Yokohama

A coworker has a coffee mug from Yokohama. I had asked her about the city and she told me great things! Yokohama is a city about 30 minutes south of Tokyo (2.5 hours by bullet train from Sendai). I decided to take a Monday off and spend a 3 day weekend there with my friend Mallory! I can't explain, but I fell in love with the city! I had a great time, here are some highlights:

Yokohama at night. The ferris wheel is a big landmark!

Inside the ferris wheel. It was kind of scary! It takes 15 minutes to go all the way around,

but it has some great views. I was really glad we wnet at night.

Not sure if you have ever heard of a Cat Cafe, but Japan is known for having them. Basically it is a place where you can go to play with cats, becasue most people live in apartments and cannot have animals. I had heard of these from a friend, but that was about it. It turns out there was a Cat Cafe right next to our hostel in Yokohama. Mallory loves cats, so she was really excited to go. I am not much of an animal person, but I knew I had to check out this strange place! Below is the door walking into the Cat Cafe!

The cafe is seperated into 2 rooms. One room is for food and drink (no cats allowed) and the other room is for playing with cats (no food/drink allowed). You buy a time limit and you can divide your time between the 2 rooms however you like. Below is a picture of the "Cat Staff" so you can learn the cats names/facts before you play with them.

The cat room. Yes, I realize this is totally bizzare!

There were about 20 cats in this room.

Japan is known for their crazy flavors of KitKat bars! These are sweet potato flavor,

I tried them...they were good!

We went to the big red brick warehouse. There are 2 huge warehouses that used to be for import & export, but now are used for shopping and dining. We ran smack dab into an anime convention! So funny, and so Japanese! We had to get a picture with some of them.

Yokohama also has a really large Chinatown. This is the entrance.

We bought Starbucks mugs!

This was a HUGE highlight of the trip: MEXICAN FOOD! It is hard/near impossible to find mexican food, much less GOOD mexican food and this place was top notch. Not to mention normal sized portions!

Update!

Wow, ok I have not updated this in a really long time. I am not very good at keeping this up. My last post was 6 months ago! This post is backwards, starting with the most recent month because that is what happened when I uploaded the pictures! Enjoy :]

September

Last weekend I finally went to see a famous place in Sendai, called Matsushima. I went with Mallory and her friend Hannah who was visiting from Seattle. Matsushima is on the coast and has bridges to different islands. Below is a picture of my ticket to cross this bridge.

Mallory & I

There was a small ice cream shop on the island & look who we found...Ichiro!

Beware of Bee! They have killer bees in Japan! SCARY!


OCTOBERFEST: Sendai had an annual Octoberfest. Some teachers and I went to check it out. We thought it was fun becasue we are going to Germany for Christmas vacation!

August

For summer break (2 weeks in August) I went home to America. Most of the pictures are of food becasue I was so excited to eat normal food again!

Taco Time:

I went to Taylor & Emilie's wedding:

Jorden & Trenton.

Keri, Jen & I getting mani/pedis.

Diet Coke!!!

Friends at a BBQ.

PORTLAND: Jen and I went to Portland for a few days. We love it there and we stayed in the best hotel: The Nines.

Taco Bell!

July

My mom & Terri have been sending me great packages with fun party decorations. So, why no have a party? We tried out best to have a great 4th of July party in Japan!

PAPAGENO'S: We found a great new restaurant with food I can actually eat. It's a buffet & so yummy!

June

Speaking of food I do not like...Sushi. I thought it was time to bite the bullett and try Sushi. I was proud I tried to many things, but no I will not be going back.

Crazy Salmon.

Not really loving it.

Finished! I never have to try that nasty stuff again!

May
In May we were invited to out favorite burger place, Kame House's One Year Anniversary party. They had a DJ and everything! We always love this place, but this was a fun night!

CINCO DE MAYO: Speaking of parties. Terri sent me some Cinco De Mayo decorations so this was the first of many great parties hosted by me!

You will not see a cell phone without a charm in Japan. We are all jumping on the trend. This is my friend Melanine with her 3 cell phone charms!

My NEW apartment!

Here is a video tour of my new apartment I move into about a month ago. I love it so much!

Tsunamis, Birthdays & Earthquakes!

Hello! I have not been posting because I did not think people were reading this blog, but word on the street is...they are! SO here is an update of everything I've done since my last post. I have officially been living in Japan for 1 month & 17 days. Let me tell you, it feels like so much longer! I have been through training, observing, teaching, and exploring my new surroundings. It has been a lot of fun so far. The picture below is of my friend Mallory & I at training. For the first week of training we were in a room from 9:00am to 3:15pm. Everyday they provided coffee, lunch & snacks. This was the first "Japanese snack" I had. It was sooo good! It was like a coffee flavored cream puff with maple icing.


Starbucks! We convinced our driver to take us to Starbucks. I have never been so happy to have coffee in my life. They had an English menu with pictures so we can point to what we want. They have limited options, but the taste is still the same! We have yet to brave special ordering a drink. I will let you know how that goes :] The closest one is about a 20 min walk.

