:O I was putzing around with the blog stuff and clicked on the Blog of the Week link and lo and behold, my blog got made Blog of the Week. I’m really happy people enjoyed reading this ^^ I made it mostly so my friends and family had a convenient place to read about what I’m up to (and so I didn’t have to send a bunch of e-mails XD), so I never really expected anyone else to be interested in it lol. Now I wish I took more time to edit everything better XD So thank you everyone for the support ^^

Well, let’s see, we’ve been here 1 year and almost 2 months, so I guess we’re pretty comfortable now. At the beginning though it was a bit scary traveling around since we didn’t know so much Japanese or customs. Like for instance, a month ago I found out that the Japanese don’t eat curry with hashi (chopsticks), they eat it with a spoon. While it’s possible to eat it with hashi it’s not easy, so now I know why I always got weird looks at restaurants when I ate my curry with hashi XD I’m a huge fan of Japanese curry, I like it more than Indian curry, but Indian curry has more variety. There is an Indian restaurant pretty close to here called Ankur, and they make excellent curry and oishi (delicious) nan bread. I like their vegetable curry the best, but very much enjoy all the other kinds they do have. But wow, their spicy chicken curry is waaay spicy. I love me some spicy food, but I can’t barely handle it XD

We went to the Lake Towada Snow and Ice Fantavista yesterday (23 Feb). We took a bus trip there, but wow that was scary XD It felt like the bus driver was flying the bus more than driving it lol while we were driving through the narrow roads in the gorge. But it was pretty with the snow covered trees and the frozen waterfalls hanging down. When we got there we saw through the windows that it was snowing and blowing out real bad. We were afraid they were gonna cancel all the celebrations, but thankfully they still let us walk around. Man it was cold, when we got there a sign said it was -2 degrees Celsius, within an hour it was down to -5 XD We wandered around and took some pics, but we mostly just ran from place to place so we didn’t get to much snow down our jackets XD Then we tried to head to the jinja (shrine) before it got dark out, but they had it roped off ; ; That made me sad, we both really enjoy the shrines tranquil atmosphere. So we headed back to the festival area and ate some yummy food ooo, they had a snow bar, just like one up in Sapporo at their big festival, but we didn’t get anything there. What we did get though was the 500 yen refillable glass of hot mulled wine. They had 3 or 4 different kinds, one of which was Korean wine, that kind was my favorite, it had a berry sweetness to it, but not so sweet it was icky. And I could actually drink some this year cause I didn’t drive there XD

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I got this bag at the Nabuta festival, it’s so cute ^^ When I’m walking around with it I’ll ocassionaly notice someone point at the bag and go kawaii (cute)

This is from the La Pia Do mall in Hachinohe during the Tanabata (star) festival. For the festival people write wishes on colorful pieces of paper and hang them on bamboo fonds. You can read a bunch on the festival at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanabata

Yay sushi ^^ It’s one of my favorite foods, I find it very refreshing. I like the simple flavor with the tiny bit of sweet from the rice and soy sauce. One of my most favorite places to eat is a Sushi-go-round, they put pieces of sushi on a plate, then set the plate on a conveyor belt that runs around the store. When a piece you want comes past you you grab it off the belt. All of the resturants let you order specality stuff too so if you don’t see what you want you order it. They rebuilt the sushi-go-round at the Shimoda mall which is near here and it really rocks now! At each area/booth there is a little touch screen ordering menu, you pick what you want then hit send. In a couple minutes the food comes out to you on a little Shinkansen (bullet train) on a track and you grab your food off it and hit a button and it heads back to the kitchen.

Hirosaki Lantern Festival

9 Feb 2008

This is about my trip to Hirosaki’s Lantern Festival. It’s kinda like my trip last year to Towada’s Ice Festival, but Towada’s is a bit bigger and Hirosaki has a lantern theme about it XD

It was almost 4 till we got there, so it was starting to get dark but lanterns lights weren’t visible yet. We headed towards the main area and we found some pretty sculptures. This year is the year of the mouse so many of the sculptures were of mice. I went with my friend Ai and she brought her roommate and her roommates boy friend ^^ He has two small boys, so you might see them in some of the pictures. Let’s see, I had some tori niku (chicken) onna stick, some homemade dounuts, and some nice hot o cha (tea) to keep me warm. I <3 festival food.

Don’t forget you can click on each pic and it’ll pop up a full sized version.

A pretty chapel and manor.

I think these were a class project, and yay! Hello Kitty

Yay cotton candy! Here it doesn’t come on a paper stick, it’s in a bag and they give you a single hashi (chopstick) and you use that to pull out a bit to eat. Toy vendor are all over the place, I like the look that kid is giving me when I take the pic XD

Hirosaki Castle, I got a pic at the Sakura Festival from almost the same angle, it’s a very popular shot from there.

A lantern with a slide built into the base and a snow mouse.

A big lantern, it had to be at least 10ft tall.

A snow slide, you get in line and they give you a tube to ride down on ^^

Totoro! It’s not a festival without Hello Kitty and Totoro and a pretty Hirosaki made outta snow.

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