Big crab

Our friends Jason and Yumi got married back in November. We went to the ceremony in Yumi's church, then to the celebration dinner at an Indonesian restaurant. Apparently at Japanese weddings it is common to play some kind of game after dinner, rather than dancing or anything. This is the only Japanese wedding we've been to, so we don't know that for sure, but Jason and Yumi had a bingo game. I used my extensive bingo skills to capture the first prize: a choice of one of a number of specialty foods from around Japan that would be delivered by mail to my apartment. Despite some advice to take the beef on offer, I chose Hokkaido crab. It came a few days later - one large crab. It's currently residing in our freezer, of which it takes up nearly a third. We're still deciding the best way to cook it.
-Jason

All I Want For Christmas is (Yu)

Although they don't celebrate Christmas, the Japanese like the decorations and the music. They play English carols at all of the stores and really, really like the song "Last Christmas" by Wham! I don't really consider this a Christmas song, but it says the word Christmas which means it passes the Japanese test. They are also very fond of Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You."
At school I help the kids clean the English room. We usually finish early and one day we found a Christmas CD and put it on. The Mariah Carey song was the first song and four boys and I grabbed markers and started to have a concert. We were singing along and dancing and the girls who were in the class were thoroughly entertained. Suddenly one of the boys ran out of the classroom. I figured that he was just too embarrassed, but he came back a minute later with his friend, whose name is Yu. He got Yu to stand in front of us, so we were all singing and pointing to him saying "all I want for Christmas is Yu".
It was really funny. These are great kids and the reason why I'm going to miss this school when I have to change schools in January.

German Christmas Market

Last week we went to the German Christmas Market in Osaka for the second year in a row. This is basically a traditional German Christmas market set up at the base of a big Osaka office building. It's run by the German Consulate in Osaka, so it's fairly authentic, although the German guy we met recently said it wasn't quite the same. I think both the beer and the mulled wine were below typical German standards. We had fun last year, though, so we headed there again with a couple of friends. Mostly we were excited about the food. We had some sausages, a good ham sandwich, some German potatoes and then some donuts. It was a good time. Last year we brought home the mugs they served the wine and hot chocolate in; this year, we got the new mug, which was shaped like a boot. Good souvenir.
-Jason

Nishinomiya Race

I'm a little late with this, but I ran a 10km race at the beginning of November. It was in Nishinomiya, a city between Kobe and Osaka that is the home of the Hanshin Tigers baseball team. In fact, the race started right outside Koshien, the Tigers home stadium and the most historic ballpark in Japan.
I was pretty excited to do the race, because I hadn't run a race in 10 months and I was missing it. Unfortunately, the timing was pretty bad. October and November were very tough months for me training-wise, as it seemed like I was too busy to fit in much running. So having a "comeback" race in the middle of that time period wasn't so hot. Moreover, I had a cold. The day before the race I thought I was getting better. I've raced with colds plenty of times in the past, so I figured it wouldn't affect me in the race. I was wrong, as I could definitely feel my breathing being constricted in the second half of the race. I went on to retain the cold and a cough for another two or three weeks, so it might have been a worse bug than I first thought.
With those factors, it really wasn't a very good race - about two minutes slower than I was at about the same time last year. Nevertheless, I'm happy that I got to race again. I've got three or four more races coming up in the next couple of months, so we'll see how that goes. The first one is next week, so I'm not expecting too much there either - I haven't had time to build up enough training for a really good race yet, I don't think. But perhaps in the New Year I'll be able to see some improvement.
-Jason

