ひまわりの大冒険! - Great Sunflower Adventure

Travels with Saki!!! 冒険だねええええ！

2012-02-02T02:00:00.001-08:00

Yay, it's posting time again. So for winter vacation here, I spent just a bit of time chilling out, and a bit of time traveling around with my friend Saki. We traveled on the crazy path of Yamanashi > Shizuoka/Hamamatsu > Kobe > Osaka > Mie > Gifu . For those of you that know me, you know that I've lived in many of these places. The only new one this trip was Mie, which completed my set of Kansai prefectures! Even though there wasn't a great deal of new places, it is always so much fun, even just being in transit. What I have posted here, begins on the train that already left Yamanashi. Technically there's some more from before the beginning here, but this just felt like the right place to start!

Day one(Shizuoka/Hamamatsu/Yamanashi): Began at the end of civilization! The first picture here is in Yamanashi. We traveled by train with my friend Jason, who was on his way down to Mount Fuji. He works around where this picture was taken, and claims that this is indeed, the end of civilization. We spent the day time in Shizuoka city, and ate at Sweets Paradise, which is an awesome all you can eat cake buffet! Super tasties. Originally our plan was to be in Hamamatsu, but in the end all we did there was go to the castle at night, and the toys R us to play on unicycles!

Day two we went to Kobe. Saki is really into Tetsuo Osamu - the writer of astro boy, kimba the white lion, and other famous comics... he has a museum in Kobe that we visited! The museum is in an area called Takarazuka, which is actually famous for an all girl theatre troup (called takarazuka) I had been there years ago just once, to see one of their plays. In Japanese history, most theatre groups were traditionally all male, even female characters. So in the early 1900s, Takarazuka came as kind fo a backlash against that, and became a huge hit! It was pretty nostalgic getting to be in that area again, and seeing the museum was pretty awesome too! On the train on the way to Kobe, we saw a lot of snow, right near home here in Gifu. There hasn't been a lot of it this year, so it was quite exciting^^ Lastly, we were staying with my friend Jen, who took us all around her neighborhood which is well known for Koreans and the famous Chinese story Sangokushi. Oh last awesome note: I had my first hatsumoude(traditional first visit of the year to a shrine) at a shrine in the middle of a factory!

Days three and four were in my lovely old home, Oosaka! We stayed in the coolest hotel ever, "Hotel Mikado." Saki's friend works there sometimes, and told us about it... it happened to be just in the neighborhood where I spent my summer living! So nostalgic the Tsutenkaku area. Tsutenkaku is the major tower attraction in Osaka, but it's in a rather crazy neighborhood. Pretty much, the biggest ghetto in all of Japan. I used to take Celes touring around the cusps of it when we lived there back in the day.. but all I really knew back then was the major prostitution district. Exploring deeper than that, there is an area considered taboo for basically anyone to go to, especially Japanese. We biked around there a lot, not carrying a great deal (no real pictures here)... while Baltimore is certainly ghetto, there's a different feel to this one all together. It doesn't feel as life threatening as some of the places in Baltimore I've been, but it feels incredibly more impoverished, and insane. Bonfires in the streets with dogs roaming everywhere. No women are there at all, it's literally a town of old men that were just shunned by Japanese society for reasons of either family name, or crime, or just pushed down from some association of that. The slummish areas in the pictures here are on the rim of the main ghetto, it's safer feeling in that no one is around, but you can tell that there's a reason for it.
We also went to see an amazing theatre troupe called Hanaguruma! I've never really seen this kind of traditional play before, but we were truly blown away by the awesome mixture of traditional and new day subculture of Japan^^
Of course we couldn't skip out on denden town and maid cafes.
And last, we ran into some really crazy cult churches. One in particular really drove us towards it... on Sunday as we were leaving, we met some people from the service. It was definitely an intriguing encounter.

Day five - Mie ken ~ The completion of the Kansai set! The principle from my kindergarten on Fridays had told me that the aquarium there is awesome, so we checked that out. Maybe it's a touristy and somewhat terrible hobby, but I truly love aquariums... Something about the deep, vivid colors, I can often get lost looking at even just one single tank for a very long time.... which is a lot of what we did there.
Mie is the most rural part of Japan I've ever truly visited. I've seen more rural on the train, but never truly stopped there. After the aquarium, we were thinking of going to Ise jingu which is one of the most famous shrines in all of Japan, but apparently it's pretty hard to get there late in the day, so we wandered around town and got some crazy Mie traditional udon, which was really just like noodles in soy sauce >< Such a surreal tiny little town, for being so well known in the country... Japan truly loves to promote all of its' different towns for something or another.

The last day, we went to Gero Onsen, in Gifu. I live in Gifu now, so we just stayed at my place, and took the train out. Originally I really wanted to go to Takayama or Shirakawago, but the train/bus ride is about 4 hours each way it turned out! Gero onsen was a good compromise at only 2 and a half hours each way^^ We met an Australian family traveling around for vacation, on their way to Takayama. That was at a town that looked truly major from the station, but upon exploration during a layover, turned out to be quite abandoned. There was a vendor selling this mushroom dish shown in the picture... it's a matsutake mushroom, which is often times ridiculously expensive here in Japan (up to $100 for a single mushroom) I guess this one must have been terrible quality, since it was in an amazing lunch box for only about $10! It was pretty darn tasty, but really not enough to make the case for such a high price understandable><
We reached Gero onsen, and did what you do at an onsen -- took a bath! Onsen means a hotspring, so we pretty much just bathed all day! It was a pretty awesome ending to the journey.

So this was the journey! I hope you've been entertained by the rantings of a mad young one. These days I find communication to be such an interesting task. I spend most of my days here speaking Japanese, and even sometimes find it easier to say things in Japanese than English. This by no means means that my Japanese is better than my English, but it makes for a strange brain environment. When I speak in Japanese, sometimes I get lazy about how much of a message I want to convey, and this has carried over into my English as well. I guess it's time to start working the brain hardcore!

Merry Holidays, from the ghost of Australian past and Christmas Future!

2011-12-24T20:15:00.000-08:00

I promised to update my blog days ago, but times have been busy. There've been further adventures since my August Australian one, but I still wanted to share some events from then. I'm sharing with you in a new format! I hope you enjoy these!

City scenery from the botanic garden.

Gigantic tree in Cairns!
Harbor across the way from Manly Beach.
A QUANGDONG. The Australian national fruit... found in the wild!

The botanical garden in Sydeny. This was my favorite place in the city. They give free tours daily from different people each time, so you can learn about the plants there. Seems like you could really learn everything there is to learn, right there! Interestingly enough, most trees there aren't native to Australia! I also met this cool Singaporean fellow who had befriended the birds in the park. We hung out all day.
Flowers and trees. The upper right tree is actually a prehistoric tree that was thought to be extent, until discovered in a rainforest in 1995!
Prices in Australia. Insane.
Flowers and fruits!
Jenolan Caves, way outside of Sydney! I went there with my Australian friend whom I met on the airplane on the way over. He had just finished biking across Japan in 5 weeks, and then spent a bit of time showing me around Australia! We met a ton of Japanese people.
Bugs and spiders! I love small creatures. Australia is known for having some insane ones, and I wasn't disappointed.
The Cairns Botanic Garden. Yet another amazon place to be. I love nature.. it's interesting how we craft it though. I have yet to go to a rainforest actually... I'm really looking forward to that adventure.
Botanic Garden in Sydney again, a few random things thrown in.
Adventure to Blue Mountain, a pretty magnificent view of vastness. I've been to the Grand Canyon once before... it's always really pretty, but the touristyness really really takes away from these places I think. We passed through a small town called Oberon on are way there, and I was in the midst of reading The Hand of Oberon at the time... yay.
Birds! This picture's for you, Kristy.
The beach at Cairns. I walked along here a bit, but it's pretty dangerous. I hear it is festering with Crocodiles.. but it's right there, and os hard not to walk up, especially with such cool little life crawling around everywhere.
The aquarium in Sydney. I really like fish. I went here with my good friend Mikiko, whom I had just met the day before, but happened to not only be from Japan, not only from the same Prefecture, but even the same County as me! Only about 20 minutes away from where I live here in Japan... she's still in Australia now, but since I'm staying here one more year, I'm looking forward to meeting her next year. It was truly a case of instant best friend.
Around town and at the opera house. Look, I found Waldo!

The long delayed Australian post - Part one

2011-10-21T07:32:00.000-07:00

So I've been really bad on the procrastination thing lately.. not something that usually affects me. I went to Australia way back in August, and have had so many adventures even since then. I kept meaning to post, but just kept putting it off. Well finally, I decided slow and steady wins the race, so here are my first two days in Australia. There will be more!

