Emergency disaster drill at our local elementary school for Noah. And 2 fun days out with my good friends (2 lunches, 1 trip to Starbucks and 1 movie, we’ve been hanging out a lot lately)

Once a year our local elementary school has an "emergency disaster drill" for all grades 1st-6th. And each child is supposed to be picked up by a parent or grandparent. And every child is supposed to know how to walk home from the school. Japan as you know has lots earthquakes and they want the kids prepared. Basically if disaster should strike while the kids are at school. They are taught and have practiced to all file down out of the school ASAP and go and stand in rows, a row for 1st grade, 2nd grade and so on. Stand someplace not near any building or structures. Which is quite easy for our town kids... considering we live in rural Japan, lol. And given since our school is built in a spot where no other buildings are near. So the spot is easy. Anyways...that day May 19th was the set "practice drill" and all the kids would be getting out at 2pm because the sirens and alarms would start at our school at 2pm. Us parents were already standing outside in the field waiting for the sirens to start. I snapped this pic around 1:40pm-ish. The kids at our elementary school have a whole bunch of nice raised garden beds and the kids at our school tend to the veggie patch inside those raised garden beds. Noah along with about 6 other classmates tend the veggie patch on Wednesdays. This pic was taken on a Thursday so this was a different bunch of kids tending the garden that day (a different bunch tends the garden on different days of the week). They pull weeds surrounding the veggies, water the veggies. Pick them when they're ready. Our school also has a huge amount of rice fields too. Noah and his grade/class and a couple other grades planted the rice a few weeks back too. I love that our school teaches the kids about the importance of growing your own vegetables and rice. 

The note says every year. Parents stand in the basketball court and wait for the sirens. Which I did. I then watched each grade file out quickly... with their randoseru  (backpack) and belongings to take home for that day. 

Hey! I recognize that Mr. Mustacho shirt! It's you! Hi Noah! And hi fellow 5th graders.

Good kids good kids, seems these kids have got this emergency drill stuff...down to a science! 

You can see long rectangular flags in the distance and all grades in their rows separated by grade. The flags just have numbers on them. Like the #5 for the 5th grade obviously. : ) And 2 for the 2nd grade. You know what I mean. That way god forbid...another huge earthquake rocks around here. The kids will know the drill. Know the routine and know how to quickly file out of the school. Stand in a safe spot... not near any buildings or structures with again...living in rural Japan that's super easy. And just kids wait for your parents to come. Meanwhile... back to the drill. The person on the loud speaker said, "all parents go stand next to your child, but stand on the right side of your child" And if you should have more than 1 child at this school stand with your youngest child and then go and collect your other children" Okay heard that message. No I do not have any other children attending elementary school. I used to... but now only 1 attends elementary school. But okay heard the message loud and clear. So, I went and stood next to Noah on the right side of Noah. : ) Meanwhile the teacher starts from the head of the line. It's all alphabetical order. Noah is 10th in line. And the line moved quickly. The teacher walked to each parent and child duo to make sure we were actually their parent. The teacher just visually checks, the school is small so every teacher knows all us parents anyways... and he also verbally just says/asks... "you are his mom right?" and you just say...yes I am. It's just the rule they have to ask everybody... even though they already know. And yes... It is pretty obvious...that I am his mom. Everyone else at the school is 100% Japanese except 2 kids are half Japanese and half Filipino but they look totally 100% Japanese/Asian and that's not a bad thing, that's okay. Nothing wrong with looking Asian or Japanese, I married a Japanese man, I find some Japanese men, super hot. : ) Meanwhile there is only 1 western mom/American mom there and that's me...and given... there is only one extremely looking western/white hafu child (Noah) at our school. It's pretty much a no brainer...who is his mom and who is my kid, lol.  So clearly we are together. They know that and by our faces it's clear we're together. Plus everyone knows us. So it's pretty quick. And soon enough we were on our way home. Emergency disaster drill done for another year. Yay! : )  

