This weekend was another long weekend due to "Culture Day" falling on Monday. As you can probably guess from the name, it's a holiday for the Japanese to appreciate their culture. My town had a festival to commemorate it which included an Aikido demonstration, a tea making ceremony, origami lessons, cooking lessons, etc. Unfortunately, this all happened last weekend while I was away! Why they decided to have it a week early is anyone's guess. This weekend, however, I decided to stay home and not go off exploring like I usually do. On Friday night another JET, Caroline, was holding a kids Halloween party in her town of Tokoro, an hour away from me, so I decided to go and help out. I drove to Tokoro right after work on Friday to meet up with eight other JETs and spent a few Halloween-filled hours scaring all the kiddies in my mummy costume. After that we went back to her mansion of a house (her living room is pretty much the size of my entire apartment) and hung out there for the night.

The next morning we went to a fancy French restaurant called Blé (maybe the accent is pointing the other way... I don't know) where they had really good western food and homemade french bread and croissants! Soo good. After that we broke up and went our seperate ways with plans to meet up the following night for Justin's chamber orchestra concert! I drove home that afternoon when it was still light out, which is unusual for me, because I'm usually working during the daytime and never get to see the sun. I wasn't in a rush to get anywhere so I made a stop at "Ai Land Yubetsu" which was on my way home. I've driven past it a million times before but never stopped to take a look at. It's a mini amusement park with a ferris wheel and other fun looking stuff. It's closed at this time of year but I may have to go back there in the spring when it reopens..

When I got home I did some errands and other boring things like buying groceries, cleaning my apartment, taking another nap, writing in my blog and attempting to work on my presentation for next week. I decided to go to bed early that night and slept for a good ten hours. Sleeping-in is a luxury for me nowadays! The next morning I lazed around my apartment, talked to my family for over an hour on the phone and then headed out to Kitami for Justin's concert. You can read Justin induction into the orchestra on his blog. There were eight of us going and since it was technically a night out, we decided to dress up in our finest to cheer him on. The concert was put on by the "21th Kitami Chamber Orchestra" with members from all around Hokkaido. That's right, the twenty-firth Kitami Chamber Orchestra.. or is it twenty-oneth? Anyways, Justin says they're not a professional orchestra but they were pretty good. My few years working at a theatre hall and listening to the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra gave me an ear for classical music. They were a little sharp here and there, the french horn was a little squeaky and the trumpet player was playing into his music stand (something my junior high music teacher always told me not to do!) but overall they were really good, especially the violin soloist. After the concert we all went back to Justin's house where he gave a private performance and played a few pieces of Stravinsky and Bach on his viola.. then everyone changed, got drunk and had 7-11 bentos for supper. We're classy like that.

Oh yeah, I want to mention about the amazing toilet that I saw in the washrooms at the concert hall. You've all seen the self-heating, automatic washing, adjustable power, bidet toilets before (if you haven't, here's Callie's experience) but those are old news! A picture could not capture the amazingness of this toilet so I took some video of it. I also just realized the video is sideways so just tilt your head to the left.. and brace yourself..

AWESOME!

So anyways, the next morning we all broke up again and headed back to our towns. I left at around 1:00pm when it was light out (again) so I decided to make a few stops along the way. First thing I saw was this cemetery which looked pretty neat. The headstones are all really elaborate and the bigger or more richly made stone it's made of, the better the afterlife. They make cemeteries back in North America look like shoeboxes.

The other thing I saw was what I thought looked like a go-cart track but is actually a closed drivers course. It's where you go to get your Japanese drivers license test done. Instead of driving around on the road with everyone else you are safe within the protective confines of this course. From what I've heard, the drivers test has some really tough standards and it's really common to fail at least once or twice. I've heard of other JETs who took the road test and finally got it after three tries and $1000 later. Luckily for Canadians we have a driving agreement with Japan so when my IDP (international drivers permit) expires next year I just have to pay a $40 fee, watch a safety video and get a translation of my Canadian drivers license in order to get a Japanese one. No problem!


Later that night I went to the gym in my town for the first time since I've been here. My supervisor showed it to me when I first moved here but I hadn't been back there since. I bought a yoga ball and I have free weights in my house but they just weren't cutting it for me. It only costs 150 yen ($1.50) each time I go so I think I'll be going there a lot more often... when I'm not feeling lazy and manage to make the five minute drive.

Oh yeah, I also want to mention that we had our first snowfall today! It wasn't cold enough to stay and just melted when it hit the ground but it means winter is officially here! Here's a video I took at my junior high school: