Ho Hum...

Ok, so maybe Japan isn't all bad. I just had a couple of bad days last week with stupid things happening. But, we are just a little homesick and it's getting even worse since we are so close to leaving. By my last reckoning, it's about 66 days or so until we leave. I dunno...my counting is bad I think. ANYWAYS, it just makes it harder and us long to be home more.

July 26th is the date people. We will once again be living in our mother country. Hooray! I'm not being creepily patriotic...I just miss Wal-mart and Applebees and Red Lobser and soup in a can and frozen dinners and fat-free/low-fat food and people who obey traffic laws and family and speaking English to anyone and everyone and volumizing shampoo and radio and being able to have a meal for less than $5 and doctors who can cure problems and not just treat the symptom so the problem is never solved and cheap movies and candy bars that aren't tea flavored or bean flavored and...and...and...lots of stuff. Do you know they don't really sell vanilla ice cream in tubs? It's annoying!

Anyways...that's that...now I should repeat "Japan isn't all bad." I miss a lot of things, but I am sure there are things that I will miss from Japan. I won't make another list...that gets monotonous. I'm sure I will be whining about it when I get back home. Things that I don't even realize I will miss, I will miss.

So lets tell some happy stories, right?

On friday, the day of the crappy time at the Post Office, Chris, Jason, and I got together to have some ramen at the nearby ramen place (ramen! That's something I will definitely miss). We were going to meet up with some other people and have a monopoly night but we wanted to snag something to eat before we settled in to play monopoly. Anyways, I was ranting to Jason about the bad time at the PO when they served us our food. We were the only people in the restaurant at the time and the lady handed Jason is food and his set. Chris and I had just gotten ramen and nothing else. Well, all of the sudden, the lady hands us an extra full plate of gyoza (Japanese dumplings) and says that they were good and we had extra so they were on the house.

Awww...seriously that was such a nice thing to do. Whenever we go into that store, they are so nice to us. And we've given back to them as well. We go in at least once every two weeks to get ramen and we have introduced many people to the restaurant so we've given them business. But, it's always like they know when we are feeling grumpy and they do something like comp our sodas or give us some free gyoza. Such a nice restaurant. Jason said I should blog about it so people could see that Japan doesn't suck, just sometimes sucky things happen (like anywhere) and there are a lot of cool people and things that happen every day.

Really, I love that little ramen restaurant and mainly because the owners are so nice. I will miss that little store. I feel like I should get them a little gift to give them on our last day we eat there (which will very likely be one of our last days in Japan) because they have always made us feel welcome. Good people!

Yesterday was pretty good, too. Chris and I got up early and met some other ALTs at a big park. The high school ALTs were having a picnic for some of their English club students. It was a lot of fun (if a little rainy!). There were quiz games, three-legged races, playing on a playground, Bilingual Japanese-English Apples to Apples, and tons of snacks. The two hosts, are really great people. They are both from England and the personification of 'genki' (genki is a word that means 'lively, energetic, healthy, etc.' but the conotations carry more, think of little Casey...he's a great example of genki in dog form(actually, all dogs are usually 'genki'). Anyways, great people and they did a great job organizing the picnic.

It did sprinkle a bit, but we found a little covered pavillion to sit under so it was all good. Oh! We even learned how to do "poi" which is a maori dance-type thing where you swing 'poi' around in artful movements. It's hard to explain...google it for a better definition. But it's how you see fire dancers (usually they light the poi on fire and it's gorgeous to see at night!) dance. Of course, we did it sans fire, but it was still really interesting to learn. Sam, the New Zealander is very good at poi and fire dancing so he instructed us in it. Chris did a couple of magic tricks to the squeals and delight of the Japanese girls. Heh. Nothing better in life than making a herd of Japanese girls squeal in delight, fascination, and disbelief. I think Chris loves it.

So, good stuff. The rest of the day was uneventful but still pleasant (even though we couldn't get vanilla ice cream to save make sundays for a tasty dessert treat while watching American Idol).

Oooh...American Idol! How could you guys let Melinda get voted off! She's the best, HANDS DOWN! Nooo! I miss her already and we are 2 and a half weeks behind you guys. I will just have to savor her next perfomances. Shame shame America...for letting this one go. Idol Gives Back is what we are seeing right now. I'm interested to see the big hoopla show tonight. It should be interesting. I already know that twist (no one gets voted off! gasp!) and who gets voted off in the subsequent weeks, but it's still fun to watch. Good times.

Ok...now it's time to find some not-curry lunch. Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!