Brazil Carnival

This past weekend I trekked out to the village of Shinshinotsu for a Brazilian carnival. It's not every day you get to go to an authentic Brazilian carnival in the middle of nowhere, Hokkaido.

It was a really great party. There were lots of people, soccer challenges, food, Brazilian drinks, raffles (I won a great CD), more drinks, samba lessons, and a ni-jikai that ran until at least 4:30am. We even got the Japanese people at the party on their feet to try the samba. I think it must have had something to do with the Brazilian drinks... It was a concoction of sugar cane liquor, fresh limes and some sugar. It was awesome -- reminded me of a similar Cuban drink of rum and limes. I was warned though, that one of them is not enough... and two is too many. I stopped somewhere around five.

I'm glad I went out to this event. Last week was so desperately slow and blah. Nothing like having nothing to do to get you down. Getting out and blowing off some steam was a much needed break. I still have nothing to do at work (no really -- I don't have a class at the Junior High I go to twice a week until next Friday), but it's at least sunny out today. Spring is thinking about starting up, but there's still a long way to go. We've just entered the gross brown snow season.

I also went to see "Walk the Line" on Sunday night. It was ridiculously expensive at 1800 yen (about $18CDN), but worth it. I enjoyed the movie too. It was one of the better Bio-pics I've seen. Really, it was a splurge-tastic weekend. I also went and spent lots of money at the foreign food store, but now I have cheddar cheese, salsa, tortillas and bagels. Guess who's having tacos this week?




In other news, I'm thinking about doing a week-long homestay/Japanese lessons over spring break. I'll have to see if my office will give me education leave (I don't want to use my vacation time seeing as I hardly have any left). My Japanese studies have hit a plateau. My kanji reading is pretty good for coming here with basically nothing, but my speaking still sucks. I haven't been taking my own advice and speaking enough. A homestay would force me to speak and would be really good for me. Besides that, it would get me out of the office for a week. We'll see if it works out.