an airshow, raw beef, oh, and class

It's Saturday & I had to go to school. Six days in a row is kinda rough & I'm ready for the weekend!! It was "PTA open school" & this morning I taught Writing and listened to a 60-minute lecture (of course all in Japanese), but in the afternoon I watched portions of an airshow going on at the airport near my school. I just stepped out of the teachers' room onto the balcony & had a fantastic view of the planes zooming, spinning, and making cute smoky shapes like a heart with an arrow through it.

After school I relaxed at a coffee shop then met up with a teacher & some new friends for dinner. A couple people knew English, but for the most part, the 8 of us only spoke Japanese. As always, after a long day of concentrating & thinking so hard about language, I'm exhausted. But, I feel excited too to see my listening & speaking progress.

At dinner, the first dish was a green salad with raw red meat on top. People argued back and forth, 'it's beef.' 'no, it's horse.' 'beef.' 'horse.' I was grossed out by both possibilities, but I've learned it's best to take at least one bite.

Yum! I had seconds! Later we asked & found out it was beef. Hum, raw beef. Who would have thought it'd be so tasty? (and wouldn't make us sick!) Unfortunately I didn't get my camera out for the raw beef salad...the photo above is raw fish wrapped around a leaf, cheese, and rice - also very good.

We also ate cow stomach with spaghetti noodles, a lot of sashimi (raw fish without rice), more good raw stuff, plum wine, and two of the guys ate the entire (eyeballs & all!) fried fish skeleton. (this is the fish before it got fried and eaten)