花火

madoka and daniel clowning around with fireworks

POWER SUNSET

along the Ibo river 揖保川の近く

TOO MUCH WALKIN

yeah i am tired

相生ペーロン祭り

taiko in the shadows

相生ペーロン祭り

A solo act.

時々

Sometimes I do believe I am living in the countryside. Especially when I see a tractor rolling by my window.

NUNG CHUCK BASEBALL

Gotta love the crazy Japanese TV shows. The show featured a crazy Bruce Lee fan who was a teacher. Here he was showing off to his two students his skill with the nung chucks. His new sport of nung chuck baseball.

もうすぐ蒸し暑いくなる

Its starting to get humid and muggy, I figure another week or two til it becomes a sweatfest. Lucky I got the fan from Noriko just in time.

プレゼント

The other week I stepped into work and found these nice little goodies under my desk. Of course who wouldnt refuse free beer and nuts. Miyamoto sensei is a great guy!

友達の結婚式

Just got Maria and Dan's wedding invitation in the mail. Congrats! See you guys soon in the boonies!

A NORM DAY IN NIPPON

Been in Japan for a loooooong while now, and some things feel normal, but then again, mmmm ... they aren't so normal back home ...

- back up parking is the norm
- my car makes a beeping sound when you throw it in reverse
- its regular to ride a granny bike
- most students wear uniforms
- i get my rice by farming it
- pay my bills at the convience store
- drive on the left side
- eat miso soup with every meal
- i grab a rice ball for a snack
- the food choices consist of sushi, ramen, or some fried chicken
- all beer tastes the same
- people turn off their car lights at the stoplights
- emergency car blinkers are used to say "thank you"

Thats all the thoughts that popped in my head today, but there is always more ...

CHRISTMAS COMES EARLY

今年のクリスマスはちょっと早く来た。今日はボーナスを貰った。よかった! Today I got my bonus for work! Yipee! I won't never complain about getting a bonus, sure is different than working in a public school. Plus maybe now I got enough money to buy a plane ticket back home.

東洋大姫路高校

Toyodai Himeji High School : My new school where I have been working since April. About 1400 students! Many come by bike, bus, and train. Even some of the kids ride their bike up to 1 hour each way! Talk about being tough. A couple years back it was an all boys school until recently. There are just a handful of girls, where the boys make up about 80 percent of the school. In a class of 40, there are only about 6 - 8 girls. The school is part of a University in Tokyo called Toyo. Toyo is a pretty big and famous university and it is quite often where the main University school creates a sub high school in its name. Still researching why, because um yeah, Tokyo and Himeji are pretty far apart, and vastly different (3 hours train to Tokyo). But hell the baseball team is quite famous all over Japan. High school baseball is somewhat of a cult status at times, getting to the big game at Koshien Stadium is just like getting to the Super Bowl. Some baseball players from the school will eventually make it pro. Just like "Shiggy" Hasagawa of the Mariners from back in the days. Some of my teachers even taught Shiggy. The school is located in northern Himeji at the base of Mt. Shosha, where they filmed the movie, "The Last Samurai" with Tom Cruise. Kinda cool that you can hike from the back of the school to the top of the mountain in about 40 minutes. The school has a mixed bunch of kids, ranging from the brainy to the not so brainy, to the super sporty. Overall most of the kids are pretty cool and nice, and still the style as the norm for the wannabe cool girls are the short skirts. Which the teacher police always cracks down at times. Honestly I like the longer skirts. Anyways the staff and teachers are pretty cool and friendly too, and school is just a hop skip away from my apartment, so everything is pretty cool so far.

TAIWANESE FOOD

Damn Taiwanese food is good! And cheap too! Its great sometimes to escape the land of sushi and ramen.

JUST CRAZY!!

