My room always has excellent icicles.

So, we finally got our Christmas package from mum! And it had SIDEKICKS in it! Oh  em gee! I was so excited to see them! Angel and I shared a package of the Parmesan noodles last night. Yummmmm! And we added extra cheese. And watched Winter Wrap Up whilst eating. It was GLORIOUS! Just sayin~ I'm really excited to eat my Three Cheese kind. <3

Yay! In other news, HOLY SNOW, BATMAN! I went to bed last night and it wasn't bad. And then I woke up and went to work this morning and there was sooo much snow! We got like a foot overnight. Easily. It's crazy! And the icicles are back on the houses. My room always has excellent icicles. I guess it's because David and I keep our room rather warm. Oh well~ It looks cool. I had to shovel the steps today and there was just so much snow! It would've probably taken me about 45minutes by myself. As it was, Richard, Ceed and Mikako came out to help me. It was awesome of them. We got it done in about 15 minutes. :D

And there's been lots of people coming back from trips, recently! Haruka from the shoppe went to Turkey recently and brought back cookies. They kinda tasted like a mix of Arrowroot and Graham crackers. Yumm. And Ceed went to visit Yamagata and brought back juice for everyone. Ceed used to live there, so she travels a lot and always brings back their juice. Yummm.

Call me crazy, but that note doesn't exactly inspire much confidence.

Ahhhh~ Nice clean room. I spent most of this afternoon cleaning my room and re-organizing. I never really realized how much stuff I've acquired since I got here. Ahahaha. I took a few photos of my toys and also a photo of my corkboard. I put newspaper clippings, magazine cutouts, and other stuff on there. It's kinda fun to display my likes that way.

Ahhh yeah~ :D
And I intend to keep adding to my collection. Muahahahahaha!

In other news, it's STILL ridiculously snowy here! It snowed a few days ago for like 3 days straight. And it was easy to shovel, but it was insane how much snow was dumped on us! I took a few pictures last night when I went to visit Angel. Now, as usual the photos aren't very good. Sorry. I took a few good photo's of our icicles, though! God damn! They're MASSIVE! Impressive, really. But still!

I went and bugged Angel for a bit last night. And there was a fire going, since it was a weekend. It was nice. We chatted for a while, and then Angel trudged off to stack wood. It's one of our jobs at reception, and we hate it! It's fun to have a fire, but not fun to stack wood. Lol. At least she didn't have to go stock wood with Maki-san. We had to drive over to the pub, grab wood, drive over to the sports wing and unload it, and then repeat. We drove a golf cart. And by 'we' I mean me. Lol. Maki-san asked me to help her stack wood and I asked if I could drive as a joke, and she said, 'Yes darling!' Yep. Good times. It was a laugh and a half. I didn't have my camera, since I was working, but I snapped a photo of Angel stocking wood.

And then I came home and popped to the kitchen to grab a mug and there were snacks on the table.

Call me crazy, but that note doesn't exactly inspire much confidence. Lol. I didn't end up trying one, because I wasn't really hungry. But, they were gone today, so I guess someone ate them.

And then, he lost balance.

So, we went on another family field trip a few days ago. We all had the 10th off, so Kyoko arranged a skating trip for us! We went out for lunch, skating, onsen and then dinner. It was a really nice day, too. A little cold, but sunny and awesome.

To start, Tatsuru (Tatsu for short) drove us all again. He's such an awesome chauffeur. We used the BH bus again and this time there wasn't a time limit, so we could stay out as long as we wanted. The bus wasn't big enough for everyone, so Angel and Keira went with Eriko. And for all intents and purposes, they probably had a better drive there. George sat up front with Tatsu and he chose the music for a good part of the trip. Its about an hour and a half to Koriyama from BH. And George has a very... eclectic sense of music. It's like driving with dad, but amplified by about 10. I can't lie, though, George's car trip music always reminds me of traveling with dad, since he always has interested stuff to listen to. As in, both dad and George do. Lol. Anywho~ Talia and Tonya had decided to put on headphones and listen to their iPod's. Which would've been ok, but Talia kept randomly bursting into song. It was kinda crazy. And then, she got fed up with the headphones and made George switch our music to hers. Now, Talia's music tastes run a lot like Heather's, so it was a lot of the Biebster and other bubblegum pop. We all promptly put on our headphones and I didn't catch any conversation until we got to the lunch place.

