New stuff and future Re-cap.

Well, a month has gone by since my last post. Sorry about that. I have been busy, but not too busy. As soon as I missed posting about one thing, it only got harder and harder to post anything at all! Finally the guilt has consumed me to get started on a month of stuff that I did. I plan to do this one post at a time, so bare with me here.

I guess I'll start with this week. On Wednesday, there was an event outside of the Moriyama train station where they lit up the trees in celebration of the holiday season. It had live entertainment, and the event was called Moriyama Hotaru (firefly) Baaru (Ball). Essentially it was city sponsored, and promoted all the different restaurants in the city. They were selling tickets for about twenty four dollars that allowed the buyer to try food at any three of the many sponsoring restaurants. Just like the Taste of Amherst/UMASS event that happens in the Mullins Center every year. It sounded nice enough, but was not something I could afford or wanted to get involved in. Johnny and I merely checked it out while out shopping for dinner.

While we were shopping Johnny got a call from Yuri and she said she was going out to diner with her co-workers. We did not know till when she arrived home later that she was actually doing the Firefly Ball thing. She said it was nice, and her boss paid for the outing. Sounds like a good time to me.

As for other stuff I've done in the past week, I've been reading a lot. I read Hawksbill Station, a 1968 Robert Silverberg novel, and now I'm about halfway done with Good Omens written by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Both of them are fun and easy reading books.

As for the rest of the week, our friend Lisa is coming to visit us, and we will be visiting our friend Mizuho at the club she works at Giraffe on Saturday night. This will be my second time going there (the first being with Maija in September for Mizuho's B-day), and Timur is going to come to. I'm looking forward to it!

So that's the most recent news I can give at this time. Now on to recording everything else!

Random sunset behind my building.

Ok this is pretty awesome! Yuri Made this from elementary school to the end of highschool. These are called PuriKura a shortend form of Print Club. It is an extremely popular thing to do on outings with friends, and they are found at most entertainment complexes. I recently had the experience of sharing a booth with 15 other guys on a recent bowling excursion.

Here she took Atomu (Astro Boy) out of the newspaper and decorated the book tastefully. There are other themes, cut outs and drawings throughout the rest of the book. It was really great that she showed Johnny and I this.

Here's the tree lighting.

This is the live performance. She was singing English songs.

This is the sun reflected off a car through my kitchen window.