March has been a pretty busy mounth and because I haven` t been writting on my blog for a while, I decided to shortly describe my happenings. A few days ago, I was asked by a Y360 friend what am I doing beside snowboarding? I first I thought that she likes the winter landscapes on my blog, but thinking about it I realised that my blog, starting from December last year turned into a winter blog, even the often keywords on it are powder, snowboard, winter and so on. Ok, I admit I wasn` t that sincere with you and I` ll try to expand my horizons in my blog.
As you all may know, the World Women's Curling Championship 2007 Aomori Japan has been hosted in Aomori City between March the 17th- 25th. I was tried to do my best by helping the organisers and the competitors by working as a volunteer interpreter. I was asked to work in three different locations: The Arena, where the games took place and two other different locations- hotels that were hosting the Media Representatives and the Competitors. It has been a pleasure to work at this Championship I had the occasion to talk with many people on different subjects. The presence of the foreign competitors gave me the occasion to exercise my foreign language skills that are quite... rusted, I have to admit. While trying to translate the first language that was coming in my mind was...japanese, not Romanian, not English and not even Italian. Am I growing Old???
It all ended before I realised but I have many good memories, a few photos with the competitors and ... many gaps in my known foreign languages.
Project "M" is called the worked that me and my friend Mark are trying to put together since December last year. Recently we visited Shiko Munakata ` s Museum to improve our knowledge in his personality and his work. I waited for a few months to "meet" him, and visiting his museum was just what I needed. We also had the chance to watch him work- a video of his life is broadcasting while the visiting hours.
Ok, enough work, here comes the fun part. A few days I went to this Yakitori restaurant and I ate a litlle of everything. It wasn` t my first time to eat Yakitori but it seems that the Yakitori made in a Yakitori restaurant are more delicious. It my sound stupid, but I thought that all the Yakitori are the same everywhere. Well, I was wrong. The smell of the charcoal, the crusty meat and the variety of the menu is worth all the cholesterol.
And of course, I have been to Hakkoda on Saturday. The smell of spring is present here too, but luckily, the old snow of 290 cm was covered by a new " white carpet" of 5 cm. It was enough for me and another 10 friends to go up the mountain. The sky was clouded and that temperature was 1 degree below zero on top and 4 degrees plus at the bottom of the mountain. Before going to work I got up on the gondola as many times as I could- 6 times I think.
I left for work at 3:30, raised my body temperature into an onsen and arrived at 4:35. Just in time and ready to make some Ramen. It seems that the snowboarding season for the 06/07 is over but the ski season is just starting for me. I forgot to tell you that I took my first ski lessons of ski last week and I quite enjoy it. It needs some time and practice to slide as a normal skier though.
Wishing you a nice spring!
