chiba city international fureai festival

This weekend was the Chiba City International Fureai Festival! This is a big annual event hosted by the Chiba City International Association, and this year the International Relations Section also took part for the first time! The downside to this was that I was there in a work capacity so I didn't actually have a chance to look around at all, though this was probably also because I had a couple of other events going on that day - futomaki sushi-making and English storytime at the library! All in all, it was a busy day. :)

I got to Qiball a little bit before the opening of the festival to help set up. The International Relations Section had a little booth next to the stamp rally table (because what's an event in Japan without a stamp rally?! Gotta have one) where we had some posters introducing our sister cities as well as a bunch of commemorative gifts from them, which we gave to anybody who donated money (to be used for international exchange things like youth exchange programs, sister city events, etc). I think at the end of the day we'd managed to fundraise a decent amount of money, which was great!

From our perch on the third floor (the first and second floor were full of booths with food, arts and crafts, and goodies for sale from all sorts of international organizations in the city), I had a good view of the opening ceremony, which included a speech by the mayor, singing of 'It's A Small World After All', the appearance of Chiba-kun and Fuuta (the Zoological Park's mascot red panda), and an African drum performance!

The mayor and African drum performers!

Afterward I popped over to the CCIA to try making futomaki sushi, aka a really fat sushi roll whose insides were shaped to look like a rose! It was run by the Chiba Local Food Study Group, and they had all the ingredients and even aprons prepared for us already (which I think is probably the hardest part, haha). After showing us how to do it once, they helped us to do it ourselves - it was surprisingly simple, and they gave us a recipe to take home, so in theory I could totally do it again! Again though, the hardest part is probably making nice flat sheets of egg to wrap up so I don't know how successful I'd actually be. :P Still, I think mine turned out pretty well, and my coworkers seemed to appreciate them when I went back to the Festival and shared some with them. :)

Successful futomaki sushi!

Then I headed over to the Central Library to read for their English story time! This was my second time doing story time, but my first time in the story time room, which is a really cool round shaped room with a mini planetarium on the ceiling. I read The Snowy Day, which I remember reading when I was a kid, and the English version of two Japanese picture books, Groompa's Kindergarten and Miki's First Errand. All the kids seemed to know the last two books already, so it was pretty cool to watch their reactions to hearing them in English instead of Japanese! We also did Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes together (just like last time), which they seemed to enjoy - and they all actually said the words out loud instead of just doing the motions, which I thought was great.

Imitating the book; don't worry, I don't actually stand like that!

So it ended up being a long and busy Sunday full of work-related activities, but they were also interesting and fun so I can't complain! :D

flying february

...because it's flying by! Somehow we're halfway through February already and I haven't posted at all, oops. Things have been pretty busy and it seems like the pace is only picking up instead of slowing down - not a bad thing, but it does mean less frequent and less detailed posts. Oh well.

Things at work have been relatively exciting recently - I've gotten to do a lot more things that aren't just translating, yay. Last Monday I went to a seminar about expanding business into India, which is not directly related to anything I do, but was a chance for me to learn a little bit more about the kind of things Chiba City does as far as international economic exchange is concerned (especially relevant since I've started working at the economic planning section), and was also a chance for me to observe a professional interpreter and try and learn from her, so that was cool.

And then last Friday, I went on another school visit, to a different elementary school! It was basically the same thing as last time, except we ended up talking the whole time instead of playing games with them (for four classes in a row! Tiring), but I enjoyed it a lot. I'm actually going back to the same school at the end of the month to talk to sixth-graders this time (last Friday was fifth-graders), so I'm trying to think of some new and more interesting things to do than talk about than Southern food and school lunch (though I do think at least some of them were interested!).

Today I got to have lunch at a new restaurant near Port Tower as part of our preparations for when people from Houston (one of our sister cities) come to visit in March, and also see the Japanese garden that we'll be taking them too, which was very beautiful. I also stayed late to call our sister city in Switzerland (Montreux), which once again reminded me that my French is not what it used to be. -.-'

Things outside of work have been pretty active, too! I went swing dancing for the first time in a while twice last week, which was super fun as always - I think on Friday I was probably dancing for a solid two hours, which was great! On Thursday and Friday I spent a little time exploring more around Chiba, and on Saturday I met up with some friends in Tokyo to go to the Square Enix cafe (before going to dance).

Then on Sunday I went to Chinatown in Yokohama for Chinese New Year! It was pretty crowded and it turned out the lion dance we wanted to see was more of a ritual than an actual performance so we really just ate dinner and wandered around for a while, but it was still a pretty cool experience. Afterward we wandered around Yokohama and rode the Cosmo Clock 21 (a ferris wheel that is also apparently a clock) and wandered around the little amusement park that was around it, which actually I think I may have enjoyed more than Chinatown, haha. Yokohama seems like a pretty cool place, so hopefully I'll be back there again!

And then on Monday, which was a holiday, I met up with some Chiba AJETers to go see the Kimono Beauty exhibit at the Chiba City Museum of Art again. Even though I'd seen it before, seeing everything again was still pretty interesting, and having dinner and chatting with everybody afterward was a nice chill way to spend the holiday, I thought. :)

There are a lot of applications due and events coming up in the near future, so it looks like I'll be keeping busy for a bit longer! I'll try to keep posting more regularly, though. :D