Wedding Weekend

No work on Friday. A plane ride. A wedding. A college reunion.

This weekend can't come soon enough.

Wedding Ready, 

Kate

The Latest...

Google Search

How to find a lost ipad. 

Accomplishment 

Swimming before work. 

Tune

Stolen Dance by Milky Chance

Weekend Update

highlights included...

[1] fall in kagurazaka.

[2] a lovely latte from the new zealand coffee chain MOJO.

[3] went to see Argo (it's an amazing film, go!) and walked by some fish on the way into the theater.

[4] rainbow bridge and tokyo tower from odaiba.

 [1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

hope you all had a great one as well!

xoxo,
kate

Our Scrappy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

 This is the third year in a row that I have celebrated turkey day in Japan, and while I am always pretty bummed that I can't be home in sunny LA eating turkey and stuffing with friends and family, I am always curious to see what original ways we'll come up with to celebrate the holiday over here.

This year, I completely forgot about the holiday until everyone from the US started wishing me a Happy Thanksgiving. I was content with it being just another Thursday in Japan, but then I came home from work and watched a bit of TV. It was a Thanksgiving episode, and I thought, "Awww man! Now I wanna celebrate."

So I texted all members of JET village to see if anyone wanted to try to throw together a scrappy, totally causal, relatively creative, last minute Thanksgiving. We had a few members on board. We quickly decided on a menu, divided up the tasks, and everyone came over to help cook. Since we didn't totally know what we were doing, the theme of our make-shift Thanksgiving was, "No complaining." Not that any of us would have anyway, but just to make everyone more comfortable with their tasks, if the green beans were burned no one was allowed to complain, if the chicken (no turkey in Japan) wasn't flavorful enough, you wouldn't hear any negative comments from the audience. It was a great theme, you couldn't fail! By the end, it all became a huge joke, but I think it really took the pressure off.

Given that I sent the text out at 5, and we ate at 7, the meal turned out pretty great! Better than we expected.

It was a very happy thanksgiving indeed. 

 

Gobble, Gobble, 

Kate

P.S. You can read about past thanksgivings here and here.

[The Latest]

Must Read: A Chinese Education, For a Price...NY Times. 

Google Search: Simple green bean recipe.

Tune: Broken Hearted By Karmin

Accomplishment: Watching everyone walk home a little fatter and happier. :)

Obsessions: New baked apple dessert.

Fall

which means...

thick socks

scarves

changing leaves

blankets

hot chocolate

boots, boots, boots

candles

pumpkins

thanksgiving

movie nights.

All the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey, 

Kate

[The Latest]

Must Read: London Tube Pranks...Buzzfeed. 

Google Search: supercook.com.  

Tune: California Dreamin By The Mamas and The Papas.

Accomplishment: A jog in the rain.

Obsessions: Instafonts App.

Fallin Around

This past weekend, in another effort to soak up every ounce of autumn, I headed to Shinjuku Gyoen with my friend Jeff to explore. A newbie to Japan, I am ridding on the coattails of Jeff's excitement and eagerness to explore this beautiful country to discover a few new things for myself.

[Shinjuku Gyoen]

Still sending you love Dad...

After the park it was off to eat dinner and check out the Halloween costume situation. Japan doesn`t do Halloween per say. There is Halloween crap to buy everywhere, but when it comes to trick or treating and Jack-O-Lantern making, it just doesn't happen. During the costume hunt, we saw a carving size appropriate pumpkin for ¥3000 or $40. We passed. Then we saw a Darth Vader costume that Jeff got excited about, but that too was a no go when we saw that it was over $100, and either way we ran the risk of it not fitting his 6 foot frame. So we have reverted to the old school way of doing things, which is to create it ourselves. The Darth Vader mask is the killer, but we will see!

Loving the season, 

Kate

[The Latest]

Must Read: Darrell Hammond Abuse from CNN

Poor guy. I had no idea.

Google search: How to make your own Darth Vader costume

Tune: Pumped Up Kicks By Foster the People

Accomplishment: an excellent chicken salad for dinner, reading and understanding an entire paragraph in Japanese

Obsessions: hourly weather with the new itunes update, Halloween things, homemade popcorn

Visual aid of my latest accomplishment.

Falling into Autumn

I love fall.

I have made that rather well known to anyone and everyone who is around me as of lately. The other day one of my guy friends said to me, `Is that a girl thing? Your love of fall? I feel like every girl I know loves fall.`


Let's be honest. What girl doesn't love candles, wine, a nice dinner and a movie, and maybe, just maybe someone to share it with. That doubled with weather encouraging that very scenario is almost too good to be true. Then their is fall fashion. As a southern California child, I am loving the seasons and enjoying it even more by showing off my personality through boots and scarves. Seasonal clothing is still something I'm getting used to.

Yesterday, Monday, I had a slow day at work as all the students had midterm exams all day. I was left to sit at my desk and entertain myself. Given that I don't have to lesson plan, as I am not teaching elementary school anymore, I had little to do but play online. Something I think anyone from my generation is remarkably good at. I started looking at all things fall; clothes, crafts, recipes. And decided that after school I would go and try to `fallify` my apartment. More difficult than you might think living in Japan.

Everywhere had kitschy Halloween stuff, but I didn't want that. I wanted generic, classic fall things that could last well past Halloween, through November. And let's all remember that I won't be living here forever, so I wanted to spend as little money as possible and buy stuff that I wouldn't feel guilty throwing away in a few months. Surprisingly I found a few pumpkins and a cheap vine of flowers to accent my home with this lovely season.

I have passed the first few weekends of this lovely season by traveling to Tokyo and exploring. Just wanting to be out in the weather, walking around with my coffee. It really is the simple things in life.

Loving Starbucks flavoring, Hazelnut especially

I get excited when they come to town

Persimmon is kaki in Japanese, just so you know

Make your own Jack-O-Lantern!
Ya there`s an app for that

Starbucks apple crumble latte.
Not sure if it`s just a Japan thing, but it is definitely apple pie in a cup.

Snuggled, 

Kate

[The Latest]

Must Read: Why gamers are a great fit at the gym from CNN

Google search: Fall things

Tune: Don`t Let Me Fall By Lenka

Accomplishment: get back into a workout routine, branching out a the grocery store

Obsessions: 79yen milk frother from IKEA, plastic desk cover from IKEA that is now decorated with pictures underneath, my new fall apartment decos, persimmons