Mt. Raineir in Japan. The first time I went to the grocery store I found this! Mt. Rainier coffee! I did not buy it, but it was so funny to see.

MeySen Grounds. This is just one of the many playgrounds that my school, MeySen has to offer. I mean...this is insane. Everything is built on this massive hill. They have HUGE slides, bridges, swings, and a steep "log climb" with no railings! I will take a picture of it. I am even scared to go on it!

The top of the slides and the barn.

One of the animals in the barn. I call him Sheepy. I think the kids get to watch them get shaved and do something with their wool.

KARAOKE!!! Melissa took the group of new teachers out for the Japanese Karaoke experience. You pay by the hour for a karaoke room that fits about 10 people. There is seating, a table, and a television screen. You select the songs you want and can do as many as you can in one hour! It was a blast. It is fun to sing with just your friends in the room. We had a blast. I of course brought down the house with "MMMbop".

Grape City. The new teachers got to tour Grape City/Wine Studios. They are sister companies or Meysen. They do all of the artwork, publishing, and video production for MeySen's curriculum. They have grown so much that they now bring in more money than Meysen and have offices in Korea, the us, and a couple other places I do not remember. Pretty cool to see!

This is a picture of some of the artwork used for MeySen's curriculum.

This is the studio where they shoot local commercials, small movies, etc.

Korean Pizza. The last day of training they ordered pizza hut for us! I was excited until I saw what was inside the boxes. There were some normally looking pizzas, but I decided to be brave and try this Korean Pizza. OMG. Seriously the best pizza I have ever eaten! It was spicy and kinds of hard to describe the flavors. I looked in ordering one for myself & pizza is about $40.00 here! Yikes.

Driving. Learning to drive. Our boss, Esther, took a few of us out driving. I was SO scared to drive on the other side of the road. Minus turning on the windshield wipers instead or the turn signal, I think it went pretty well! I have driven a few times since then and it it becoming more natural to drive on the left side of the road! Now if I only knew where I was going...

The Best Burgers in Town. About a 10 minute walk from my apartment is this gem. Kame House has great burgers, even better fries, and a fun atmosphere! They have "American" paraphernalia everywhere (of course an Ichiro bobble head) and are usually playing The Beatles over the speakers. This is our new favorite place!

Notice the spelling: abacado, sandwiche, becon

Yummy!

We even had some entertainment. This worker (we like to call him Mohawk Boy) played the ukulele for us!

Valentines Day. On Valentines day we had a girls party with many of the MeySen women. I decided to be brave and try top make chocolate covered strawberries! They turned out great!

Playing a game at the valentines party. We are fun losers :]

S.P. This is what we Americans like to call the Squatty Potty. Ally was trying to be funny and demonstrate how to use it. Apparently she is faced the wrong way. They usually have both squatty pottys and western toilets so I have not been forced to use one as of yet.

The Cabin. Meysen owns an amazing cabin on the "other side" of the Pacific Ocean. All the new teacher, and some other MeySen staff got to stay for the weekend. We hiked down to the water, played tons of games, and just relaxed. The day before we left, we received a call that there could be a tsunami. There had been an earthquake in Chile and we were going to receive a 3 meter tsunami at 1:00pm. 3 meters was not something we needed to evacuate for, but we were excited/scared to see the tsunami!

We all hiked out to a spot where we were safe and could still see the water. There were announcement in Japanese telling people to evacuate. There were helicopters and many people were out to see the tsumami. So we waited....and waited...and waited some more, but did not see anything. We ended up coming back to the cabin about an hour and a half later, only to find out that the tsunami was over and it had been 10 centimeters. Wow, all that for nothing!

Birthdays. Mallory's birthday is the day before mine, March 9th. We worked all day, but I managed to pull together a makeshift cake of "acorn doughnuts" for her. This is in my apartment.

Good morning, you're 24! I woke up to over a foot of snow on my birthday! School was cancelled, but the teachers had a work day. I got to go in an hour late :] Kind of crazy!

That weekend everyone ate at Kame House for our birthdays. We filled the entire place and had it all to ourselves. We had a lot of fun & great food!

Earthquake. Mallory and I were at Starbucks one Saturday night. We were talking and laughing then all of a sudden things started shaking. Starbucks was silent for about 5 seconds. Then the earthquake was over and everyone just went about their business as usual. Mallory was cheering because it was her first earthquake and I was scared! Then we still had a 20 minute walk home and it was freezing cold and so windy it was hard to walk! We took this picture when we got home.

Japanese Photo Booths. I never knew a photo booth could be so much fun! They have them in any arcade (pretty easy to find) You go into this space. Looks kind of like a small studio. It is all white and there are lights everywhere. You can pick from every background you can imagine. Then, you can edit the pictures! You can write words, the date, add decorations, Kind of hard to describe how cool it is!

Well, that is all for now! Sorry this post is so long, I had a lot to update. On March 25th I move into my new apartment, then for spring break on the 26th I leave for Tokyo. It should be an adventure and I will have lots of pictures to show!