Takasaka Zoo

There's a little dry cleaning place that's right behind our apartment. That's where we met Ringo. She is a 17 year old junior in high school and wants to learn English. She works in the dry cleaning shop and was so excited to speak English with us whenever we went in until finally she asked if we could exchange letters, which turned into us helping her study for tests, to going out to dinner together with her and her family and finally going to the zoo. She is such a sweet girl and it has been so much fun getting to know her and her family since last spring!

Last weekend we finally made it to the zoo that is near our house. It's not a big zoo but I was surprised how nice it was and how many different kinds of animals it had. It was a really fun day!

From left to right is Ringo's mom Yayoi, her little brother Hinata, Ringo, and of course us. 

Brad and Hinata with a giant capiburra that Hinata liked. Hinata was a little shy since he doesn't know any English but it was still fun to talk a little bit. (Side note: we didn't see any capiburra but apparently they will be arriving in November once their hot spring enclosure is ready. Lucky animals!)

This little calf was only a week old. So cute!

This is a red panda which is the big attraction for the park. There were twin red panda's that were born in June which were so cute! 

Weird, big scraggly bird. It's the white Big Bird! 

Pretty fall colors!

Three toed sloth. They had this enclosure where you were basically on a bridge walking through their environment--no barriers whatsoever. You could almost reach out and touch the guy!

This little guy was my favorite. He was just taking a nap on a tree in the open enclosure. You can see with the picture of Brad that there were no barriers in the enclosure, but we still couldn't touch them. :( They look so cute and cuddly!

There were tons of kangaroos! And again, there was no barrier between us and the kangaroos...

This isn't a good picture but see how close you can get? Crazy!

Some turtles having fun...haha

These little pigs were in the petting zoo area. They were so cute! They had little numbers painted on top of them so you could tell them apart. 

Giraffes! They had at least 3 of them, and a couple zebras too.

So that was our day at the zoo. I'll try and post all of our pictures on Picasa soon, but for now enjoy!

And... HAPPY THANKSGIVING! I think Brad and I will go to the Hard Rock Cafe this weekend for their turkey dinner. Unfortunately turkey is pretty hard to come by here, but hopefully this will hit the spot. We will definitely be missing all the amazing home cooked meals and family this week!

Design Festa Art Show

We went to this huge art show called Design Festa a couple weeks ago held in Tokyo Big Site. Design Fest is put on twice a year by an organization that has a full time art showcase warehouse in Harajuku. We've been to the original building but it was cool to see the good and not so good art all in one place. This building is huge! When we left the art show it was really dark out so I couldn't get a good picture of it but I searched online and found this one. So if the Olympics are held in Tokyo in 2016, this is where some of the events will take place.

Tokyo Big Site (I did not take this picture.)

Like I said before this was a huge art show that showcased artists from all over Japan. They had paintings, sculptures, clothes, crafts etc. etc. so it took a long time to go through all the aisles of artists. Brad and I bought a few copies of paintings and some cards that will be fun to have up in our place some day. 

This is what it looked like inside.

Brad liked this one.

I thought this one was kind of pretty. Some of the art was really out there and not quite to my liking (i.e. a lot of it was more modern looking or was manga (comic book) style illustrations. 

A lot of artists painted huge murals over the course of the weekend. It was fun to see them paint!

I thought this one was really neat. She looked almost alive!

This one was my favorite from the whole day. It had so much detail in it! I'm not sure how they made it but it looked like the whole thing was done with a fine tipped sharpie. 

Anyway, we did a lot of walking and it was a fun day! Although I'm still working on appreciating some styles of art (maybe I'm just not creative enough to "get it") but it was a fun experience!

Japan Three Day March

Higashimatsuyama is home to the biggest march in Japan. I couldn't find anything confirming this online but one of my teachers said that between 50,000-60,000 people participate every year. And this is in our own backyard! School was closed and all students and teachers as well as people who traveled from all over the world and Japan to participate walked anywhere from 1-3 days and 5-50km per day.

It was a neat experience seeing our little town get all dressed up for the event. The march started on Friday so school was canceled so we could all walk. I ended up walking with one of my English teachers and a couple other teachers from my school. They asked me a while ago how far I wanted to walk and I told them probably only 10km. My English teacher said that's all he wanted to do too but then started talking about how funny it would be to do the 20km route and have a car waiting halfway to take us back to the start. I totally thought he was kidding until we did just that. No joke! I don't even know why it was a big deal because the race is kind of based on an honor system. They give you a piece of paper and you get a sticker at the start, the midway point and the finish. There are no prizes for 1st and 2nd place etc. I guess what I'm saying is it was a very laid back event in that it really was centered on walking. It was not to benefit any event or organization (although it is an official event for some international walking association, but whatever...) And I'm really not sure why we couldn't just walk the 10km route but I had no idea how the whole thing worked and really, I'm just along for the ride.

So we stopped and got some lunch on the way home. And once I got back to the start I walked around because they had a lot of tents with food and goodies to buy but I got hounded by some 7th grade girls from another school that had an assignment to speak to a foreigner in English so I spent about 20 minutes answering questions and signing my name and taking pictures. I guess the word got around (and I was one of few foreigners that were present at the moment) because I ended up having to leave soon after that if only so I didn't have to answer the question "when's your birthday?" one more time. lol!

It was a very nice day and it was fun to see my students and teachers outside of school for sometime. I didn't take too many pictures but here's a couple:

I think it's funny that the name is actually in English （スリー　ダイ　マルチー or surii dai marchee) instead of Japanese but it's supposed to be a big international event so it makes sense. 

These are the flags representing the different prefectures of Japan. 

Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone! This year for Halloween I made our costumes--that's right I can sew! (Kind of--thanks Mom for hemming my pants when you were here! :) )  We went to a Halloween party at a bar in Koenji (near where Chris lives) and then did a little karaoke with some of his students after. It was a fun night! I don't have too many pictures though...

I hope you find this as funny as we did... :)

Chris is missing his headband but he's dressed as the owner of this fruit stand that is well known in his city. Apparently the guy is pretty loud...kind of like Chris. :) 

We hope you all had a great Halloween too. I can't believe it's already November! Our next project is finding a place in Tokyo that serves turkey and pumpkin pie for less than a million dollars. I don't want to miss my favorite holiday! Fun fact: the only place so far that we've been able to find turkey is Disneyland and Subway Sandwiches.