almost out

SO the last saturday has come and gone,
my farewell party was a great time
had some yakiniku and maybe some beer!
afterwards, the diehards headed out to
karaoke... until 5am. ah yes, good times

the last week was hectic and flew by, as
i figured it would, I didn't really eat
that well, slept way too little and as a
result, I think i have a cold, but i've
been lazily relaxing / cleaning all day
knocking back the old Oj and vitamin C
drinks.

time to head for a quick bite to eat and
back to cleaning. see you soon.

natto

natto is fermented soy beans
it's gooey, smells like, well
rotten soy beans, and the taste
texture... I'll just say it's one
of two Japanese food stuffs that
I do not like. Yes Sarah I've had
natto. It's nasty.

the other thing i can't do is
tororo i think, its a rice dish
with grated mountain potato or
something and it's also nasty.

and if you look at that video clip
sarah left in the last comment. that
guy is huge here, comics, tv, everything
you can rent his costume at some karaoke
places. Japan loves the crazy daytime
variety shows. later

shakes

neither of us were anywhere near the earthquake, still plan to leave
in about 2 weeks. that's all.

winding down

that's right, cleaning...
it's not so much fun.
anyway...
last night was the big typhoon
students asked me if i had water
and acted like it would be a full
blown hurricane. well, it got a little windy
and there was rain, yep and that's about it.
big let down on the storm front, good that
it wasnt really big enough to hurt anything
so...
this post is basically i'm in the middle of
doing laundry. yeah. anyone up for doing
anything when i get back should leave a
comment.

go for a drink, I guess there's a new
japanese place in Aswaubenon. hang out.
play the wii, I'll probably be getting
an xbox 360, so kill some monsters etc.
even go for some taco bell. it'll
probably be a little shocking getting
back to the west. anyway... see you
soon... ish

comin home

it's true, and for those of you who don't know.

Aug 1 to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Aug 6ish to London, England
Aug 9ish to Dublin, Ireland
Aug 14 to the US

see you soon, I'm also semi planning to be in the GB area for maybe a couple years, that's right. funny how things work eh?

Also, I'll hopefully be throwing a little I'm home party catered by myself with all of the Japanese goodies I've learned how to make ( don't worry if you are scared of sushi, I've gotten quite good at westernizing Japanese cuisine).

see you soon.

spin me round

ultimate / disc golf ds

floating gates

We also went to Miya-Jima, most known for its
Floating torii.




we also went for a hike to the top of Mt. Misen.





and saw plenty of wildlife












good times

more pictures here

tabemono

On a lighter note.

Hiroshima is now a very much alive city.

One of the things that is famous in Hiroshima is

okonomiyaki, a kind of pancake meal.

Hiroshima changes up the typical okonomiyaki by
adding noodles to the mix. and it's tasty.

i didnt take any pictures but someone has a photo

click here for a walk through with pictures on how to make it

uploading

right now my pictures from Hiroshima and Miya-jima are uploading.

Hiroshima is an amazing city that's come back from massive destruction.
some parts get a bit graphic, you were warned.

The Peace Park was a very sobering place,

The Centograph for A-bomb victims.




the remains of the A-bomb dome.



The Children's Peace Monument.



A little girl name Sadako was dying from the radiation
and she had heard that if you make 1,000 paper cranes
you get a wish granted, so she made cranes, lots of them
and people all over the world sent cranes to show support.


The National Peace Memorial Hall for A-bomb victims.



Here you can read accounts of the day written by survivors.
Even though they were different, they all included the regret
and horror of leaving people behind, hearing the screams and
not being able to do anything. Even though some swore their
hatred for America, most everyone was/is against any form of
war because no one should have to endure that.


The National Peace Museum.

This museum has many videos, artifacts and things related to
August 6, 1945 at 8:15 a.m. and beyond. Information about
the heat, the force, the radiation and the destruction.
There were pictures and actual artifacts that showed how shadows
were permanently burnt onto things where people were sitting at
the time.

There was a small exhibit of sculptures of people with their skin
melting off of their body from the heat blast followed by old photos
of actual victims. It was fairly graphic.

It all just nails home how terrible it was and still is.

more pictures here

i went to korea

pictures are online, finally click the food below to check them out



more from Fukuoka and Hiroshima to come

whatever

so, still have to upload the korea pics... yeah, that'll happen.....

anyway this past weekend jo and i went to Tokyo Disney.

Disney Sea on sunday and Disneyland on monday. good times

enameru neibi

that's enamel navy!
which is also the color of my nifty new ds lite!
nice huh. of course if it dies in the states im in trouble, but i dont care much.

