It's been a while since my last post, and I apologize. Moving to Brattleboro, VT and starting school at SIT have kept me pretty busy; not to mention it took three weeks to get the Internet hooked up in my new apartment.
Anyway, things are up and running at full speed now, and I do mean FULL SPEED. For the first time in my life, I need a day-planner to keep track of everything that's happening.
In the coming weeks, I promise to get some pictures online of the Vermont foliage, but in the meantime I started working on another project to interview all of my fellow classmates one by one and podcast it on my DotMac site.
Family is frustrating, no doubt about it. But this isn't about that. This is about the foundation family lays and what can be built from it.
This past Saturday all members of my family volunteered with Habitat for Humanity to help construct a house for the Watson family. The money for the house was raised by Grace Episcopal Church in memory of my late Uncle Ned.
My cousin Harris instigated this project during Christmas '05 with a letter to all family members explaining that Grace Church and Habitat of Hall County would raise the money and get the house started, but at some point during the building process he wanted our entire family to come get our hands dirty.
Since Christmas, it took a few months to get the logistics worked out, but they broke ground the end of June, and this past Saturday morning at roughly 9am every family member & a couple close friends came straggling in for work detail: Puttin' up the roof.
The start was slow and unknowing. If anyone had asked me the day before who would be the first family member to climb on the roof, Harris would not have been the guy. But to my surprise, Harris not only got on the roof, he led the charge!
Before long, my cousins Stuart & Rob, my brother Darrell, and Harris were all up on the roof talkin' the talk and walkin' the walk. Between the four of them, they laid well over half of the ply wood sheets for the back part of the roof (in hundred degree heat no less).
Meanwhile, my father, who has always shied away from manual labor, was measuring plywood, cutting wood with a buzz saw, heaving wood up on the roof, and mixing up concrete with my cousin Meigan.
My Uncle Bill, Aunt Laura, and cousin Liz were busy nailing up the weather proof plastic sheet around the house and cutting out the windows.
My eighty-year-old grandparents even made a showing around lunchtime with homemade sandwiches and sweet tea.
All in all it was a momentous afternoon for our family. I'm sure my Uncle Ned was thoroughly entertained, laughing, and smiling the whole time.
To cap the day off, we drove into the foothills of the Appalachians and my Dad treated a group of us to dinner in Dahlonega at a place called the Oar House. We sat outside on big wooden deck next to the Chestatee River listening to a two-piece jazz band while eating prime rib and pork tenderloin.
As a family bonus, Sunday morning got started with a breakfast batch of grits and a drive to Atlanta. Darrell & I met my cousins Seth & Meigan, and they treated us to the Allman Brothers concert at Lakewood Amphitheater. Summer ain't summer until the Allmans play.
I walked out after the concert feeling physically exhausted with blisters on my fingers from playing too much air-guitar, but my conscience was clear and my heart was full.
This is a tip of the hat to my buddy Richard and the rest of the promotion staff for organizing this music festival and a wag of the finger to anybody in Japan that doesn't go.
It's the 10th and last time they're gonna do it, and it's for a good cause; all proceeds go to local Yokkaichi charities.
If that's not reason enough to go, the lineup looks good too! Big Frog, A-Fank Syndicate, and more will get the place rockin', and Tokyo Ale will be serving up cool refreshing beverages, so pack up the car and get down there this weekend for some fun in the sun!
I shit you not, since being back in the States; I've been on the run the entire time. If I only had a guitar, a few chords, & some truth, my hard traveling and easy riding would make even Woody Guthrie proud.
I hopped on a Greyhound bus out of Boston bound for Brattleboro to pick up the used car I'd bought the previous week. Much to my family's dismay, I decided to break it in by driving it down the East Coast, making a few pit stops along the way to check in with some good friends.
First stop was New York City. I met my friend Daniel, who was fittingly wearing a T-shirt sporting a "100% Organic" logo. Daniel, to me fits the bill as a true activist, and I draw a lot of energy from my meetings with him. This time was no exception.
Daniel now lives in Harlem, and he first spotted me in his neighborhood as the, "white guy driving." The streets were full of African-Americans, Latinos, and the buildings had graffiti memorials to lost friends, but the best part was watching them play games in the streets. The road I parked my car on was blocked off so kids could play a supervised game of basketball.
Then, Daniel brought me up to speed on his current projects, which are always interesting. He is now working with the Gaia Institute in hopes to plant Green Roofs across New York City. A Green Roof, I learned, is exactly as it sounds, vegetation on roof tops to help prevent excessive runoff water, provide more oxygen in the city, help clean dust particles out of the air, keep the soaring summer temperatures down a little, and of course provide a more attractive cityscape.
It's just my opinion, but I think Daniel is really onto something here, and I wish him the best of luck as he tries to market this idea to the city of New York over the next year. But, just remember, to paraphrase my buddy Bubba, its progress not perfection.
The second stop on my southbound tour was Charlottesville, Virginia to visit my friend Alexis. She had recently returned to America from teaching English in Japan due to a job offer from UVA to work on the George Washington papers. I believe it involves digitizing all of George's writings.
Lex was nice enough to show me around Charlottesville and UVA's campus, but she had work everyday I was there, so I spent most of the time sleeping late, lounging around the house, chilling in a hammock listening to Muddy Waters, watching groundhogs trot around the backyard, and reading a JFK book I picked up while in Boston the previous week.
For my third stop, I was lucky enough to have Lex join me, and we drove down to Asheville, North Carolina for the annual Bele Chere Arts & Crafts Festival. This was nuthin' but a big party with good music and lots of beer!
My good buddy Stiles (aka Silver Fox) met us downtown as we joined my brother Darrell and cousin Stuart, who both reside in the Asheville area, to check out the last few minuets of a funk band from New Orleans. The keyboard player was wearing a T-shirt that said, "Make Levees, not War."
Later that night we saw hometown hero Warren Haynes with Gov’t Mule rock the main stage before heading back to Darrell's house to play a ring toss game they nicknamed Kasey 151 because it took Stuart's girlfriend Kasey 151 tries to get a ringer.
This video shows 4.5 minuets of Stiles & Lex displaying a total lack of natural ability. If they only had 1/10th of Darrell's skill!
The following night we went back downtown to see Galactic play an incendiary cover version of Zeppelin's "When the Levees Break", and then onto a place called The Root Bar, where the owner has set up a sandpit in the back and patented a game which crosses horse shoes with botchy ball. Root Ball, we were told, is the fastest growing sport in America.
The following day everyone went their separate ways, and I continued south past old Cherokee Indian places like Tallulah, Chattahoochee, Nantahala, and Chatuge into the southern end of the Appalachian Mountain range to Hiawassee, Georgia where my father lives.
I spent a nice quiet evening eating dinner with my dad and stepmother before driving the rest of the way to Gainesville early the next morning.
All in all, I put 1200 miles on my new car, saw some good friends & family, drank a few beers, heard some good music, and watched the sunset over the mountains with my dad.
If Woody Guthrie was here, he might say we're bound for glory. Life is good.
I spent the past ten days traveling with my mother and stepfather, Stanley, through New England. It all started because I needed to go Vermont to find a place to live for school, but it became a great excuse to take a family vacation to Boston and up the coast of Maine.
I owe a great deal of thanks to my mom & Stan for their overwhelming generosity and assistance in finding an apartment and a car. As usual, their hospitality went above and beyond anything I could have anticipated. Thank you very much!
We flew into Boston, rented a car, and immediately drove over to Plymouth to eat lunch and check out Plymouth Rock. Afterwards, we drove back into Boston and checked into a hotel located in Cambridge, a couple blocks away from the Charles River and next to MIT's campus.
(If you're interested in reading more about the Pilgrims, check out this article: Puritans to Prohibition)
The first couple days we spent sightseeing around Boston. We went to the JFK Museum, which was politically inspiring, went to the famous Bull & Fitch Pub, which was the inspiration of the '80s TV show Cheers, and we braved a heat wave to do a portion of the Freedom Walk; checking out Paul Revere's house and the Old North Church, where the famous "Two if by Sea" lanterns were hung.
The next day we walked around Harvard's campus and spent some time in an outdoor cafe at Harvard Square watching a ten year old boy Chinese boy whip a line of adults in speed Chess.
We drove into Vermont listening to Willie Nelson's Whiskey River on the radio and spent an intense few days apartment shopping. There was no time to take any photos of Brattleboro, but I will say, I'm getting very excited about starting school.
