Winter II

Winter has been tough.

The nasty weather has encouraged us to bunker down. Yep, most of our time has been spent sitting around, reading or watching movies, and drinking tea. Accordingly, nothing interesting happened for the last few weeks.

However, last weekend we managed to be a bit more social and had Hillary, Cory, and Alicia over for some warming food- our guest special, Corn Chowder with a side of Crab Rangoons. Gorging followed. Then we hit into Alicia's salad and Hillary's brownies for more indulgence. For a nice digestif we watched the first "Kill Bill." Living in Japan has made me realize that all movie Japan cliches are, in fact, true.

1. School girls always wear their uniforms, even on Sundays.
2. School girls can shift moods in the blink of an eye. Cute --> Killer in .5 seconds
3. Kawaii [cute] things occupy an inordinately high position in the "important things" pyramid.
4. While gigantic monsters don't wander the towns, if you replace the monsters with insects[of the same size!], you get a very accurate representation.
5. The "Samurai Standoff" is actually the teacher-question student-try-to-outwait-the-teacher dynamic.