An Amalgamation of Thanksgiving Dinner, Riding School Exam, Japanese General Election, and the Raising Value of the Yen

December 13, 2012

---November Cultural Salon---

Turkey, and Cranberry Sauce, and Futomaki!?!?

On the 28^th, we had our second International Society event in Minamiboso. This time we held a Thanksgiving dinner. The best way to teach people about culture is to have them immerse themselves in it, right? We started off by having everyone give thanks in English or Japanese, and then we dug in to some delicious food! I was really excited about this dinner because not only was I able to make traditional Thanksgiving dinner stuff like turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, apple pie, and pumpkin pie, but also it was a potluck! Which means that we had all this traditional American food mixed with traditional Japanese food. It was really great because we had plates full of turkey next to plates full of futomaki. One woman who is in training to be a Shinto priestess baked a traditional German kuchen, which was also really delicious and kind of reminded me of holidays at my grandma's house. Here's a link to my city blog post in English and Japanese: city blog

I made this!

---Orchestra Concert---
On the 2^nd, I attended an orchestra concert at the Nanso Cultural Hall. Most of the songs were entirely orchestral, but the last two were joined in by a choir. Both the orchestra and the choir were fairly decent. The main soloists were, of course, impressive. Apparently the orchestra doesn't play in this area very often, but I look forward to going again the next chance I get.

---End of the Year Party!---
Last Friday, we had a bonenkai, or End of the Year Party for work, and I had my first experience eating shabushabu! Which is actually really sad considering I've lived in Japan for a year and a half now. But there's a bowl of water and vinegar over a flame on the table and you basically boil a bunch of veggies and meat in the bowl and add in some ponzu and devour! Honestly there's not much difference to me between that and yakiniku but I welcome any opportunity to eat meat that isn't fish in this country :)

---Riding School Exam---

This past weekend I had my exam for getting in to the riding school. I was a bit nervous because I had a really terrible ride on a pony the day before (If anyone can tell me why ponies are so evil I would love to know). Then my trainer got on and was like oh no, he's totally being fine for me! Ugh it's so frustrating sometimes when you're totally struggling with something and then another person walks up and has absolutely no problems with it. Granted he is my trainer so of course he's better than me, but still...

Anyway so the exam itself was at 5:15 in the morning so I stayed over in Chiba and had to get up crazy early. Turned out my hotel was in the middle of a district of host clubs. That was...entertaining. It was super sketch outside, but the hotel itself had a women-only floor with pretty good security so it was safe. I did get to over-hear some entertaining conversations from the women who were staying there though. The hotel itself was about 95 degrees, and there was no way to adjust the temperature, so I didn't actually end up sleeping for more than an hour. Next time, I'll just drive home. I'd get more sleep that way.

So I got dressed around four a.m. and headed over to the riding club. The exam was just okay. I came in crooked to the first fence so it could have gone better, but the rest of the course went fine. Hopefully they post the results this weekend. This Sunday is the December circuit so hopefully I place well since it's the last one of the year! I'm seriously looking forward to hanging at the barn all weekend again, and...

---Random Ramblings About Japanese Politics and the Economy---

I also can't believe tomorrow is Friday already! Time has been going so fast ever since the mid-year conference, trying to get caught up on everything. I'm almost there though! Just one thing to translate and a couple things to write and I'll be all caught up!

On a more serious note, the general election is once again taking place here. Stating that there wasn't enough funds to run the government properly, the current prime minister dissolved the lower house of parliament, effectively giving up his title (just making sure but isn't this about the third prime minster we've gone through in the last year and a half?? come on guys, we need someone to run this country...). So anyway the election is taking place right now and everyone in my office has been crazy busy manning the polls and going out to vote themselves. Since the election just ended in the U.S. as well I feel like I've been doing nothing but following politics lately, which is something that I generally try to avoid.

Something that I do enjoy talking about however, is money! And the current low value of the yen makes me sad. Luckily, I still have some time before I have to purchase any dollars, but with all that has been going on lately in world economics, the value of the yen has been fluctuating like crazy. Needless to say, I'm going to have to keep an eye on things. With the euro doing so poorly, people have been buying tons and tons of yen, driving its value higher and higher. Unfortunately, with the economy in Japan being what it is, and the pressure being put on it by the island dispute with China, Japan's economy can't handle a high valued yen that makes its exports more expensive. With no one purchasing Japanese products, the economy will fall into further recession. To counter this, the government is purchasing trillions of U.S. dollars and driving the value of the yen back down. Once the election here ends, they're looking to implement a more cyclical purchasing of dollars on top of printing more yen at the mint. In the twelve hours since I started writing this, the yen has fallen from 82.4 to 83.6 yen to the dollar **sigh**