SIT is a very small school, the campus consists of only a few old white columned houses renovated into classrooms and offices, located on top of a hill overlooking rolling mountains. There're maybe 300 students. I think it’s gonna be a phenomenal experience that will light a few creative sparks and get the good wheel of fortune turning.
By sheer luck, there was a Subaru dealership located next to our hotel in Brattleboro, so I bought a used Outback wagon. I'm now mobile!
With my mission accomplished in Brattleboro, we headed into Maine to travel up the rocky coast and eat lobsters! Our first stop was the small town of Ogunquit where we went to Perkins Cove to eat stuffed lobster at Barnacle Billy's.
As we continued up the coast, driving from meal to meal, we made a sightseeing stop just north of Portland around Cape Elizabeth to see the Portland Head Light, the most photographed lighthouse in the world.
Our next meal was on Bailey's Island at place called Cook's Restaurant, which became world famous in '98 when it was featured on a string of Visa commercials. We all ate our first lobster rolls.
For dinner the same night we drove around Rockland to a small community called Camden where we ate boiled lobster at a place called Bay View Lobster. Stan made friends with a guy from Louisiana whose reason for moving to Maine was Shreveport.
Stanley's goal for the whole trip, aside from eating well, was to make it to Bar Harbor. We had an afternoon driving around Acadia National Park, where we saw some breathtaking views of the jagged coastline before checking into a B&B called Lucerne.
Last, but not least, we drove back to Boston, stopping at some outlets malls for my mother to do some shopping, and had our last supper at one of Boston's oldest family run Italian eatery called Jevelis Restaurant. Evidentially, Bill Clinton ate here a few years ago, so they styled one room after the White House and it has presidential paraphernalia everywhere.
This was the first extended trip I've ever taken where so much emphasis was placed on food, but I must say, it was really, really, good food! My hat's off to Stanley for being a knowledgeable guide, and my belt's one notch looser in anticipation for my next trip with him.
Fourth of July necessities: food, beer, water (preferably ocean), friends, & fireworks. I feel like I covered all of these criteria excessively over the past week.
I just want to say thank you to my good buddy Stiles for his hospitality in Charleston and his family in St. Simons for all the delicious gluten free food.
Thanks to Cain for the gas powered blender on the beach and the daiquiris, and his cousin Ashley for being the kindest, funniest redneck from Albany, GA I've ever met.
Thanks to Nelson for the Red, White, & You party which consisted of chili dogs, baked beans, potato salad, beer, and a few hundred dollars worth of explosives. All the summer essentials to celebrate America anyone could ask for.
Thanks to Fiji Ted for taking me out on his boat and letting us watch fireworks from his dock.
Thanks to my friend formerly known as Ronnie and his roommates for grilling everything under the sun and letting me eat it. I wish I had some pictures!
Thanks to Scooter and his family for letting me crash at their house on Folly Beach and feeding me even more food.
Sir Ken Robinson is author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative, and a leading expert on innovation and human resources. In this talk, he makes an entertaining (and profoundly moving) case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it. [Recorded February, 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 20:02]
This post is long overdue, and I just got some pictures up online. Check 'em out here: Hawaii Picture Gallery
Originally, I wanted to write about my departure from Nagoya; the quiet drive with Fumio to the airport on the Nagoya expressway past the twin towers of the station and the new Toyota building. My last view of Nag city came from an almost aerial viewpoint with surreal qualities.
I wanted to write about arriving in Honolulu and getting whisked through immigration because a family of twenty Samoans was in front of me; only to get outside with my giant green duffle bag holding six years worth of summer clothes and be told there's no storage facility at the airport now because of 9/11.
I wanted to write about my Uncle Teddy, a guy from Macon, GA that caught the Southern Rock swell of the early '70s and rode it all the way to Waikiki. In the middle of that tumultuous tidal wave, he married a young Hawaiian woman, had a baby boy, and experienced a religious awakening which bore him again. He spent the next twenty years with a Bible and no secular music. Just last year, he had another religious experience at a church in Harlem, NY, where he was ordained, and he's now on a mission from God to start his own church in Waikiki.
Let's just say, Teddy didn't show me the light... but he did show me a home video of him meeting James Brown in 1968 at the Macon airport. Does that count?
