I went to a belly dancing show on Friday night, and now I have a bad case of dance envy. (Let's not even get into the costume envy...sequined bras! Pom poms attached to the waist! Swoon!) It's no good saying "take lessons, then", as I've been down that road and it's only confirmed that I have not got a rhythmic bone in my body.

Anyhow, the show was fantastic, and Kae ended by dancing with a sword on her head, which I think we can all agree is pretty impressive.



After the show, Yukie and I wanted to grab a drink and maybe some nibbles, so she suggested the Brooklyn Cafe. I've walked by it often, but never stopped in, as it seems pretty posh (by which I mean "expensive".) However, you only live once, etc etc, right? So we walk in, order our drink, and decide to get some salads (as they were the cheapest thing on the menu.) I ordered the snow crab and avocado salad for 1100 yen. When they delivered a quartered tomato with a dollop of crab and avocado mix on each piece, I began to suspect that they were being fairly liberal in their use of the word "salad", but the wafer-thin toast amused me so much I let it pass. Then they brought Yukie's tomato salad (800 yen), which turned out to be...a tomato. Sliced, arranged in a circle, and sprinkled lightly with black pepper, but ultimately, one tomato. I couldn't even keep a straight face when the waiter brought it over.

It was a very fresh and tasty tomato, I will give them that.

I know what I want for my birthday this year!

The chickens will be speaking for me from now on.

Oh, falling Canadian dollar. I love you SO MUCH. Today was the first time in well over a year that converting my money to dollars did not leave me grumpy and missing a huge chunk due to the conversion process.

Yesterday Masami started inviting people to Liam's birthday party. I have absolutely no idea what to get him. The child has almost every Thomas the Tank Engine toy known to man, and since his grandparents are coming down at the end of April, they will likely fill in the gaps in his collection. I'm stumped.

It never ceases to amaze me how when I announce that we are going to play a game, many of the students ask "Uno?" or "Jenga?" in hopeful voices. I mean, seriously, kids, when have we EVER played Uno or Jenga? In the history of your entire class?

With my Tuesday class we are playing a version of scattegories. Every week I give them a letter of the alphabet and they have to write down as many words as they can think of that begin with that letter. This week was "F". "F" is a pretty good letter, as you can always write down the numbers 50-59 in a pinch, which is exactly what one of my students did. Literally. She wrote down "fiftyone-fiftynine" and got quite indignant when I finally stopped laughing and explained that she did not get credit for the numbers implied by the dash.

Snerk.

Aw. My baby is two years old. No, I'm not talking about Liam (although his birthday is next month. I'm giving thought to just baking him a cake and not getting any presents, because he is the only child of an only child and already has every single Thomas the Tank Engine toy known to man. Oh! Random story: Stu bought him a toy shinkansen and put it next to his pillow, so when he woke up the first thing he saw was a new train. The Shinkansen Fairy strikes again!)

No, it has been exactly two years since I first started talking at you from my computer. "Heavens," you say, "has it really only been two years? Because it feels like forever." One of my very first posts was this picture of Australian canned wine, so it is very appropriate that I recently found this downtown:



Yes, it is bubbly wine.

Champagne.

In a can.

Liam's become really good about giving kisses lately. Almost everytime I ask him for one, he purses up his little lips and obliges. (Sometimes he lunges at me with gaping maw, but that's mostly so I will go "Ewwwwww! No! Don't eat me!" and cringe, because that is so totally funny and will never ever ever get old. Let's do it again!) Tonight Masami grabbed their bags and went out to the car to open the door and stow the bags, etc, so I grabbed Liam and brought him outdoors, only to find she'd been sidetracked into talking to one of the moms. So to kill time, I took him around saying good bye to various objects around the building and suggesting that he kiss them goodbye.

"Bye-bye tree!" *smooch planted on one of the "feefs"*

"Bye-bye school!" *smooch planted on window*

Dance, monkey, dance!

Today saw the Green Cookie experiment unfold. I asked Liam if he wanted a cookie before his dad took him home, he responded in the affirmative ("COOKIE!"), I handed him the very green cookie, he....totally grabbed it and started nibbling away. About 10 minutes later, Stu phoned Masami to report that Liam was in his car seat, licking away at the cookie until his tongue turned green, and murmuring "Yummy! Yummy! Yummy!"

So I guess the conclusion that can be drawn here is that the kid is not stupid.

Probably you want to know what that is, right? Ok, so it's also highly likely you are staring at the screen in horror and want nothing more to do with it, in which case I suggest you go elsewhere and come back tomorrow, when I shall report on Operation Give Liam A Green Cookie.

It's an inflatable swan. Well, clearly.

What I like most about it (beside the low low price of 100 yen) is that it appeals to both little girls who want to be pretty ballerinas AND dirty old men who want to be...well, dirty old men.

Wow, they really do make cards for every concievable occasion, don't they?

Liam has started rejecting all green foods. On a scale of 1 to 10, how mean would it be of me to add green food colouring to cookies or vanilla cake ("CAKE! WOW! LOOK! CAKE!" Boy likes his cake, what can I say?) just to see if his head would explode from the dilemma of whether or not to eat it?

Wow, You're a Golden Retriever!

