My coworkers asked me to join them for a ladies only lunch on Saturday. Well, ladies and kids I guess. I was supposed to meet my coworkers at our office at 11:20am on Saturday but ended up getting scooped up during my walk over to the office by one coworker who spotted me walking. After everyone arrived and we did a little carpool rearranging, we headed to Takatsuki, a city next to Ibaraki where I live. The restaurant was a kind of European style bakery and we were planning to have a fixed price lunch... basically a few courses of food along with all you can eat BREAD. Heaven. If you know me, you know about my love of bread. So I pretty much loved this place and never wanted to leave as long as the bread kept coming.
I think the babies had fun, too. How cute are they?? The little girl in the middle and I especially bonded over our headbands and love of picking up donguri (acorns). But that came later.
This isn't a great photo but here's the whole group. Look who's holding the sweet baby! That would be me. He let me hold him for about the time it took the photo.
Can you spot what I was surprised to find on the table? Silverware. It hadn't really occurred to me that I've hardly used forks and knives during my time in Japan. So, a fun surprise.
After a lovely lunch and lots of chatting about what women normally chat about (shopping, husbands, kids, single men in the office, eating too much, boyfriends... you get the idea) we got back in our cars and headed to the "expo park". Some type of world fair was held in Osaka in 1970 and this park was built for the festivities. Maybe this guy will look familiar to you...
The Tower of the Sun designed by Taro Okamoto for the world fair. The park is HUGE and we spent a few hours walking around and playing. There wasn't a ton of English conversation happening but I had such a nice time with the ladies and getting to know them a bit better. Of course, kids are the same in every country so also got to play and laugh a lot with them.
Take one...
...two
...three!
I'm still trying to learn all of their names (and pronounce them correctly!) so I can't really tell you who they are but look at these sweet faces! My coworkers told me that these flowers are called cosmos. Not sure if that translates or not. Such a fun day. So thankful for the ladies in my office and their infinite patience with me.
Saturday was probably the big Halloween party day in Osaka but I was so tired from our day at the park that after I came home and made dinner, I went to bed pretty early. Not so exciting but my Halloween options were pretty much don't go out or go out and stay out aaaaaall night until the trains start running again at 5am. I'm sure it could have been so fun but I had already decided that I wanted to try and go to a new church on Sunday morning and didn't think staying out all night would be so helpful.
I found the church before coming to Japan while Googling "christian church osaka". There weren't many links that even came up but I found this one, did a little digging in and decided that it might be nice to check out. It's actually a brand new church and their launch Sunday was this past week. So that's why I haven't really gone to any other churches here (besides being super busy on the weekends) since I've been waiting for this one to start up.
Maybe you remember my running out of cash saga from a few weeks ago? Well that basically happened again on Saturday... one of my colleagues had to buy my way into the expo park because of my lack of funds. It was kind of an accident but I knew that I needed to get to Osaka as soon as I could to get more cash. So on Sunday before church, I ventured to Osaka and went in search of a Citibank ATM. I had written down the name of the building and some general directions but still had a hard time finding what I was looking for. It was also rainy and I was running late for church so in general a bit of a stressed situation. But I decided that getting cash was my number one priority since I hadn't had breakfast (fridge also empty at this point haha) and was hungry. Now this cashless situation was a bit different from last time because now I have a fully loaded transit card. So no chance of getting stranded in a train station or anything. That made the situation completely stress-less, it was just the fact that I was running late for church that I didn't really like. Soooo after some searching I found the building, went to the seventh floor like I had written and found the bank to be closed (of course) with no ATMs. Annoyed that I had rushed and stressed over being late only to find no ATMs, I went back downstairs to the street level. Sitting right by the entrance that I had just rushed through were two ATMs. So I got a bit of cash and went back out into the drizzle to try and find my way to the church.
Here's what cheap, lazy people do when they don't want to draw a map or use data roaming on their phone for Google Maps. Pull up directions on your computer and then take a photo. Easy breezy. Walking to church from the main train station area took me around fifteen minutes and I was happy to spot an American at the entrance to the church venue so that I didn't have to guess as to where it was. The church has rented a dance club type space through the end of the year so that they're in a central location with easy access to train stations.
I probably spent around two hours at the church including the service and then lots of talking afterwards. The church is being planted by an organization that wants to plant churches in a bunch of big cities all over the world. Very vague, yes. But I guess just go to their website if you're interested in more detail :) Everyone was SO nice that I met and it was really refreshing to have easy conversation and to meet people that relocated to Japan from the US and have been living here for a few years. I'm hoping to go back when I have free Sundays and may also try to hang out with some of the people I met during the week.
After church, I spent a few hours in Umeda (main train station area in Osaka) doing some shopping and relaxing. My only goals for the day were to pick up a few gifts for colleagues and get supplies for Halloween in the office. So I headed back to Ibaraki to meet up with my coworker and do some Halloween grocery shopping.
My main idea was to make caramel apples. Pretty much the whole plan hinged on my ability to find meltable caramel so that's the first ingredient that we looked for at the grocery. I bought a few bags of individually wrapped milk caramels and hoped for the best. I also got some plain cookies and mini cupcakes for decorating. As you can see, the caramels melted really well and I was so happy that it worked out. My coworker told me that candy apples are more common in Japan so maybe the caramel apples were a new experience.
For toppings (toppings? not sure what to call this) I used peanuts, coconut and these salty, fried ramen noodly things. The green dots are macha (green tea) chocolate drops. I also dipped the cupcakes and cookies in caramel since I had plenty leftover from the apples.
I had a lot of fun making all of this... apparently I forgot about my love of crafting and baking since I haven't done it in a few weeks. Full disclosure- the bulk of the crafting came after dinner when I got back to my apartment but for continuities sake I'm posting out of order.
