Kaya English Circle Farewell

With only a couple of weeks left before our contracts end here in Japan, our schedules are starting to fill up with farewell parties and gatherings.
First on the calendar was the Kaya English Circle's farewell potluck. I (Bryn) have been leading this group once a month for the past two years. The members are all people from the local community who enjoy speaking and learning English. Our classes were always really fun and informal, and everyone in the group is so kind and friendly.
Sadly, the time came for our last class last week, and so they organized a potluck farewell for me and Liz. Simon and Clodagh came along too, and it was a fun night.
Everyone brought along something they'd made. There was meat-wrapped eggplant, sushi, korean potato pancakes, salads, cakes, deviled eggs, snacks, onigiri and so on.
It was planned to be a no-alcohol affair, but a couple of the guys there decided that we certainly needed beer to make this party feel more like a party, so they nipped to the supermarket and came back almost immediately with a bag full of beer cans. haha.
It was sad to say goodbye to everyone, but I know they'll continue to enjoy the English conversation classes under Simon's leadership, and hopefully some of the other new JETs will be keen to get involved too.
One down, several more goodbyes to go...

Typhoon's a Coming...

Check out this awesome weather map video of the huge typhoon heading our way. Should get here on Wednesday some time. If you click play, it should show you the typhoon's progress over the past 12 hours (until now: Monday morning)

Sushi Sunday

It's Sunday today.
After a lazy morning we decided to go and get some sushi for lunch. We haven't been out for sushi in such a long time, actually, so it was nice to head out that way for a change.
We ate 14 plates of sushi. It's conveyor belt style, so the plates of sushi all come cruising past on the belt and you just take whichever plate looks good to you and at the end the staff count up how many plates you have on your table and charge accordingly. Each plate is 105 yen (about US$1 or so). There's also a touch screen at each table, with which you can order sushi from the menu and they'll make it for you and send it to you on a nifty little sushi express train. When the train comes it stops at your table and beeps until you remove your ordered sushi from the train and press the button to send the empty train back to the kitchen. It's really cool. Actually, this isn't new at all, but today I just decided to tell you about it.
Here are some of the sushi we had today:

tempura prawns sushi (one of Liz's favourites)

tuna

inari-zushi (sushi rice wrapped in sweet beancurd...so much better than it sounds)

tempura prawn roll (one of my favourites)

cooked anago (salt water eel) with sauce

crab sushi... man, this was amazing!!

Salmon sushi

I forget what this one was... some white fish

pickled eggplant sushi

Our post-lunch stack of 14 sushi plates waiting to be counted

After sushi, it was starting to rain, so we made the very logical decision to keep driving over to the other side of the peninsula to Kumihama and get some ice cream from the cow farm there. Japan draws a strange connection between cow farms and ice cream. I know ice cream comes from cream and stuff, but I don't get the fascination with eating ice cream while sniffing cow manure on the farm... but anyway, we did that. I really like the ice cream there, and I think it's a very scenic place. I got bitter caramel ice cream, and Liz got espresso flavour. I think mine was better. haha
They also had lots of herbs growing in the garden there, so upon being dared by Liz, I snaffed some for dinner tonight. Nothing like a bit of fresh rosemary! In fairness though, this rosemary wasn't growing in the herb garden, but randomly in the carpark, so I think it was ok.

Driving the narrow roads back to Yosano from Kumihama