Keeping Busy

During the second half of last year I started to become a bit of a hermit, and since going home this summer I have really started to get out and take advantage of my time again. Here are just a few of the things I have been up to:

I went to an okonomiyaki restaurant with some Japanese friends. We were actually going to get Indian food, but our local Indian restaurant is taking a hiatus and doesn't open again until the end of this month. I don't really like okonomiyaki much, but I tried a few new types of things that I enjoyed! Okonomiyaki is often translated as a Japanese pancake, but it's really nothing like a pancake like you would envision. It's usually cabbage, some other veggies and chunks of meat, egg and some type of batter (but only a little bit to hold it together). You mix it all together and fry it, flip it, and then cut it in pieces to eat. It's usually topped with a special sauce, mayo, and sometimes fish flakes or shredded sea weed. Here's a video of the flip:

Remember if you're reading this in an email, you'll have to go to my blog to watch it.

I also tried a new thing that's like the omelette/pancake thing above - it's a mix of ingredients but isn't eaten in the pancake form, but more like a...stirfry? Not exactly, but my English is failing me these days, so see below:

The bowl of ingredients before mixing it.

Chiaki mixing in the the sauce to give it good flavor.

I also organized a rafting trip for AJET along with the vice president. It's quite near my house actually. so I had a few people come up to stay with me the night before and we just drove there. There were about 30 rafters in all, so quite a large group. It was a good time. Like last year the rapids weren't really that big, but we had fun in the water and in good company!

Our Raft Left to Right: Me, Kory, Kelly, Jaime and Dion

One of our team's rafts in the rapids

After rafting, we went to hana no yu, my favorite onsen and second home! The wine bath is back, though a different type of wine, so I am one happy girl! After onsen I road tripped it with a new friend out to the Izu peninsula and went to dinner with John and Kari. We scoped out a new bar in the "Nag" and stopped to soak our feet in a foot bath along the way. Apparently they are all over the city there, I wouldn't mind living there for the foot baths!!

Can you tell which feet are mine? ;)

So life has been good, hope it's as good there as it is here! Love you and miss you all!

Ash

p.s. After writing all this, I realized I had already blogged about some of it, but this time pictures are included, so I'm not deleting all this work!