The Jennifer Weekend

This past weekend my ALT successor, Jennifer Craven, came back to Sendai for a week.  I had never met her before as she came to Sendai after I left to replace me at my former ALT job.  Well, she left last year to work in Australia for a year.  That year is over, so she's now returning home but not before making a pit stop in Sendai to say hello.

This was my first time meeting her in person.  I've only ever emailed her or left messages via facebook. It's been nice to get to know her.  She's a very nice person and we, along with the Ayashi gang, got to hang out over this weekend.

I was very surprised to see her pop into church with Shiina-san, my old tea-lady and friend from Osawa chu gakko.  Nobuko also stopped by to see both me and Jennifer.  It was nice to see all of them since I haven't seen them in a while.  After church the Fileo group went on an afternoon outing.

Everyone from that service: it was a big turnout!

First we went to the Nikka Whisky Factory.  It was out in the boonies.  They showed us all the different buildings they used to make whiskey.  Then they had free tastings.  And NO ONE tasted the free whiskey.  We all went for the orange juice instead.  It almost seems like waste.

After the whiskey factory, we went for a short hike up a steep mountain.  It was only a few minutes long, but the steps were Japanese sized (very small and steep and covered with moss), so I found myself stepping very carefully.  It was the most I've used my leg muscles in over a year.  Pretty sad.

                 

About halfway through, Jennifer had to stop since she had recently injured her foot.  She and Manami went back while the rest of us continued upwards.  At the top we found a cave that the monks used to pray in.  The view was nice and very woodsy.  When we got back to the bottom we cruised for a bit before heading out for some...

Me and Jennifer.

... GELATO! 

I got banana chocolat (pronounced with a French accent!)

Somehow our drivers found this little red house in the middle of nowhere.  It was a great little gelato place called "Buddy."  The lady there was so cute in her little blue apron.  She served all of us and gave us water and chatted with Manami.  It turns out she doesn't live in the little red house.  She actually lives in Ochiai, right next to Ayashi!

 

The cute gelato lady in her blue apron.

Here we all are eating our gelato!

The next night Manami, Haruka, Jennifer and I had a BBQ at Haruka's house.  Manami wanted a Hawaiian style BBQ.  That was pretty hard to do in Japan.  Well, we tried, but the truth is it was nothing like a Hawaiian BBQ.  We had cheeseburgers (made from ground pork, because there was no ground beef at the supermarket), cheddar cheese filled sausages for hot dogs, potato salad, potato chips, and corn on the cob.  And apple juice. 

For some reason, they trusted me to do the BBQing.  Like I have any idea how to bbq!  Usually I'm sitting on my butt while the guys are doing the grilling.  But we had no guys around, so I was put in charge of cooking the sausages... fortunately Haruka and Jennifer took care of the burgers.

 

Afterwards we were so stuffed!  But Manami wanted to make smores!  In order to make room in our stomachs we went for a walk across the bridge.

After a impromptu race from light post to light post (which I definitely lost), we headed back.  I had room for only one smore.  It's impossible to find graham crackers in Japan, so we had to use saltine crackers instead... it was interesting.  After one, I was done.

And that was the end of my Jennifer-filled escapades.