ネイティブが教える英会話のジェムスクール☆Teachers☆

I've been hearing a long time that tourist places such as Osaka and Tokyo are very crowded with tourists. I thought I knew what to expect when it came to the trains and the flow of people while walking. But last weekend I was woefully unprepared for how difficult it would be to get a bite to eat.
I left my home very early in the morning with the intention of having breakfast at a restaurant. It's not often that I can eat something different, expensive or fancy.
Unfortunately for me, every single restaurant I encountered in the station or the mall had long wait lines. Sunshine City Mall was particularly a problem because their restaurants are not all in one place and I didn't really have time to get lost. I was dreaming of Korean fried chicken or tacos but in reality I was just trying to find a place where I could eat and get out in less than an hour. That didn't seem possible!

In the end, I sadly got some food out of the convenience store. Monday ended up being a much better day, and I did enjoy some eggs benedict.   

I love teaching my students about animals and I started thinking about how few they have seen. When I was a kid, a popular school field trip was to go to a farm or a petting zoo. This map shows just how many great petting zoos there are in my state of Michigan! Sometimes the animals are rescued, and sometimes people just want to share their farm animals.

It's pretty common to pet goats, rabbits, chickens, cows, pigs, alpacas, llamas, ostriches, and ducks. I had a scary moment where the goat at a petting zoo ate my name tag! They will try to eat anything!
  

My favorite popcorn is back at the cinema! Caramel popcorn and pretzels are the best. I went to the movies with Elizabeth and we saw Wicked. I don't care much for musicals but I had a good time. Sometimes the singer was singing in such a high pitch that I didn't know what the word was, so it was actually helpful to have the Japanese subtitles on the bottom. I usually forget that the subtitles are there pretty fast.  

I spoken before about my love for Black thunder chocolate. I got Tony into it as well! I don't usually go to Family Mart and the other day I found lots of Black thunder desserts! I didn't feel like eating them all or anything, but I was worried that I might not see them again. I'm looking forward to the pie the most. The donut cookie has me confused. Is it a donut question is it a cookie? Maybe those two shouldn't be combined.   

I hate doing the dishes! It is my most hated chore. Sometimes I think about recycling my plates and only having one in the cupboard. I'm bothered by the dripping of water too. I usually put off doing the dishes but recently a plumber had to come by. I never did them so fast in my life! The sink was empty for one day!   

I've been pretty dissatisfied with the state of my skin, and I'm getting older. I spent a whole weekend reading reviews and watching YouTube videos about Japanese skin care. I found it very overwhelming and intimidating. Luckily for me Japanese drugstore brands are not expensive. Unluckily for me, in Japan you cannot return beauty products unless something is really wrong with them. In the USA, you can return pretty much anything with a receipt.

I understand right now that it's about doing the skin Care consistently. I'm not good at forming new habits like that but I will do my best.  

I've had my current cell phone for over 4 years. It's been great, despite being a less popular model. I would love to keep using it, but they don't make electronics to be long lasting anymore. It's a shame, because I become attached to my things and don't want to upgrade.

My new phone cost twice as much, but I look forward to having a very new model. I am excited about the improved camera.   

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Currently, only pizza places will deliver to where I live. It's a good and a bad thing. It's good because I don't waste money ordering out. It's bad because sometimes I don't feel like shopping. My pizza place has started selling sandwiches, soups, salads and rice bowls. I don't like the pizza, it's way too expensive in Japan and it gives me a stomachache.

Right now Dominos has a godiva shake that is fantastic.   

The area to get into Matsuyama castle is so big, but I think it's my favorite castle. Mom, Josie and I made a few mistakes walking up (there was an easier way) but it was wonderful. My food dreams came true with fantastic hamburgers in a small restaurant and very good yuzu pasta in a fancy Italian place. Shopping was also very good, I bought small snake figures for my friends.
  

I had a really fantastic Sunday! First I went to my hair salon. Even though I was prepared to speak japanese, I was having a hard time that day. Luckily I had brought a lot of pictures of the haircut that I wanted. The salon is relaxing and everybody is super nice. I've been going there for 3 or 4 years now! I liked my haircut right away even though I don't like how they style it after.
Erin and Tony picked me up and we went to their favorite store: 2nd street! I found a L'arc en ciel item from 1998!? What a treasure! Tony got an adorable Godzilla. We went to Seria and bought tons of stickers.

