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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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....

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