Just a while back there was the crazy killer on the Virginia Tech campus. The student got the gun across the street from campus, ordered the bullets on Ebay, during the melee had the time to go to the post office to send an express mail to NBC News, in the package was videos and photos of why he was out to get everyone. He said he was bullied , and this was his revenge, to get back at the rich kids. Yeah, WTF!!!!! Just crazy I tell ya. The gun laws are really fucked up in America, who are you really protecting? Why everyone gotta have the "right to bear arms"? Where is the right to walk down the street peacefully? Yeah, people always gonna get angry and fight and shit, but I take my chances with a wussie with a knife any day over a wussie with a assault rifle. Heck can't even go into malls now a days, even the crazy people know to go there and bring their guns. At least while living here in Japan, shootings arent that common. Mostly the gangsters are shooting each other. Too hard to get bullets, they gotta save em. Reminds me of that Chris Rock episode where he tells people its not the guns, its the "bullets!". If each bullet costed one million bucks, ya think that dood is gonna shoot it? Hell no! He gotta save it! Anyways, thats my rant, guns suck!

SMALL WORLD

How small the world is! i live in japan, Eric lives in Seattle, coming out of the subway tunnel in Taipei and crossing the street Cheryl spotted Eric. what a coincidence to meet Eric of all places. I didn't know he was in Taiwan, and Eric didn't know i was in Taiwan too. anyways its always great to bump into any friends in part of the world.

HOLY SMOKES!

One day I was driving through Ako, and holy smokes it was a huge fire! The fire just ate up the hillside, and it also went throughout the night. Guess smoking and hiking don't go good together.

UNDER THE CHERRY TREES

Its the Japanese tradition of families, friends, and co-workers from the company to sit under the cherry tree and enjoy bentos and plenty of alcohol. Day or late late into the night.

SOAKING UP THE SIGHTS

Trying to go into ninja mode.

FUNNY TREE

I think its a female tree for some reason. But hey it was growing near the shrine for marriage???

A SPRING REFLECTION

A CLOUD OF SAKURA

How beautiful it is looking up.

姫路城と桜

Just enjoying the view of Himeji castle and cherry blossoms.

姫路城と桜

It was said in the history books back in the 1920s that Himeji Castle was to be destroyed by the army for materials. But when the general looked at how difficult it would be to take the castle apart, stone by stone, they decided to put it up for sale. For a mere 23 yen it sold for, which is about 25 cents USA. Of course its worth alot more now. Its such a beauty, glad they didn't destroy it.

HIMEJI CASTLE 姫路城

A couple weeks back (April 7th) the sakura (cherry blossoms) and people were out and about.

ENJOYING SPRING

A walk with a friend under the cherry blossoms is the best spring thing to do.

TAIWANESE PEOPLE

Taiwanese people are really cool and nice. Much different than the hustle and bustle of HK or mainland China. Cheryl took me to this great Beef Noodle Shop near her apartment. Had some great Beef Noodle Soup and even chatted with the shop owner. Really nice guy and even invited me into the kitchen to check things out. He visited Hawaii before and was proud of his hula picture in the back, and if he wasn't busy enough with the restaurant he even sold insurance on the side. Really nice guy.

FIRST CLASS

Started work at my new high school in Himeji called Toyo Himeji High School, just over a week ago. But really didn't get to any classes til today. Honestly a bit nervous, but not too much, because well thats just me. First class was the 3-1 class, the brains class, where most of these kids will go to a good University and are the best of the best of the 3rd graders. Wow! Their English was really good, and Yoshikura Sensei had the whole class taught pretty much all in English! The one rule was to only speak English, so this will be very interesting, but I think the kids can do it. They all gave good answers about their dreams and hobbies. Very interesting to see compared to junior high school where sometimes I was happy that the kid even answered with a word. But then that first class was probably the best, the rest is WIP, work in progress for all the other classes, as probably the rest of the kids can't speak very well. But I will do my best to make these kids my little evil English project. The 2-4 class I also visited today, the have class two times a week with me, but doesn't mean they are twice as good. They either signed up to learn more English, or their friends signed up to, or they just didn't like math or science either. But the kids were nice and friendly and I think they showed me some hope to work with. So I am crossing my fingers. And hey they got their own motivation, they are going to do a 1 week homestay in Australia in June, how cool is that. Overall a good class day. Then even took out some time to visit some of the clubs around school, soccer, boys softball, badminton, basketball, and the really cool one Japanese archery called "Kyudo" the way of the bow. Kids were really nice and invited me in. The backdrop was full of cherry trees with the pedals flying off the trees as the kids shot the arrows. Kinda gave me a Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon moment, haha. Anyways back to school, more stories coming soon!

