Birthday Fun!!!!

Hey everyone. Aaron here. Time for a little update. This past weekend, Kendra and I hosted a birthday party for our good friend and local fulbright fellow, Katherine. We gussied up the place with balloons and such, and had a few friends over for a couple days. It was a riot.

Well, like any good party, this one was almost completely devoted to eating. Katherine had often mentioned her affinity for cheese, and after being thwarted by exceedingly high prices for cheese fondue at a local pizza place, we decided to take matters into our own hands. We surprised Katherine with an all-inclusive cheese fondue dinner.

Here she is, dipping something tasty into the cheesy dip. She's the one in the green and black. She's always the one in the green and black. In fact, if you look closely, you can see that her hair is actually colored green and black. Amazing.
On the left with his insanely curly hair is her long time friend Abel, (pronounced uh-bell) who is doing work through the JET program in Nara city (which is a really neat and old school city near Kyoto). Abel was kind enough to lend us his English Nintendo Wii (He still has his Japanese one to play the new Smash Brothers game on. Sorry for all you American gamers who will have to wait a while for that one.) He's so nice, and he always brings us great gifts.
And, in the back, as always, is Andrea, another fulbrighter from Kyoto. She's the one who helps us travel with her insanely good memory and infinite guide-book information. If it wasn't for her, I would probably be working in a rice paddy on the other side of the country right now, trying to find my way home.

Here's the whole spread. Looks pretty good. I wish I had some right now.
Also, we happened to know that Katherine was a big fan of Tiramisu, a delicious coffee and cream dessert. However, Japan has a way of failing to include real Mascarpone cheese in, much to her chagrin. So, Kendra once again took matters into her own hands and made her very own Tiramisu from scratch.


And she made plenty of it too. Because she didn't have a pan large enough, she made it in a large cardboard box lined with tinfoil. Luckily, there is no baking necessary. It was delicious.

The following day, we basically vegged out for the day, and made our own springrolls for dinner. Then, guess what we had for dessert? That's right, more fondue. This time, the chocolate variety.


MMMMMMMMMMMMM Yum yum yum yum.

We had all this fresh fruit to dip into it as well. And fruit don't come cheap in this country.

Then on Monday, we went to Kyoto to see a concert. Katherine introduced us to a Japanese post-rock band called Lite. They are pretty progressive and don't have any vocals. (which is usually a good thing, especially for a Japanese rock band--no offense to Japanese rock singers.)
Anyway, they really rocked, but they didn't play as long a set as I would have liked. Here's a picture of them playing along with the headliners, which were some older American dudes who played nothing but bass and drums. It was interesting to say the least.We got to meet Lite and talked briefly about progressive music in broken English. Katherine talked to them in Japanese, because she has magic powers. That's about it for recent times. Until next time, talk to you later.