Makin' the Best of the Halfway Point

On Saturday we felt the itch to get out onto the open road, so we decided to make the journey to a small town nearby, Hirakawa, that has a famous house that's Japanese style on the first floor and European style on the second floor. As you can see in the picture, the house is pretty neat. It was built close to 100 years ago probably and is situated in a luscious Japanese-style garden, which is next to a big park/temple ground. On our way to leave, we even got free apples just for being different!! Talk about the advantages of being a foreigner!

Then, on Sunday, we were on the road bright and early at 5:30 to visit America!!! or the closest we can get to America here! We traveled 3 hours by car to go to the American Air Force Base in Misawa for the Misawa Base Air Show. Although we were mostly looking forward to all the American food we knew we'd be able to eat on the base, we were quite surprised to find we were literally blown away by many high-speed, crazy-loud fighter planes!!! Yes, these planes our upside down!!

Anyways, back to the important stuff, the food! There were cakes, turkey legs, steak, cupcakes, pulled pork sandwiches, pizza, chips, pop, and even Starbucks Frappucinos!!! We were also able to leave the area where the show was held to go to 2 of the fast food restaurants (Burger King & Popeyes) and a mini-supermarket! Of course we couldn't buy any food at the supermarket, but we enjoyed some Popeyes chicken for lunch!

After the show we went into Misawa City for some authentic Tex-Mex, which was absolutely AMAZING!!!!

And, today, Thursday, we had no school thanks to the start-of-fall!! Thanks Autumn Equinox! So, to celebrate the coming of fall, we decided to do something that we have dreamed about since our first month in Hirosaki, Japan- eat the "monster parfait" (the name is the literal translation from Japanese, obake parfait, which actually means ghost or monster.. we think monster is more fitting, don't you?!) With 9 of us, us plus 7 of our english club members, we dug right in....

but, if you look closely at the "after-shot" we have an extra addition to our party!!! We realized after about an hour of eating that we were not going to be able to demolish the parfait on our own. We had to call in the reinforcements, so Kevin decided to join us!!! Finally, after much team effort, stomachaches, and some close calls for vomiting, we completed the mission!!! As you can see in the picture, although it was an amazing parfait, we were not very happy leaving with bloated stomachs!

Although it seems like that would be enough excitement for one day, after sitting and watching a movie to let our stomachs settle, we decided we needed to burn some of the sugar out of our bodies, so we set off on another mission- to climb the dog in the dog-park! Mission success, even though Travis busted his knee cap! That's all.

The Last; The First and The Last; The First

The past two days have been monumental moments in our final year in Japan. It has been filled with many first's as well as many last's and has made our days bitter sweet.

The Last:

We had our final All-State English Speech Contest on Tuesday. The students have been vigorously working away at their speeches for at least the last month, with the last two weeks focusing on speech etiquette: intonation, gestures, facial expressions, pronunciation, etc. This has included many long evenings at school preparing and practicing, which is trying but also fun. We get a chance to spend extra time with the students and question them on their speech topics such as bullying, studying abroad, and differences in culture. They all practiced very hard and poured their hearts out at the contest on Tuesday. Although they did not win any prizes, they did really wonderful and we were quite proud of them.

The First and the Last:

Usually the speech contest lands on the same day as the field day at our school, so we have never been able to attend the field day; however, this year was a change of plans. A typhoon came to town delaying the field day to a day later which meant we were able to go to both the speech contest and the field day. The field day is an event held at all schools across Japan. Our field day consists of many running events, long jump, shot put, three legged race, funny relays, and tug-0-war. It was fun to cheer the students on as they spilled their guts for the glory of best class!

This video exemplifies the hilarity of the relays. Here the students have to duck a hurdle, grab a bag of bread with their teeth, and run with it backwards.

The First:

After the field day we took a little trip with one of our coworkers to the brand-spanking new, oh so wonderful and highly anticipated, Starbucks, which opened up about one week ago in a city about 45 minutes from us. This is HUGE news for the area as it is the first to open in our entire state. Because it was the first store to open (workers there confessed there would be more!) there were special Tsugaru (our part of the state) mugs and tumblers with Tsugaru symbols on them: apples, Neputa, The Shinkansen (another highly anticipated event of the bullet train coming in December to our neck of the woods that is hoped to enliven our not-so-thriving area). Unfortunately, they were out of tumblers already; but we were able to snag one of the mugs. Even though we love our local stores much, we are happy to see Starbucks so close to us (the closest one is 3 hours away). This brings our area a little closer to modernization.