I can't remember how it came up but my coworker was in the mood for sushi and really wanted rolling sushi in particular. I'd heard of this kind of restaurant but hadn't tried it yet in Japan so I was definitely excited to try it out.
We sat at a bar with all the fixings for sushi laid out- green tea powder and hot water, ginger, soy sauces, etc. Plates prepared with single serving portions of various types of sushi continuously rolled by on a conveyor belt that looped through the dining room past all of the diners and once through the kitchen. The belt was reloaded with fresh plates as people took their picks off of the moving buffet. Each plate cost 105 yen (around $1.40) and there were also special dishes with higher prices as marked on a picture menu at our seats. You could also press a little intercom button and place a special order. Your order would come out via the conveyor belt on a special plate marked "reserved". So efficient.
It was really interesting to see all the different sushi options and try some new things. The strangest dish that I tried was a cooked shrimp hand roll with a little slice of cheese and squiggle of mayonnaise (I think?). I can't say that I've ever had cheese on sushi. Everything I had was good and it was also fun to see what my coworker picked out and tried.
When we decided that we'd had enough, my coworker called the waitress over and she whipped out this ruler thing to hold beside our stacks of plates and quickly see how many plates we each had. She marked it down on our ticket and we paid at the door. Seven for me. Seventeen for him.
Rolling sushi will definitely happen again in Japan. The setting is really fun and I love the delivery method. It's also nice to have a little bit of lots of things instead of just ordering one type of sushi. And again, I'm continually amazed at the patience and kindness of my coworkers. Maybe it's just Japanese good manners, but I appreciate it either way.
Usually I like to segment posts by the weekend, BUT since I'm already typing I'll go ahead and tell you about today. I think the caramel apples and other snacks were a success... sometimes I forget that you have to kind of announce things and invite people to eat what I brought. In my office at home, I usually just put cookies or whatever up at the front and by the end of the day people have figured out that I brought them. So, not quite the same official announcement and invitation to try. But still fun.
It seems like my colleagues and I are getting in the routine of going down to one of the lab break areas for the 10am coffee break, going to play outside after lunch and then going to the downstairs engineering lab for the 3pm break. This is really fun for me because there's not much English but I still get to laugh when someone translates for me and hang out with colleagues that I don't see on a normal daily basis. After lunch today, some of us played a kind of croquet/golf game. But the field was all mushy and wet so maybe tomorrow we'll play a real game. I'm not sure what my lady coworkers must think of me playing with the boys everyday, but maybe I can convince one or two to join. It's so nice to take a few minutes outside and enjoy the weather. Especially considering it's almost dark when we leave the office.
This morning I scouted out a meeting room on the other side of the building from our office that was sunny and empty. In the afternoon, I camped out for a few hours by myself to work on a few things and spend some time processing all the information I've been absorbing. I think my brains needs as much time to process and rest as it does to absorb and learn and I haven't really given myself enough time to think through all of the presentations and meetings in the office. So this week I'm going to be more intentional about spending some time by myself away from the distractions of our office so that I can do a bit of thinking. I love the group atmosphere of the office because I enjoy being with my colleagues, but at this point I'm not acclimated to the point of really being able to concentrate. Everything is a distraction to me so if I'm doing anything past checking and replying to emails, it can be difficult for me to focus.
Aaaanyway. Here are some photos that I took when I left the office today. It wasn't that late, maybe 5:30 or 5:45 but it's getting dark earlier and earlier.
I think our office looks so nice in the evening- warmly lit windows with the barely lit sky and a few palm trees just for fun. I guess it looks pretty industrial but the building is pretty interesting. I'll have to take some more photos during the day so you can see the strange architecture. It was designed by an American. With asbestos. So my choice of the word strange is not a reflection on Japanese design. Ha.
Another busy week ahead. Time is going by entirely too fast. There's a national holiday on Thursday and I'm imagining some fun activities like a pedicure or massage. Or maybe just napping and reading. Whatever it is, it will be relaxing! Tomorrow, I have to go to the grocery store. I cooked my last onion, can of tuna and bag of noodles in a curry sauce for dinner tonight. All I have really have left is peanut butter, jam, instant miso soup and coffee. But for me coffee isn't worth it without milk so that won't be happening for breakfast tomorrow. I actually texted my coworker tonight to ask what time the grocery store opens in the morning in case I had time to go before work (and before it gets so crowded so I can peruse every aisle at my favorite leisurely pace). But she translated my question as a request to be taken shopping so I spent some time trying to sort that out before figuring out that the store doesn't open until 10am. So. Looks like I'll be going shopping after work tomorrow. On my bicycle. In the dark. Since it's getting dark at like, 5:30pm now. Wish me luck.
New words: oishi- tastes good. After talking to the preacher's wife at church, she suggested that I learn one of the Japanese alphabets called Katakana. This could be completely wrong but I think it's an alphabet of characters that represent sounds so that you can make words in Japanese based on foreign (imported) words. There are forty something characters in the basic Katakana alphabet and she said that once I memorize these, I should be able to read some things at the grocery store, signs of stores, etc. That would be really nice so today I started working on learning them. I may or may not have used some of my alone time today in the office as Katakana study hall.
Other exciting things: my coworker told me about a Japanese music group called Spitz. So I'm going to Google them at some point. I'd Spotify but after they found out that I was streaming from Japan they blocked my account and are holding my playlists hostage until I either upgrade or go back home. So sad.
I can't think of anything else and unfortunately I took very few notes in my little red notebook over the weekend. Only directions to the ATM and church.
No comments:
Post a Comment