I might have said this before in an earlier post but this winter seems to be just flying by. I guess it's my first one spent in a climate that's significantly warmer than southwestern Pennsylvania and the lack of 'frigidness' is a welcome change...although I really miss seeing snow. Speaking of bad weather, Caitlin and I took a day during the long weekend to check out some installation artwork and an art museum on Naoshima Island near the city of Takamatsu in Kagawa prefecture. My ex-roommate Katyana was there last year and highly recommended visiting the island once she found out that I would be living in Shikoku. I was also happy to see some more of Yayoi Kusama's works aside from the installations that she has at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh. We didn't get to see too many things during this visit (and faced some dreary rain at points) but now that we know how easy it is to get there it looks like Naoshima will be great place spend some time once the weather gets a bit warmer.
The rest of the weekend was pretty calm. I got to cook for some friends in the neighborhood on Sunday and Monday and it felt pretty good to prepare food for more than just myself or a few other people. It seemed like Fukui sensei and her family were really into watching me cut up vegetables although I'm not too sure why. The meal that I cooked for them was my version of an 'American' dish- seitan, quinoa, cashews, asparagus, cabbage, mushrooms, fresh basil, garlic, etc., etc. All plates were clean when the night was over so I was happy with that. On Sunday (the night before) Caitlin and I hung out with Hiroko and Taka (and Riku-chan) and brought over some pizza and a homemade salad and dressing for dinner. This was my first taste of pizza in Naruto and I was impressed. I think I'm lucky to live where I do soley based on the good Mexican food and pizza here. Yeah, and the sushi's not too bad either.
Hiroko's brother Shige is an interesting person. He is a teacher at a school for the deaf near Tokushima City and is deaf himself. When he talked, he used sign language, Japanese, and written and spoken English to get his point across. He would ask questions by writing them down in English and was able to lip-read most of the answers (in both English and Japanese). He was quickly able to adapt to our multi-lingual conversations (not that I can speak much Japanese) and has overcome his disablility to a great extent. Sometimes I get pretty frustrated as I blankly stare at 'Minna no Nihongo Volume I' but I realize that learning a second language could be much more challenging...
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