So, for anyone who owns a ds i'd like to highlight a fun "interactive noir novel" game. It's called Hotel Dusk. It has a sketch style character design that may remind you of that amazing ah-ha video from back in the day. Anyway, you take the role of a retired detective out to find his old partner who double crossed him. He works as an on the road salesman who moonlights as a private dick type. The writing is very much in character with the gritty noir male type. Which more often than not are just funny. Anyway this game takes you through Hotel Dusk as you learn about the other guests and work to trace your ex partner. the game is fully stylus driven and you hold the ds on it's side with a 3d map on the left screen and a top down view on the touch screen where you move your character. It's not so much big on action, and the story is semi predictable, but its fun nonetheless. And if you ever played Trace Memory, this is by the same developer but the game is much better.
That'd be about it for now.

Korea will be posted eventually, maybe. Oh and pokemon Diamond is sucking up all my time. never thought i'd get sucked in.

I'm well, yes it's good.

This is a reply to a comment asking about working in Japan ... Enjoy or Ignore

"Seems like your experiences have been abundant and wonderful, but, were they indeed wonderful?" - Scott

The short answer is, yes it's been wonderful. It's radically different from the places I've lived / been in the world. Japan is an absolutely amazing place to live and work. Aeon, well Aeon is a Japanese company... which at times will drive you absolutely insane. My experience has been overall positive but I've heard crazy stories about passive aggressive, deceptive, cut throat and sometimes just insane or ridiculous. A good place for horror / glory stories is an eikaiwa journal
site. I rarely read it, but my girlfriend checks it out fairly often, it can be informative, sometimes entertaining.

Aeon also has many campaigns aimed at supplementing income during the slow periods and to "help your students" which unfortunately can take a backseat to the money. It's business though, you've got to pay to live right? These campaigns can be difficult especially when you are new and have no idea how anything will help your students and it seems that arbitrarily recommending that they buy something (often very expensive) really seems to undermine your teacher - student relationship. But as you get more experience it's really not a big deal, just a little messed up at first. so be prepared to feel like a trashy used car salesman (no offense aimed at any used car salesman!).

Next, I work in Kanie, which is in the Chubu area Aeon Central Japan. Tokyo is Aeon East Japan. I have heard from trainers that the teaching style is different. So I'm not exactly sure how it works out there. One of the guys who was in my training group has transfered to AEJ so check his blog maybe he have something to say about it.

My experience in Tokyo is very, very limited, the eikaiwa will have more info. Tokyo was fun when i visited, but I love being in a smaller town near Nagoya, because I'm to a Shinkansen in 10 minutes and I'm in central Japan, Kyoto is 40 min away Osaka less than 2 hours tokyo about 2 hours or so. So central has its perks. Plus the largest area I've ever lived in is a suburb of Milwaukee or of DC, so I'm used to smaller communities close to larger urban areas. Tokyo might drive me crazy, but i doubt it because life can be so convenient. But Tokyo is insane!!

Aeon's benefits are getting worse, not that it matters to new teachers ::
Aeon pays my way home, they won't pay your way home.
My contract is 29.5 teaching hours a week and if my first class isn't until 2 or 3 pm, i don't go in until 145 or 245, you'll have to be in at 12 or one everyday.
My rent is subsidized and I don't pay into the pension system, your rent will still be subsidized, but your rent'll be higher, so will your base salary, but the added pension and hours makes you earn less (or so i believe, it doesn't matter to me since it's not my contract so i didn't really pay too much attention)
And there's something different about the bonus system, but for the real details just check Aeon's site, which I'm guessing you have already done.

Having said all of that, the students are almost always amazing people. The Japanese are almost always amazing people. The food here is amazing, transportation is almost always amazing. The culture is so crazy sometimes but usually in an amazing way.

Aeon's teaching method is pretty good and after you get into yourself here it gets much easier, especially if you teach adults only (i teach kids and adults) I think I would get bored if only taught adults. what are you planning? A or B or Amity?

Long story getting shorter:

It's a job. Japan is amazing. Japanese is a pain (KANJI), especially when you decide not to renew your contract and the end is in sight, which is why i quit actively learning.
Apply, why not. I think Aeon is better than NOVA again the eikaiwa is full of that.

No idea on teaching in Korea, and I'm tainted by living in the passive Japanese culture.
I will say that Hangul is so much easier to learn to read than kana and kanji.

well thata was a fun sunday morning

back to Japan!

Yep, we're back!
Work's back in the mix and crazy. The next couple months, scratch that, the last couple months are going to fly. Anyway, we are back from Korea, a very nice place, and there are pictures.
As always I think you should check out Jo's site first, she's better about things like that, but i'll get it out soon.