Jason's adventure at the post office

I went to the post office last week to mail a package of Christmas presents back to the U.S. Like many other countries, Japan's post office includes a number of services besides mail, like banking and insurance. At the main Himeji branch, one end (with orange paint) is for mail and the other (green) end is for those other services which I don't use.
I parked my bike in front of the window looking in on the green end that day. As I was locking up, I looked in the window and saw a teller with her hands in the air. Odd, I thought. Then I noticed another one, then I noticed the customer with the white shirt had a gun in his hand.
Now this was a bit unexpected. I was outside, on a fairly busy street, and the gun was pointed in the opposite direction (the gunman had his back to me), so it wasn't immediately petrifying, but it was sort of worrisome. I quickly tried to figure out what to do. My first thought was to call the police, but since I can't say "man with gun", "robbery" or "post office" in Japanese, I wasn't sure I would do much good. I also noticed that everyone in the orange end of the office was acting normally. Well, the supervisors were standing at the back watching the robbery, but the tellers and the customers were just going about their business. There was also a bright flashing light, which I first thought was from some alarm, but now saw was the flash from the camera of the guy taking pictures of the robber.
At this point I began to wonder if it was a drill. Still, I wasn't too keen on walking into a building where a man was holding a gun, so I decided to go into the park across the street and wait to see what happened. After a couple of minutes, I could see the robber come into the lobby. He stopped and chatted with a post office employee there for a few minutes. He then went back into the post office. About that time, a policeman came walking around the corner (from where I had been previously). He stopped and chatted with a post office employee out front, then carried on. At this point I figured it was safe, so I went back across the street. The robber was still in the post office, but he'd put the gun away, and it looked like he was having a meeting with the employees in the green end. The orange end continued to function normally. While I locked up my bike, the robber left and the employees proceeded to close the green side of the office. I went in through the other door and mailed the package.
-Jason

Kobe Luminarie

Last Friday night we went to Kobe to see the luminarie with our friend Lauren. We stopped first in Chinatown for dinner. Then we joined the crowd and walked through the maze until we reached the lights. They had barricades set up and it seemed like they were prepared for much larger crowd than was actually there. It was busy, but it wasn't so crowded that it was uncomfortable.
There's a walkway of lights that ends at a park with a big structure that's covered in lights.

ikebana #2

Tonight was my second ikebana (flower arranging) class.
I thought that the arrangement we made the first time had nice balance and structure. I understood the theory about how the different pieces fit together at particular heights and achieved symmetry.
This time, however, I feel like it's more of a hodge-podge. Some of the same rules applied, but I felt like it was much more of a whatever goes approach. This could be the style that the teacher chose this week, or it could be a reflection of how little I know about ikebana. I'm not sure which.
It's a Christmas-themed arrangement, and although I think it's a bit awkward, I do like having the Christmas colors (and smells) in the apartment.
Jason's holding up a towel in the first picture so you can see the flowers without the distracting background of our wall.
The second picture is the view looking down on the flowers.
The third picture is a close-up of one of the interesting flowers that I'd never seen before. My teacher told me the name, but I can't remember it.

koko-en at night

The garden near the castle has a special night-time display this time of year where they illuminate all of the tress with the beautiful changing leaves. We went last Sunday with some of our friends. A few of my favorite views weren't quite as spectacular since you're looking at a the castle covered in scaffolding, but it was a really nice evening and we enjoyed the stroll through the garden.
There are more pictures on the picasa site.

mandolin concert

One of our Japanese friends plays the mandolin and invited us to her concert last weekend. I wasn't even sure what a mandolin was -- it looks a little like a short guitar, but the bowl part is quite a bit deeper. The music was beautiful and we had a really nice afternoon.
While we were waiting for the show to start I was playing with my small camera and discovered a new feature that takes a series of photos in rapid-fire and then composites them into a single image. So I told Jason to make a string of funny faces so we could test it out.

Thanksgiving

There's a restaurant downtown that you can rent out which serves an American-style Thanksgiving every year. Once again our Aussie friend (go figure) organized the event. So we joined about 30 of our friends for a great dinner. They managed to get all of the traditional food and added a few extra "foreign dishes" -- re-fried beans anyone? The one missing piece was pumpkin pie, which they'd replaced with (little-known) traditional chocolate fondue fountain.

fall leaves

I took this one on my way to work Thursday morning.