Lunch under the Cherry Blossoms

Cherry Blossom season is absolutely lovely. The weather is perfect and the blossoms make everywhere look beautiful. So, to make the most of this season I enjoy eating my lunch outside in Tsu Castle Park since it's close to work and my apartment. 

When I eat at the park I like to stop by the bakery near the post office for my lunch. They have the best tuna sandwiches on a walnut bread and really good mini mango chocolate pies. However, today I picked up their BLT on walnut bread(the tuna was sold out D:) their mini pesto Mediterranean pizza and their anpan(red bean filled white bread with sesame seeds on top) then I grabbed a coffee too. A pretty typical lunch for me.. I maybe go to this bakery a few times a month :) it's really delicious. 

It's nearing the end of cherry blossom season though, so many petals are falling and it is very stunning, making not only the trees beautiful to look at but the ground as well. 

Snacking at work

Asparagus bacon potato sticks... Taste exactly like asparagus and bacon... a little disturbing but super delicious. My new favorite snack lol

p.s. This is probs turning into more if a food travel blog cause it's a lot easier to make posts like this haha

Iga

Ate Ichigo Daifuku today! I have seen pictures of this online before and always wanted to try it! It is mochi with anko(red bean paste) and a strawberry inside! It was super delicious!

Setsubun!!

Well, today was Setsubun. The Japanese holiday where you drive away evil demons by throwing beans at them. While I didn't do any bean throwing... I did participate in a few of the activities, which included eating as many soybeans as your age, and having a good fortune senbe(which is apparently only a Tsu thing I think) Inside the giant triangular senbe thing was a little good luck figurine of little men. Super cute.

Other traditional things that I did not take part in is eating a rice roll(we would call it sushi in the US but its aomaki....) the reason I didnt eat this was because the line for them was insane at the super market... and I didn't have the patience... Then often times families will have the father dress up as a demon and the kids will throw beans at him as he runs away out of the house to symbolize cleansing of evil spirits. So, pretty cool holiday, however still had to work haha

Other than that nothing new, but there was a small earthquake a second ago... which is the second one I have felt since being here, and caught me a bit off guard, but it was a really small tremor... so all is good! Still working making all those old videos, so keep tuned for that!

Tsu Festival, October 13, 2013

Yay! I was productive this weekend! Here is a look at what Tsu festival was like way back in October! It was a lot of fun and the food was awesome!

Another part of Tsu Festival that is very famous is it's Yosakoi dancing, so here is a video of some of the different Yosakoi dances I saw! They kind of made me think of marching band haha

Finally, at Tsu festival I won my wonderful pet turtle Taiko!! He is still alive and doing well!! :)

Nothing much

So... I have been doing a horrible job of keeping this blog! So, I thought I would post something to let you know that I have not given up! I have tons of video footage since October of Tsu Festival, Kyoto, Nara, and Vietnam that I really hope to put together eventually and post... just editing takes a lot of time.. and my computer doesn't like to not freeze every two seconds when my editing program is running... so, I'm working on them, just its a slow process, and the videos might not come out in chronological order, but something is better than nothing right??

Life update: These last few months I have traveled around a lot, and so I have had little down time. However, now it is winter in Japan, and it is cold... not as cold as most places in the US, but cold enough that I don't want to go for a 30 min bike ride to do anything. So, these days I'm just chilling at my apartment and going to work(which hopefully means I'll be more productive on my blogs and vlog than I have been).

Last a list of some things I miss about the US in no particular order:

-central heat
-cheese/milk
-having a car
-being able to see movies when they first come out in theaters(Japan gets them usually around 3 months after the US)
-netflix/hulu
-having an oven
-having a larger group of friends to hang out with
-my painting supplies
-fruit that isn't overpriced

Kyoto in September Days 2 and 3!

Second and last day in Kyoto! I'm too lazy to write a blog with the videos... so here are the videos... not very quality but I didn't try that hard.. just for fun.