Anyone have any questions about Korea? In my 9 days there I got a feel for things.
Fire away

oops, one more

if anyone gets any strange emails from me, might be spam/virus, the computer I'm on seems to have some trojans on it, unfortunately the software wants me to to pay some won to actually delete it, i think, i can read hangul but i don't have any idea what it means, hehe, gotta love these asian languages!

so sorry again if you get anything from me, delete it!

other highlights include

well after a year in japan waiting and wanting....
i gots me some pizza!!!!

not the squid/mayo/crap cheese/tortilla esqe crust pizza you find in japan

but real (more passable) go pizza hut!!!

and!

Burger King!!

that's all...

oh yeah, we saw Spiderman 3 too!
after eating Pizza Hut!

that's all all

hangul

Hello from Gyeongju, South Korea. We are down here for a couple days to do some sights, some hiking and some relaxing. There will be more details coming later. If you saw Jo's post you may have seen that we went into North Korea. On our tour of the DMZ we went into one of the buildings used for signings etc and half of the building is on the south side of the actual line and half is on the north. So we walked over and i got my picture taken next to one of the ROK (republic of korea) soldier. Intense... if i touched him i might be in a hospital now, if i went close to a certain door maybe i'd be a captive in the north. Very intense. pictures to come!

Initial impressions of Korea are a healthy mix of Japan and a more American/aggressive attitude

great food, equally crap beer, nice people, less expensive, great food on the streets in stalls, sides and backs of cars.

having fun.

away message

I'm out of the country from 4/29 ~ 5/7.
Hopefully be enjoying some spicy kimchi
visiting the DMZ between the North and
South and enjoying not being in Japan.

with love
from Korea

let's go to the movies

and eat octopus balls! no, not actual octopus balls, but kind of dough nut holes filled with octopus and onion.

here we go. If you haven't seen it, I think you should at least give Little Miss Sunshine a rental, if it's out on video yet ..., not sure, anyway its great!

on to the takoyaki (fried balls filled with octopus bits and more!)

It's something you should really try if you come to Japan, and especially if you visit Osaka.

(1)
You mix some batter of fish sauce-ish water, egg and flour. Then you cut up various ingredients

octopus should be boiled first.
we also used shrimp, chicken and negi (green onions)

(2)

pour batter into the takoyaki grill and add ingredients

(3)

once they're ready, flip and let finish

(4)

remove from the grill and add garnish
common choices are takoyaki sauce, mayo or bonito (dried fish shavings)

(5)

the bonito flakes dance because of the rising heat form the takoyaki
(that might not be true at all, but they do dance)

anyway, we are borrowing the grill form Jo's manager so we might be experimenting with other styles, neither of us are really big fans of octopus. They are just little balls of dough and
fillings, add some sugar and its desert, maybe some breakfast types, ham and egg.

Everyone at work thinks im crazy because i change japanese recipes to my liking.

that's all, but in case you missed it Jo and I will be in Korea from April 29 until May 7 or 8.
Golden week vacation! yes! last year we hung out around here and I was sick, this year will be better!

you can always check out the pics and more at my flickr page

japan ultimate

to kick this off, jo and i have been in Japan for over a year! whoah! and happy easter to those who are eastering!

the following is a fairly... well, if you don't play ultimate or aren't familiar, feel free to skim the net chunk!

cheers

let's see, so this weekend, well sunday only, I played in an ultimate tournament in Okazaki. Iwas one of 2 foreigners on the team and the one with the least Japanese. Which made some things very very difficult. I have a decent level of experience with the game but a lot of the time it felt like i was playing... I'm not really sure. stall counts were in English, even though Japanese numbers are not an issue, pick, foul, travel the same, just with a heavy katakana feel. flick is called side and backhand is back. no break is ura, strike is either inside or open, and i think straight up is FM... i think. oh, the games are timed 50 mins and stop. even if you are tied the disc is in the air you jump catch (buzzer) you land, NO POINT, time ended before you touched down. After each game both teams line up facing each other and listen to someone read the scores and then you bow and say arigato gozaimashita (thank you very much), shake hands with the person across, arigato gozaimashita and then do the traditional line shake arigato gozaimashita, arigato gozaimashita, arigato gozaimashita. then you circle up for the cheer, which is the other team name then shout something, then your team name shout something. very fun.

we played zone, sweedish, ho stack, stack, man.
great group of guys, very fun, and since it's been... a very very long time since i've played
my legs are sore and tight today.

I had to work saturday so i missed out on the 1st 2 games, they lost, then on sunday we won the first two mainly due to the other teams' incompetence to convert our mistakes and then lost to the third team.

I played ok, few big mistakes, some great flow moments and a couple worthy d points.
not bad

as much fun as it was, im not sure i'd like to play another tourney mainly due to the language barrier (my bad for being not so great at japanese)

but i may start practicing with the guys

sweet.

anyway, if any of you disc fellows have any questions, feel free to ask!