A WALK UNDER THE CHERRY TREES

before they bloom

LAST CLASS

最後クラス

ONE LAST CLASS PICTURE

GRADUATION DAY 卒業式

one last song 最後歌

GOODBYE

さよなら

COLLAGE

A farewell collage I made for Kobu Jr High School. Worked their for the past 6 months in Nishinomiya. Went to all their events ranging from sports day, super sports day, karuta, speech contest, teacher softball game, music concert, etc. Printed out about 200 photos, cut and used about 100, took about 2 days, and slapped them in a frame until 4am in the morning. But it was fun! Gave it to the school president Nishiuchi as a graduation present, I would say she was pretty happy.

DAMPLINGS FOR YOU

Went to eat at one of my favorite ramen shops in Osaka and got the English menu this time. Didn't notice how poetic their menu was, makes all the ladies wanna go and eat there! ...
"These Hakata bite-size DAMPLINGS were made so that women would not have to open their mouths wide to eat them. Try these piping hot, juicy damplings fried to a crisp ..."
funny shit, but still some good ass ramen.

THE ROCKY BALBOA GYM

Mr. Sakamoto, mystery guy, and Ken at the World Training Center gym in Nishinomiya. Really nice guys, be sad to miss em all. Everyone at the gym was very friendly and nice. At the beginning I compared the bling bling Konami Center gym ($120 month) to this gym ($60 month). Cheaper it was, so I opted for the down and dirty Rocky Balboa style gym. Literally the carpet was coming up, with floor boards showing through, there were huge holes in the seats as if Wolverine came by, the weights were brown and rusty. But hey I liked it, just gotta push iron no matter what it looks like. And the dudes there were huge! "gotsui" ごっつい they say in Japanese. It was fun times.

PINK?

Just some random apartments I found around Nishinomiya. Love them pink and green. Don't you want to live in a pink one?

MANHOLE

Every city has a different design for their manhole covers. Tatsuno is the dragonfly and for Nishinomiya is Koshein Stadium. Guess they love their Hanshin Tigers!

ME AND THE FROG

Was walking around and got intercepeted by some group telling me that Japanese work too hard. I told them I didnt speak Japanese so I could try to escape, but they were nice and tried to speak to me in English. Found out they were part of the communist political group, and one of their agendas was work. Personally I dont like communism, but then again I dont like over working. So it was interesting to talk to them. Even asked the frog guy for a pic too.

TATSUNO 龍野

Back in Tatsuno, my old town before. The short 6 months stint in Nishinomiya was short but good. Nice to be back in the country to just sit back and relax and be a bum for a month til the next job in Himeji starts. ++ pic of scooter license plate, the hiragana reads Tatsuno city

HANSHIN TIGERS 阪神タイガース

Baseball season is just around the corner. Go Hanshin Tigers!!! The Tigers are the Cubs of Japanese baseball, great history, great fans, great stadium, and always losing. Anyways hope they do great this year. If you are a Hanshin Tiger fan, you are called a "tora kichi" in Japanese. Tiger fans are great! Pretty much all home games at Koshien stadium are sold out. Fans come decked out in all sorts of Tiger wear, I would say that about 80% of the fans have some sort of Tiger clothing on. Much different than in America when you roll in with anything. And even with the team losing the fans are still cheering loudly, never a boo, and the sounds of drums, trumpets, any music instrument you name it, can be heard. A definite must see if you live in Japan.

MEGA MAC ATTACK

Being American I just had to try the MEGA MAC. Was it Mega? Sure was, a full 4 patties. Was it good? Mmmm ... maybe a bit too much meat. Just was a super Big Mac. In the end it was more of a Mega hurt to the stomach. Time for the gym!

