First Week: Accomplished.

"7am, waking up in the morning
Gotta be fresh, gotta go downstairs
Gotta have my bowl, gotta have cereal." 

-Rebecca Black. 

Truth. except the cereal part. If you've been following, you know I'm partial to my bowl of rice with natto. Oh Rebecca, so juvenile. jk. Except for today...headin' out towards the ways of the West for my breakfast! 

Homemade bread (with Mochi flour!), Japanese sausages, homemade tamago yaki, some shredded cabbage salad, and...

A little Mango flavored yogurt! Does the packaging look familiar?! It's the Japanese Activia! Ya know, the yogurt that Jamie Lee Curtis is all woop-dee-doo about! Except that these are actually good! Really good, in fact! And in cuter, smaller packing, in cool flavors. Haruki and I had the mango. Kaho had the white peach. The Japanese even take Activia to a whole new level. Whoa. 

Going to school, I was surprised by how warm, sunny, and comparatively dry it was today! It was somewhere in the mid-80s. I better appreciate it before the rainy season comes! 

Class again went by quickly, since we are constantly learning and reviewing new vocab, grammar, or Kanji. Today we started a new chapter about asking and giving directions. SO DIFFICULT. If someone asks me how to get somewhere, I'm just going to have to smile and wave. Struggley struggle fest. During those three hours of class, my mind is just going and going and going and...gone. Over. Done. Weekend. Woo. 

How to celebrate? Go back to the market with all the sales to get my food! I wanted to go with a bento like yesterday, but I have to pace myself with the bentos! Spread the bento love over 9 weeks! So today, sushi was the name of the game.  I gotta admit that I like Ralphs sushi at home, but this just shut it DOWN. Look at it!

There was Maguro tuna, Ika, Salmon, fresh white shrimp, scallop, cooked shrimp, octopus, and tamago yaki. Look at the variety and colors! It's a double rainbow!!! 

Again, grubbed at the home of the trains...

I love the flowers inside! They are so bright. 

Attention: No color enhancements were used in the posting of these photos. 

 We are starting our own J-Pop Group.

 Call us "Boom. Boom. Pow."

 We were having great fun...until a bird decided to give Wolens-san a gift of nature. 

But don't worry. His shoes escaped unharmed. 

Alas, I think the bird was telling us to go back inside and do our homework. I didn't want to risk getting the same gift as Wolens-san, so back to Rifare we went! 

While engaging in the ever so popular procrastination technique know as Facebooking, I ended up video chatting with my real mom. While our conversation was cut short due to technical difficulties, I did come away with some important advice: "You HAVE to go to Takayama." 

And those were the last words she uttered before disappearing into the abyss. Just kidding. That was melodramatic. 

But she did say that I had to visit Takayama! I was looking for something to do this weekend, so instead of doing homework, I ended up doing a little research, and ended up buying train tickets at the Eki with Emmy and Marina to go to Takayama on Sunday! A bit rash in my decisions, but I gotta make this stuff happen, yo! 

Oh the Adventures that will come...I see an eventful update on the horizon. 

After using a bit of broken Japanese to figure out how to buy tickets, I knew no more homework was going to get done. So, home time!  

As I was walking, I passed by this Japanese shrine. It's so cool to just stumble upon something so beautiful on a tiny side street right near my school! 

 I got home around 6 o'clock, and soon it was dinner!

 Again. Impressed. So lucky. Wow. 

Below, Chawanmushi (steamed savory egg custard with shrimp, mushrooms, clam, and kamaboko inside!), shredded kani kama (Kanazawa-made awesome version of fake crab) stewed with special Kanazawa grown cucumber, and clam miso soup. 

And that wasn't even the main sha-bang!

Temaki Sushi! 

Te means hand, and maki means a roll, so it was make your own hand roll sushi tonight! I actually have this at home sometimes! It's like arts of crafts time: Japanese food edition. 

There were a variety of ingredients to put inside our rolls, including: red snapper, ika (squid), takuan pickles, cucumber, and natto! 

Haruki especially loved the squid. So much so, that he was just eating the squid without making a roll! That's my bro! 

 One of my rolls, pre-roll. 

 Great start to the weekend! I see a busy weekend of fun in store!