Just got back from a 2 hour Harroween party with my Business English students. I got a call from my teacher last night around 7, saying we were to have a party and could I think of something to make? A little last minute, but easy peasy, I thought, until I got to the grocery store and realized how impossible it is to make Halloween themed food here. Not only is there a whole world of unfamiliar candy, I can't even get cinnamon, much less something like chocolate cake mix or pumpkin shaped sprinkles. I decided to make Rice Krispy Treats, or a bastardization of it, rather. Who wants to guess if I found Rice Krispies? Silly you. I bought bags of what looked like puffy grains of rice (but didn't look a thing like Rice Krispies). Actually what I almost bought at first was tempura flakes. Also, Japanese marshmallows are strawberry flavored, which I didn't realized until I opened the bag and caught the unexpected wiff of jam. The end result was... Kind of different. Still interesting for the kids, but I was dismayed that they couldn't experience the true American snack of childhood dreams. Anyway, we cooked pancakes and okonomiyaki, and one of the girls brought some cakes she'd made. So much food. Bleh. I feel a little disgusted with myself, to tell you the truth. But I like being around these great kids, and I felt ever the slightest warm fuzzy feeling inside, the kind that only a teacher of foreign kids (actually, I guess I'm the foreign one) can feel, the kind in every vomit-inducing essay in every JET publication. It's wonderful. Oh yes.


Yesterday a group of ALTs and I took a train to Takyo (not Tokyo) to find the mikan picking farm. Mikan are dangerously addictive little mandarin oranges, and Shizuoka is famous for them. Lucky us! For 400¥, you're let loose on the farm and can basically stuff your face with all you can eat. But, like a buffet, you can't take any home. It was a Willy Wonka-esque experience for me, as I've never been to a place where I can just pluck whatever I want off the tree and eat it. And it was a really breathtaking farm too... Whereas I was imagining a vast plain of trees, the farm was actually in a sort of valley, and the orange trees were staggered up the hills. We climbed (and ate) our way to the top of one of the hills, which commanded an impressive view of the orchard and the big cemetary next to it. Which probably contained the bodies of careless gaijin tourists. Or girls who go mikan picking wearing stiletto boots and pumps (which we saw). Anyways, I probably ate enough Vitamin C to last me a month. And we probably could have smuggled out some oranges, b/c they didn't even check for them. Sigh. Sometimes it blows my mind how trusting the Japanese are. Like, if they saw us taking oranges, their heads would blow up b/c they can't even comprehend why you'd steal.

So tonight starts the web-based research study I'm participating in. A grad student from the School of Design is conducting a study of how couples communicate when living at a distance. I'm actually kind of excited to be a part of it, since it is actually an important part of my life right now, and I would be very interested in the results. In a way, it's also nice to be at least contributing to something design-related, as I haven't been doing much for myself lately. Sometimes I get into such a routine that I forget that teaching English isn't my REAL career path. I'm also excited to be going to Tokyo Design Week this coming weekend, where I will meet up with Melissa and Jimi from CMU. It's time I get back to my roots.