We finished the day with a nice long lunch at Hamasushi. The New cheesecake was really delicious.  

It's been snowing! Which is lovely, but the snow won't stick around here. I used to go sledding in Michigan every year, and I miss it! After a day of snowfall, we would put on a lot of layers, including snow pants and waterproof jacket. We would go sledding anywhere there was a hill. My neighbor's house was REALLY good for this! We would fly down and shoot across the frozen lake!

The state parks turn their areas into snow and toboggan hills as well. It's helpful when they set up a ropeway of sorts to help you climb back up.  

I love it when my friends send me winter photos. It's honestly one of my favorite things. Looks like Michigan got a lot of snow as usual. My friend has given up a lot of her small yard to help outside animals. She keeps cat food out there for wild cats, and she has bird seed out for the birds. Other animals come around though, like these squirrels! They're very greedy so they can be annoying if you are expecting birds. But they're really cute and I can't believe there are four of them here!   

Mom ended her vacation with 3 days in Tokyo. I had a hard time finding Godzilla, but it was fun to surprise her. There is a hotel hiding inside of that theater, and we looked at old Godzilla posters. Shin Godzilla is very boring to me, but it is the scariest monster.

We also went to Team Lab Planets. I loved it all over again and Mom had a great time. She said room number one was like being in a kaleidoscope. She collects kaleidoscopes.
We had a really hard time with trains in Tokyo. For some reason we would often find ourselves in the subway as opposed to the train. So the platform number would be correct but we would actually be in the wrong section. We did a lot of extra walking because of this and it was very frustrating.
Our hotel was near haneda so it wasn't too hard to transport to the airport. We got up very early and I was sad to say Farewell. She made it back to Michigan safely.  

Mom, Josie and I spent Christmas in Kochi. My mother really liked our Japanese room and brought a tiny Christmas tree. We opened presents together and I got a lot of socks! That's okay, I needed socks. We went to Kochi castle and ate at the market. My favorite thing I bought was some chocolate pudding. I noticed lots of whale things in Kochi.


  

On our way to Kochi, the drive was very pleasant. Josie is a fantastic driver and didn't get carsick even in the mountains. The Oboke and Koboke gorge was our sightseeing companion the whole day. I really loved the views. It was gorge-ous!  

This is my mother! She's visiting me in Japan. She came to Japan in the Spring several years ago, so now we planned for winter. I have many adventures planned for her. She will be here for Christmas and new year. I'm interested to see what city she enjoys and if she likes any Japanese food.   

My Christmas tree is up! This year, I put it in the living room. I added my ornaments and some new garland. My tree has a theme, it's squirrels! My tree has 3 regular squirrels and 2 flying squirrels in it. I need to buy some more lights, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.   

I watch a lot of YouTube these days and maybe that's not exactly the best judge of what commercials are playing right now, but I can't help but notice that I haven't seen a single Christmas commercial in Japan. I know that Christmas time is usually a time for couples, so wouldn't it make sense to have commercials for flowers or presents? Or maybe some travel ideas?

If I switch to the American version of watching YouTube, I immediately get consumer commercials. Yes, America has a problem. We have too many holidays that revolve around shopping. But there are also a lot of commercials that have a warm and friendly feeling of Christmas. Time with family, snow, food, well known holiday songs. I find that I'm missing them.   

I was biking home from a clinic. The sidewalk disappeared and I found myself walking the bike in the road. The cars were driving slowly but they were so close. I moved the bike over too quickly and it got caught in a ditch. The tire popped!

I was 15 minutes from home. Oh no!

I decided to go to the bike shop instead. The owner said he couldn't help me till Thursday, but they called me back early. I had to buy a new tire which is too bad, but I also got a new solar light. I had been fighting with trying to screw it onto my bicycle for a week now.
  

I pride myself on being pretty knowledgeable when it comes to animals. But I was very surprised when I saw this. Because of its size, I was so sure that it was a lobster. But it turned out to be a tiger prawn! I wonder how many times I told a student that a prawn was a lobster. Uh oh...