What Easter?

All the blog chatter about Easter made me pretty homesick this weekend. Not only are there absolutely no signs of Easter here in Japan, there are barely any signs of spring! It snowed off and on this weekend and has been super windy everyday. 

Despite the lack of Easter celebrations and the bout with homesickness, it wasn't a bad weekend at all. Friday began the second round of work parties to welcome the new teachers who are starting at my school. All the English teachers went to a small izakaya called Kushi-Zen which specializes in yakitori and other skewered meats. The food at these kind of parties can be a crapshoot but this one was better than most despite the chicken skin, beef liver and grilled seaweed-wrapped natto (blech). The pork salad and bacon wrapped tomatoes were SO GOOD. I think I will be making bacon wrapped tomatoes at the first spring barbecue, whevnever that will be. After the work party I headed across the street to a bar to meet some friends for drinks and Super Nintendo. I don't think I'd ever played Super Mario while drunk and I must say, I'm still pretty good!

The next day, Saturday, Sean and I went over to a friend's for a trivia night which was tons of fun. My team was kind of crap with a lot of the questions but when that ONE literary question came up you can bet I nailed it. (What is the alternate title of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein?) I had that crap written down like lightning! But yeah, I had no idea what the Beaufort scale was. 

(It's a method of measuring wind). 

As for Sunday, we didn't do a darn thing! We both slept in really late, cleaned up and did laundry and watched some TV. Sean's mom sent us a cute Easter package filled with candy and plastic grass but the coup de grâce to my diet was a bag of Lucky Charms cereal! I didn't even realized how much I missed those dry little marshmallow shapes...