August is officially here, and it brings a variety of things: heat, festivals, vacation, Annual Conference, and more.
I finally got around to posting pictures from the Music Cafe on July 21, so do check those out to get a feel for what this event is like.
In other news, Google Maps picked up a fresh set of satellite images for Okayama. You can almost zoom all the way in—earlier this year you couldn’t zoom in as far. My apartment is in the second district of the Tsushima Nishizaka neighborhood. Just to the northwest of the arrow is a building with a reddish-orange square thing on the roof. That’s the daycare that’s across the street to the west of my apartment building. To get to the church I usually go south until I reach the diagonal road that goes southeast to highway 53, which goes almost straight to the Family Center. Yes, Google is indeed t3h coolness.
There’s a full schedule of activities and get-togethers planned for next few weeks, both TEAM-wise and friend-wise. The Japan Annual Conference in Karuizawa is coming up in a week and a half. All of the TEAM missionaries in Japan attend this conference to hear presentations and take care of TEAM Japan business (but I’m not eligible to vote this time around). If anything, the cooler temperatures in the mountains will be nice for the week that we are there.
This weekend is the three-day Momotaro Festival in Okayama city. The highlight (at least for me) will be the fireworks exhibition on Friday evening. It’s traditional to wear a yukata to festivals like this, but for some reason I haven’t gotten around to finding a yukata. Maybe next summer.
In the category of unusual and unexpected events for the week, David and I had lunch at Naish Curry on Tuesday. Curry restaurants are everywhere in Japan, and in the general ranking of things, Naish seems to be one of the more elaborate establishments. I decided to go for the pineapple/chicken curry. It seemed like an interesting combination, and I was feeling culinarily adventurous at the time. What I didn’t know was that the dish would be served inside half of a cored pineapple that was on fire. Apparently it’s all part of the presentation. It was really good, though (once the flames stopped).