A bookstore! It's the kind of bookstore I grew up knowing. Small, locally owned, experts on everything that hit the shelves, collections of new and old. In Japan, they exist only for Japanese books. I grew up in the US, and these bookstores are so close to extinct, it makes me want to cry. I was wandering the streets of New Town, Sydney (my favourite area there), and was excited to find this shop. As I continued through the streets, I found even more bookshops of a similar feel. I was happy enough knowing they were somewhere, but as my trip went on, it turned out they were everywhere! I found so many tiny bookshops... and not a single large one! I'm sure they exist, but I'm glad that the large ones are the oddity instead.

How cool of a daycare is this? I work as a kindergarten teacher, and actually my school is more like a daycare than a kindergarten... anyways, these things catch my eyes nowadays, I'd easily work here. Also in New Town.

I guess it's not surprising this park is also in New Town. I wonder if this picture will be less exciting for people that live in the western world... but this really reminded me of a park in Norway. I met many a friendly folk here.

I was amused.

The classic. It's kinda pretty, but not the best thing about. I heard that walking across that famous bridge in the background costs over $100, who would bother?

I'd seen pictures in my textbook for the 6th graders last year, and there it was in person. Pretty cool building actually. Reminded me of the great armadillo convention center of Glasgow, Scotland.

Computers in convenience stores! Everywhere!

This cool fellow was rocking out on the didgeridoo to techno music. Down by the harbor in Syndey, there's *always* at least two different folk/groups doing this.

School uniforms! Back in the States, such a rarity, but here in Japan everywhere. These were such a different style, I wanted to remember.

These are kindergarteners! Even they have uniforms, insane. Not the case in Japan.

I like this.

Fish and chips! Whoa, I thought this was English food only! Australia's quite known for it, and I think they do it better. Don't tell the English I said that though.

That's it for now. I fell in love with Australia instantaneously. Perhaps mainly for the fact that I was staying only one station away from New Town, which felt painfully close to my childhood. Honestly, it hurt very greatly getting so near to such a life, without it being the real thing. Yet somehow, I can't step away from the fire.

フルーツパーク浜松ー Fruit Park Hamamatsu

2011-08-04T05:14:00.000-07:00

With all that I post from Hamamatsu, you would think that I live there! From now on, when I get back to Gifu in September, maybe I will go to more places in Gifu. Today's adventure brought me to a Fruit park for the first time! Fruit parks are all over Japan, you can go, and pick lots of fruit to eat, and learn all about them from farmers and such! Today, we picked blueberries, and pears. Have a look at this amazing park!

竜ヶ岩洞 Spelunkings!

2011-07-17T05:42:00.000-07:00

So It's Sea day on Monday here, which meant three day weekend. So I of course went off to Hamamatsu to visit Celes! Today was Spelunking day for us! I've never actually been spelunking before, but it has definitely become my favourite new word. Who would have thought that English had words for such specific actions? I am only just recently learning such. Anyways, today's cave is called 竜ヶ岩洞...ryuugashidou. It's I guess pretty touristy for a cave... but since I'd never been to one, it was still quite a lot of fun.. very beautiful place in general. Enjoy!

Very Beautiful landscapeall around in northern Hamamatsu.

And then the cave!
Aaaaahhhh! Aligator!
In the ceiling.... I expected to see a cat...

As much as I joke through this, I really enjoyed seeing such new sights today. There was a great energy in this place... rocks are really beautiful and amazing. Though I've never studied them so greatly, I can surely understand how precious they are.

This one was my favourite.

The great phoenix is I guess the "attraction" of this place. It's certainly very pretty, but the adventure is much more worth it than just this single area.

Can you find the bacon!?
Wow, I had no idea that moles were so cool. I definitely would have been born a mole, if I'd've known I could have such awesome gear.

花鳥園ー bird and flower park - Kakegawa

2011-07-01T15:07:00.001-07:00

I'm stepping outside of chronological time for a second, to show you a past adventure from Golden week with Celes. Feels like you can never run out of new interesting things to find here in Japan. This Bird/flower park is just about a half an hour trainride away from Celes, at Kakegawa and was a really great was to spend the day!

My aunt had one of these guys when I was little.. I even went with her to go pick him up.. I wonder if she still has him?
Birds just fly on your shoulder!

Beautiful gigantic lily pads... Victoria Longwood hybrid.

So outside the emu fence, there was a stand where you could buy emu food for like $1. Or you could be this guy, and grab a giant stalk of grass, and feed them for free. The emu certainly didn't mind either way.

This big swan type, snapped at my leg as I was walking by. I always heard swans were mean, now I've experienced their wrath first hand!

Reverse Destiny! 天命反転地

2011-06-04T06:14:00.000-07:00

Today, Celes and I went to this super awesome park called Reverse Destiny. It's made by the people who made this house: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92ppyREetnk&feature=related
It's a really fun place to go.. I think I'll probably hang out there pretty often. They call it very spiritual... I don't think I got that feeling, but it was really quite enjoyable! After this, I guess there will be some completely out of chronological order posts... but for now, enjoy having your destiny reversed!

Ahhhhh I'm trapped!
This building is the coolest place ever to place hide and seek.

This scenery really reminded me of the great wall of China... that was a fun trip.

Somehow it feels so wrong to make a post without bugs these days!

Yet another Gansuiji trip

2011-04-18T15:39:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the lovely Gansuiji! I really like taking hikes out here. The "ji" means temple, so here's the entrance temple grounds.
Pretty flowers are in bloom.

And various wild firns/vegetables!

The next two are matured zenmai, royal ferns. They are completely uncultivated, but still used for a lot of cooking by people that go out and gather them.

Suuuper cool beetle!

And some crazy larva, found deep in a tree.

This beast is about half an inch big, so something tells me the pointer isn't for blood... maybe treesap?
A home!
Trees and nature.

Machetes, treesaws and chainsaws -- A day in the peace park.

2011-04-08T21:06:00.001-07:00

Hello all! So as I mentioned, I ran away to America for a while. It was a crazy two week adventure, but as my life is filled with insanity, I figured for those of you really interested, you can ask me... or maybe you were a part of the insanity! Just a brief over: Stayed on a US military base for a few days, moved on to Towson, gave a lecture on the quake and situation in Japan in my long ago Japanese teacher's class. Had great giant parties, thrown up with some balls of drama that brought everything on the run. Ended up in a peace park, at a Tibetan Buddhist temple with my brother.
That last sentence is where this begins. While there were tons of awesome adventures, my photo opportunities were limited, and in the end, I went with basically nature shots. My brother volunteers and attends a Tibetan Buddhist temple in Poolesville, Maryland. Last winter (09/10 winter), Maryland was hit by a huge snowstorm, that ended up damaging and knocking over many of the trees in their 64 acre nature area, known as a peace park. Celes, Peter, Nick, my brother, and I took a hike through the woods there with a machete, tree saw, and chainsaw, to help clear out paths, and move dead trees to help visitors in the park. It turned into an amazing whole night journey truth be told.. staying in my brother's barn. However, that is a story of words, and I am leaving the rest of this post as a story of pictures. I hope you enjoy!

Actually this image is of no relation to the park or the temple. It's just a crazy church type building in the DC area. Felt like a picture worth sharing.
This picture on the other hand, is inside the temple. The colors really reminded me of temples in Korea especially. I'd be interested to see what they're like in Tibet.
From here on, are pictures of our forestry adventures in the peace park.

Taken by Celeste. She was giving me lessons in taking pictures with my new camera.
Taken by me after about 15-20 more minutes of trying.

When it's time to run away.

2011-04-07T02:06:00.000-07:00

So March 11, 2011 is a day to be remembered. I was at my kindergarten at the time it happened... the quake that moved Japan. Yamanashi is on the cusp of the Kantou region. We are literally the western edge, which I am very grateful for. That being said, we still got hit with a quake large enough to scare me pretty bad. The kids at the kindergarten thought it was great fun, but parents who were on their way in to pick up kids, were running for hugs out of the fear they may not have seen their children again.
The quakes of course occurred before the tsunamis. All the damage you saw on the TVs, it was almost entirely related to the tsunamis, not the quakes, there's a big misconception about that, I think. When the quake hit, we didn't know if we were the center, or what happened even really. Our school care taker went to grab his radio, and listen in. The news came that the center was Miyage, quite far from us, and suddenly a great fear set in. Under earthquake procedure rules, we stayed outside, since the chances of more large quakes happening directly after are greatly increased. Sure enough, we had another huge quake, only about 15 minutes later, I think we got hit even harder that time, at least in Yamanashi.
Once another 15 minutes had passed, we wandered into the classrooms to see what the TV had to say... and suddenly the north eastern shore of Japan was in ruins. The tsunamis were rolling in all around Japan. The reports were saying many places were expected to get over 10 meters high of tsunami... I didn't really understand what a tsunami was, until I saw this. I figured it was just really big waves, much like the name says... but it's really quite different. It's as if the sea level has temporarily changed, and moves in land to meet that level. So when you say a 10 meter high tsunami is hitting land, it's not a 10 meter giant wave crashing down, it's more like lands that are 10 meters above sea level are going to be flooded with water. What this meant in some areas, was tsunamis hitting as far as 6 miles in land.
It really took a few days to sink in what was happening all around. The first day was ending, people were in a panic, no one knew if more big quakes were coming. Quakes were the topic that first day. I called my family and everyone at about 4 in the morning their time, just so they wouldn't wake up to hear about it and freak out. At that point, I was feeling mostly calm, but just disrupted form the regular flow.
Then day two came, and the first reactor blew. Before it blew, they were talking a lot about it on the news... we thought it was going to be OK, and then everyone freaked out with the first explosion. Our media began to switch pretty drastically from after the first to second explosion. Rather than getting doom reports just talking about bleakness, they began to discuss how radiation is harmful, what types are being released, the rates of dispersion, how to be prepared against it, what exactly was wrong with the reactors in detail. I was actually feeling very calmed by it, but many of my friends still had me pretty scared.
As the week went on, there were more explosions, and we were still having about 100 or so quakes a day, with big ones starting to hit my prefecture. The news with the reactors still wasn't looking better, and more scary news was coming out. The US was offering some ways out, through a really terrible deal.. I opted differently, but indeed to leave.
Somehow I felt like things were going to be ok, even when I bought my ticket... I knew Japan had to be OK... but there was this over whelming fear of being in it... My Japanese co workers were talking about not trusting the government. Everyone around me just felt displaced. Terrible jokes about the situation getting worse, stores running out of food and gas stations out of gas, trains around me weren't working, and I was feeling trapped, alone, dirty, and scared. I wonder if I should explain dirty... I just mean that... I felt to the point that I couldn't trust anything around me. I felt like the radiation probably wasn't that bad, but knew it had to be there, and I was so terrified to do anything around me. Didn't want to be outside. Didn't want to use any water that wasn't bottled.. even for bathing. Didn't want to eat any vegetables...(that one is a bigger concern right now actually). I just felt so tainted by everything, and I needed to get away from that, because I felt sick.
I guess this has been a long post... longer in words than anticipated, but I was wondering if people were wondering what happened. I guess the real thing I want to say is that.. I felt so bad for leaving. Leaving the people that were staying. All my coworkers were staying, still working. My friends, still wondering.. and there I was, leaving. Many of my friends wanted to leave.. I told them to keep my info just in case they had to get out. I will say, it really gave me a refreshing look at every thing happening, and in the end I am glad for my own health and safety, that I did leave. Even if the radiation wasn't effecting me physically, I couldn't deal with it mentally, or emotionally at all.
I said this on my facebook already, but I really want to say again... Thank you so much to all my friends. I feel so amazingly lucky to have everyone in my life, that I do. To those of you that just listened, or maybe gave some encouraging words, or a place to sleep, or a bit of money to help get me out... I just don't know what I would have done without you existing. Just thank you so much for existing.

Anayama fun day, and the big move.

2011-03-06T02:50:00.000-08:00

Well it's official. I'm moving! In less than one month, I will be moving to Gifu prefecture, and working as a full time kindergarten English teacher! Kind of crazy to believe I've been working as a teacher for a year already. Truth be told, I'm a bit sad to go, I'll miss my friends and job here. But, over all I think it's the right choice... a better job, better pay, and closer to Celes! Probably my next post will be from Gifu! For now, here are some pictures from my recent adventure with Celes to Anayama, just a 20 minute trainride away!

Halloween Kindergarten and my room

2010-12-05T00:45:00.001-08:00

amazing sky and.... small? creatures post

2010-10-02T07:44:00.001-07:00

It hasn't been that long since I posted, but I felt like showing off a few things. One day last week, I was walking home from work, minding my own business wrapped in my head.... and suddenly I looked up! The sky was so astoundingly beautiful. I had never ever seen colors fading in across like this before! I just sat there and stared at it, in the midst of walking up the little mountain. I had wanted to share this since then, but haven't had the time. Nowthe other day, I found some crazy creatures, so I figured I'd just make a small post.

Aside from the sky. I saw this little caterpillar at work the other day. This is his tail end.
Head is on the right side!
Same concept with this guy I saw on my way to work! Head on the left side there. Didn't have time to get a cool shot sadly.
Then, walking home from work the other night, I saw this.......
It's a worm!!!
About 15 inch long earth worm!!!! I didn't know such a thing even existed until this night. Apparently they CAN get a whole lot bigger.

I headed to the store, and came back, that's about 20 minutes. This guy was in almost the same place, but now had a leaf on his head!

Aside from these creatures, I also saw a MUKADE!!! And, the fuzziest caterpillar I have ever seen in my life. I will work on trying to catch pictures of these.... but the mukade will probably be a bit on the difficult side. That's all for now!

long awaited and editted china, just like the real thing!

2010-09-22T20:23:00.000-07:00

One month after the fact, I bring you...... CHINA!
For those who don't know: I spent one month in China studying the game of go. Fun times, good people, interesting sights, but maybe just not *my* place, fun times anyway.

This is what it's like crossing a street in China. There are lights, but they honestly have no meaning. Cars have the right of way at all times, and people just cross whenever there is a chance, no matter how many cars are there.
People just set up places to sleep anywhere during the late night, early day.
My friend challenged a worker in a market to a game of go! They ended up playing 5 in a row instead.
Demolition and reconstruction everywhere. This is right next to a nice fancy mall.
This place is also known as the Japanese go club, I recommend if you are in Beijing and want a nice match of Weiqi!

All the Chinese ice cream, next to some Dreyer's ice cream in 100% English. Something tells me that batch had a different destination than this grocery store.
Famous Asian fruit called a Durian. I didn't actually try one, cause I hear they taste like dirty feet.... if you want some exotic *yummy* fruit, I recommend the Dragon fruit, which I didn't take any pictures of, even though it's prettier!
Chinese people just don't like rules.
Panda!

This cart kinda freaked me out.
I was amazed such a message was even *allowed* in China. This was taken in the Beijing aquarium.. the only modification is that the words weren't readable so I took separate pictures of the bubbles and added them in here.

Lovely display at the mall, I especially love the copy of Carcassonne in the back!

The same market place as above with the guys sleeping on couches. Later in the day time, they pack up, and the market comes out til about midnight.
Alright, China may not be my place, but their terrible English is definitely #1!
Pretty view from my apartment.
I ate these crepes almost every day! Miss them so much...
The most clear weathered day my entire time in China. Almost every day is so smoggy with pollution, that you can barely see even 3 blocks down the street. But the day after a rainfall, it tends to clear up quite a bit.
My friends acting cute!
Nothing beats a game of Go in the park.
Welcome to the Altar of the land of God and Grain. Oh, so exciting.

hello kitty!

We sat at this place, just enjoying the world, for quite a while... it was my favorite place in Beijing, ended up going back a few times. It's in the park next to the forbidden city, across frmo Tiennanmen Square.

The bell at a famous Zen temple called Yong ZeDong... it cost 10 yuan if you want to ring this bell alone.. I don't recommend this temple at all, far too....... impersonal.

Did I mention Chinese people hate rules?
Turtle dragon!

Oh Hello Mr. Monk!

OK this is absolutely the best restaurant name ever. Though I've never eaten there!

The Great Wall of China is amazing. I have been to many touristy places in my life, but this is the first and only that sincerely felt more like a journey, or a quest, than just some place a guide book pointed out. Everything about the climb was just amazing! I joined my friend in walking it barefoot, too!

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Michael here actually moved this rock you see, to find the scorpion seen above. When the rock was moved, the scorpion was still alive, but he almost instantly killed itself, stabbing itself in the spine with it's stinger. We can only assume this is because it had two legs torn off. Two physicists on this trip said that this really conflicts with the laws of natural instincts... so it's pretty interesting.
If you see the two paths on the sides here, we actually climbed up the right side, and down the left. This was *after* climbing up and down a completely separate part of the mountain!

