Thursday, November 08, 2012

It’s been a slow week.  I caught a cold last week from all my little preschoolers and I’ve been coughing and blowing my nose a ton!  I should have been wearing one of these masks, but I didn’t.  People wear these masks all over Japan.  They wear them if they have a cold, if they don’t want to get a cold, or if they have allergies.  The word for nose is hana, and the word for water is mizu, so when a person has a runny nose here they call it hanamizu!  In America we just call it snot!  I"m feeling a lot better now.

We saw a lady last week that was covered from head to toe to keep her allergies at bay!  We stopped to ask her directions and she spoke English quite well.  She told us she was in disguise!

The only vase we could find was the empty dish washing liquid bottle!

We had our Mexican dinner last week.  I forgot to take pictures, but it turned out well.  My friend, Stuart, said the “Natural Cheese” package said “melt in you mouth mixed cheese”.  Scott thought it tasted like cheddar, I thought it tasted a little like parmesan, I guess that is why they call it mixed cheese.  It was delicious!  Hong Nan and Wenji brought flowers, and a box of desserts made from sweet potatoes and Mr. Kadawaki brought large cream puffs, melon drinks, and BANANAS!  And the funny thing was I had just bought a huge bunch of bananas earlier that day.  We went to the store and found them on sale for 200 yen (about $2.50). Occasionally they put some fruit in a big bowl and sell it all for one price instead of by the pound.  In fact, you rarely buy fruit or vegetables here by the pound.  It is sold by the package. I ended up having to make banana brownies again!

This is a picture of downtown Miyazaki.  I walk about 3 miles round trip from the train station to The American Kindergarten almost everyday to help out there.  It is a large city with a population of close to 400,000 people, but the crime rate is very low. 

This is a picture of a beautiful garden right next to our apartment.  The man works in it for many hours every day!  Scott says he wants our garden to look like this some day.  I’m all for that!  We get to decrease ours down to this size, and he gets to work in it all day!

The bread here is interesting!  It comes with a sticker on the top telling you how many slices it has been cut in to.  They are about the size of a half loaf at home and they do not have end crusts!  The one on the left has been cut into 5 slices, the one in the middle 6 slices, and the one on the right, 10 slices!  We buy the 10 slice package when it is available.  They don’t sell whole wheat bread here and we can’t buy whole wheat flour to make our own.