  Hey everyone, I just popped onto my site to find a new picture there that just showed up on its own of my brother, Bryce with his auto show contest trophy. Okay, so maybe it didn`t show up on it`s own, maybe my mom posted it on my site instead of hers, but that`s cool. She`s got a few pictures going on already and I want to see the pictures of what you did to your hair mom!
Is it drastic? So today around noon I decided I would get out of the apartment and take a break from studying for awhile, and go see my town. I would drive over to Joetsu, but I figured alot might be closed on Sunday. As a matter of fact, I`ve been dying to try the little cafe at the train station by my apato, Cafe Cloud, but unfortunately it was closed. So I first went exploring. I found where the Niibori Guitar School is. Tara, the first ALT who was here who was from Ireland, she took lessons at the school. I also found a park with these shiny metal bent rod sculptures and a stream of water running through it. It was kind of fun. There was a mom and her kindergarten age son there, so I worked up the confidence to say "Konniciwa, Ii tenki desu ne? " Which is "Good day, nice weather isn`t it? " With that confidence and racing my bike down a few hills (there are plenty around here, the hard part is going UP them!
), I decided to go into the convenience store and browse. I found out that those trash bags for sorting your trash are in fact something you have to buy (though I had a bag of each at my apato when I moved in), so now I don`t have to ponder where to get those. I looked at some manga and magazines, then I bought a vanilla ice cream box, some Toppo (chocolate filled pretzel sticks), and talked to the lady who ran the store, or rather she talked to me.
Of course she spoke in Japanese, and I was pleasantly surprised after I got past my first thought which is "oh no Japanese, I don`t understand" to it slowly registering that she was telling me that her son was in school, 6th grade I think, so I`ll probably be teaching him. I should really practice conversations more with people who speak absolutely no English, but I feel like my vocabulary is too small at the moment to try to get away with it, unless we`re talking about the weather. So now I`m really and truly feeding myself. I went to the grocery store, Narus, in Uragawara last night. It was down to the choices of straight peanut butter without bread, plain spaghetti without sauce, udon noodles, or rice, or grits in my apato and nothing was sounding that good anymore, so I had to go shopping. Happily I bought both Japanese and normal food so I can go either way, eggs and bread and OJ for asagohan, bento for lunch at work, or a sandwich or spaghetti and coffee latte for dinner.
Talking like this makes me think of Scarlett O`hara`s words "With God as my witness, I`ll never go hungry again! " Um, not that I`ve really ever gone hungry. A little hungry yesterday, but nothing a little reheated chicken and some noodles couldn`t help. I want to make the folks here some Southern style breakfast sometime. Maybe someone could send me some biscuit or cornmuffin mix.
Oh yeah, you can also get Aquafresh at the grocery, but only in a small tube. I was happy. I also got stuff to wash my dishes, wash my clothes, and condition my hair (I thought the water here felt kind of soft, but it really seems to be rough on my hair). I`ve also been pondering things like getting sleepy after every meal.... did I always feel that way, or is that new to being here? Of course yesterday it was raining and I had a headache so I was kind of tired and sedate anyway.
Also, beds in Japan (where there ARE beds in Japan) are really really hard, even with the extra futon mattress on mine I keep waking up with a crick, or a cramped shoulder, so today I pulled out a futon (really heavy and stuffed with down I think) that`s somewhat firm, but floppy, so on top of everything it feels pretty good, you almost sink in. So it`s airing out today. So good work to Bryce and Chuck at the car show. Check out mom`s site that`s urlLink http://scmitchells.blogspot.com , and more fun tomorow. Same jap time, same jap channel. Matta ne. 
