Presentation in drag

Remember when Yasu and I were playing with a wig and a pair of huge glasses? Well, we got those in preparation for Yasu's presentation about psychotherapist Virginia Satir at school today. He's really excited about it because her work is one of the three fundamental models of NLP. And he wanted to make sure his presentation is fun and interesting for his classmates, so he's dressing up as Virginia Satir to teach a small part of a seminar as her.

He's probably doing the presentation right now as I'm typing this and I hope it's going well! Good luck Yasuhiro Satir!

Birthday board game fun

Today Jenny turned 26 and she invited a bunch of people to her place to celebrate that with her.

She'd baked a huge chocolate cake and decorated it beautifully with delicious frosting, which we all helped her eat.

And she'd also organized some activities: board games! Yay, I love board games, especially with a large group. We played 'Cranium' and 'Apples to Apples', two games I'd never played before but they were really fun.

Yasu and I are so glad to have such a nice circle of friends here in SF. We really need to hang out with them more, lots more.

Catching up

Almost 4 years ago I moved to Nagoya, Japan and was trained to be an English teacher for AEON. And one of my fellow trainees was Eric, from San Francisco. After a year in Nagoya, he moved back home and he's still here. And tonight we met him to do some catching up!

We had dinner with him in a small Vietnamese restaurant, its interior actually made me feel like we were back in Japan, in one of its many little Asian restaurants. Or maybe it was the company, one being an actual Japanese man and the other a man I've only known in Japan.

We had some tasty Vietnamese food (which surprised me because Vietnamese in Japan tastes rather bland) and they actually gave us one of those typical paper take away boxes, Yasu and I have only seen in the movies. Which we found pretty cool and picture-worthy, and I think Eric found us a little weird. He's probably right! It was really fun to see him again.

Waiting

On Friday we get this note slipped under our door from the building owner. Telling us that they're coming to inspect our apartment Sunday morning between 9:30 and 10:30 with an official inspector. It doesn't say what they're coming to inspect, which made me slightly nervous so I spent Saturday cleaning the apartment, just in case. 

We got up early on Sunday, to make sure we'd be up and properly dressed, the bed was made, and the dishes were done when they came to inspect. We waited... waited... waited... and waited... 

It was way past 10:30, but people are always late here, so we waited some more. I didn't cook proper lunch because I didn't want to make the stove dirty (I cleaned hard on it the night before) and we thought the dreaded inspectors could show up any minute. No one came, all day.

We did hear a lot of people working in the hallways yesterday, so we assumed that whatever they came to inspect wasn't necessary anymore or whatever. We didn't call to check with the building owner, because he's a slightly intimidating ex-cop.

Then this morning at 9:35 AM, when we're walking around, just awake, half-dressed, the building owner, his wife and the inspector show up, wanting to come in! 

Yasu: "We thought you were coming yesterday?"

Building Owner: "No, today! Check your letter!" 

Louana (hiding half-dressed behind door): "Can we at least get dressed first?"

Building Owner Wife: "Ok, we'll check apartment 303 first."

They left and we hurriedly got dressed, made the bed, did the dishes, checked the letter... Turned out they did write Monday, but they also wrote February 20, yesterday's date. And waited, waited, waited. It's almost 5 PM, and no one has come.... 

Intercepted ramen

Yasu received a care package from Japan today, it was supposed to filled to the rim with his favorite instant ramen. But he wasn't the first to open it, US Customs was. And they took out 15 packages of instant noodles and 3 packages of dried snacks, making the box quite empty and light. 

[Care package from Japan, only half full]

We had no idea sending instant ramen would be a problem. Last year, when Yasu was in the Netherlands and I was still in Japan, I sent him a huge box full of instant ramen and other goodies and it all arrived without a problem. And the only thing the Japanese post office tells us we're not allowed to send abroad are things that contain milk.

[My care package for Yasu last year]

So it was quite disappointing to see that this time so much had been taken out and destroyed (or perhaps eaten by customs officials) including some of his favorites, but they did leave 7 instant ramen boxes for him and they make Yasu happy too!

Look-a-likes

They say married people start to look like eachother the longer they are married. We've been married for a little over a year:

Seems like we're already getting there.

A day in pictures

Took the Muni bus in the morning.

With my new umbrella.

Because the rain was relentless.

Went to see my physical therapist to work on my tennis elbow and thumb tendinitis.

Had to sit up (because my low blood pressure always makes me dizzy when I lie down) when he stretched my arm, hurt my elbow to loosen the tendon, treated me with ultrasound heat (machine on the left table), and when he put a huge heat pack (on the chair/bed) on my arm.

Waited in the waiting room for a letter of recommendation for a thumb brace.

Bought this thumb stabilizer at CVS.

Hung out at Starbucks with a new book by my favorite author.

Enjoyed a view of the San Francisco rain and the movie theater while talking to my little brother (in the Netherlands) on iPhone Facetime (love the free WIFI at Starbucks).

Met up with Bradley and Hannah.

And my husband.

For a huge American dinner at Denny's.

And an interesting and slightly scary movie across the street.

Had a great day.

Juan's cooking

Juan, Yasu's Spanish friend from school, invited us for lunch today!