So this is the thing to do on the Great Wall. Take pictures with the Chinese people, or in their case, with the foreigners. This especially works if you wear a Chinese hat.

My good friend Nikolaj and I at the edge of the wall!

Welcome to the Summer Palace. Another recommended place if you go to China. Very beautiful place.

These kind of rocks can be found in parks all around.

Welcome.... to a very... interesting market.
You can EAT SCORPIONS! No real flavor to them actually, just the spices... very crunchy
Larva taste gross. Never again.

Surprisingly, this market is very popular. It is known only for the exotic strange foods about.

This is a Chinese workers' cult. We found many many businesses that would have these random meetings at anytime. They would talk, shout, cheer, just all sorts of things that your normal employee wouldn't do unless they were a sports team.
We went to a go match!

This little girl is stronger than me at Go!

Outside the forbidden city. It is expensive, and not worth it, so we didn't go in.
A picture across the street, showing Tiennanmen Square. The security there is very very intense. There are gates all around the square, blocked in by road. The only way to enter is underground, and every underground path requires a security check. Actually I don't think I mentioned, but security checks are very common in China. You can't enter any subway station without a bag check.
Security cameras are pretty intense
Statue 'for the people' at Tiennanmen Square.... how ironic.
Chinese silk worm!

Last real dinner with the folk... this is our cool chrysanthemum tea.

岩水寺

2010-07-18T04:58:00.000-07:00

Today, I'm in Hamamatsu! This is my last time hanging out with Celes before my ventures to China. For those of you that don't know, I'm going to Beijing for a month to study Go! Anyways, that's soon, not now. For now, I'm in Hamamatsu!
Today, Celes and I went to a place north of Hamamatsu, in another small town. It's called 岩水寺(Gansuiji). That technically means it's a temple, and there certainly was a temple tthere, but after that, there is the prefectural park. It was a really beautiful, serene place. Here are a bunch of pictures from the adventure!

This is the Gansuiji abandoned hotel. Well kinda anyway. The bottom part has partially been turned into a shakuhachi (Japanese flute) work shop/classroom.

creepy, ne.
Pretty water, doesn't look like water.
fishies!
Cool caterpillar ness.
Reeeaaally decent picture of ants.
Mushroom!
mushroom!
This park had a giant ninja training ground! It was fuun.

fun on ninja training ground!
mushroom!
I wonder if this was a queen ant... It was quite large compared to the ants around.
kanahebi lizard.

This totally looks all aminita like to me.
We took a long picnic in this area.
Mushroom!
Mushroom!
We found a nature building, that was really cool. Various animals inside, and activities about nature. This is Celes playing with a well they had outside.
This turtle posed for us!

A cool salamander thing.

This is the lizard from a few shots up.. called a 'kanahebi'.
A completely wooden go set!
These are the names of some of the mushrooms we found, and below is a display of some.

More mushroom goodness.
Pretty view from a bridge! You can see a liiittle bit of the city off in the background.
This mushroom kinda looks like a flower.
Cicada shell! about an inch and a half large.
Returning to the city, we saw this spider, caught a cool shot.

Scenery, farms, and houses

2010-07-16T19:21:00.000-07:00

I've thought of many different ways to do this post, but in the end, I decided to just show off the things that I see in my every day life: farms. Yamanashi, my home, has a sister "city" of Iowa! The biggest difference here, is that we're covered in mountains. The name, Yamanashi, literally translates to "mountain pear."
Just a quick story for you:
Since farms are so common in this area, it's also a part of the education here. Our 'tanpopo' kids... those are like special education children... grow vegetables as part of their program. One time this semester, they grew onions, and came to the office to give us all some! I was so excited, recieving freshly grown onions! Seveeral days later, walking home from school, I saw my local Go club owner working on his farm with his wife, picking potatoes. They decided to offer me some... I was expecting 2-3, but instead I recieved 18 potatoes! Freshly grown vegetables for all....
And now, some pictures!

This is a picture of the village down below, from the first bridge I cross to school every day.
These are more things along my path to school every day. In the next picture, the building on the left that says "囲碁” is my local Go club that I go to every Tuesday.

My nearest house neighbor. Really gorgeous house.
Along the pathway from the train station to the shopping mall.

Here is the nearby train station.
This is the path starting up the way of the mountain I have to climb from the station to my house.

This is where the mountain I climb every day gets really steep!
You can start to see how high up the mountain goes.
Nearby neighborhood, I walk through sometimes, going to the shopping mall.Neighborhood farm.
Farm across the street from home.Farm down/across the street from home.
This is a pretty shot. My apartment is in it, though I guess not so visible.
This is actually my kindergarten, but I felt like including it here, since they have such a gorgeous garden. They actually grow all sorts of vegetables there, and everyone at the school gets to eat them. Not only at the school, but also down the street from it, we actually have our own farm. Occasionally after I'm done teaching, I go to the farm to water the vegetables.

Farm by the station.
Near by river with the trainstation in the background.
This is Kofu city, it's my largest nearby city, and the nearest 'large city' for that matter.
Here are some eggplant growing at a local farm down the street from my school.
I figured I'd end with a dramatic picture of the town below. I only just recently found this path.. It goes by the near by middle school and down to the shopping center where I get all my things. So beautiful.

the small creatures and plants post part 1.

2010-07-13T04:29:00.000-07:00

Alright this is for those of you that like bugs.. and plants... plants are included. If you didn't know, I work in a Japanese kindergarten, and one of the requirements for this job, is the ability to stand/keep as pets, bugs! Due to this fact, I have become incredibly obsessed with small creatures of all sorts... Below I have posted a bunch of my encounters.. Celes is also incredibly obsessed with plants and various fungus right now, so I have also posted some of these as well, enjoy!

We'll start this post with sex. These are two lady bugs.. I wonder if they're both ladies.. ee is it wrong to say these things about bug sex? Interesting ladybug fact: contrary to common belief, the patterns on the lady bug back have nothing to do with their gender, and not even really their species in most cases, they're just patterns.. like the difference in fur colors on cats and etc. actual size: about 1 CM
Rice growing in kindergarten yard. There are hundreds of little tadpoles swimming in the green rice container.
Pet lobsters at kindergarten. Aren't they cute? I pick them up every friday!
These next two pictures are of a Japanese beetle Larva from two different angles. My kindergarten LOVES larva. Japanese name: kabutomushi(Japanese beetle) youchuu(larva), カブトムシ幼虫. actual size: about 2 CM.

Cute fish.
I found this dead dragon fly on the ground.. it was so beautiful. Actual size: about 3 inches.

Baby singing crickets! Pets at the kindergarten as well. In Japanese: suzumushi, 鈴虫. Do singing crickets exist outside Japan? actual size: less than 1 CM.
Earwig! I've seen them larger and smaller than this guy. actual size: about 2 CM
These beetles are super common around here. Actual size: about an inch.
Celes likes her fungus. This is a gorgeous picture she took.

Colorful little guy, I was nowhere near close enough to him to see these patterns really well in person, but my camera skills are getting better. Actual size: a bit under 1 CM.
Roadside decapitated bug! I honestly wonder what happened.
This guy was huge. I see tons every day, but this is the only one I've seen this big... so pretty. Actual size: 2-3 inches.
Celes was wondering what they sprayed on the leaves.Celes likes flowers indeed.
Smaller version of the gigantic guy above. This is on the "spider bridge" that I walk across every day to get to school, I pass by at least several hundred of them every day. Actual size: little under an inch.

Cool shot of a different spider, same species as the above one.
Cool Gecko creature! We were looking at spiders, and I saw this guy. actual size: about 4-5 inches.
Next two shots are of the same spider, different angles.. pretty cool looking guy, and I like his pose in the next shot! actual size: little under an inch.
Similar to the other guy above.. but seems a bit different... not sure if they're different genders or just different spiders. Actual size: little under an inch.
Fungus! Celes loves fungus!
FROG! Japanese tree frog. Celes and I caught two of them. Or rather Celes caught two because I couldn't catch one lol. We tried to feed them rolly polly bugs(otherwise known as pill bugs or potato bugs, or in Japanese, dango mushi, ダンゴムシ） But sisnce they wouldn't eat, we decided to put them back. Actual size: about an inch and a half.
Grasshopper! I think? actual size: about 1 inch.
Really beautiful snail shot.. rainy days tend to draw them out and all. actual size: about 2 inches.
The next two are the same spider, front side and back. actual size: little less than 1 CM.

