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So there will be some kind of international exposition here in January. Nothing big, but I guess it’s part of the Fukui International Association, and people will have small booths detailing their home countries, or something specific about them. Anyway, the secretary of the Echizen City International Association has asked me to make up a “Matt’s Corner” stall for the event. I said yes, of course, but now I need to think of something to do! Agh!

My first thought was how awesome it would be to make a cheesesteak stand and cook up delicious steaks for everyone, but even before the logistics of that idea stopped it dead in its tracks, I remembered how shitty of a cook I am… so that won’t be happening. What else could I do? I guess I could get my hands on some pollution to represent New Jersey… but that doesn’t really send the kind of message most people might want. So I need some suggestions. Please email me or comment them onto this post! お願いします!

I talked to some friends as well as my family over Thanksgiving weekend, which was really nice, and the one thing I keep getting asked is for photos… I guess I chat online about my life here and think out blog posts in my head so often that I always feel like I’ve already said what I wanted to say — except that I’ve only said it to one person or just myself. I feel like I’ve posted tons of photos of my straight permed hair or my town and my school, but I guess I really haven’t! So, since this weekend was luckily an absolutely beautiful, perfect November weather weekend, I went out with my sleek, sexy new camera and took tons of photos. Be forewarned: they’re nothing special; I wasn’t taking photos with an artistic eye, just snapping really quickly everything I looked at. There’s quite a few, too — but this is only about 1/15 of what I actually took… I guess when it comes to visual stimulation I get a little bit obsessive compulsive. I’ll take 10 or 15 pictures of a single wall or brick, or I’ll end up staring at a wooden railing for 8 or 9 minutes… it’s even worse when I look at artwork that I like. I guess that’s why I became an artist… Anyway, here you go: Read more »

Today is Japanese Thanksgiving Day. It’s a national holiday, but there’s not much to it — just a day off from work. So of course, I can’t complain!

Yesterday I celebrated US Thanksgiving Day by teaching all of my kids (and my manager) how to make hand-turkeys. Very few people here have seen a turkey, and the kid’s had trouble believing me that it wasn’t a chicken. Afterwards, the staff and I went out pretty spontaneously for a “Thanksgiving Day” celebration — karaoke and half-priced food until early in the morning, It was really fun, and probably as close to Thanksgiving as it can get here. Everyone insisted I stuff myself, being Thanksgiving of course, and I’m still full this morning!

Soon it will be Black Friday morning over there… ahh I will miss Black Friday. If anyone goes out, please send me some photos. And tell me what insane deals there are… just so I can taste it!

Happy Turkey Day!

It’s midnight, which means that Thanksgiving has officially started. There is a national holiday here on the 23rd, so I will have a day off on Friday (yay!), but I don’t have any plans for tonight. I suppose I’ll try to get my coworkers to go out with me. But Thanksgiving exists here even less than Halloween does. In fact, it’s totally nonexistent. Big surprise, right?

Anyway, even though I have a lot to be thankful for — and I am — I will be missing turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and candied yams and green beans and cranberry sauce and gravy and funny foreign beers that my dad finds. Luckily the weather here is very much like Philly, and the mountain outside my window is turning beautiful shades! The cold weather is refreshing and the air is very clear. The sun rises and sets too early, but that’s ok — Fukui has one thing that Philly never will; thunderstorms in the winter! Apparently there was a huge one last week when I was in Tokyo, but there was another one today during work. My teachers called it “snow thunder,” because I guess our snow storms here are accompanied by humongous thunderstorms. And the thunder today was really big! So I’m really looking forward to winter now!

Parakeets kind of smell like chicken or turkey when they’re wet, so maybe I’ll give Pi-chan and Kiiro-chan a bath and then sniff them for my Thanksgiving meal…

Today, my senior crush asked me if I was wearing underwear.

I’m fairly positive she was actually asking if I was wearing an undershirt, as it’s quite cold these days and I was wearing a short-sleeved dress shirt. But somehow… I’m just not sure…

That’s all. I’m starving now, and I just made mac’n'cheese. A thousand thanks to Kaori who brought me 2 boxes of mac and some rice crispy treats all the way from America! You don’t know how satisfying it is to eat an entire box of this at once is, after living on small Japanese portions (and expensive cheese!) for 4 months. Thank you!

Today I visited Youkokan, the second house of Fukui’s Matsudaira clan in feudal Japan. Second house! It was absolutely, breathtakingly beautiful! The current house was rebuilt in the 1980′s (the original was destroyed in the firebombs on WW2), but sadly parts the grounds have been built over with roads. However, what’s been rebuilt is just insanely awesome. It’s a garden the size of a small city block, with tiny streams and waterfalls and bridges all over the place (originally it was fed by the same waterways that fed Fukui castle’s moat, but as those have been built-over, now it is fed by pumps. One of the buildings hasn’t been rebuilt, as a road runs through it, but the foundations are marked. The rest of the grounds are a beautiful Japanese garden surrounding a shallow lake filled with carp. The house itself is built half on land and half over the lake… When you go inside, you can stick your head out the window and be right over the water… the balconies go over the water as well. And it has a wooden walkway that goes around the outside of the house, but is still under the roof, so your socks don’t get dirty or wet if it’s raining and you step outside. There was a cedar steam room built over a canal that runs underneath the house and into a private courtyard surrounded by a low wall… kind of like a backyard pool. It feels like a miniature Japanese castle, and even though it was really dang cold walking around there in socks… wow! It was just breathtaking. Read more »

Pi-chan got a new friend today. He’s been so lonely by himself while I’m at work, and I felt so bad to see him puffed up and looking depressed whenever I came home at night. It was a cold and rainy day, but I managed to run out to the bird store when it was only just a little rainy and pick up his new friend. She’s a lutino parakeet, so she’s all yellow and has red eyes. (Pi-chan some kind of bizarre half-lutino/half-green, but I think they look nice together.) Since she’s all yellow, I named her Kiiro-chan.

Pi-chan’s reaction when I put her into the cage was so heartwarming. He was so happy! Even Kiiro-chan shrugged off the trauma of being cramped in a tiny box on a cold, rainy bike ride when she saw how excited Pi-chan was. They’re cute together; Kiiro-chan follows Pi-chan anywhere he goes, and Pi-chan is really happy to have a buddy, although he’s been nipping at her on and off all day when she eats “his” food or plays with “his” toy… I guess he’s not used to sharing yet.

Kiiro-chan is really sweet and curious, and has a different sounding chirp than Pi-chan, so it’s really cute to hear them peeping to each other. It’s going to be hard to finger-train her, with my limited time, and with them being together all the time… but she’s happy to follow Pi-chan onto my finger, so I’m hoping I can tame her that way. She isn’t all that scared of me, and the most important thing is that they have each other.

Originally, I was going to go on a 2-day trip to Nagano to visit an Ukiyo-e art museum and then to Takayama to look at the really old village (good photo opportunities, methinks), but I wasn’t able to get in touch with my ride, so it ended up falling flat. I was kind of looking forward to a relaxing weekend anyway, considering the business of last weekend. I got to clean my room and start a painting, too, which is good.