Trick or Treat Part two...

Last weekend, Lindsay and I dressed up as each other's evil twin for John's potluck party. This weekend I packed up and went to Miyazaki Prefecture (southeast of here, on the coast). After sending out an email on the JETs of African Decent site about being bored, I received a couple invitations. I couldn’t make most of the events because of my schedule here but Friday was a holiday so I headed on down. I took the highway bus from the most obscure place ever. The bus stop was literally on the highway. It took about 3 hours to get down there. Miyazaki is absolutely beautiful. I stayed with a girl from NY who lived in San Francisco before coming here. She’s biracial, has serious identity issues, insecure, and immature. Not exactly the things you want to be when you’re almost 30 (no the biracial part…lol). She is really nice and loves to have fun so we had a good time. All the English teachers down there live in the country which made me really appreciate my little boring city and the 6 others who live in my building a little more. The first party was in a city that was about an hour away. A lot of people wore really interesting costumes. Like this guy who was a "space man" or something. Yes, that's silver paint. No, he's not wearing any clothes. Unless you count the piece of tin foil covering his business. His helmet is attached to the tank on his back by a hose. The tank had U.S.A. written on it in marker. I must say he's the boldest Japanese man I've ever seen. I got to see two of the people who I’d met at orientation back in Atlanta. That's them in the next picture. The one dressed as a woman won the costume contest and the space man got second. After the party everyone headed over to yet another bar. O, joy... Here you have to pay a table charge just to be there and a little extra for all-you-can-drink, but they were nice enough to make an exception for me since I wasn’t drinking. I would have stood outside otherwise. That night we hung out at another JET’s super nice apartment. He was the best host ever. He had enough futons for everyone and he even fried bananas and made tea for us all in the morning. Now I know for sure that my prefecture cares the least about our living conditions. The next night we went to a party in some cabins and spent the night. Here are the two top winners of the costume party there. Optimus Prime (who knew a monologue from the show) got first place and Kim Jong Il was second. Too funny!!! It was really nice. Dinner was a potluck and there was toast, eggs, and tea for breakfast. The cabins were so nice. Everyone’s places were so nice (newer), especially in comparison to mine. Everyone I met was really nice and I plan to go back down in the spring to enjoy the beach, “Monkey Island,” Japan’s version of the Easter Island statues, and some of the other interesting sites down there. When I got back home (7:30 pm), I had a dessert party at my place (8:00 pm) to get rid of all the sweets I got from the reception after my demonstration class. We had cake, mochi, fried apples (with cinnamon and sugar because I had a taste for them…and three ripe apples to get rid of), edamame (to balance out the sweets), earl grey tea, Darjeeling tea, hot chocolate, coffee, and orange drink (no, not juice!)...I’m high society over here in the projects.