どもありがとう Domo Arigato

Special thanks to Rachael and Stacy and the peeps at TIUA who so nicely sent me mail! I felt very loved yesterday when I opened the mail box to see mail - in English! - that I could read! Awesome, thanks!!

This is a three day weekend and we had plans to hang on the beach or cruise around Beppu, but instead we are holed up in our apartment due to Typhoon ShanShan. (Yes, kind of like Shawn-Shawn...hehe) We've had window-rustling wind, lots of rain and some thunder and lightning. Which, can get quite scary, but I think we'll be ok. In a few hours it's supposed to pass over Kyushu to the west of us, so we have yet to see the climax. I am kind of excited but also glad we have candles and a flashlight, and we just stocked up on food -just in case!

Yesterday we did go to Beppu for a while to seek one of their many many famous hot springs. Beppu is a tourist hot spot and sure enough right off the train we saw a family of backpackers making their way through the city. Tourists means lots of information in English! We'll have to take advantage of that sometime, but yesterday we were going to Kitahama Onesen on the reccomendation of one of my coworkers. Most hotsprings in Japan are separated by sex, and people bath naked...which...wouldn't be fun since the goal was to relax with each other. The onesen we went to was "german style" and outdoors facing the ocean. So, we got to wear our bathing suits and enjoy the scenes and hot water together. It was really nice.

Here is one highlight. Luckily, Shawn won, head intact.




We ate dinner, cruised some stores and then took the train home. It was a quick trip, but I know we will go to Beppu more when we have more time. It was fun to get away from Oita and find a new place, though.

Sports Day was on Friday and it was really fun. I took a few pictures in the morning until my battery died. I only got pictures of the first obstacle course event - these are a few of the obstacles. First they had to climb under this green net, then crawl through this bamboo ladder thing, and next jump over these white ropes, and finally hop in a gunny sack to the finish line.









We are now using SKYPE for internet calling, and it is so cheap! We are able to call anyone anywhere using our internet connection. It's worked really well and it makes us happy we can so easily talk to our families. Well, other than the time difference - we can usually only call on weekends because while we are sleeping and working people in the US are awake.

Holy crap. The typhoon has gotten so much worse since the time I started this blog! Crazy wind and rain! Neato! :)

Today is a perfect day for baking. We are going to make brownies from scratch, cabbage and chicken salad and tacos for dinner with homemade tortillas! We have to make homemade tortillas because they don't have them here. Gotta do whatcha' gotta do.