Sunday, August 31, 2014

Gifu prefecture

Went for a BBQ in Gifu. It's a gorgeous area with mountains, rice terraces, and beautiful old style houses. We all got to talking about how we'd live to end up on one of those types of farms













Saturday, August 30, 2014

Last summer festival

The teachers all went out to celebrate Minori's birthday on Friday night. I got my first official taste of okonomiyaki. Loved it!


Visually it looks pretty bad. But it's good. It's varied versions of two pancakes with something in the middle. 

The next day Minori, her Mom and I went into Sakae (sah-kah-eh) so they could buy some clothes for the big parent meeting in Korea in two weeks. 

When we arrived in Sakae we discovered a HUGE festival going on. There was the usual food stall setup in the park area, and then there was an endless parade going down the biggest street. We were in town for six hours, and the parade continued the whole time we were there.


There were tons and tons and TONS of performing groups. Over thirty groups at least. They all danced some really fun stuff! Each group followed their own truck, which had a singer and leader on top, leading them on.

Many of them had these gorgeous flags being waved about. There were tons of different flags. I was video chatting with Hillary when I saw the biggest flag, it was easily taller than three of me.

Something all of the groups had in common was that they would bow and thank the crowd before and after each dance they did. Another thing they all did was pull a move that changed their outfit to a different one in like two seconds.




This van leader looked freaking awesome lol. 







See this group? This was near the beginning of a dance...
...and this was at the end, when they had to change back into their first costume so they could perform again.


Koinobori!!!!! So huge!

Anyways. It was very fun. 

In the past few days there's been a change in the air, and it seems like summer Weather is changing right on time. I am a little sad that summer is going. On one hand I hate hate hated the humidity. And the cicadas were like constant car alarms going off. But on the other, much more important hand, I will really miss the amazing fireworks, all the festivals, and the foods that showed up when summer arrived. 

Korean BBQ

.....is the most delicious thing on the planet. Hands down, not a single doubt on the matter. I went to a dinner last night that had my eyes closing in delight at every single BITE. Holy Moses, it was amazing.

It was Minori's birthday. She is one of my favorite people on this planet!! Ms Mihoko and Ms Michiyo were incredibly amazing and had reserved a private room at a Korean BBQ place called Lysho. 

Here's the other side of the room. Minori and I kept trying to play it cool, but whenever nobody was looking, we'd look at each other with jaws dropped and point to all the cool stuff.

My chopsticks, sauce platter, plate (yup), and coaster. The sauces were delicious, especially the center one! But honestly I ate plenty of meat without the sauces, it was so good no matter what was on it.

A yummy pepper salad, Kim chi, and another small salad too. Soooooo good

This is Karby I think? A form of sashimi if I heard right. You spooned a little into a square of seaweed, and ate. I'm going to stop exhausting the word amazing, and just assume that you know that everything was deeelllicious!!!!

In came the meat, avocado, and mochi wedges. I'd never grilled mochi before, not bad!

I loved the plates!!!! They were unique and beautiful! Yugo over there was watching something hilariously serious. There's a popular app here where you can send a video message to scold your child for specific bad things they've done. The video has a demon thing, frighten you and lecture you about following rules and such.

Cucumber and another intestine!

I looooooooved the food


And I loved the plates
I am absolutely dreading when Minori moves away!!!


Saturday, August 23, 2014

Elizabeth 2


Monster lily pads

Tenryuji gardens

Arashiyama bamboo forest

Found these as we explored down a street

Liz will post her pics in a few weeks, but til then, can anyone guess what we did today?   Insane and so much fun

Elizabeeeeeeth

Saw this pillow and thought of Lindsay

Gion in the daytime

Rice and omelette house. Crazy delicious deserts

Goin at night....kyoto is dead as a doornail by ten, apart from karaoke and ramen shops

Mid Aug blog


Love the train to kyoto. Rice paddies.


Liz and i in downtown nagoya

Boys here are big on bug collecting. Maybe it's because the bugs get ridiculously big