Golden Retriever
The Charmer

Laid-back, sociable and well-groomed, you've got your own hip little pack of groupies who just love to be around you. You have a brain inside that adorable little head of yours, though you use it mostly to organize your hectic social calendar. You never poop out at parties, and since you're popular with ladies and men, as well as children and adults, you dish out your wit, charm and luck to whomever is close enough to bask in it. The top dog likes you and wants to be your best friend, despite the fact that he doesn't really know what the heck you do. No one does, in fact, but everyone loves you all the same. A true foodie, you’ve got your keen ears fine-tuned to make sure you don't miss out on the opening of a trendy new place to nosh. But your youthful days of being able to wolf down food 24-7 are wagging behind you, meaning you've got to watch what you eat so you don’t pull a Brando and outgrow your coats.

...shuddup.

Double chocolate with peanut butter filling.

I have attained cupcake nirvana.
I have also attained a sugar high that is likely to last the entire week.

I'm an idiot.

I will pause for a moment while you all go put your pearls on so you can clutch them in shock.

Ready? Good. I forgot my wallet on Friday. Normally not an issue, as I keep my bus pass seperate, but I had plans to go downtown after work and have dinner before getting a massage. Luckily I decided to get some money out of the bank before sitting down in a restaurant, because that was when I noticed I didn't have any money. Oops. I emailed Miho to let her know I wouldn't be able to actually pay her, but that I had some cupcakes for her so I'd be dropping by anyway. Because she is a lovely person, she told me not to worry about it and that I could pay for the massage next time I saw her. Aw, yes? So at this point I had to kill about an hour. It's fortunate I wasn't all that hungry on Friday, but when you can't even sit in a coffee shop with a good book to kill time, an hour can last a long time. Finally it was time to head out to her place, which is when I ran into Andrew. He was stocking up on cheap Grolsh beer (he has decided to deal with his hayfever by drinking it into submission, while I have gone the neti pot route. My symptoms are considerably better than his, but I suspect he's happier anyway.) and kindly offered to lend me money, but it was kind of a moot point by now, so I declined. About five minutes later I thought to myself "Shoot. I have that tuition money from two of the kindy students on me. I should have given it to him."

Which is when it hit me: I'd been walking around with 10 000 yen in cash the entire time.

In less embarrassing news, this weekend has been gorgeous. Warm and sunny and not too windy and I'm wearing at t-shirt today, people! A T-SHIRT. With short socks and no undershirt! I feel so naked. However, I have not been out and about in the beautiful weather today because I am making these. They promise to be well worth the sacrifice.

Visibility? What is this "visibility" of which you speak?



I may have exaggerated about the 600 feet of snowfall, but not by much.


Clearly a ski resort of the highest quality.



Sadly, it's hard to not fall down and appreciate the view all at the same time.



Naps. I takes 'em where I can gets 'em.



More pictures here.

Know what I really love about snowboarding clothes? All the pockets. Pockets pockets everywhere! It's amazing the amount of stuff you can carry up to the top of a mountain with you. (Since this is Japan, after all, this includes your cell phone. Ah, civilization.)

We left Shizuoka around midnight and drove until 6 am. It was an uneventful trip, which was a small miracle considering 3 out of the 7 people in the van had food poisoning. Iku and I also discovered that the back seat of the van doesn't get any heat, but luckily Wataru provided us with a nice cozy paper blanket.

Yes, you read that right. And no, I don't really know what it is, either.

We arrived in Niigata to discover that they had approximately 600 feet of snow and counting. On previous trips, we just drove straight to the ski resort of our choice and napped in the van for an hour or two before hitting the slopes, but this time we went straight to a hotel and checked in. The main disadvantage to this is that it was a lot harder to drag myself out of the nice warm bed after an hour of sleep than it ever was to make myself wake up and crawl out of the van. Tempting though it was to just sleep for 6 hours and then hit an onsen, I managed to make it downstairs for breakfast (three tater tots, two small sausages, and a big pile of shredded cabbage, mmm mmm good!).

As you may have surmised from the pictures I posted below, visibility was poor. It didn't help that the snow kept flying in my face and accumulating on my glasses, although not being able to see added a certain excitement to the act of careening down a mountain strapped to a board.

After we'd finished for the day, we really really wanted to hit up an onsen, but instead we ended up back at the hotel and its tiny little bathtub. Which, don't get me wrong, did the trick, but when we found out the next day that there was a big fancy onsen nearby that offered mud baths, Pauline and I were outraged. Fair enough if Wataru didn't want to go after driving all night, but if we'd known about it...well, that's what taxis are for, yes?

Sigh. Am I doomed to never take a mud bath? Why so cruel, life?

The next day was much better weather-wise. It was also better breakfast-wise, as we had a buffet to choose from. I decided not to go with the spaghetti, but to stick with the fruit and toast instead. I also stayed away from the salad, which appeared to be more shredded cabbage with cornflakes as a garnish.

Ah. Warm, sunny...this was more like it. I still haven't mastered the ski lift, but I did manage to get off it a couple of times all by myself (by employing a rather undignified technique that Wataru, no doubt, managed to capture on film.) The rest of the time I made sure to sit next to a skiier friend and cling to them as we got off. I don't so much mind the prospect of falling, I just don't want to collapse in a heap right off the lift and get run over by the people in the seat behind me.

I really, really need to take lessons. I can get from the top of the mountain to the bottom in one piece and with minimal fallage, but my technique is awful. Not to mention that when you constantly keep all your weight on your heels, it starts to hurt your legs like crazy about halfway down the mountain. No doubt putting all your weight on your toes also strains your legs, but presumably we're talking different muscles here, and an ability to shift your weight probably distributes the aches and pains more evenly.

And thus ends the saga of my one and only foray into the world of snowboarding this year.

I think there'll be enough snow to cushion my inevitable falls, she understated.