake hit, but it was 50 miles offshore so the news faded quickly. Then the town siren went off, then I turned on the news. EVERY channel was covered up with a screen about the Tsunami. The entire Pacific coast of Japan had warnings, with the worst of it up North in Aomori where we are. Fortunately, the worst parts were on the Pacific side, and we are on the Sea of Japan side. There was a lot of hype about how bad it was expected to be, but fortunately it turned out not to be much at all. The biggest wave was about 4 feet. There was a lot of flooding and most of the trains across Japan were stopped so people got stuck all over, but there was nothing catastrophic. Thank goodness for that! They had evacuated several coastal towns across the country, which turned out to be uneccessary, but it was definitely better to be safe rather than sorry.