I crave salad

It's pretty much official; I'm coming back to California for about two weeks at the end of July/beginning of August (until the 14th), and will be back in Japan before the last day of the obon festival here. Two obon festivals in four days. Yea-yuuuh.

I wanted to come back earlier, but I actually got chosen to be one of the orientation assistants for the Tokyo Orientation, and on top of that, I was picked to be one of the CLAIR (official) workshop presenters. The application for Tokyo Orientation Assistants (TOAs) are based on the outlines for two workshops you submit, as well as comments from your supervisor. In some places, getting a TOA spot is harder than getting into JET in the first place, so I'm super excited! It won't, however, be a free ticket into Tokyo; they're actually going to make us work by helping people get from place to place, from the airport to hotel, answer questions, give workshops, act like Role Models (ahaha...) but in exchange, we get our ticket to and from Tokyo paid for PLUS accommodations (and breakfast). So yeah. I'm excited for it. :) I've been working on the powerpoint with three other people, though one of them, I swear, it's like, did you even LISTEN to the "how to give good powerpoints" presentation? STOP WRITING SENTENCES ALL OVER THE POWERPOINT. It's distracting. And Y U NO LIKE PLAIN B&W BACKGROUND? Sigh. lol. I'm sure it'll be fine.

Immediately following orientation, I will be flying back to the US. It was too good of an opportunity (not having to pay for the shink or a hotel) to not come back during this time.

I also need a little sanity break, I think.

By sanity break, I mean visit my family. My grandma. My friends. Eat food. Oh god. The food. Mom asked me what I wanted to do when I got back and I could not think of anything else other than "see friends" and "eat ____________." Since I listed everything out individually, this was a long list.

Don't get me wrong. I love Japan. I love the food here too. I have not lost weight here because I love the food so much.

But I really miss the wide range of foods you can get in California. I miss easily prepared dinner salads. Cheddar cheese. To make a proper dinner salad here, first you have to buy a head of lettuce, wash the lettuce, cut the lettuce, buy the (expensive) vegetables to go on top of your salad (I like to put baby corn, 500 yen; onions, 158 yen/bag; red onions, 1 for 300 yen; bell peppers (red, yellow, green) - 198 each for reds and yellows, 300 yen/bag for greens; button mushrooms, 400 yen for 6; and cheese. I won't even get started on how much the cheese is. Tofu is super cheap to put on, but things like meat, especially beef or steak... yeah, that gets expensive. Occasionally they'll have it on sale, like today. I got a strip of steak (dunno the cut) for 500 yen! Woo hooo! But yeah. By the time you buy all the ingredients - and remember, this is a dinner salad so most of the ingredients will actually be used - it's one hell of an expensive salad. Of all iceburg. Romaine lettuce is really hard to find. Arugula is out. You can get spinich here, but not baby spinich. Have I mentioned I miss bagged salads?

There's this fantastic bakery under one of the department stores in my area that sells a ham on ciabatta sandwich. Oh god. It's amazing. Seriously, it's a good thing I don't live near these places, otherwise I'd be even fatter and more broke haha.