yamaonna

Hello Everyone!

So its time for another update!  I can hardly believe how quickly the months are passing!  But as they say, time flies when you’re having fun 🙂

January has been a good month to me.  As I mentioned last time, I spent a few days with Yui and her family over the New Year basically relaxing and being spoilt.  After that there were only a couple of days left in my New Year vacation, which I spent doing some things at home and shopping for a coat.

Going back to work was a little hard.  We were lucky that our first week back was actually only 2 days, of which only one was a teaching day.  The second week back wasn’t as easy, as it was back to normal, and I had to get used to working full time again.  January through to March/April is the busiest time of the year for schools in Japan, because the school year starts in April.  So at the moment we have a lot of prospective students coming in, and we have to give them interviews and model lessons.  That on top of having a day of training on Monday has made the last two weeks very very busy for me.

As for my free time in this last month, I’ve spent most of my time hanging out with friends and family.  Early in the month I met up with one of the guys I did training with and we checked out the sights in Yokohama.  Yokohama has one of the largest China Towns in the world, so we spent the morning wandering around there looking through the shops and eating the occasional pork bun.  And from there we went to the Ramen (Chinese Noodles) Museum, which was actually the highlight of the day for me.  It’s a really cool place.  Inside is set up to look like Japan in the 1950’s, and there are around 6 stores that sell ramen from different parts of the country.  Almost every region in Japan has it’s own variation on how to serve ramen.  Hokkaido Miso Ramen remains my favorite.

On the weekend of the 13^th and 14^th some of my cousins from Adelaide were in Tokyo as part of a longer holiday in Japan.  I met up with John and Jacqui on the Sunday to see some Sumo wrestling.  Before going to the stadium we went to the Tokyo Edo Museum, which is one of my favorite museums.  It details the history of Tokyo, so it’s quite interesting.  Then after lunch we headed over to watch the professional sumo matches for the day.  Sumo is always fun to watch, and the atmosphere is quite exciting, even being in the back row….  For dinner we headed over to Shinjuku, and I took them to an Izakaiya, a traditional Japanese bar.  It was a pretty long day by the time we separated, but it was very enjoyable.

Apart from that I didn’t get up to much touristy stuff.  I just met up with Christina for lunch a few times, and with Peter for dinner.  And it seems that most Saturday nights after work a few of us go out for dinner and drinks in the local area.  I’m learning that Nerima has a lot of good restaurants.  

Oh, and if any one was wondering, the subject line says “Evil out, good luck in”.  Yesterday was Setsubun, when people in Japan toss toasted soybeans out of their house to dispel evil.

Keep well!

Michele