This one was taken by Celes... beautiful moth.
Accredited again to Celes.. pretty mushrooms that I wanted to share.

a few pictures and little update

2010-06-16T06:30:00.001-07:00

So I finally got a new camera! I've been taking pictures, but I'm saving some right now for a certain post. Here are a few to tide you over in the meantime! Aside from the visits shown, my friend Tyler from college also came to visit one day!

This is the gorgeous view from the second floor of my school... that's the school playground, and part of the school.

I went to hang out at a coworker's house with her friends, lots of fun times just hanging out!

Just a random picture I wanted to show folk. This is a typical Japanese house in this neighborhood. You can see the house in the top left of the picture. The house is high above ground, and tiny parking garage is built beneath the house. There's even a yard above the garage!

So in Japan, they like to sculpt nature. You've probably heard of Bonsai and all. These are flat trees.
Taken last night with my friend Annclair from Belgium, and some of her friends we went to hang out with, fun times!

OK, I dunno how exciting this is for most of you, but for me, it's super happy. I fail at cooking, but I decided I want to eat healthier. So my solution: eat fresh foods instead! So this was what I made for dinner tonight, no cooking involved, yay.

As promised! A comment on America, Japan, and if I can fit in the rest of the world

2010-06-03T05:45:00.001-07:00

I'm back again!

No pictures yet, but soon.

Anyways, I wanted to post about something random I've noticed these past few days that I really wanted to share.

So, these days I watch a lot of tv. I know, I know, yell at me if you like, but it's amazing for comprehension practice! Anyways Japanese tv is a lot better than American tv, so it's ok really. Actually I seriously mean this now.

I've heard a lot of comments in my life about the racism in Japan, and all sorts of issues that people like to complain about.... but honestly, I don't really see it that way. There's no doubt that racist people exist.. but there's tons of non racist people too! On top of that, watch tv in Japan!

There's a giant mixture of celebrities of all sorts here. Plenty of Japanese folk, but foreigners from all over the world, from Korea, to France, to Nigeria, and of course America. Japan also LOVES to put half Japanese people all over television and in magazines.. if you're part Japanese, and part something else, then you're all set if you want to be a star here, no joke. There's also a large array of language learning programs at practically any moment of the day!

Aside from race, gender is also a part of this. I literally can't count the amount of trans gender celebrity figures there are in Japan, and lately I keep seeing more. It's also trendy these days for guys to be incredibly feminine.. from cross dressing, to wearing makeup, stylized hair.. it's just part of the norm here these days. I was talking to a very manly co worker today who was talking to me all about this today, it was quite amusing. As for women... well women are about 100 times more feminine here than they are in America, and probably 80% of the rest of the world, too. But the beautiful thing is... that's not a bad thing! It's OK to be a woman, and it doesn't mean that you're weak!

Random note from my life: I remember just a few years ago thinking about how much I hated girly girls. I think I still can't stand the idea of American girly girls.. they're in a different field in my eyes. The idea of gender queerness used to appeal to me a bit.. not making a distinction.. in some ways it's cool. But like race.. it is different, isn't it? Does that have to be a bad thing? Then maybe a year or so ago, I started thinking about the history of clothes, of how things may have begun to take shape. Pants make sense if you're doing labor work and such.... but in today's world, with all the office jobs and stuff, why is everyone striving to wear pants? Sometimes pants are cool.. but skirts/dresses are both better looking and more comfortable in my opinion.. and it feels unfair to me that women have to want to strive to be more like men if they want to be successful. That's just stupid in my opinion.. alright there was my random comment lol.

BACK TO TV! Granted, this is all pretty idealistic what I'm talking about.. but isn't that cool? People watch tv all the time.. I've just really seriously begun to appreciate the fact that it's there, and that people watch it. Because people *do* watch tv! It's influential, and I just find it so amazing that they want these kind of messages spread! Think about television in America now, think about the movie industry in America now, how many non American stars can you name? How much effort have you seen anywhere in America to PROMOTE any of these ideas?

If I have readers from outside of America right now that are annoyed with my American centered post right now, I'm sorry, but I'm sure you understand what I mean, because in your own countries, I'm sure you know about as much American
star industry as your own. This just makes me think, why is it that the rest of the world is OK with foreigners? Why is the only star industry generally accepted all over the world is so racist? So sexist? So... limited.

I'll post more random things soon!

New pictures, and an update!

2010-05-21T21:16:00.001-07:00

Alright, as usual, it's been a while. I've been really uninspired lately though, not having my own camera and all, since Celes has the phone with the camera now. Update on life: Celes and i are living away from each other, her in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka. I'm in Kaishi, Yamanashi. They're not terribly far apart, and definitely not that expensive thankfully, but it's kinda nice living our own lives for a while ee. anyways, here's some pictures from various adventures.. I'll post more stuff soon.

I had to go to Korea on a Visa run.. these are a few pictures from the adventure. This is a *big* street in Busan Korea....

Home less people sleeping under a statue in Busan.
Something just feels so ironic about it.
This is an art car that I saw on a street in Busan.. in Baltimore, these kind of cars are everywhere, but here in Asia, I *never* see them, so it was very nostalgic!
Before moving on.. a quick story from the trip. I was placed in a room on the boat with a woman that is everything I aspire to be. She was in her 50s, married with one 10 year old son.. though traveling aone to visit some friends. A Japanese woman, who spent 8 years living in Canada working for the Japanese government in her 20s, and traveled all about for a while, then headed back to Japan for a while. By the time she was in her late 20s, she decided it was time for something completely different, and signed up for an international arranged marriage service, and with no prior knowledge of Korea or anything, went off to South Korea to marry her husband and have a kid.. they've been a family living together in South Korea for 10 years now, and she is fluent in many languages... we just clicked on so many levels.

This adventure was super amazing for me, for the fact that I was able to meet her. She invited me to stay at her house, since I was staying the night in South Korea. So for the night, I went out to he town of Gimhae, and stayed with her, her husband, son, and mother in law. It was such an amazing experience for me, and her family really liked me. I had told them that was planning to teach in South Korea in the future, and they very seriously invited me to come live with their family if I ever decide to! Amazing how things happen sometimes... That's mySouth Korean adventure for today, back to the blog!

These next few pictures are from Nagoya.. I'd never bene there before, and Celes was having work training there, which happened to be over her birthday, so of course I came to visit. This is a cool building with colorful panels that blow in the wind. Something about it reminds me of the Montreal convention center.

I took this next picture for many reasons. Any museum you go to in Japan, always has an activity center in the end, where you can do origami, draw things, or color, etc.. so this is mmine and Celes's colored drawings of the famous painting, "The Lotus and the Flog" I love Japan for their Engrish. Anyways, this was done at the Nagoya Boston Museum of Fine Arts. When I was in Jpaan before, I did much research involved the Boston museum of fine arts.. there's a lot of really amazing stories about it. So when I returned to America, I decided to go visit there... it's beyond the point of amazing. I am without a doubt certain that they have the largest collection of Asian historical facts on the American continent. (well I say this, but haven't researched, so don't take this for fact). Anyways, I had no idea that they had an affiliated museum here in Japan, now suddenly it makes sense. I'm planning to research.. I wonder if they have these affiliated museums all over Asia. Do you know anything about the museum? If so, feel free to respond!
This next picture is a pretty fountain in the train station at Hamamatsu, Celes's new city.
A miniature horse next to the train station in Hamamatsu.
A cool and incredibly Japanese street near Celes's apartment.
The Hamamatsu castle, during Sakura season.

A windmill in the park, Hamamatsu!
The beach there, from the kite raising festival... or 凧揚げ祭り。 There will be more pictures from this, actually related.. at the bottom. Anyways, one cool thing aout this festival: it was a festival at the beach, and in coordination with it, they had people handing out bags and grabbers to collect garbage of the beach while they enjoyed. I find this super cool, especially considering it is one was the largest festivals in all of Japan.

This is outside of a bus window, in Yamanashi ken.. the guy on the horse statue is Takeda Shingen, *the* famous historical figure of Yamanashi-ken. We were on our way to the next pictures...
Pretty flower field in Yamanashi.
This is what people do here.
This is what we came to see, the 2,000 year old Jinzai sakura tree. It's not very far from my house at all.. just one train stop and a busride away! I want to get some pictures of my school sometime.. at my kindergarten in the playground, we have an 800 year old tree, and it's massive. It makes me so happy to be around, every Friday. Having seen standard trees and knowing their ages, and seeing my 800 year old tree, I feel pretty certain that the age of this tree is no exaggeration. (actual age is said to be about 1,800 years) Have you ever seen something so old in your life?