He made us creme de asparagus and a potato and codfish dish from the oven: 

Much fancier than I expected when I thought about lunch, and he made it all from scratch (we actually watched him do it) and it was so good! Especially the soup, and I don't like soup, was very tasty. Thanks Juan for a delicious and fun afternoon.

Early sakura

Look what I spotted today in front of my friend's house: 

Sakura a.k.a. cherry blossoms! In Japan cherry blossoms are a big deal and people celebrate these cute little white flowers with festivals and picnics, usually with lots of people, lots of food and lots of alcohol. I've celebrated the sakura three different times when I lived in Japan (2008, 2009, 2010) and it was always in the first week of April. But here in warm and sunny San Francisco cherry blossom season apparently is in early February! Yasu and I want to organize a hanami (flower viewing) party under the cherry blossoms in some park, but we're not allowed to drink alcohol in public here...

Happy birthday Gy!

My little brother is turning 20 today! Yeah, that's right he's more than 10 years younger than me :). Oh, how I wish I was still that young sometimes. He's just turned adult, in Japan, but he's got one more year to go in the Netherlands. 

He'll always be my little brother, his nickname is actually "The Little One", but he's not so little anymore. Still, I thought I'd honor his twentieth birthday with a selfmade card with loads of pictures when he was still little. Here are two of my favorite pictures of when The Little One was actually little:

Doesn't he look adorable with his huge shovel and sitting in the kitchen sink? 

Happy birthday, Gyano!

My Super Bowl commercial top 3

I really enjoyed watching the Super Bowl game at a friend's house yesterday. Two weeks ago she taught me all about the rules, so this time I knew exactly what was going on, when I was paying attention that is, because we were talking way too much! Girls...

I was also very excited to see the special Super Bowl commercials. I heard they are supposed to be a big deal and I'm a big fan of funny and interesting commercials. But again, we were talking too much and the gist of most of the commercials were lost on me. So tonight I watched them all again online, yeah I'm such a commercial nerd. I was pretty impressed by most of the 66 (!) original Super Bowl commercials, and I even have a top 3!

# 3: The Pug Attack by Doritos

The running pug looks cute, but I was scared the bully was going to hurt him with his mean trick. But the pug is super powerful and puts that bully in it's place and eats his Doritos.

# 2: The Saluting Beaver by Bridgestone

Oh my, that beaver is so cute. He's cute when he's almost run over, he's cute when he salutes the driver for swerving around him, he's cute when he saves the driver's life 6 months later. But he's the cutest when he does that fist-to-chest bump!

# 1: The Darth Vader Kid by Volkswagen

I even got this commercial when I saw it live on TV, because the tiny Darth Vader was so adorable  even us stopped talking to watch him in action. I love his reaction when he thinks he starts the car and how he looks back at the house to see if anybody saw him do it.

There were also numerous commercials with famous Americans in them and of those I liked this second commercial with Eminem the most (he also starred in some ice tea commercial).

I like this commercial because of the impressive shots of Detroit, the drama of the commercial and the music. Oh, and I think Eminem is cool and I love his music.

Can't wait to see next year's Super Bowl and all its commercials! What a fun American pastime.

Repeat student

Look what I did, again.

Small book?

Doesn't this look like a small book?

Actually the book is a normal-sized book, the letters are just huge. It doesn't look as impressive in this picture as it does in real life, so I put a regular book with regular-sized letters next to it, so you can compare:

It's a large print edition of one of Jefferey Deaver's recent books. Yasu brought me this from the library, and it surprised me, because I've never seen such a thing. But I really like it, I can read the book from across the room and I'll be turning the pages so quickly I'll probably feel like a speed reader.

I love the library here, it's totally free and they allow you take out so many books, CDs and DVDs. Now, I've got all Harry Potter books in audio version. Of course, I've read all seven books at least twice, but you can never read Harry Potter enough, right? And now I can 'read' them while I'm sewing or organizing pictures for my blog. Awesome.

Eating a lucky direction roll for Setsubun

I know these pictures look weird but we're actually following a Japanese tradition here.

It's Setsubun today, which is the day before spring in Japan (even though I'm sure the weather will still be pretty wintery in Japan tomorrow) and the Japanese celebrate that in several ways. People love to throw beans (mamemaki) and to catch and eat their age in beans, a tradition I tried a few years ago in Inuyama, to scare away evil spirits. That was an interesting experience, but I much prefer the lucky direction roll (ehomaki) tradition. Basically you buy yourself an uncut sushi roll, and eat it completely in silence while looking in the lucky direction, determined by the zodiac symbol of that year. 

Last year, Tomomi inspired me to try it, simply because her makizushi (sushi roll) looked so yummy. But of course, we didn't eat it in silence, we love talking too much, and we had no idea what direction to look in, but we didn't care because our sushi was delicious.

Today, I stopped by Japantown after my appointment at the physical therapist and bought an uncut sushi roll for Yasu and me to lunch on at his school. I did know the lucky direction this year (SSE) but we forgot to check our compass because we were once again busy talking. So no eating in silence and also against tradition, we were sharing the roll... Oh well, lunch was delicious again this Setsubun.