Adventures in Japan: Week 78: Mighta bought a lot...

It's been a busy week! Let's see. My big accomplishment this week was I made some mini flan.

WOOOOOO!

And it tastes good!

(still possible to eat an entire one yourself, but less shame involved)

The recipe I has calls for sweetened condensed milk and water, so I tried replacing the water with coconut milk, and it's really nice! Very creamy.

But back to the week!

The weather has perked up, so I biked to school twice this week. And realized how out of shape I seem to be. WOW.

Tuesday I taught English class in the evening at church for the second week. The students say they enjoy it because I always add such random stuff to it. "Astronaut means space sailor!" "THIS is a tuxedo cat!" :D

The students had "parent's day" at the various schools. Monday school's was last week, but it was on a Wednesday, so I didn't have to worry about it. Wednesday's school was...on Wednesday this week, so I got to teach a class with a bunch of parents watching. One of the other teachers asked if I was nervous and I said "No. They're not here to see me. If anything goes wrong, they're going to be watching you, not me." (I'm so mean)

And it went well! There was a MOMENT of the teacher looking at me and thinking "I didn't think the students would get through their presentations so quickly what do we do?!" And I fluffed the lesson a bit.

At least that's what I THINK he was trying to convey. I'm still not psychic.

For the parent's day, the students get to show of a lot of what they're learning, and it's always fun to see the other students getting excited over it too!

Look at these cool pictures!

Anyhow, it was a good day.

Wednesday was also a Relief society get together. One of the other Foreign sisters taught how to make Flautas!

they were yummy

Her Grandma's Mexican.

Since tortillas cost so much over here, she showed them how to make some!

They really enjoyed it.

It's a lot easier than I thought.

And then they put them together.

They really enjoyed this!

And the whole thing turned out well.

Let's see, what else.....I decided to filter out my soy sauce, because it's time. It's been time for a while now.

ewwww

I've changed how I 'm doing it a few times now, and I think I finally found something that works, but the first night, I had this open soy sauce draining all night. And it smells...fermenty. Kinda yeasty. And for some reason that meant I dreamed about PANCAKES.

ALL NIGHT.

Now I have it covered so I do not have dreams that make me want to eat my pillow.

I guess it kinda hit that I'm going home soon, because on Friday, I hopped over to a second hand store I heard was going out of business (so everything is half off) and bought a bunch of Kimono and Obi. (I have PLANS for that silk). Later, I was feeling cold, so I went to the bath house, but first, I stopped by the mall to look for a bag mom had picked up here and then lost.

I never DID make it too the bath house.

By the time I staggered out, I figured 1) I had already spent enough, 2) I was finally warm and 3) the bath house doesn't have lockers for all the bags I was now hauling. :P

I try to watch my spending so very carefully, so Saturday, I figured I'd go somewhere that I wouldn't be tempted at all.

A temple market.

I'm bad at self control. :P

Apparently it was a BIG and FAMOUS one. Because it was huge! And SO CROWDED.

so crowded.

We got to see more plum blossoms!

artistic.

Flowers!

ART.

And there was the temple, of course.

very noisy with all the bells, but awesome

And there was a HUGE flippin line for tea ceremony stuff, but we were ok with not going in. We'd both tea ceremonied before and were not interested in waiting in a long line again.

Then we went to the market part!

tiny bottles with paintings inside

beautiful flowers I would hate to kill...

I like the little moss ball at the bottom.

tiny furniture!

There was food too. For those who have seen my comic on festival food...

in case you don't remember.

I got a picture of the flavor options at the fry stand. (they call french fries "potato")

salt, curry, soy sauce and butter, roast soy sauce, corn syrup, garlic, consomme

BBQ, pickled plum, Takoyaki, and cheese

I BET YOU THOUGHT I WAS EXAGGERATING.

This particular temple market seemed to have a lot of kimono stuff.

like a lot

There were lots of stands that were selling them pretty cheaply. The less organized, the cheaper it was. These go for 10-15$ each.

Some we found were even less. There were two stands that were "$20 gets you everything you can stuff into this bag". One of the two like that even had a $50 bag option! (sucker was big) We ended up splitting a $20 bag. :)