cho gotsui, ne.

Recently, there's been some amazing sunsets that I've been watching from my front door. The picture below was taken on Saturday night before going to the ume-shu party.


And, speaking of ume-shu, our homemade plum alcohol turned out great. Back in June I posted about how a group of us went to a farm and picked plums (ume) and bottled them with rock sugar and liquor. Three and a half months later, I opened mine on the night of the party and was surprised at how good it was. Here are the various jars of ume-shu (mine is on the far right...photo credit to Sarah).


Having many different mixes to choose from was nice because they all had a distinct taste. Yuko made her batch with brandy, I used less sugar than was called for, some people's plums were of a different variety, etc.

Afterwards, me, Caitlin, and Dianne (a first year teacher from New Zealand) headed out to karaoke. It was an intense two hours of singing, concluding with a seemingly never ending version of Led Zeppelin's 'Achilles' Last Stand'. I woke up in the afternoon yesterday feeling pretty bad, mainly because I was sore from singing and getting acrobatic in the karaoke booth. We were grossly overcharged for our two hours spent there but upon a day's reflection I'd say that it's karma for our un-Japanese behavior.


It's Monday and I am feeling good. The weather is nice and cool, my classes are going well, and next week I will be in Korea hanging out with Jon. Sugoi.