More pictures from the raising of the kite festival.. this next one is actually the kites in the air.

This is how big the kites are!
Celes and I got to raise one too!

I hope you enjoyed! Will post more soon.

Snowing in Seoul

2010-02-04T22:01:00.000-08:00

I know it's been a while since I updated. I want to give you all lots of pictures though, and it's kind of annoying uploading them all. Anyways, here's pictures from Seoul!

The story goes, we went to South Korea, and stayed there for about a month. Most of that time was in Daejeon, but if you go to South Korea, you go to Seoul. We went there for only a weekend, but it was a pretty amazing adventure. I'll let the pictures tell most of the stories, but there's one that words would do better to tell. Guess I'll let the story comes when i picture does.

Everything about South Korea feels like an older time to me. This is a picture from a movie theatre that gave me a supremely 1980s feeling. Most things are more so 90s, but the 80s make me happy, so I figured I'd share a glimpse from the past!
Just a pretty and dark picture of a sunsetting Seoul. Yeah, it's pretty polluted there, but not nearly as bad as this picture implies!
mmm yummy giant tentacles!

The busy night streets of Seoul. For those of you who have heard that Japan is crowded, let it be known that South Korea actually has more people per square foot of land than Japan, so it is even less possible to find space to yourself. Though South Korea does a much better job of building upward. There are many houses in Japan, even in the cities, it is not impossible to find houses. This is not the case of South Korea, there are apartments EVERYWHERE. This means that there's a lot more room for shops, and less room for housing.

This is a Christmas tree of locks. They do these locks in Japan too. Lovers put two locks together to signify their love. They write little messages too.

All of these last pictures have been from the national folk museum. Though none of them get so exciting as they do now! Any of you that know me, know that I play go, so I was very excited to come across go in the museum of course. In South Korea, the professional world is thriving of young intelligence, which is great contrast to Japan, where it is aging.

Habok are traditional Korean women's wear. South Korea is much newer to recent style than much the rest of our world. Habok have only gone out of regular wear since the 1970s!
Hanafuda was in the museum as well. This is a traditional Japanese game, the original source off nintendo. These days it is incredibly popular in South Korea.

Awesome pirate!

Here is where I can fit in my story. We spent our first few nights in Seoul, in random pc bang that turned out terrible. This lead us to finally quest out our amazing Lion PC bang, which was our favorite in Busan. We couldn't tell from the address where it was, but simply a train station mentioned. So we went to the train station, and searched it out. Our search lead us to nothing, but an area about a 20 minute walk away, which turned out perfect! After much searching, we found a nice pc bang with very helpful people that had us figure everything out. The next day we awoke, and I decided to buy a snack. The guy working there in the morning seemed kinda rude at first, as he was working hard to get is job done, and keeping me freezing at the same time. However, when I went to buy my snack, he accidentally said something in Jpanaese, so I mentioned that I knew Japanese, and that was it. He turned into the nicest guy ever. Even gave us all free breakfast!
In the end, it turned out that there had been a blizzard overnight, and there was nearly 10 inches of snow on the ground.. and I was wearing sandals! and again, the 20 minute walk to the station.. i was pretty mortified. Luckily our new found friend helped us figure out *everything*, and even got us to a closer station. It just seemed like another "ichigoichie" in life.

Transportation in Korea is very cheap. If you are headed to Korea, and need to plan your travel around, this is how you do it: http://info.korail.com/2007/eng/eng_index.jsp in the "online booking section" you can find schedules are prices for all trains. If you have a lot of time on your hands, and just want to relax your way around, the Mugunghwa train will get you almost entirely across the country in less than 6 hours for only about $25-30. There are faster trains too, and they aren't incredibly more expensive. So anyway, we went to our friend's place for a few days, and then headed off to Seoul for the weekend... and that was our adventure~

Busan is to Korea as Osaka is to Japan

2010-01-13T21:47:00.000-08:00

I say this comparison for many reasons. The main comparison is that like Osaka, Busan is the second largest city in the country. Aside from this, there's many other personal comparisons, the shadiness factor is up there, although Seoul is pretty shady itself. My favorite though, is that in Busan, it literally breaks my heart not to be able to communicate with so many nice people that always try talking to me. It's the heart and soul, and after my past few weeks in other parts of Korea, I've spent more time in Daejeon than Busan, but I still love it there. My pictures can't explain why.

This is outside the Busan train station. We arrived by boat, but found the main station for a better orientation. Busan's a little funny, because the main station for the town is nowhere near basically anything in town.

Walking around the station area, we found this shot, trying to capture the run down feel all over this part of town.

This picture is taken in the "foreigners mall" right next to the station. It's filled with Russians, and is known and definitely feels like the most dangerous part of town.

Like Japan, Korea is filled with shopping arcades, though they look much less lively and more ancient than Japanese ones. I kinda enjoy that feel though. Also like Japan, Korea underwent a pretty big growth spurt in the 80s followed by a big pop in the economy soon after, meaning that much of their major growth happened in the 80s, and nothing has happened since.

The hat that I'm wearing in this picture lives on my head forever more. In Japan they celebrate Christmas with chicken. In Korea, they celebrate it with cake and hats. (pretty awesome considering that Korea is a Christian country) So my new hat here came on discount with the cake we are eating here. It was under $10 for both the hat and the cake!

We found a Korean Manwa Cafe I guess you could say. Veeery different feel, as it's literally like a library where you can read manwa in comfy sofa type chairs. We don't know Korean, and there are no computers, so we just stopped down to take a look.

On weekends, you find *tons* of folk set up on street sides with their vegetables and handmade goods. You still find them on the weekdays, but not in such large quantity. Some folk say not to trust the fruits and such from these folk, but we've gotten kiwis and mikan from these folk with no problems.

This is what a pretty Korean park looks like.

These are pictures of a korean temple complex, I really love the colors and designs they use, it almost feels native American to me.

I'd never seen black bamboo before!

Celes, Aaron and I headed up a mountain on a tram cart, originally we were going to climb this mountain, but after going up on the cart, I was certainly glad we opted that way instead.

The mountain we would have otherwise attempted to climb.

This is the south gate of the wall along the defense in Busan. It's incredibly long.. a common hiking walk for Koreans and tourists alike is from this South gate to the East gate, and then to Beomeosa temple complex, which is further along the path.

There were plenty of houses and businesses running along this path, super high in the mountains.

We made it to east gate! Though we set out a bit late to accomplish much more. We headed down from east gate, and I didn't really feel like taking a bus, although after heading down by foot, I kinda wish we did.

I love Korea for this. We found tons of random hoolahoops through the woods on the way down from east gate. Korea is really all about hoola hoops. The kind with the ridges is a Korean type exercise hula invention called a massage hoop. I have yet to use one, but they are available in America.

After climbing out of the mountain for about an hour and a half, we randomly came into a University, where a soccer game was happening. Surreal.

Aaron had an allergic reaction, so we decided to stay in a jimjilbang this night. That translates to bathhouse. You pay about $5-6, and get a pair of PJs and take a bath, you can stay as long as you like, even if it's multiple days. It was pretty awesome sneaking Celes in, since she couldn't take a bath. Our PJs looked like jail clothes!

For Osaka diehards, here's a kappa kaiten napkin pack from Korea! I had no idea they existed in Korea too!

Another example of how broken down Busan can feel. I honestly feel like Korea feels like some strange developing nation that happens to have advanced technologies everywhere. Especially, they've got to have the most technologically advanced hobos in the world, because anyone at all has access to tons of the best computers out there for under $.50 cents an hour.

As I said, Korea is a Christian country, so here is a church we saw. Busan feels like it has many less churches than other part of Korea however.

A random arcade on the street!

I will have another picture with these guys up later. This was one of my favorite things! These super heroes ran all throughout a train back and forth for about 10-15 minutes of our train ride. They also happened to be getting off at thee same stop as us, and not only made sure we could get pictures, but batman actually grabbed me by the handed and dragged us over so that we could all get pictures together!

We went to Hyundae beach! A popular hang out for foreigners and Koreans alike. Even though it's winter, it felt pretty nice at the beach.

These are Jianggi (Chinese/Korean chess) players.

Korea loves exercise machines!

We also found a major political building, and got to see an interesting combination of Korean ancient and modern architecture combined.

Then we found go players!

And a skeleton!

It was in the aquarium, they had lots of things like this set up throughout.

Then at the end of the aquarium, they had a disco room!

Followed by a car filled with fish.

