Five Months Today!

It's been sweaty ones lately. Sheesh. Anyway, last weekend ended on an interesting note. Kengo and I had made plans to make some food for whoever from FUSE could come and hang out for an evening. Later, another girl, Kaori, got involved in helping make food, which was a lot of fun. (Here is Kaori, me and Kengo as we start the long process of making lasagna from scratch!)

But as it were, Kengo sent me a message last week for Thursday night-- are you free at 7? Yeah, I was. I knew it had something to do with dinner, I figured that we were going to go buy all the things. When he mentioned, let's meet at the church and "we think about what we buy", I realized, oh boy. He doesn't have a recipe.

He had told me we were going to make lasagna, and I was going to make a Mexican dessert. He had lasagna noodles, and I was really impressed that he was going to make lasagna.

Silly me, what was I thinking?

As it turned out, I looked for a recipe online, wrote it out, shopped and figured out how to make it work budget-ly (i.e. replacing half the meat with tofu still it came out expensive). (here Kaori and I work on the 3rd pan of lasagna layers)

But it was thoroughly enjoyable. Anyway, yeah, Kaori, Kengo and I got together to make food early Friday afternoon and then Yoshi, Joe and Tim joined us for dinner. Oh, and Tatsu too-- but he came late. Afterward, we played games and then went to an area by the river where we did fireworks. (my fireworks look lame next to Kaori-chan's)

It was fun, though by the end of the day, I was tired. That night, Kaori-chan stayed at my house, (Here Kengo snaps a shot of some of us at the table, Joe, me, Yoshi and Tim (L-R))

Yesterday, school began again, and yesterday evening, I met a girl from the Noborito church who speaks Japanese and English and guess what... Spanish. So, we talked for a while in Spanish, and Japanese words kept coming out of my mouth... and then when we switched to Japanese, turning the mental dial in my brain from one language to another just was like... it left my mind blank for a few minutes.

So a few things I haven't mentioned, or at least, I don't think I have.

First, my friends from school taught me a way to my train line from school via the "underground streets". For real, I walk a block up from school, cross the street and then walk below, and I can walk the whole 3 or 4 blocks it is to the station, maybe more, underground. There are exits to other train lines, stores, restaurants, and an entrance to a big department. It still astounds me that I can walk under streets, cars, sidewalks, etc. (Pictured here: Yoshi and I had a conversation about view and differences of what other countries look like-- and I really wanted to go to a park I could spot below...)

Now of course, I find that scary, but not scary enough to walk outside. But I do think about the possibility of earthquakes as I'm walking underground. Because they are common, I assume they know more about how to structure and building to avoid disaster. Please, no one debate with me on this issue.

OH- PS- Today's my 5 month anniversary in Japan!!