Jack-o-Lanterns

My 1st year English class at Kono made Jack-o-Lanterns a bit after Halloween. I mean, they don't celebrate the holiday here so the date when you carve pumpkins can easily be worked around mid-term tests and the like. These two girls are really cute an always talk to me. Take a look at more Halloween photos.


I like this tray/bowl and the screen behind it is also beautiful. I'm amazed at what some artists can do with a piece of wood. The black canister looking thing in the background is a firepit with a bowl for boiling water that is used for tea ceremonies.

new refrigerator!

Here's a picture of me infront of our new refrigerator. It's a nice orange color which makes me happy every time I need to get something to eat. It has a really nice pull drawer for the freezer on the bottom. Within 30 minutes of plugging it in afer it was delivered there was already ice. Imagine our surprise at this feat of modern science and freezer technology. Well it was a surprise to me beacause I'd lived without ice or anything frozen for months.

Fall Fun!

We signed up for a host family program here in Japan. We got paired up with an adorable little lady named Yamamoto Sachi-san. Recently, we went out for a day of fun in the fall. First we went to her mother's persimmon grove. We picked persimmons for a while. We had little snips and a basket tied around our waist. It was raining a little bit, but it was fun. Plus we got a sack full of persimmons. From there we went to this modern art museum tucked in the rual moutains of Japan. It was a surprise to see this kind of museum, but Japan is always full of suprises.

Here Peaches marvels over the flower arrangements.


Here is Yamamoto-san, Peaches and Yamamoto-san's friend Maeda-san



Then we went to the Fukui convention center to a tea ceremony. It was for about 20 people at a time so it was a little removed from the quite affair that I pictured from movies. It was really interesting and the matcha green tea you get is good. There were actually two tea ceremonies, one for outdoors and one for a tea house. Here is a picture of a woman performing the one for outdoors.




After that we went to the Fukui-shi Art Museum. They had a great exhibit on Japanese photography, but I think the kimono are where we had the most fun.