This is how awesome Korean exercise parks are.

Then we accidentally climbed a mountain!

And somewhere along the way, found the grungiest scariest looking pc bang (pc cafe) we'd ever seen.

These are Korean cooking pots that you see all over the streets.

We found an aquatic type place that we would've gone to but then didn't. Maybe we'll go again.

And that's Busan for ya!

Shimonoseki and KyuuShuu - from one edge to another.

2010-01-08T22:06:00.000-08:00

This story will start out with a post I wrote on our first day there:
We are here to take a boat to Korea on Christmas... No particular plans here, didn't even have a place to stay. We seatched for over half an hour fora good cheap place, but to no avail. We returned to the trian station and asked there, again no luck. We walked down another street towards the local police box. However, we found a video rental shop a long the way.. I decided that would be the best place to ask, so I went in... the worker there, knew of a place, but it was pretty far away. He was getting off of work in half an hour, and offered to drive us there!
I feel so happy with the way things work out when you just try things. I honestly felt scared not having a place to sleep in the cold, not knowing what was going to happen. But that feeling is amazingly relieved when everything is resolved. It is so amazing the adventures you find in such cases.
The nice guy that drove us there, we never learned each others names, but that's ok. He explained to us his favorite word, "ichigoichie" which means a precious once in a life time experience. He truly believed that things happen that develop strong relationships in the world, of serendipitous measures. He was more than happy to help us get all squared away at a good place to sleep for the night, and right now... I feel so grateful for the intricate coincidences of necessity in life.

...I'm glad we went to Shimonoseki for that reason alone, but aside from that, we had a pretty amazing adventure all around. We really only spent one day exploring, but we took full use of it. Our original plan had us checking out an uninhabited island where a famous battle was fought. We headed in that direction, but ended up walking to KyuuShuu instead! There are four main islands in Japan, Hokkaidou, Honshuu, KyuuShuu, and Okinawa. I had only been to two, and thought that Shimonoseki was a part of KyuuShuu when we got our boat tickets... I was disappointed when we arrived, and it was only barely not. We were able to see KyuuShuu in the distance, and then decided to head there instead of the island only half way between! I'll let the pictures describe the rest.

When we woke up in Shimonoseki, we had no idea where the train station was, so we had to ask folk along the way. This was a first real glimpse at Shimonoseki, a pretty small city.

This is Aaron and I at the visitor's information center. We had arrived the night before to be just in time for the automated visitor's center *closing down* entirely automatically. I don't understand the point of an automated center being unavailable, heh.

Epic building across from the train station.

Christmas tree in the mall on Christmas eve.

Celes and I in front of Shimonoseki's crazy tower that's really pretty at night.

According to Aaron, many cities in Japan built up in the 1980s, and when the economic bubble burst in the 90s, they just couldn't do anymore. So you find a lot of places around Japan with a very 80s/90s retro feel, much like in Shimonoseki.

While heading to get to the island, we saw KyuuShuu right across the water, I reeeeaaally wanted to go!

It's a small town.

This is a famous Shimonoseki fish market, looks a lot more like a factory, so it's pretty cool. Shimonoseki is *all* about fugu (blowfish), if you go there, you eat fugu... though we didn't this time around. I also learned from a Japanese friend that most fugu are from fish farms, where they are raised without the necessary components for their poison. So as long as you're paying like $50 for the fugu, and not $500, then there's no poison danger. Though I've also heard it's not the same flavor.

I saw this bridge and really wanted to cross it. In the end though, we had no idea how to get up to it, since it started in the mountains.

Along the way to find the bridge, we found this abandoned hotel that was pretty cool. We wanted to go in, but it was along a main road, and didn't wanna risk it in daylight. So Celes and I may try to go back at night when we return.

We found this awesome Inari shrine along the side of the road, too.

This is how epic Japanese spiders are.

The battle on the island that we were after, also happened to be in Shimonoseki of course. These statues represent the historically renowned clans of Heike and Genji from the Heian period. The Genji clan won this battle in Shimonoseki.

This is the underground tunnel we found leading to KyuuShuu! Everything inside looked super apocalyptic . Especially getting off the elevator, felt like we entered some bunker.

Across on KyuuShuu, we found another Inari shrine, with the tori gates specifically lining up with the gates across on the Honshuu side. Pretty cool.

We saw an awesome pagoda on top of a mountain, so we randomly decided to climb the mountain... these are all from the path.

At the top, we found the World Peace Pagoda. It was like finding aotfher part of Asia randomly stuck in Japan. Indeed, it was a peace project from Myanmar.

We got there right before it closed for the evening, and saw the sun setting from the mountain top.

These goldfish are literally inside of a stone wall directly under neath a Japanese house.

We started wandering around Kita KyuuShuu to look for a Manga Kissaten for the evening.

The next day we tried to find an arcade. There was indeed a round one, they had this cool statue thing!

These are a few final shots from the mountain path. It was a fun journey indeed.

Kansai Nostalgia

2010-01-06T18:06:00.000-08:00

So it's been a while since I've made a blog post, and quite a lot has happened since then. I'm going to break this down into several posts to make it easier, so like the first post, I'm writing from the past! This will take a while to catch up on, since I don't have a stable internet connection/computer power source at the moment.

Kansai nostalgia.

So after spending about a month in Tsuruga, we headed off to Kobe to stay with a friend, and get re acquainted with Kansai. The last time we lived in Japan, we went to school at Kansai Gaidai in Hirakata, then spent three months living by Denden in Osaka.
This time around, we stayed in Kobe, which is still Kansai, but a little off to the west of Osaka. Though we still went to visit Osaka a few times. We only spent a week there, but our time was much enjoyed. We stayed with two folk.. one of Celes's old college friends, who I met in Japan the first time around, and hung out with in Finland as well. She's been working as an English teacher in Japan for about three years now. She has a Japanese housemate who works as a hostess. It was quite fun times staying with them! Our friend is a day time person, so we hung out in the days with her, and her housemate is a night person, so we hung out with her coming home from work at 3 in the morning.
From the few week experience of Kobe that we got, it seems like a pretty pleasant place to live. It's certainly a big city in US standards, but surrounded by mountains in sight everywhere, so you never lose quite so much touch with nature, as you would have it in Osaka or Tokyo. We spent much of our time in one of the centers of Kobe, Sannomiya. There's a mall there, with an anime/visual kei scene, which is pretty nifty and worth checking out! The mall was reminiscent of a miniature version of Nakano, which is the new, more "underground" Akiba of Tokyo, since it's lately become trendy.
Aside from that, we also went to Osaka a few times. Went with some friends to see a visual kei concert at our old venue, Holiday Osaka.. They have a free concert once or twice a month (600 en for a drink required fee, but still dirt cheap). Went back to Denden town.... it was all so nostalgic, and even Celes really realized how awesome life in Osaka is compared to Tokyo again. I'm cool with giving that region another chance, but Osaka people have a quality to them that is hard to explain. You could say that Osaka is the heart of Japan, and that Tokyo is the brain. Anyway, I think that's enough explaining with words for now, here's pictures!

I'm walking down an arcade in Shinsaibashi! We hung out with so many friends this day, it was super awesome times.

This is a random treat thrown in. On the last day we went to Osaka, I went off on my own back to Tsuruga to pick up the last of our luggage... there was snow everywhere around there! Here's a picture from the train ride.. I may have a few random uploads later.

In the Hyogo Museum, there was an exhibit on Studio Ghibli that Jen took us to.. it was pretty super massive and cool. At the end, we got to make Totoro origami! (left Jen, center Celes, right Sonya)

We also took a trip up to Kyoto for the glowing bamboo! The following pictures are all from that night. Later in the week, we went to Jen's conversational class, and never have I felt so fluent as to when we had an epic conversation entirely in Japanese about how instead of using lights, they should be genetically engineering bamboo to glow on their own, since they can make bunnies and monkeys do it.

This is the Kobe giant robot, created to compete with the Tokyo giant robot, which was eventually taken down.

Random Celeste! so cute! ^.^

This is what happens to your arm when rested on a wicker chair for several hours.. you turn into an alien.

If you've ever seen Miyazaki's Nausicaa, and ate some yummy omu-raisu, you know there's a terrible pun. We all made Oomu raisu one night! These are the processes went through to make it. You can see more by google image: オームライス。 We used bean sprouts for tentacle feelers, rice and vegetables for innards, ketchup for blood, omlet for skin, and tomatoes for eyes.

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Burn Oomu burn!

