Thanksgiving!

I knew that this time of year it was going to be tough. The holidays are quickly rolling up on us and that makes me miss my family more than I can say. So much so that sometimes I get chocked up singing We Wish You a Merry Christmas during my toddler classes. Anyway, this last Thursday was Thanksgiving and I was wanting to celebrate in style! I was lucky enough to find some friends who let me join in their Thanksgiving feast! On the actual day of Thanksgiving, I made myself a super American dinner of BBQ chicken and Kraft mac and cheese.

YUMMY!

It was excellent but I knew that Sunday was the day of my celebration with friends so I anxiously awaited the day when I would not only have some good old fashioned American food but also good company to go along with it!
The day after Thanksgiving which was actually Thanksgiving evening for my family, I got to have a Skype session with the whole family and it made me feel like I was there even if I only got to be there for an hour :)

Hey there family!

Sunday finally rolled around and I was off to Shizuoka for some friends and food! It was about a 3 hour train ride since I took local trains and not a shinkansen (bullet train) but it had a great view!! I had to go through all of these mountains and even passed right by Mt. Fuji. I also lost my apartment key on the train ride over here but I shall leave that to another post...I had ridden the whole train ride with my homemade pumpkin cheesecake in hand and it arrived safely with me. We spent the next couple of hours getting dinner ready and having some drinks.

Some of the cooking action!

Everything came out great and tasted fantastic! It was a memorable meal :D

I bet you're jealous

my cheesecake!

I ate sooo much

We were all pretty stuffed by the end of the meal but we were satisfied! We stayed up until 1 AM just chatting and picking at left-over cheesecake. Great way to spend my first major holiday away from the family. Thanks ladies!!

Kamakura Trip!

I live about an hour and fifteen minutes away from the great historical city of Kamakura. I've been meaning to head over there for quite sometime now but Sunday was the first time that I actually got to visit. It was a great experience and I had a fantastic time!
The experience started as soon as I pulled into Fujisawa. From there, I took an old historical electric railline it was really cute and fun!

The train!

While on the train, I got my first glimpse of the sea since I arrived here months ago.

There it is!

My first stop was to go to Kotokuin Temple to see the Great Buddha of Kamakura. This bronze statue is the second largest Buddha statue in Japan. It was originally cast in 1252. I couldn't wait to get it in person. I also heard that Kamakura was very beautiful in the fall so I was looking forward to what the scenery around the statue would look like. It did not disappoint!

Me and the Buddha

The Buddha's slippers

The inside of the statue

After seeing the Great Buddha, I did some shopping for gifts. I also ended up getting some green tea and sweet potato ice cream. I was unsure of how it was going to taste but it was really good! I liked it a lot! W While I was getting the ice cream, the clerk asked me where I was from. I told him that I was American and he pointed towards a picture of President Obama outside of the store dated 11/14/2010. He smiled and told me, "President Obama, okay! Nice!" I smiled and told him that I was from Illinois which is where Obama is from as well and he nearly freaked out! It was so funny. He shouted "Sugoi!" and told the other cashiers that I was from Chicago in quick Japanese and they all shook their heads and agreed that it was very awesome. It was quite the fun little experience. I then headed to another temple on my way back to the train. It was Hasedera, a temple dedicated to the goddess Kannon. I adored this temple. It had beautiful gardens, a fantastic view, and awe inspiring statues. Oh, and an amazingly creepy sacred cave.

The gardens

The temple lit up at night. The colors in front of the temple change.

Sacred cave!

The inside of the cave

The fantastic view

 

It was a fabulous day of exploring which I REALLY needed after a rough week at work. Great way to turn the week around!

Food Spotlight: Fast Food

I'm not going to lie here: I LOVE having familiar fast food restaurants around here. Japanese people have an odd love for American fast food. As a result, I have a whole bunch of familiar chain restaurants around me. It's actually really comforting to know that when all else fails, I can walk to the McDonald's or go down to the Starbucks where they treat me like a celebrity (true story). They just love a good hamburger here really. Some restaurants by me include: McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, Denny's, Starbucks, Tully's Coffee, and even an Outback Steakhouse.

mmmmmm BK...

Of course, each of these offers unique items as well as the staples that we are used. This is what makes it so fun! Almost all of these restaurants have some kind of teriyaki burger or wasabi spiced burger or KFC even has soy sauce chicken (which is way gross in my opinion. Too much salt for me to handle). There are also some Japanese burger chains that are equally amazing such as Mos Burger and Freshness Burger. My personal favorite places to visit are Burger King and Freshness Burger. I love the hot chicken sandwich here. They taste like some one put some Asian Zing sauce from Buffalo Wild Wings on it. YUM! I go to Freshness Burger for some of the "stranger" items like a teriyaki chicken burger or the crab burger. Another thing I appreciate here is that no matter where you go, they bring you your fries or onion rings fresh. Yes, you have to wait a couple of minutes but it is well worth the taste boost. I truthfully end up eating this kind of fast food about once a week when I just need a taste food. It's at least a small culinary cure for homesickness.

Some good old fashioned KFC. Yes, that wrapper totally says Wa-fu chicken...

Achievement unlocked: Reading!

The day has finally come! I sat my butt down and studied hard and I finally know how to read some Japanese! You have no idea how much I as an adult took being able to read for granted. It was something I didn't even think about when I first moved here. I've been so frustrated that I could not do the simplest things like read a menu to figure out what I was eating or not knowing what kind of sauce I just bought at the grocery store. But, I finally conquered one of the Japanese reading/writing systems. I can now read katakana and I mean READ it. I didn't just memorize the symbols, I officially read a whole menu with no help from anyone :D It was an exciting moment for me. I'm clearly moving up in the world.

Here's a little bit of information about the Japanese writing systems. There are three different systems: katakana, hiragana, and kanji. I chose to learn katakana because it is used for "borrowed words" from other languages (namely English). This means that although I am struggling to learn Japanese, I can still understand the words I am reading because they are words like kohi (coffee) or hamubaga (hamburger) or rate (latte). Hiragana is kind of like the basic alphabet. It covers all of the basic sounds in Japanese and uses it to form words. This is taught to children before they can read kanji. I hope to conquer this next...The last and most complicated of the symbols is kanji. These are symbols derived from Chinese that represent many words and sounds. I actually have learned about 50 or so kanji from my day to day interactions. Things like "water", "day", "month", "book", or even the names of some local cities from the trains have all been burned into my brain as I see them at least one a week. I hope I can absorb more and would like to know at least 200 or so kanji before I leave.