MEGA MAC

A special in Japan a month back or so. So popular that it often sold out by dinner time at many of the McDonalds. If ya missed out, you could get a coupon for a discounted Mega Mac.

HERE COMES

Here comes spring! Cherry blossom viewing is around the corner!
もうすぐ春に来ます。花見を見たい!

TRAIN SUNSET

A sunset of train wires on the Hankyu line.

RUNNING SMALL

Sometimes it amazes me in Japan how things are sometimes. In the big city kids who wouldn't even come up to my waist are taking the train with their friends. No parents, no supervision, just the little group of them, I would guess they are maybe 1st graders or 2nd graders. In America that wouldn't happen, of course the first question to them would be "Where is your parent?","Oh, my parent is out playing pachinko". But the kids are so cute riding on the train. Here is a photo of them weaving through grownup traffic after getting off the train.

FERRIS BASKETBALL CHAMPS AGAIN

** Photo from Seattle Times
Earlier in the week I noticed that my high school, Ferris was back in the 4A Washington state tourney. Then checked again, low and behold another state trophy for the school, better luck next time you Franklin Quakers!! ha ha ha.

I remember back in the days going to watch the bball games, going to state every year. Watching coach Gillman work his magic, it surely was inspirational especially when I taught my junior high kids here in Japan. Jeez, they just get bigger every year, this year team had a student, Casto who was 6-8 and he is only a junior! Also on the team is the nephew of John Stockton, Shawn. Props out to the players. Ah and last props to the Lewis and Clark Tigers girls team, school rival, but winner of this year state girls 4A bracket. A double sweep for the eastside! Go country teams! Seattle Times article <-- click here for article

IN THE HOT SEAT

Yeah thats my chair and my ass burning up everyday. Sometimes it feels good and sometimes its a bit toasty. Was so glad it was natural gas this year, much cleaner than the ghetto oil gas that stinks. Well everything was peachie until this morning. When in the morning meeting the VP was talking something about the heater, then held up a brochure, then pointed at the one I was sitting by. Found out that there is some sort of problem with them, not sure what, but they gotta be fixed. Great, dumb heater ...

CRAZY?

Crazy is probably what all my teachers and thought of me today at school. Why? Because I was wearing a short sleeve t-shirt (mind you, 3 layers). I was fine, and the sun was shinning, it was a nice 54 degrees as a high, kinda felt like a Seattle spring. But teachers and kids were still in winter mode. Whispers went around, "hansode? 半そで? short sleeves?", "are you hot? atsui desuka? 暑いですか?", "oh, it must be because he is young, wakai kara, 若いから". Mmm .. this is the land where all elementary kids go to school in shorts, even when its snowing, and girls wear skirts year round. It was fun, maybe I will wear short sleeves again this week. 　

BLACK AND YELLOW

Colors of the Hanshin Tigers and also a rail road crossing.

HANKYU 阪急電車

Hankyu is one of the 3 major train lines in the Hanshin (Kobe and Osaka ) area. Of course its my favorite, the main station (Nishinomiya Kita Guchi) is by my home, fares are cheap, its clean, not too crowdy, train comes every 7 minutes, and it takes only about 20 minutes to get to either Umeda/Osaka or Sannomiya/Kobe. Its great until about the end of February when I have to move again, dang.

THE NEW YANKEE

Good luck to Mr. Igawa. From Hanshin Tigers to New York Yankees. (took this pic when I was walking around Koshein Stadium in Nishinomiya)

MORE PHOTO BOOTH

Poor guy can't get his head in the circle, (diagram to show you how to get the perfect picture) and when he does, he is still sad. Isn't he supposed to be happy getting it in there?

AT THE PHOTO BOOTH

You know it's a little old skool if it still says "FRESH".

HONEST MARKETING

Gotta love it, honest marketing in Japan, no beating around the bush, and they even show you its fake, great!