We ate at World Buffet and it was pretty good! They had a good selection of different foods and it was all pretty good quality. I ate some really good fried rice, spaghetti, nahn bread and some good desserts, too. They had a chocolate fountain! Yummmmmm~~~~~  And I tried milk tea pudding and that was really nice, too! We were joined by Jen (one of the teacher managers), Mikako-san, Terashima-san and one of the chefs that I don't know the name of.

After lunch, we all headed to the ice rink. Tatsu took care of our skate rentals and we all busied ourselves with tying our skates. And I must say, the skates were HIDEOUS! Bright red, plastic and gross. I sooo wanted to use my own pretty white skates, but no dice. And before we left BH that morning, Kyoko was trying to convince us all to get helmets. We all kinda looked at her like she was crazy. Lol.

We laced up and hit the ice. We skated for about 2 hours and it was awesome. I was really worried about falling, but I only fell once! And it wasn't even my fault! It was all David! I was holding him from behind and seeing if I could push him, like in that one Vinyl Cafe story with Dave and Morley. And then, he lost balance. And me, being the brave wifey, tried to save him. And then I lost balance. And I pulled him back, rather than falling on him. And he fell on me. On my left hip actually. It was quite painful. But, it was my only wipeout. And it was spectacular like always, so yeah. I'm satisfied. Lol. It was an awesome workout, though! I worked my arms and legs something fierce. Tatsu, Terashima-san and Eriko had never gone skating before, so it was cute seeing people teaching them. David actually spent most of the time skating with and teaching Eriko. He's really good! we'll have to start skating more when we go home.

After skating, we headed to an onsen. It was really nice and relaxing! Especially after that workout. We sat in the little onsen area outside and just soaked. Angel and I apparently looked really alike while we were there. Our hair was slicked back since it was wet and my glasses were off. Even some of the other ladies there said 'Ah! Futago-chan, ne?' (Ah! Twins?) when they saw us. It was cute.

After the onsen, we all had a chat about dinner. Tatsu and most of the others wanted suhi, but Keira, Angel, Eriko and I didn't really want fish. So, we were going to go for yakiniku instead. But, when everyone else heard of our plan, THEY all wanted it, too! So, we went to Hyper Gaja for dinner. It was pretty good. Yakiniku and I have a kinda love/hate relationship. There's so much cross contamination going on, it's unreal. But, once you get past that it's pretty good. And it's a fun way to eat.

And then, after dinner, we all split up. Eriko, Keira, Angel, George and I went home and Tatsu took everyone else out to do karaoke. I couldn't afford to, and in truth I was really tired from the days activities. Lol. So, we all bid each other farewell and hopped back in our cars and left. The car ride back was a laugh and a half. George is always fun to travel with. Lol.

And we listened to good music on the way home. <3

Yes, I am now the proud owner of Noble Gundam.

So, I'm sitting eating a Meiji chocolate bar, drinking coke and listening to the Vinyl Cafe~ I figured it was time to make the new years post. Ahahaha.

So, first and foremost, we ate lunch at the tearoom. Angel was working on the 31st, but I had the day off. We decided to get lunch at the tearoom, because we wanted to treat ourselves. Lol. So, while we were eating the bagpiper gentleman came in. Mr. Hunter. He's so cool! From Canada and he's a real sweetheart. He's an older gentleman, but he loves to talk. And he has a lot of interesting stories. He was gonna be piping for the Hogmanay celebration that night. Sadly, Angel and I couldn't stay for it, but I got a picture of him just before we left that night. He actually wasn't sure if he was going to wear the hat, but I told him if he should wear the full regalia for such an occasion.

So, we hopped onto the staff bus at 6pm and set off to town. We got there, ate a quick dinner from 7-11 and then hopped on the Shinkansen. We got a Doubledecker shinkansen this time! Oooooooh~! And we bought ourselves upstairs tickets for the reserved Green Car, just because we could. That's the fancy car. Looots of leg room! And it was just really nice.

