My Week: Indoor Pursuits

As you might have heard, it's the rainy season in Japan at the moment. Well, that's what everyone says. This climate chart seems to suggest that actually it just gets rainier and rainier until it's winter again. Yippee. But, you know, we're British. Enjoying complaining about the rain is part of our national heritage! Plus, we've found plenty of indoor activities to keep us entertained!

Izakaya (Japanese bar), take 1. John with fish.

Izakaya take 2, nabe and sashimi

Failing at bowling because it was too busy, but the table tennis was fun!

We're useless at table tennis, but great at photos! 

Purikura time! 

I rearranged our room to clean, and John was very helpful :s

It was going to be a Christmas present, then a birthday one, but I finally finished my sewing in time to send to my Dad for Father's Day!

My amazing mother posted me some cookies!! They were so yum! Just don't tell customs...

Reason 10,000 why I am becoming my mother...I put far too many things in my bike basket then try to cycle home!

Note to Susie...STOP BUYING CARD MAKING ITEMS. They may only be ¥100 each and very pretty, but you have a very small apartment and not that many people to send cards to.

New love, bento box making. Craft plus food plus lots of cute accessories to buy. Heaven.

Me and my favourite little class decorated our initials. Great, until someone decided the paper was confetti. Good thing the vacuum worked!

Putting craft items to good use. Parcels on their way, girls!

My week: A fortnight

I'm going to continue to title these posts 'My Week', even though I'm too lazy not enough exciting stuff happens for me to post every week. This really is a random collection! 

I had to make this scary and impossible craft, with 12 children, 1 roll of tape, no common language and about 15 minutes of the class to do it in. Fun times. 

A ridiculous amount of oyster shells aka My Dad's worst nightmare.

I had to go to Kesennuma to teach earlier this week. 4 hours each way with a hotel stay. But it was pretty and sunny....

...and I saw fish drying...

...and my hotel had a funny name. It was actually called the Pearl City Hotel, but an unfortunate Katakana issue means that the 'Ci' bit has to read 'Shi'. I'm 100% mature.

There is nothing like cute biscuits to cheer up a boring office day.

We started watching Series 1 a couple of weeks ago, and we've now almost finished series 3. It's awesome, addictive and annoying, in almost equal quantities.

We went skiing again. 

I made a big mess. I cut John's hair for him, as I was clearing up the cuttings, I knocked over a cup of rice that had been left on the fridge. And there was already a lot of other stuff on the floor because of moving it out of the way for said haircutting. Oh dear.

Proper tin openers cost ¥1000 (£10). So I improvised. Anyone who has ever read 'Three Men in a Boat' will understand why I was laughing hysterically as I did it. And anyone who hasn't read it, should.

Spring still isn't thinking about arriving in Sendai (we had more snow last night for goodness sake), so I brought spring to my nails instead...

...and to my table with a pot of flowers and a glass of summery smoothie in the afternoon sunshine.

And I made a Victoria Sandwich. In a rice cooker. And it works. Yum.

My week: Doing as I please

So as I moaned about mentioned last week, John spent the week in Sapporo for work, and so I was all alone. Apart from my blues on Saturday, I actually quite enjoyed a week of being 100% selfish and not having to think about someone else in my plans. I mean, I wouldn't want him away much longer but it's good to have free reign for a while!

So, as well as a couple of lunches with friends and excessively enjoying Hinamatsuri, I have also been...

Prancing about in front of the mirror in my new dress

Watching endless episodes of Scrubs. John doesn't like it and I have a rarely indulged love, so on it went :D

Eating far too much chocolate, and trying out chocolate fish for the first time. I don't remember the name but they are delicious!

Re-reading everything Jane Austen ever wrote on my kindle. If I was in England, I'd hate kindles. Living abroad, I see them as one of the best inventions ever made.

Cooking and eating lots of homey food, like this pumpkin soup with croutons. Mmmm.

Having random lunches out, just because I can. This is ramen from our local ramen place and it's delicious. Leaves you feeling like a bloated, greasy, sleepy mess though! 

Getting a haircut. 

Having lazy breakfasts.

Playing more with felting (Again, blogger with the stupid photo rotating. GRR)

Listening to the Evita soundtrack a lot. 4 years with me has made John be able to cope with most musicals soundtracks, but Evita is still beyond him, so it's always blasted out when he's away! 

I hope you've all been indulging yourself in your favourite things this week too!

My Week: Snow and snacks

This week has been exhausting. I work 6 days and commute nearly 2 hours every day. Hard work but it's been good. I feel like I'm really starting to settle into work here, it's getting a lot easier now I know the curriculum and I'm getting to know my kids (both the lovely ones and the few who are mental!) This has meant my week hasn't been too exciting (although we did go skiing at the weekend, I'll share that with you soon!).

 So, this week, my life has consisted of:

A lot of snow, causing delayed trains, stressful walks and lots of cold.

Eating ridiculous amounts of these to make me feel better about the snow

And playing ridiculous amounts of pokemon red. Original and best :D