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Manga drawing my student Miho gave me!

Tonight I was very moved! It was the last night for the adult English class, at the end of the 15 weeks of lessons we’ve had together. Miho-san is a quiet woman who did not speak English much, but she became very interested in learning about my incredible love story, of how I came to fall in love with my pen pal Mayu and married her. She was very moved with how I was a shy nerd/otaku type who married his Japanese pen pal.

Miho-san said that she’s just been preoccupied with raising her children to adulthood that she never thought much about having a hobby, but she said that I helped inspire her to reach back to her old hobby of drawing anime/manga characters. She’d shown me a beautiful picture of Maetel she’d drawn a long time ago. For me tonight, she gave me a booklet with two sketches of Minmay from Macross and Lum from Urusei Yatsura. I was so happy and almost started to cry! Miho-san is an excellent artist! Thank you, Miho-san. These sketches are my new treasures.

This is a photo I took of a watercolor painting of Maetel that Miho-san showed me. She is rather talented.

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MOAR Galaxy Express 999 booze

I went ahead and ordered the Galaxy Express alcohol I was unable to find locally. I stopped by a large liquor shop in Maebashi called Yamaya that specializes in imports and even they did not have any.

Here we have Captain Harlock’s highball and IPA beer. I don’t even know what IPA stands for, so I looked it up: India Pale Ale. Well, okay.

The other two are the Maetel Weizen and Conductor’s Porter, but this time in beautiful, cobalt blue glass bottles. Neat.

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Galaxy Express 999 beer cans!

Check out these FAWESOME beer cans. Galaxy Express 999! Here in Japan, Helios Brewery makes these Maetel, the Conductor, and Emeraldas beers. Still haven’t found Captain Harlock though. These are different types of beer. Maetel’s weizen is fairly light, with a bit of a sharp taste. Cumductor’s Porter is a black beer, very dark and hoppy, with an almost chocolatey taste. I haven’t tried Emeraldas’s red ale yet. There is both a Captain Harlock beer and a whiskey highball that I cannot find in my small town. I might try to find them at Yamaya in Maebashi. It’s a liquor store chain that has an incredible variety of booze as well as plenty of import foods. We sometimes buy tortillas there. It’s the only place I know where I can find Marsala wine, which I use to make our daughter’s favorite pasta cream sauce.