Man, that's a horrible picture of me. XD Lol. Anywho~ It was a short trip. Utsunomiya was only 2 stops away. Oh yeah. for those who didn't know, we went to Utsunomiya for new years eve. We went Lucky Bag shopping! It was fun! Anywho~ So, we got to Utsunomiya easily. And when we got there, we set off for our hotel. Now, I booked the hotel. And I remember booking the one that was close to the station. It was a 5 minute walk, said the website. Well, we found the hotel near the station and when we went to check in, it appeared that we didn't have a reservation there. We had a reservation at the one across town! 25 minutes way by foot! But, the ladies were nice and changed our reservation over, so it all worked out. Ahahaha. We decided at that point to go for a quick walk to see how long it would take us to get to Baby, the Stars Shine Bright in the morning. It was a nice walk, maybe 20 minutes. And we passed the shrine and Angelic Pretty while we were out.

So, on our way back we decided that it would be fun to go see the shrine and make our new years wish and get a charm. They would be doing that all night, after all, and we wanted to avoid the crowd. Well, we climbed the (really steep!) steps and got up there and just as we were about to go see the shrine, 2 older Japanese gentlemen asked if they could talk with us. And, being polite, we said sure. Well, they chatted with us for almost 2 hours! It was ridiculous! Like, they were really nice and they're English was really good, but after a while we just wanted to go home. So, we finally made an excuse to leave and off we went. We grabbed crepes on the way home and I only ate about half of mine. It was yummy, though. But, it was sooo cold outside! I thought my hands would fall off!

We stopped at 7-11 and got a quick midnight snack. And then we went back to the hotel and watched the end of Kōhaku. Kōhaku Uta Gassen is an annual New Years show where popular and successful musicians from the past year form two teams and compete. The white team and the red team all preform their popular sings from the year and then people vote. Anywho, we watched the end and then we channel surfed until something else caught our eyes. The Downtown BATSU GAMES! OMG~ I love them! Downtown is a comedy duo and they team up with other comedians at the end of the year and do a special TV program. All of them have a different theme, but the goal is the same. They cannot laugh. At all. If they do, that get whacked across the ass with a bamboo or rubber sword. And of course, there's always traps and people making each other laugh. It's hilarious. But, after that we went to bed.

We woke up a little late the next day. Angel wanted to be at the store by about 8, but we didn't even leave the hotel until 8am. Lol. Oh well. The walk was pretty uneventful. There were lots of people milling about and a few shouted Happy New Year! to us in English. It was sweet. We got in line outside the shop and we were actually 3rd in line! We wasted time watching My Little Pony: FiM and eating breakfast (bought from 7-11).

So, they opened at 10 on the dot and we went rushing in. I WISH I had been able to take a photo. Because it was chaos. But, not as bad as we had heard. We managed to each get the pack we wanted and I found a very pretty pair of earrings on sale. To be honest, no one was really going for the lucky bags. Baby was having a HUUUUGE sale, so everyone was shopping for sale stuff. Lol. Oh well. We did a bit more shopping in the building before we decided to get lunch and go home. We stopped at Freshness Burger and I got a cheeseburger. I found the no smoking sign kinda funny, too.

So, we hopped back on the Shinkansen and headed back home at this point. And then it was back to work the next day. It's been rather dead. But, it'll pick up soon, I'm sure. And Angel was awesome and switched our days off. So, I had yesterday and today off with David. Yay~ We went into town with Brad yesterday. It was good times. I got KATSU CURRY for lunch! Yuuuummmmmmmm~~~~

So, after getting lunch we just did soem shopping. Got groceries, David and Brad each got a new Gundam model and David bought me a cheap Kagami figure for my Lucky Star figure collection. Yay! He also bought me a Gundam model and put it together for me. And it's AMAZING. Yes, I am now the proud owner of Noble Gundam.

I'd like to point out that her feet are pink high heels! Oh yes! Isn't she amazing? Anywho, we also had time to try some UFO catchers. And wanna see what I won?

That's right. Mechanical cat ears. I press a button and they twitch and move. It's AMAZING. And we ended up all going to the pub last night. Well, most of us. We hung out and played with our cameras. Keira and Talia invested in a polaroid camera so we played with that, too. Also, I tried to dye my hair light brown recently and you can see the results in these photos. Didn't quite work, but I've got a cool gradient thing going on.