Ain't nothin' like comfort food...

I've been feeling a little run down and blah the last couple days... so I've been taking it easy, and decided yesterday that if I wanted to make sure I kept this cold at bay, I'd better have some chicken soup.

I've been able to find corn (!) soup, and cream of chicken (?) soup, but no straight up chicken soup to which I could add noodles to.

So here it goes from scratch:

mmmmm simmering pan fried chicken...
Simmered this for about 2 hours, then I just couldn't wait any longer.

Pee Ess...

Whilst chilling on the Shinkansen, I discovered stole aways... I'm pretty big on the whole "take only pictures, leave only footprints" deal, so, as much as I wanted a small piece of Mt Fuji to take with me, I did not grab a rock. Instead, I found that a few decent sized pieces had gotten stuck in the tread of my shoe. I promptly tucked them away for safe keeping. Now I ask you, dear readers... how can I make these rocks into a pendant for a necklace or phone charm for myself?

...and go!

They're fairly small, the 3 can fit on top of a penny...

Welcome party Barbecue!

Random sunset in Shichinohe just down the street from my apartment.

 I didn't take many pictures... mostly because folks were pretty schmammered by the time I got there. I did get this nice shot of the view from the hill by the cabins we stayed in. I think I will go back there... maybe to rent one of them myself with some friends just to get out and have a little fire or something. We shall see. It was a much nicer place than I had anticipated.

Additional Fuji trip photos

I snagged these offa Mekala's facebook... I'll grab other ones and add 'em in here as they pop up... I figger the initial Fuji post is long enough already...

Chelsea and myself

Mt Fuji

What have I gotten myself into... 

Okay, cats and kittens, now, some of ya'll know I dig the outdoors. I've been off on overnight canoe trips many times and have done a little backwoods camping. I love proving to myself that I can do something that other folks say they can't (or tell me I'm crazy for trying). I also like adventures, exploring and just getting out and doing something. So when Chelsea mentioned she was going to climb Mt Fuji during the long weekend with some other folks, and asked if I wanted to join, I jumped on it. JR railline had this wonderful Three Day Pass which saved us so much coin on train fare, it was amazing. Still, though, it was a crazy long day which began at 5 am Saturday September 15th. I walked down to the Shichinohe-Towada Bullet Train station to catch my ride down to Tokyo.

It's almost go time...

Friday afternoon... It's warm, but not warm enough for a/c... I knew I should have worn a skirt today...

IT'S TOO HOT FOR PANTS! Well, not quite. Anyway, I'm finding it too warm to concentrate on anything terribly productive, so... I'm gonna start another post that I will update as we go along... (well, I'll tag subsequent posts as "NATURE" so you can follow along... )

NATURE!

I hope to see lots of neat stuff this coming weekend (but I'm not gonna tell you where I'm going in case the weather is shite and all I get is rained on!)

Here are some things that I've found worth noting so far...

While heading to the exit of the Hirosaki castle grounds, I spied this one branch of red in among the green...

These leaves just could not wait to get their red on...

The moment you've all be waiting for...

... with baited breath....


... shivering with... anticiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii...





...






...





...pation.

Aki Matsuri (lit: Fall Festival)

Hey folks, the Hirosaki weekend posts took a week to get up cuz of all the classes I had (still no internet at home except for on the iphone... which I can't make into a hotspot unless I jailbreak it... it may come to that...)

Anyhoo, ever since going back to Shichinohe, I joined Tim and David (fellow ALTs, but both are from California) and started some informal Taiko drumming lessons in the Shinmatchi neighbourhood of Shichinohe. Good times were had (I shall add a picture of the shed we were practicing in, I just forgot to load it on the flash drive) a super busy weekend resulted from it!

Thursday, September 6th, all the neighbourhoods gathered in town and competed (I'm not sure what we were competing for... but we got lots of cheers for being the group with the most gaijin... however that didn't get us enough points to win. Maybe next year.) After the winners were announced, a much better taiko group performed and put us all to shame.

Suited up and ready to smack some skins!

Hirosaki pt 2

After checking out the castle, we hit up a book store (see the couple of book covers in the WTF post heheh chats...) then got some much needed food. We went to an Italian place and had some pizza. They were all pretty good, but I liked my calamari one the best.

Behold, the final slice.

Weekend escape to Hirosaki pt1

I got the offer to go on a weekend adventure with some other ALTs this past weekend... And as long as updating by smartphone doesn't make me too angry, I'll bring y'all up to speed!

We set out on our journey Saturday morning and hit up the international festival in Itanyanagi (think micro Folklorama) met a Scottish JET named James. Yay! There was short bread and black tea. I was pleased.

WTF

It's about time for me to start a collection of Engrish and or just plain weird stuff I find... Or just what tickles my fancy.

Kindness Parking located at the Kappa Sushi restaurant just outside Aomori City.