Weekword: Panoply

Seriously Jen? You chose ‘Panoply’ as this week’s weekword?! Aaaah! So difficult. (You can check out if how everyone else faced this word over at Jen’s blog) Panoply can be defined as ‘a full suit of armor’, ‘something forming a protective covering’ or ‘a magnificent or impressive array’. When I read this word earlier in the week I had a complete blank. I was sure I’d be able to think of something by Friday but nope! (that’s why this is posted on a Saturday!)

So anyway, I decided to go with the full suit of armor  definition and I’ll tell you about the armor of Date Masamune (bare with me). Date was a legendary warrior and leader during the early Edo period (he died in 1636) and founded the city of Sendai where I live. However it is his armor that is most interesting today.

This is a replica of his armor. Ignoring the giant yellow thing on this head does it remind you of anyone? It should...

Yes Date’s armor was apparently used as part of the inspiration for some of the most famous armor in movie history. The character was designed to have a wide brimmed helmet similar to a medieval samurai and the samurai that was used was Date Masamune. Have you figured it out yet?

Date Masamune is the original Darth Vader.

Scotland Trip – Christmas and New Year Part 3 (New Year in Edinburgh and Glasgow)

So my time in Shetland over Christmas was short but lovely  and it was time to change location  to central Scotland for Hogmanay (New Year) . Most of my extended family live in Glasgow so I really wanted to see them this trip as well as celebrate the New Year in Edinburgh with friends. Hannah and I flew down to Glasgow and spent a few days there shopping, seeing family and having proper Hannah-Emily-twin time.

Twin time involves going to cafes and eating cake. If you can get yourself a twin, I highly recommend it.

Then it was through to Edinburgh for the Hogmanay street party and concert in the gardens (Primal Scream) . Hannah R. was lovely  enough to host us and it was good to ring in the New Year with some of my best friends, dancing, singing and trying not to fall over and slide down the muddy bank than was the Princes Street Gardens.

Two of my favourite people!

Concert in the Gardens with the Edinburgh Castle behind.

Watching the fireworks over the Castle

It didn't start raining until after midnight! Result!

A great time was had by all. The next morning (despite a ten minute panic after some unnamed person *cough*Hannah*cough* deleted our bus reservation) we were sent on our way back to Glasgow after a lovely Scottish breakfast from Hannah R.

Yum yum

Our last few days were once again met with hurricane winds but thankfully we still managed to fit in seeing more of the family. Finally my stay ended with a night being fed and looked after by my lovely Grandparents. What else could a girl want?

P.S. The trip home was nowhere near as exciting as the trip to Scotland so it doesn’t really need its own post. I bought another bottle of the perfume I lost on the incoming journey, slept, watched movies, ate BA out of the shortbread in their snack bar and read a lot. Hopefully all my future journeys will be as uneventful.

Scotland Trip – Christmas and New Year Part 2 (Christmas in Shetland)

So I got back to Shetland late on the 23rd and basically went to bed straight away!   The 24th was my day for seeing lots of Shetland friends or actually just friends whose parents live in Shetland these days! I don’t have photos of everyone since I decided it was more important to have fun this holiday rather than take pictures but I managed to meet up with 3 different groups of people on the 24th (lunch, afternoon coffee, evening coffee). It was really good to basically pick up where I had left off when I moved away. You know you are good friends with people when you don’t see each other for years and things are exactly the same when you meet up again. I also managed to fit in some last minute Christmas shopping including  buying things Hannah pointed out that she liked without her realising while she was in the shop. Many thanks to Hannah R. and Kirsten for helping me to be super sneaky and surprise Hannah a lot the next morning!

Meeting up with old friends!

Christmas day was spent with just the family (me, Hannah, Mum and Dad). This was our first Christmas together in a long time because I didn’t go home for Christmas last year (I went to see family in Sydney instead) and Hannah was living in New Zealand the year before so she also made a Sydney trip. It was nice to spend time together as  a family and this year I didn’t even have to do any cooking!

