The Willoughbys!

Our good friends the Willoughbys came to visit at the end of February. We were so excited that we took a few days off of work and treated it like a little vacation for ourselves. Like always, we spent a lot of time in Kyoto, but we also went to a few new places like the Hikone Castle and Kobe. We had a great time and may be seeing them again in June to climb Fuji-san. Here are the highlights:

Rob and Amber at Za Watami(a good izakaya)

A couple members of a boy-band that we ran into in Kyoto
(they coincidentally both were wearing purses).

Amber, Rob, Dan, Me and Gransan at the Monkey Park.

Rob, Amber and Dan in the Bamboo forest.

Rob climbing a wall at Hikone Castle

Dan and Rob posing with a giant tanooki. There are statues of tanookis all over the country. They are often near entrances of stores/restaurants and are supposed to represent good economy.

Rob and Amber at The A Bar. This is our favorite bar in Kyoto.

Dan and Rob taking it in at the Kobe harbor.

Tyler and Kinkakuji

Howdy- I haven't posted lately, so I have some catching up to do. Last month, my brother's friend(and now our's) was over working for Nissan in Tokyo for the month. One weekend he made the bullet train ride to visit us over in Kansai. Naturally we went to Kyoto.

Dan and I have been to many places in Japan now and are pretty convinced that Kyoto is the best city. So, we took Tyler to a few of our favorite places as well visiting some new ones for the first time. One place we went was Kinkakuji. It's the "Golden Temple". It is one of the most famous temples in Kyoto and probably Japan for that matter. Interesting fact#1: It was burned down by a Buddhist monk who had become obsessed with it.

Kinkakuji in all it's glory. It had snowed the day before we went and turned out to be a great day.

Another view of Kinkakuji

We also went to the Imperial Palace, but soon realized that it wasn't that cool. It's open to the public for one week a year, and Dan and I didn't feel like going when it was. The grounds are really nice. There were people running, walking their dogs, and strolling around. Maybe it's the central park of Kyoto. The actual palace is surrounded by tall walls and you can't see any of it.

Me, Dan, and Tyler at the Imperial Palace grounds.

School Lunch

Three times a week, teachers in the Ritto City Schools eat school lunch. The other two days we bring "bento"(lunch from home, or more commonly the convenience store). People have special bento boxes with cartoon characters or flowers or something and they wrap them in cloths that also have a special name. I have an old tuperware container- it's not as cute, but it works. Anyway- it's become a big part of our lives here and I wanted to share it with all of you. School lunch usually consists of 4 items: meat/fish, vegetables, soup, and rice. Sometimes the meat/fish is substituted with something like tofu or egg or something. Anyway- the meat/fish can get pretty weird sometimes(usually when it is on the meat side of things), so the staples of it have become the veggies, rice and soup. I eat most anything, but unrecognizable meat is where I draw the line. I typically like most of it though, so my overall opinion is good. Dan wavers on the subject. So here you go; a picture of school lunch.

This particular day I believe I passed on the meat. I think it's chicken though.
Also, notice the chopsticks. I have a cute matching case for them.

Biwako Valley

This past weekend we went snowboarding up at Biwako Valley. It's a ski resort up about 30 minutes north of Kyoto in the mountains along Lake Biwa. On a clear day, you can see down the slopes to the big lake, but we unfortunately were not there on a clear day. The advantage of that was that the snow was fresh and good. I haven't been snowboarding since the first time I tried it about seven years ago on a Saturday at Breckenridge. It was super crowded and I just had to keep falling down to stay out of other people's way. This time I had a much better experience. After the first couple runs I was getting the hang of it and seemingly staying in control. I only bit it real hard once. Anyway- here are some pictures of us at Biwako Valley.

This is at a train station along the way. We don't really know what's going on here.

This is a self-pic on the lift. We didn't notice the person in the background at the time, but it looks pretty funny in the picture.

These little people were so cute.

Here I am shredding it up.

Here is Dan on the gondola.

