We spent the last Saturday in town being very big Barbies, but more in the sense of a Japanese dress-up doll instead of the blond and pink. We were invited to go for dinner with the Takikawa Soroptimist group, for a formal Kimono dress-up session, make-up, hair, and dinner. It was a fantastic invite that we jumped on immediately.
In case you are thinking “What is a Soroptimist? Is that like a Pianist?”

Soroptimist (”best for women”) is an international volunteer organization for business and professional women who work to improve …

Of all the things that you have heard about Hokkaido, they are probably all true, but really, Hokkaido is all about its winter. There might be delicious diary products and ice creams here, but nothing beats the powdery fluffy snow. To keep warm in this kind of weather, we have grown accustomed to long johns and toque hair. We have also learned to enjoy a nice warm Shōchū (焼酎) from time to time.
Things we do to try to keep warm and keep ourselves lively

- We drink and hang out. …

16.

Cathy and I had been tossing around the idea of where to go for Christmas / New Years for a few weeks. We had considered going down to the tropical southern part of Japan, Okinawa, or maybe driving around Hokkaido, soaking in the wintery goodness. We ended up deciding on something very much in the middle (both on the map and the thermometer), Tokyo! Seeing how we live in Japan, it’s almost necessary to visit Tokyo.

Looking into our travel options, we found a hidden jewel of the Japanese …

Konnichiwa!
We took a trip to Sapporo last weekend with our gaijin friend Matt (We’ve only known Matt for a few weeks, but he’s been around to help us with many things, as he is the only foreigner who A) works at city hall B) is fluent with both English and Japanese). The purpose of the trip was to go to the Apple store in Sapporo to make Steve Jobs happy by purchasing an Airport express (Which has apparently now been renamed the Airmac express, odd.) It’s interesting that every single …

Samantha & Rafael were the teachers here before us. We spent 2 short weeks together learning our way around Takikawa and the ins & outs of the job.

Sam & Raf left for Vancouver on November 25th:
Hey peeps!
How are things? Is everything OK, are you guys still confident about everything now that Sam and I are gone?
Just taking the initiative here and writing to let you know that our flight went OK, and that even though it was long we had a good time because the service was so good! …