Spring Break Part 1: Tokyo Skytree, a Maid Cafe, and Bigbang Karaoke

 

On March 18th, my best friend Lauren came to visit me in Japan again! :)  She arrived in the evening, so I spent the beginning of the day in Iwata packing and cleaning my apartment. I left in the middle of the afternoon. It was raining when I was about to leave and my umbrella had been stolen at school (probably accidentally, it's a very common umbrella). So I drove to Family Mart to buy a new umbrella. Though of course by the time I did that and actually left to walk to the station it wasn't raining anymore.

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February Randomness: Ice Cream, Lightsaber Chopsticks, and More!

Last month Haagen-Dazs came out with two special flavors for their 30th anniversary in Japan. I couldn't resist the pretty, pink, flowery packaging and bought both of them. I've only tried the Rose one so far and it was good. Though I later found out that it doesn't really have that much rose flavor. I got this description from General Mill's (I guess they make Haagen-Dazs?) blog:

"The Rose mini-cup contains strawberry ice cream with an aromatic Damask rose extract and plum sauce with the mild fragrance of Turkish rose extract. It's covered with a rose sauce."

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My birthday! Mexican Food and Frozen!

My birthday was this past Friday, which was also my last day of school. It was also the day that Frozen finally came out in Japan. As soon as I knew the release date, I knew what I would be doing on my birthday! Also, the 14th of every month is discount day at Toho Cinemas so tickets are only 1,000 yen instead of the usual 1,800. Movie tickets are super expensive in Japan!

On Friday evening we first went to the theater to buy our tickets. You buy them at a machine and can select your seat which is really nice. I wanted to make sure that we got good seats so we went a bit early. The English one didn't fill up much, but the Japanese one shown around the same time looked pretty packed.

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A Week in My Life as an ALT

　　Next school year I'll be in Hamamatsu instead of Iwata. I really like my schools right now and wish I could stay in them, but I'm also excited about new schools. I haven't really talked about what my job has been like this year, so I decided to write about a typical week.
     I have two junior highs and one elementary school that I visit every week. I also have three kindergartens but I don't have any more visits to any of them. I haven't been to a kindergarten since early November. Kindergarten is a lot of fun, but it's pretty crazy and tiring. I'm glad I don't have it too often.

     This post got kind of long, but hopefully it's not too boring and shows what it's like to be an ALT. I also hope it is helpful for people thinking about being an ALT. So... here's a week of being an ALT!

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An Afternoon in Hamamatsu

This past Wednesday Jonathan and I went to Hamamatsu to get our visas renewed and new residence cards. You have to go twice. The first time you turn in an application and some documents. Then they send a postcard to your residence. You take that postcard back to the office to get your stuff updated.

It was really boring, but everything went smoothly.

The first time we went, we bought payment stamps at the post office. I don't know why you don't just pay at the immigration office, but whatever. It was weird to buy a 4000 yen stamp. This has to be the most expensive stamp I've ever bought.

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A Walk in the Forest Park

Two weekends ago Jonathan and I visited the area near the apartment I'm moving to later this month. There's a mall really close! So we spent some time there and saw an Indian restaurant we wanted to eat at. But we weren't quite hungry enough yet and we had already spent quite a while at the mall so we drove around a bit. Jonathan was pretty sure the forest park was close so we headed in that direction. It was really close! It was maybe about 10 or 15 minutes away.

We walked around a bit, but it was getting dark so we didn't get to stay long. So we decided to go back the next weekend (last weekend).

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Happy Birthday, Jonathan!

Jonathan's birthday was a little over a month ago. It was during the week, so the previous weekend we went to Round One to do Spo-cha again. We did unlimited this time and I think stayed there about four hours. So much fun! Though he beat me at pretty much everything we did.

On his actual birthday, I went to a bakery near my apartment called Chateraise. I had never been there before but had been curious about it pretty much since I moved here. It's a nice place and less expensive than some other similar places here. I bought a chocolate birthday cake. I like how the box says "Happy time for you."

 
We didn't eat the cake right away though because we were going out to eat. We went to the Indian restaurant in the further Aeon mall. Last time we went there by train and walking, but this time we drove. We were on some highway and missed the exit and the next one wasn't for about another ten minutes so we wasted a bit of time. But we eventually made it to the mall and enjoyed yummy food. :)

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