Taking On Tokyo

This holiday break was great. After skiing in Hakuba, we went to Tokyo to meet our friends, Liz and Phil, who were flying in from the states. We hadn't seen anyone from home in over four months, so this was very exciting for us. So- we went to Narita airport to meet them, headed back into the city to our hotel, and spent three nights there. We stayed in an older district on the northeast side of the city. It was cool because there was still shopping and city life, but it was a little calmer than some of the more famous neighborhoods. The subways in Tokyo were possibly the best I have ever seen. They were on time, clean, super easy to use, and we found these cheap two-day passes, so for what was like 10$, you could use the subways for 2 days with unlimited use. I was highly impressed.
Another bonus to our trip was that New Years is kind of a chilled out time in Japan. Dan and I had been a little nervous to visit Tokyo after hearing horror stories such as "people-jams" and people who's job it is to shove you into subways to make more room for more people to then be shoved in. I typically like my good old American personal space. So, when we discovered that the city was unusually calm and we would never be without a seat on the subway, we were more than pleased. In addition to the overall calmness, Japan doesn't have the same kind of "bar scene" we are used to surrounding this holiday. People here spend time with family and go to temples to pray for good luck in the new year.
Liz and Phil arrived on Saturday December 29th. They were understandably tired that night, so we went out to dinner and had an early evening. The next day, we went out to start our touristy sight seeing. In the three days, we saw Sensoji temple, the Imperial Palace grounds(the actual palace was closed for the holiday), Harajuku, Shibuya, Akihabara, Roponggi, the Mori Art Museum, and Ginza street. It was great. The districts were all like different little cities all attached to each other. Shibuya was very fun. It was really lively and had lots of shops and restaurants. It looked like what you think Tokyo should look like. Another cool place was the Mori Art Museum. It was in Roponggi Hills(a huge trendy shopping area) and was on the top of a high rise building. In addition to a cool modern art exhibit, your ticket is good for the Tokyo City View. It is just above the museum and there are huge windows that go all the way around the floor. The views were amazing.

This is us on a train from Narita airport heading into the city. I was so happy to see Liz!

This is the first night in the hotel. Phil was choking down some mystery drink he found at the convenience store.

At Sensoji Temple in Asakusa. Liz and Phil are warding off bad spirits with the smoke.

I was really excited to find this chocolate shop. For those of you that don't know, Peltier is my maiden name and I love chocolate.

Liz B. and Liz P. taking on Tokyo

Shibuya

Us in Shibuya.

Dan and Liz chatting on the metro.

In The Mori Art Museum at the Tokyo City View.

New Years Eve at Sensoji Temple.

Happy New years at an English Pub in Tokyo.

Christmas in Hakuba

Dan and I have just returned from our trip to Hakuba. It is a village up in the mountains of Nagano, where the 98 winter Olympics were held. We had a great time. We arrived there on December 23, skied and snowboarded on the 24th and 25th and came home the 26th. We stayed at a hotel called Hakuba House. It was more of a trendy bed and breakfast. This place made our stay so wonderful. It was run by a nice young Australian couple, who just opened the place days before we got there. It was cute and cozy and everyone was really friendly. They had a little comfortable lounge where everyone hung out and talked. The skiing was good too. I was able to ski on a run that they used for the Olympics.

This is a view from our window Christmas eve morning. We woke up to beautiful snow and it continued to snow all day.

Dan snowboarding. We dressed up like Santa because the resort was giving free lift tickets to people in Santa costumes on Christmas eve.

Mrs. Claus

Dan was loosing parts of the costume every time he fell.

Here is a view of the valley.

This is a view from close to the top of the mountain.

Surreal Human Rights Experience

There won't be too many posts that I put up without pictures, but this is definately worthy of immediate mention. Today was a normal day at Ritto- Nishi Chugako. I was grading papers at my desk when a teacher approached me to let me know that there was a Human Rights Performance in the gym being done by the second grade(our 8th grade). I was appreciative of the heads up, so I followed him to the gym. Once in there, I realized I might be stuck in there for an hour, trying to pick out any Japanese vocabulary that sounds familiar to me. Then the piano started and a stage full of thirteen year old Japanese kids started singing "We Shall Overcome". I must say, they did a nice job. After the song, which up until that performance I had solely connected to the African American Civil Rights movement, I began trying to pick through the Japanese vocabulary for something to hold onto.