Kobe tunnel from train station to mall in Sannomiya

A high up view of Kobe right around sunset. It's a pretty city. Pretty big too.

I used to live on the sixth floor of this building

If you happen to be in Denden town, feeling kinda hungry.. down the backstreets across the street from the mainstrip, there's this amazing tako yaki joint, owned by the sweetest old couple you'll ever meet, best prices in town and a real great meal!

Despite the magicon(r4, ttds, whatever you wanna call it) being illegal in Japan, you can find signs like this advertising it all about. It runs pretty expensive at about 5000 en for that alone though. It can be found online for less than a third of that.

shop in denden!

Classic looking streets in Osaka.

都会から田舎に。 From big city living, to hardcore country side.

2009-12-02T21:29:00.000-08:00

My last post was my everything Tokyo post.. though I still may talk about Tokyo sometimes, especially since status changes. My biggest status change: I found a job! I'll be working as an ALT teacher in the Kanto region (that's where Tokyo is). This means: I start working in April, a long time away from now. Since Celes found a job that starts only in about a month though, we'll probably make it through the hardships. The biggest pain is that in Japan, you don't get paid on any sort of reasonable timely manor, you are paid monthly, starting at the end of your second month. This means that Celes will start working hopefully in January, but won't see any sign of money at all until the end of February. If you're wondering what sense this makes: it's kind of like the government's plan of unemployment security. If you lose a job for any reason,, then you still have quite a bit more money coming in before nothing's there, so you can plan your budget appropriately. This'll hurt me and Celes pretty bad, since it means she won't get paid until the end of February, and that won't even be a month's salary since she won't be starting in the beginning of January, and I don't start until April, meaning I won't be paid until the end of May. That's ok though, we'll survive.
I mention this in case any of you want to come live and work in Japan, this is a fact of how the system works, so be prepared for it. That being said, I also want to encourage any of you that want to work in Japan, to just do it. I am sitting in an apartment, occupied by my transgender girlfriend, my Swedish (non native English speaker) friend whom has never even been to an English speaking country, and myself with rainbow yarn dreaded and beaded hair. All of us, under such conditions were able to find work in Japan in relatively fast timing... all of us within under 3 months of being here. With all that said, now I'll go on about life in Tsuruga!

Pictures

Well my pictures before showed a glimpse of life in Tokyo. Outside of Yoyogi park, there is nothing but city... everywhere else of interest, is inside buildings. One day after leaving Tokyo, this was our trainride out to Tsuruga.

This is a local train station a few stops down. It's a bit desolate.

These are some pictures around town. It's quite a small place, we've walked completely across it several times now. I thought this was cool, because even though we've in the country side, they're still advancing technology pretty well... nice solar panels on the roof of the street cover. Though I'm curious what it powers.

This is an alcohol vending machine. I used to see them a lot the last time I lived in Japan, but in Tokyo I didn't find any at all. I'm wondering if they're no longer legal in Tokyo. They exist here in Tsuruga, but these days require an ID before you can purchase anything. I've heard that this system is sometimes broken, but you can still get alcohol.

This is a view of Tsuruga, by the river connecting to the bay. Tsuruga is a port town connected to the mountains, but it's known for the ports and fishing. You can actually find fishing bait shops only a few blocks apart from each other all over the town.

Near the local shrine.

We went to the beach on the last day of November, wearing t shirts and sweaters. It's never super cold in most of Japan, but this year is pretty amazing for the warmth. Not only were we not cold, but there were several other folk right at the beach, fishing or just walking about.

Aside from the beach, there's mountains surrounding Tsuruga. We've climbed one mountain 2-3 times this week alone. from the peak, you can see all of Tsuruga! Just beware of the bears and wild boars that run about.

These berries are called 冬苺(fuyu ichigo lit. Winter Strawberries. They're only found here in Japan, the technical name is rubus buergeri) They're quite edible and nums, and can be found in the mountains here!

Mountains here are pretty well tread. The one we climbed has a built in path way, and on the top even has several buildings made... this is the rest center.

More Surrounding Tsuruga.

As I said, we climbed the mountain 2-3 times this week. On Sunday we climbed up to the peak, and then back down. Yesterday we climbed up around the peak, then back down the other side where there was this farm with a museum. Then back up to the peak, and down where we started. Museum pictures aren't very entertaining, but this is the farm we found.

Across the bridge through the marsh here is a tradition farm house... it was pretty nifty kean. We met the nicest farmer lady here who told us all about the area there.

This is the くま注意(beware of bears) path we took toward the farm. It's far less tread than the rests of the mountain. It's very common for hikers to wear bells to warn off the bears when hiking through this mountain, though I've ride that speaking loudly has been proven just as effective... this bells are pretty happy to hear though.

A beginning from the middle: where I just came from.

2009-11-26T05:11:00.001-08:00

Let's start with some current projects and status:
Living in Japan with my girlfriend Celeste who I met here several years ago, and trying to stay on a more permanent basis
Searching for a job (on slight vacation from this for the next few weeks)
Intensive Japanese study
Writing a book about my life
Just moved out to Tsuruga (north of Osaka, far out in the country side), from Tokyo.

About my experience in Tokyo

I just moved out to the middle of nowhere from Tokyo. Tokyo is not a terrible city, it has it's charms, but it feels very separate from Japan, much like New York feels very separate from the US, it is an entirely different place, this is good and bad. Well for those of you who have been there, you know that there is no other place quite like it.

I like to call Tokyo a giant surreal adventure that ranges from entertaining, to bewildering, to feeling dull or confused. This is because of super advanced shiny technology everywhere. Buildings are always tall, and cover the entire city, not just any particular part. They're also almost always covers in LCD screens keeping bright lights with all the new company logos right in your face.

It's very easy to get lost, not just in a physical sense, but maybe even more so in a mental state, wondering where to go next. I really like to wander around places randomly, but in Tokyo, I don't feel like I'm succeeding in much if I do this.. unless I know specifically where I want to go, so for that reason among others, I've always enjoyed other parts of Japan for being more random find friendly.

There's still cool things, and as my time these last two months went by, I found Tokyo less irritating, and even enjoyable.. especially Yoyogi park. That's probably the real reason that I have issues with Tokyo. If you're claustrophobic at all, then it's pretty terrible. You will be surrounded by buildings at all times, and won't find much open space. Yoyogi is a nice open space though, and people really come to enjoy it.

This was not my first time in Tokyo, I'd spent a month there in the past, and always felt very lost. In all honesty, I didn't really like Tokyo... but I have many friends there, which can be a big draw in, not to mention there is much more opportunity for interesting positions rather than just English teaching (though not usually from the start, *especially* if you are an American like me, making a working holiday visa not an option).

Now having immediately moved out of Tokyo, off to Tsuruga in the middle of nowhere, I really understand just how different Tokyo is. I have a bit more appreciation for it than when I started out there. I feel like I'll be happy wherever I end up in Japan at this point.

Pictures from Tokyo:

Last night in Shinjuku, at the I-setan shop displays, check out the stories online at isetanchristmas.jp/ if you'd like some interesting trippy christmas stories!

This is down a Shinjuku road. I found this road particularly attracting.. most of Tokyo is filled with city just like this, but much less entertaining with the Christmas lights.

Another random Shinjuku shot. It's so rare to find random places in Tokyo, atleast when I go looking, but for the first time, there was something! Maybe there's more to Tokyo than I thought.

Pictures from Yoyogi park. It's huge, gorgeous, and everyone goes there just to have fun. My favorite part of Tokyo, and the largest amount of open space you'll find. There's endless fun to find, we even got randomly featured in a Japanese music vidoe on this trip!

Celeste and I in our new goth loli gear in my favourite nearby park, in Ikebukuro.

Cat cafe with really large cats in Ikebukuro! A cat cafe is a place where you can just go, hang out, pet cats, hold cats, be around cats, and lots of them. Many folk in Japan don't have a lot of space for pets, so this is their compromise. It's such a cool concept. I hear in Oosaka there's a bunny cafe, I'm definitely planning on visiting.

Celeste and I went to the local butler cafe. I bet many of you have heard of made cafes, where your waitresses are dressed as maids, and treat you as a household owner. This particular butler cafe is almost exactly the same, except your waitresses are dressed as butlers. Some butler cafes actually have male butlers, but of all the different genres, crossdressing butler cafes are the most fun environment, the employees are always very charismatic, and love talking to everyone that comes in. This particular time we went, it was Halloween week, so the butlers were dressed as vampire butlers. Therefore, I asked my butler to draw a vampire on my omuraisu! Celes had a bat drawn on hers.