Potluck, Madoka, and Japan

October 16th, 2012
 
---Potluck---

This past Friday, I attended a potluck event held by the Tateyama International Society in order to welcome myself and the new ALTs. However, the most entertaining part of the evening occurred before we arrived at the event. Two of the ALTs and I met up in advance to try to put a dish or something together before the event. However, by the time we got off work and got together we only had about a half hour to make stuff before having to leave for the event, so we decided to melt down some Ghana chocolate into Halloween shapes. I'm pretty sure we broke/ate a fourth of what we made, but we finished on time and ran off to the event. Only to realize that we have no idea where the building is... We met up with another lost ALT on the way, and eventually fell back on calling my supervisor for directions. Though we were told we could park at the shrine, there wasn't actually a parking lot there. Turns out the building was hidden behind a playground across the street from the shrine, and people literally parked in the sand of the playground (is that really okay..?)! Anyway so that was my Friday night.

Saturday I went to the barn and rode awesome on Parco jumping around 1m, and then I got owned by a pony in my second lesson (damn ponies!). 

---Madoka Part II---

Madoka themed scooters in the theatre

kyuubei scooter

Afterward I met up with my friend to watch Part II of the Madoka movie. Embarrassingly, I accidentally bought tickets for Part I again, and didn't realize it until we got into the theatre! (I was wondering why the movie time was different from what I saw online...) But even though they told us there would be no refunds, they were nice enough to change the tickets for us. The second part was really good too, but some of the scenes were spliced together rather oddly. One instance in particular was at the ending of a scene, they randomly added in the animation from the opening/closing (I forget which now) scene of the T.V. series, and then it just randomly jumped back to the story again. That was a little odd. Not sure what they were trying to do there. But other than that it was awesome. At the end there was a trailer for the third movie, and they finally gave us a release date (kind of)! I guess Part III doesn't come out until sometime in 2013. Cross your fingers it isn't the end of the year. I can't imagine them waiting that long though after doing all this promotion for the first two parts, and airing them right in a row like this.

Madoka Surf Board

---Dragnet Fishing...?---

On Sunday we tried to go dragnet fishing, but it got rained out. Instead we held a BBQ at the bed and breakfast in Iwai where I was a few weeks ago for dinner with the delegation of people from Taiwan. Everyone grilled up some steak, chicken, and squid, and ate some fresh sashimi (they literally brought them hopping out of the bucket). Everything was yummy, and I was kind of glad to be able to relax and not have to catch my own food. I would like to actually go dragnet fishing at some point in the future though.

---In Conclusion---

$3 for a can of Dr. P!? Not gonna lie that might be worth it. $5 for a non-alcoholic beer, however....

You don't see prices like these in the U.S. $8.50 for a small bag of granola.

Yaki-Purin is delicious.

Hell McDonalds doesn't show up in photographs.

There are no words for this.