Chefs working hard in the kitchen

Supreme Master of Desserts

I was demoted to laying the table

 

Christmas Dinner

The rest of the time in Shetland was spent relaxing, spending time with family and friends and clearing lots of junk out of my room. I didn’t manage to go through my stuff before I moved to Japan so I took the time when I was back to get rid of a lot of junk. Going through my clothes was almost like having a mini shopping trip as I found a lot of clothes that I don’t understand why I didn’t take to Japan in the first place!

We had a lovely hurricane force gale on Christmas day and the weather was pretty bad for the rest of my time home so I didn’t get much of a chance to walk about or do much outside. I was a bit worried about not getting off Shetland but the day I left was actually the nicest weather of my whole time there!

View from the house on my last day

 

C25K – Week 1 Done

So ignoring the fact that I did Week 1 about 4 months after I said I would then I would say Couch to 5km has been a big success! Despite managing to make an idiot of myself at the gym in ‘the socks incident’ on the first day this week I buried my shame and went back again for the rest. Now let’s hope I don’t leave it so long to do Week 2.

60secs running, 90 secs walking. Next week is 90 secs of running and 2 mins walking. Eeep!

First Japanese Junior High School Lunch

Unlike most ALTs in Japan who work at Junior High Schools I don’t get school lunch. I work at a combined Junior/Senior High School (or Secondary School) so while the Junior  High students (and their teachers) do get a set school lunch we also have a cafeteria for the Senior High students and the other teachers. I did have the choice whether or not to get the JHS lunch and it is very cheap but with the set lunch it’s either get it every day or not at all. Since it sometimes has food I really don’t like (i.e. natto) I’d rather either eat at the cafeteria or bring my own lunch.

However this past Thursday one of our first year classes was closed down due to flu. I think around 9 or 10 of the 34 kids currently have the flu so the rest of the students were sent home for the rest of the week to hopefully stop it spreading to the other students. However this meant that on Friday there would be 34 extra lunches going to waste unless the teachers stepped up. This lead to about ten of us having the Junior High lunch on Friday. The other teachers found it very funny that we kept on being surprised by the littlest things: ‘Oh, the rice tin has the city symbol on it!!’, ‘You have to fold your milk carton?!’. I think it did lead to a bit of a decrease in productivity because there was only 10 of us consuming the lunch for 34 kids so we did get given quite a lot to eat!

Here it is! We had Mabo Tofu (bottom right bowl), milk, edamame (young soybean) croquettes, boiled veggies and rice (which also came with a little packed of dried seaweed for seasoning that I discovered after this picture).

There were extra helpings of everything in this picture but I seriously couldn’t eat any more! Also I think I must have the cutest chopsticks ever (Winnie the Pooh!).

WIAW – Tuesday edition!

Time for a new type of post for me: What I Ate Wednesday.

Be sure to check out some of the other posts on WIAW.

Living in Japan means I get some questions from home about the kind of things I eat so I thought this would be a good idea. The standard  post is for Wednesdays but since Wednesday is the one day of the week I don’t eat lunch at work (grabbing a sandwich going from school to another) I thought doing a Tuesday version would be better. So here you have it:

Breakfast: Oatmeal and orange juice - not so Japanese! I actually have to buy the oatmeal from a Foreign Food shop. It's nice to have something warm when it's so cold and snowy outside like it is now.

Lunch: Today I bought lunch at the school cafeteria. This is miso ramen so ramen noodles and lots of vegetables in a miso broth. Yum!

Dinner: Very tired after the gym today so I just grabbed some sushi from the supermarket on my way home. On the right is Inarizushi which is a pouch of fried tofu filled with rice. The other two are sushi rolls. To be honest I'm not too sure about the ones in the middle..I think they are pickled burdock. The ones on the left tuna, lettuce, egg and crab.

No pictures of: water and banana/apple snacks since they are boring (and I forgot!).

English Boards 5

Spring English Board!

Any excuse to put up baby animal pictures.