And Sometimes Why

Just in case you thought you ate a lot of rice, here’s a picture of the bag of rice we have in our apartment. It’s a 30 kg bag (66 lb).

Yuko’s parents buy a new one of these about every three months and split it with us. That means that Yuko and I eat about 11 kg (24 lb) of rice each month, and I eat far more of it than Yuko does (too many carbs…).

Good thing we both like genmai (unpolished brown rice).

Even Parmesan cheese needs a mascot and a cell phone strap in Japan.

When I tell people that I’m officiating weddings on the weekend, a question I’ve been asked a number of times is “Why do Japanese people like ‘Western-style’ weddings?”

The biggest reason is “Because it’s cool,” but if you’re interested in reading more about it, I just happened onto the seiyaku.com web site, which does a fabulous job explaining it:

http://www.seiyaku.com/seiyaku/en/western-wedding.html

Their description is pretty accurate for the ceremonies I perform, too- which makes sense, because Japanese people like to do things the same way everyone else does.

Today was an interesting day. I’m teaching summer camp right now, and today was the first outing for one of the office ladies to go out with a class on a field trip. She was incredibly nervous- so much so, in fact, that she worked herself up into a literal fever this morning before we left.

We went to Ehime University’s annual insect exhibition, and it went really well, even though the end of the field trip found me running to get to the bus so we could get back to school on time. The museum had a “Quiz Rally” that the kids found exciting, involving a quiz station set up in each exhibit room where the kids had to write their answers on an answer sheet to win a prize at the end. The prizes ended up being postcards from the gift shop, but they were colorful closeup photos of exotic insects, at least.

The problem was they didn’t have any signage about where to take the answer sheets when you were done, and we were already short on time, so I sent the kids (only five) ahead to the bus with my de facto assistant while I ran around the museum trying to figure out where to get the kids’ “prizes.”

All’s well that ends well, I suppose.