Mark works in the international branch of the prefectural government as a coordinator of international relations. It’s kind of hard to describe what his job description is, but I found an interesting website that describes it much better than I can…check it out here. Anyway, he deals with English affairs, but because there are foreigners from non-speaking English countries, there are also CIRs from non-English speaking countries. In Shizuoka, there is one English CIR, two Brazilian CIRs, and one Korean CIR (that I know of…I think there might be a Chinese one, but I haven’t met anyone). We met Marcos, one of the Brazilian CIRs, a few months ago at a BBQ he held for some of the international branch staff. He is a super awesome guy. He was born in Brazil, but spent almost half his life in Japan, so he is ridiculously fluent in Japanese.
Since there are so many Brazilians living in Shizuoka, there are many Brazilian restaurants and grocery stores. Marcos has taken us twice now to Brazilian churrasco restaurants. Yesterday we spent the afternoon driving an hour away to an all you can eat churrasco restaurant. We met up with another of Mark’s coworkers and his family.
Then we ate meat. A lot of it.
The staff came out of the kitchen holding huge skewers with different types of meat. I have no idea what they were called because the names were only in Portuguese or Japanese, but wow, so yummy! On top of the meat, there was also an amazing salad bar and my favorite Brazilian food, feijoada.
After lunch, we made a detour on the way home to visit the beach. We passed by many wind farms, which was kind of fascinating. We got out of the car almost directly under one of the windmills…it was gigantic. I didn’t realize how tall they were, or how fast they really spun until I was right underneath one. It also surprised me how much noise they make! Many people think wind farms are unsightly, but I thought the windmills next to the beach were really beautiful.
I love all the random adventures we go on with our friends!
