Miyajima and back again
So matt came back to 'Shima, we went out with budd, met that cutie there named yoko, then went to miyajima today. I need to blog about it in detail, but i'm sooo tired, and it's taken long enough getting all of the pictures and videos up!! My archives are packed with new material so you're just gonna have to check it. This trip to Miyajima was very new to me, we ropewayed up to the top and it was really incredible, the photos or videos don't capture what it was like just walking around in the sunlight looking down at the surrounding islands. For some reason Mat and I always end up doing really ... romantic type things together. But it's cool, we're grown men and can handle it.
A long time ago when I wrote about Shichimi, and said one thing spoiled the atmosphere i'd mention later, i forgot to mention that. It's that 101 dalmations was playing on the TV. or "hyaku ippiki wan-chan". It's apparently a popular movie here... I'm talkign about the live action version, folks.
Yoko is a major babe, and I got along well with her. There's a slight problem in the fact that she doesn't speak any English, though, and I'm not sure how fluent my Japanese is when I don't have a few in me.
Also, photobucket seems to be auto-resizin my photos smaller and smaller. I'm gonna have to switch to Flickr soon.... Leave me some feedback yeah?
oyster FEST '06!
Hey, I'm super tired, and so this blog is going to suffer, but i finally got my pics up from the oyster mania. I really only ate 2 oysters, but they were damn good oysters. I have some cool videos too! The guy fighting the snake... it was a wicked battle, and of course i don't know what it was about, but i took a lot of video from that too. I need to play with them and figure out how to get them as one or two files before i get them up though ~ so just watch the others.
Things are happening now, big things, and I want you all to know exactly what is going on ~ but i am just TOO TIRED!! They are mainly naked man festival this weekend, my couch coming also this weekend, and my severe frightening addiction to
Battlestar Galactica. My passionate cravings to learn japanese are becoming so strong they are burning ~ but my inability to study is still proving the stronger. I bought some manga with furigana, so I figure that'll be a great way to pick up some verbs and kanji! That's my plan before bedtime.
D out.
I'm having a great week at work, today was fantastically easy. Didn't have a class till 3:30, then I had my least favorite class, got that out of the way, flew into 3 of my favs back to back then I finished. Tomorrow I finish my last class at 5:00!! Man. Then, after that it's friday and saturday. Those days are really busy, but I like the students, and even though I work saturday, friday is still friday. Weeks fly by here in the most serious way.
This morning before work I went to Yesterday cafe, it's a coffee shop by the hondori entrance. Don't ask me how I haven't been there yet, I just haven't. It's a beatles themed coffee shop. Always playing beatles. It's.... well, it's hard to explain how much I like it without using swear words. Just a simple place, but with the beatles everywhere. I took a picture of the stairs leading up to it ~ on the picture it says "imagine peace". There's an abbey road painting on the outside. Hard to miss.
Then I
went a few yards up to Parco, hit the 9th story while gawking at another flurry of snow, and picked up a
Yura Yura Teikoku live album for 10 bucks. I heard them playing in a used clothing shop a couple days ago, and although they didn't have the album I was looking for (me no car, if you can find it) it's still pretty decent. Man, my hands are itching for that album though.
They are sort of like a simple garage guitar band turns psychadelic, grabs some midi mixers, and then turns around and goes back into their garage. The tracks on their webpag are decent, they're old and jsut what some english company could get some rights to. Download Evil Car somewhere on the net, it's a good tune and really freaks out at the end if you're into that. My fav. track i have is off this CD called "bando wo yatteru _____ (can't read that kanji)."
One of our JTs is leaving soon ( :( ) so they're doing interviews. This girl Kanae is a prospective hire, and let me tell you the hiring for the JTs is MUCH tougher than it was for me! I don't know why, i'm the one they had to risk getting a visa for, and all of that. But she had to take written test, interview at a branch with a NET (native english teacher, like myself) then i'm not sure what, then she's here at ____ all week observing and training and stuff, and today I gave her a 50 minute lecture on pronunciation and classroom english, phonics, etc, then tomorrow she has to do some trial lessons with my J-staff, and THEN after that if they still like her she has to go to Okayama to honbu (HQ) and do a week of training or something. After that week they decide whether or not they will hire her. She can do all of that and not even get hired. BRUTAL!! She's stressed, though i don't blame her, but I think she gots what it takes. Her english is good, and the moral of the story is that she's cute.
Talk to you all soon
matta ne
-D
Iwakuni and back again
So Iwakuni was a cool place, fun day. Jessica, from Reno, is working with Aeon and is stationed(?) there. It's a 740 yen train ride, takes about 40 mins. Nothin', yeah? We checked out the huge cool bridge there, and had plans for the castle as well. Well, we missed the cutoff for the ropeway so saw the white snakes instead. (Man, it is snowing like hell here by the way)
We were eating at this very japanese place, and there was only one other person there, this 60 something year old drunk guy.
He bought us some sake, we thoroughly thanked him, and i talked to him in japanese for a bit. Talking isn't really the correct word.. more like i listened, and didn't understand. Anyways, then this tray of fugu comes to us that's from him! Fugu is the
blowfish, pictured below.
It's super expensive, and super poisonous. We had it raw, too. Afterwards my cheeks were burning, and i felt sort of dizzy and high. But not really in a good way ~ i dunno. It was awesome though. So we're trying to leave, he's spouting off stuff, and jessica says "I think he's saying something about a taxi..." and sure enough we go outside to head to our bus and there's a taxi there. He's like "dozo, dozo, dozo, shinpainai yo!"
"here you go, please, don't worry!" I shrugged at Jessica, and we got in the taxi, sort of asking each other if we had any idea of what was happening. Then he says "my house is near, don't worry" so i'm like "holy cow jessica we're going to this guy's house!"
Well we got there, he tells us to wait, disappears for a few minutes while we're hanging out in the taxi, then he runs out with his little old lady wife in an apron and stuff and he said "we're only going to have a few drinks"
So we pulled up to this little bar with this stereotypical looking japanese izakaya owner (pictured below) They tried to get us to eat more, i had some sort of "delicacy" which was this long thing in this brown sauce.
I think it was some sort of fish guts soaking in it's own feces. It was probably the most disgusting thing I've ever had, because it
really tasted like fecal sauce, but i had to chew on this slimy thing with my mouth full of it. It was awful, they're looking at me and i'm telling jessica in english "this is the most disgusting thing i've ever had, just don't eat it. I might throw up right now" dead serious. Ugh. Anywys, the shochu was good, and of course it was all paid for. And what a bizarre day that was!!
