Last weekend I finished my Christmas shopping! haha I wanted to get it done freakishly early so I could save money on shipping. I did some of this shopping at a mall that is a 40 minute bike ride south of my apartment. The mall is a chain called the Fuji Grand and it is just that... an enourmous mall. It's got a grocery store, movie theater, department store, specialty shops, fast food, Chinese restaurant, Italian restaurant, and a gigantic arcade/photo club. In the last two weeks, I watched two movies in English in the movie theater!!! I saw Black Dahlia and World Trade Center. Half of the movies that run in that theater are English movies with Japanese subtitles. It's kind of expensive ($17 during the day and $12 for the last showing around 9pm) but I'm probably going to go back when movies that I want to see get here. And wow, I've never cried so much while watching a movie in a theater than I did while watching the World Trade Center.
Since my tap shoes came in the mail, I've taken up tap dancing again! I reeeeeeally missed it. I don't have many places to practice since it's so loud and requires certain flooring though. So I got a piece of countertop from the tech high school and practice for a half hour when I get home from work, which is before the person below me gets home. My feet aren't strong enough to tap for more than 20 minutes at a time so it all works out. I'm signed up to tap dance for the tech high school's cultural festival in late November, so I really have to practice!
I've been trying to put more time and effort into my Japanese studies. ......It's going slowly. There's a dialect difference in the Western half of Japan, so even some of the words I remembered from college courses have to be re-learned as different words.
I've also made a Japanese friend. She's a student at the Naruto Educational College and wants to teach English someday. We met while she was student teaching at one of my junior high schools for two weeks. We get together once a week and eat together. Two weeks ago she made me nabe (delicious!), and last week I made her tacos. There are many other dishes that I would like to make for her and my students, but I don't have an oven. Anyways, we practice English and Japanese while we eat. It's been a lot of fun so far!
I also applied for an absentee ballot last week. I probably should have done this earlier, but regardless, I'm really excited about voting in Ohio. This will be my second time voting, but I have yet to vote in person. I've been keeping up with politics in the US via online news. In case anyone is wondering, cnn has the best online video setup.
This is a school assembly at one of my schools. They are arranged in vertical lines by class and gender.
This was the sunset in Naruto today. I almost fell off my bike when I saw it. My apartment is off in the distance.
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