Mexican and Movies

Last night I had two friends over for Mexican food. The Japanese understanding of what Mexican food is ends abruptly at tacos. I don't suppose that enchiladas or fajitas really brings cultural enlightening, but it's still always a fun thing to do! So we got together and made chicken enchiladas and chicken fajitas, guacamole, refried beans, and in true taco bell style, potato oles! Here's Chiaki and Kyoko getting the enchiladas ready:

Rolling the enchiladas:

Our final product. I should have unrolled the fajita to make it more appealing, but I cared more about eating it than taking a picture of it!!!!

You can see the guacamole in this one if you look closely. Not the best angle to see the food, but here we're getting ready to dig in!

I also included this picture to give you a better idea of kotatsu. I think a lot of people still think it sounds strange when I say I'm sitting under or sleeping under a table. You can kinda see my floor furniture there (the chair behind me) and you stick your feet under that big blanket! The heater under the table heats it up nice and cozy. I have been known to take naps under there as well, of course with my head outside the blanket!!

Anyway, it was a good night. After eating and chatting awhile and them thinking all the pictures on my refrigerator were "kawaii," we watched a movie. I rented two movies, intending to watch a romantic comedy, but for some reason I couldn't get it to work in my DVD player. So instead, watched The Reader, a pretty heavy movie with Kate Winslet about a woman and her affair with a 15 year old who later coincidentally shows up at a Nazi war trial in which she is convicted of murdering 300 people, letting them burn to death in a church as a guard of a concentration camp. It was an interesting movie, but maybe not one to watch with people you don't know all that well! The plot is a little complicated and it's a slow moving film, and there's lots of nudity. Kate Winslet won an Oscar and a bunch of other awards for it though, so it was obviously a film worth watching. Interesting and thought provoking.

Today I'm heading off to the Izu peninsula here in Shizuoka. I'm staying with a friend and tomorrow we are going to see some early cherry blossoms. It's a little bit different kind of blossom and with the location and type of blossom it is, it comes much earlier than the regular cherry blossoms of Japan. I'm really excited to go down and check it out!


On the map above, you can see Fuji, I live just a little bit north of there. The early cherry blossoms are in Kawazu, a town that's mostly at the bottom in the middle of the peninsula there. It's about a 3 hour drive, but remember speed limits are low in Japan, so it's actually only like 60 miles I think! I remember looking at that once and being outraged, so I try to quit thinking about distance and just go by time now! I suppose, that's actually my cue to go jump in the shower and get on the road!!