Wow. It's been way too ridiculously long since my last post. The reason being that for some strange reason that this weekend is the first time I was actually able to view my own web page since this summer. Why? I don't know. But it works again, so that's good.  

So Japan year number two has started.  It's a bit weird since many of the people I hung out with a lot last year have left.  But there are also new people, and a number of people from last year opted to stay another year.  Plus, I'm in Japan, and still having a great time here.  Everything seems more chilled out now that I've been for a year. The super market is no longer scary, I can get by with my Japanese fairly well, and I feel very comfortable at my school. 

 My school festival is coming up next weekend which should be interesting.  You can check out some picture from the festival last year, including some picture of me in a kimono, here. Tomorrow I'm going to a tea ceremony party with one of my Japanese friends which should be cool.  Also coming up soon is the Inter-Prefectural Soccer Tournament in Nagano. This year I designed the logo for the Shizuoka prefecture team, which will be featured on all our tee shirts.  I'm going to try to scan in at school next week and I'll put it up here.

Also new are some picture from the the Izu Tub Race (see below).  I didn't have any picture before, but a friend of mine hooked me up, so here you go.

A few days ago Shawn and I got to go to the Ghibli Studios Museum in Mitaka, just north of Tokyo. There is no English language page, so the fonts on that last link may be messed up on your computer. Gomen. (jp sorry) You may know some of Ghibli Studios movies, which include Spirited Away , My Neighbor Totoro, and Laputa: Castle in the Sky.  All done by the famous Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki.  If you've never seen any of his movies, you're missing out.  Go and check out them out.  Also a few pictures from the Ghibli museum will be up soon, that is as soon as I can find my memory card. I know it's around here somewhere...

Monday, July 14, 2003 11:07

Been awhile since the last post, but two weeks ago I had a really cool experience.  A group of about fifteen JET's went down to the Izu peninsula to participate in Ito city's annual tub race down the Matsukawa river. 

We went down to Izu a day early, and as luck would have it there is an extremely generous Buddhist temple in Ito city called the Butsu-Genji temple and they actually let us all stay in the temple the night before the race! If you're ever in Ito definitely try to stop by. The people at the temple were super nice to us. They've had people stay there a number of times before the tub race, and I guess they've just had good experiences.  We stayed upstairs in one of the temple buildings, and they gave us all futons to use, and the next morning they actually put out breakfast for us as well.  They had donuts, coffee, tea, they made sausages, and they even had cereal!  It was great, and it was also funny, since that's probably the most western breakfast I'd had in months., and it happened to be in a Buddhist temple.  

We were up early the next day to go and register for the tub race. They had a separate international race, so all of the foreign people competed against each other.  The Japanese people mostly raced as teams from their blocks in the town.  (For example, I live in Yoshiwara. My address is 4-12-4 which means I live in "yonn cho-me" or block four.  So when you have a town festival your supposed to celebrate/compete with your block.)  There were about 20-30 people in the international race, and we went down the river (which runs through the center of the town, and leads right out into the ocean maybe 50 feet past the finish line) in groups of five.  

They timed everybody as you finished and posted all the times up on a scoreboard. Of the top five times for the international race there were four JETs, including me.  I got a time of 4 min 22.03 sec to come in first place! I barely beat the guy who came in second by 6 tenths of a second.  After the race I was talking to some people and it turns out that the guy who came in second, Javier,  is a Brazilian who lives in Ito, and he'd won the tub race seven years in a row!  The other JETs that placed were Daniela Papi, Nick Ball, and Rob Shaw. After all the races were finished  they had an awards ceremony, and I got a plaque and I also won 30,000 yen. ($240!) Not bad for 4min22sec.

Wednesday, June 25, 2003 13:48

Another trimester is starting to wind down here in Japan.  Japanese high schools are in session from April-July, Sept-December, and January-February. August, Mid-Dec through Mid-Jan, and March are all vacation time for the students.  It works out to be about the same amount of school as students have in America, except that in America most of the vacation time is during the long summer break.  

Speaking of schools, I've finally got some pictures back up and running of my school, Yoshiwara Shogyo Koko. Some exciting news, tomorrow my brother, Shawn, will be coming to school with me for the day, to experience a Japanese high school firsthand. Quite a line up class-wise tomorrow as well.  Four oral communication classes, an English department meeting, and an international business class. Should be fun. 

Monday, June 23, 2003 13:17

This weekend I had the opportunity to travel down into the Izu peninsula. We went to relax on the beach for a few hours in Toi. Besides Mt. Fuji, The Izu peninsula is one of the main attractions of Shizuoka Prefecture. If you've ever read James Clavell's "Shogun" you'll be familiar with the Izu as one of the prominent locations in the book.  Also interesting to note, even if you've read the book, you may not be aware that it's story, and main characters are in fact based on actual people and events. There is even an annual festival held in Yokosuka to remember William Adams (the historical Blackthorne). And of course, we're still in the rainy season here in Japan. You can take a look at the lack of Mt. Fuji in this web-cam.  

Wednesday, June 18, 2003

This past weekend about 30 Jet participants from Shizuoka prefecture (myself included) took a trip up to Nagano for the 2003 inter-prefectural AET soccer tournament. Sadly the men's team lost all of our games, but it was still fun. The women's team actually won two games, and almost won the plate competition.  But they lost by one penalty kick in overtime.  Check out this this News Article about the tournament.  

In other news, I'm making some changes to the web page.  The site I was using to handle my pictures was getting cumbersome, and running low on space, so I've switched host sites, which will hopefully transfer into more pictures for you, more often.