I have recently met up with my 2 really good friends lately. I met them at yochien years ago. Our first get together was just 1 day after the emergency drill at the elementary school. We met Friday May 20th. We met at our fave Indian restaurant. 2 of us had pumpkin curry and 1 of us had the butter chicken. We each had a combo/set. Our curry came with salad and drinks and a huge naan. We sat for at least an hour and a half at the restaurant enjoying the excellent food. And after that we 3 went to Starbucks. Clearly this all happened in the small city nearest my town. Because my town doesn't have stuff like that hahaha. : ) We 3 sat at Starbucks for ages. We talked and talked and talked. We laughed. I had the best time. We actually stayed until 3pm. I live farthest away. They live in that small city. But I live way over in my town and it is a bit of a drive and given Noah gets out at 3:45pm most days now. I had to leave Starbucks at 3pm to make the drive back to my town. This was the day we had pizza for dinner. I am pretty smart with time management and stuff like that. And I know I'd be out of my home all day long. And knew I'd be home around 4pm and frankly that is a pretty late time... to start and begin supper. So...I made the pizza dough that Friday morning. We weren't meeting up for lunch until 11am. So, after dropping off Noah at school that Friday morning, at 7:15am. I went home, jumped in the shower, washed my hair and face and body. Blow dried my hair put my makeup on in 10 minutes or less. By 8:45am I was totally dressed hair done makeup on. And so, that's when I made my pizza dough. After I had it resting. I quickly vacuumed the downstairs swooshed the downstairs toilet. And by 9:30am. I had done tons already. had dinner basically in the bag. Was dressed. And I basically chilled at home until I left at 10:30am.  Oh while at Starbucks, we had made another meet up and we decided to go to the movies the following week. This picture was snapped the 2nd time I met up with my friends when we 3 were at the movies in Narita at the Humax movie theater. We stopped to look at the display for the upcoming movie and as we were looking and talking about it, I snapped a pic of it real quick of it.

May 25th, I think it was a Wednesday. We had a plan to go and see a movie that would only be showing for 2 weeks at the movies in Narita. Not even our local closest movie theater wasn't showing it. We went and saw a movie called "Spotlight" We 3 went to the morning showing of that. How was the movie? It was a good movie. It won 2 Oscars. It's a serious movie. Serious topic. It's basically about sexual abuse by Catholic priests. A huge cover up that happened in Boston. I'm glad I saw the movie. Would I buy the DVD? No. Would I watch it again if say...I were on a 14 hour long haul flight? No. It's a..."I'm glad I saw it. But wouldn't watch it again though." After the movie we walked across the street to the Narita mall. We went to Capricciosa for lunch if you show your movie ticket stub you get a 10 or 15% discount on lunch and given they have lunch specials for 1000 yen so... our lunches were like 850yen or something like that. We each had a lunch combo/set. Sorry in America we say combo for combination and in Japan we say "set" so...I always just use both. We each had our own salad and pasta. We each had a drink and a dessert. I had the garden salad, the tomato and garlic pasta oh that is SO good. a peach tea and tiramisu for dessert. After that we left and went home. Lucky for me, Noboru was off work that day, so he was able to swing and get Noah. We knew I wouldn't be able to make it in time. I got home about 5 minutes after they got home. So, I didn't do too bad of timing, but I did okay. : ) What did we have for dinner that night? Again...I plan ahead... because I don't think it's fair that we miss dinner just because I go out with my friends. So, I always plan ahead and make sure dinner will never be a problem. Basically...I make sure we won't starve just because I go out. And that's fair. : ) So, what I did was....I made Japanese style curry with chicken and veggies the day before, I doubled the amount and made 2 boxes worth. And I did that so we would be having curry pasta the day I would go to the movies. So when I got home. I warmed up the cold curry...pulled it out of the fridge. Meanwhile, I boiled some water for some pasta. And plated up some salad. We actually had a pretty decent supper the night...and considering I was gone all day. We had curry spaghetti, this is so good and a perfect way to use leftover curry. We had salad and a buttered and sliced fresh bakery baguette... loaf of crusty bread. Noboru was kind enough to pick it up for me on his way home from fishing. Yep he spent his free day fishing. : )