But I digress, I wanted to write about sleeping on Waikiki and overhearing someone point out the exact place where Cameron Diaz learned to surf, and I also wanted to write about Teddy's friend Dr. Wes, a fast talking, fast thinking, fast photo taking guy who married a young Japanese girl named Tomomi in the Ilikai Penthouse suite two weeks prior to my arrival. They still had the keys and wanted to show the place off while I was there.
I still feel like I'm digressing. I wanted to write about flying to Maui and renting a small economy car and paying $125 for a room at the North Shore Hostel; the car nor the room were needed because I met my buddy Dane, an ex-English teacher from Japan who works construction and was renovating his basement apartment. He set me up in a nice condo and didn't charge me any rent.
Dane's girlfriend Yumi arrived the same day as I did (06/06/06), and he proclaimed he was her low calorie sugar daddy. I wanted to write about hanging out with them on Big Beach, going surfing in Kihei and getting a bad rash on my belly and chaffing my nipples, going to a Hawaiian house party full of Dane's host family members and unknowingly meeting Richard Chamberlain.
I wanted to write about driving at 3am to the top of Haleakala, the highest mountain on Maui, to watch the sunrise and nearly freezing me feet off because I was wearing a pair of Dane's oversized work boots and my socks somehow managed to come off my feet inside the boots.
I wanted to write about hiking through I'ao Valley and getting lost, so we tromped through the woods to the river where we stumbled on a nude photo shoot, and Dane ended up jumping off a bridge into a shallow river with some local Hawaiian guys and making new friends.
All these things would have made a great storey, but as soon I landed in ATL, I hit the ground running, and it's hard to look back. Maybe someday, I'll get around to writing all those things up, but in the meantime please take a look at the pictures: http://web.mac.com/heyheygig/iWeb/heyhey%27s%20Site/Hawaii.html
Just got home and having some technical difficulites with my new MacBook; nothing serious just can't seem to import all my old pictures & albums into to my new photo library. It should be resolved soon, and I'll get a post up about Hawaii.
In the meantime, please check out this video my friend Ethan sent me.
On behalf of the Admissions Committee and faculty, I would like to congratulate you on your acceptance to the Master of Arts in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages course work that begins Fall of 2006. We are confident that you will both enhance SIT's learning community and benefit from the degree.
Within the next few days, you'll receive a paper packet containing documents related to your acceptance. If you would like to access an Acceptance Packet instantly online, you may visit: http://www.sit.edu/graduate/accepted/ Please save this email to direct you to this Accepted-Students only website.
In the packet and online, you will find an enrollment card. The Admissions staff recommends that you submit the $400 non-refundable deposit as soon as possible. The deposit reserves your place in the class and will be deducted from your first semester tuition payment.
If you need support accessing on-line documents please feel free to request assistance by replying to this message.
Again, congratulations and, on behalf of the faculty, the Admissions Committee and SIT, welcome. We look forward to meeting and working with you.
Sincerely yours,
Donald Freeman, Ed.D. Dean, Graduate and Professional Studies in Language Teacher Education
I've been using that intro ever since I saw Mickey Rourke in 'Barfly' say it as he poured free drinks to everyone in a bar, but for me, this is the first time I've ever meant it as sincerely as Rourke said it.
There is nothing I can write, say, or do to express my gratitude and appreciation to each and everyone of you for making my life in Japan more than memorable.
This is a leap of faith, and I'm hoping for a soft landing.
Entering my last days in Japan, I feel like I'm being drawn and quartered. Trying to get my bags packed, ship boxes home, finish my grad school application process, get my financial aid application in, negotiate the hand over of my school, train Brian to take my place, and say goodbye to everyone!
I wish I had time to properly write about my last weekend trip, but it's not gonna happen at the moment. Anyway, please check out these pictures. They're worth a thousand words each.
BitTorrent, the creator of the file-sharing software that for some has become synonymous with piracy, has struck a landmark distribution deal with a Hollywood studio.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Group has agreed to use BitTorrent's peer-to-peer system to distribute movies and television shows, including "Dukes of Hazzard" and "Babylon 5," beginning this summer, the companies are expected to announce Tuesday.
My good friend Tiffany recently returned to Japan from France. She made a surprise appearance at the Heiwa Matsuri last week by sneaking up behind me and giving me a big hug.
Amidst all the party people, she managed to snap quite a few funny pictures; including some of embarrassing shots of me trying to cut the rug.
Click here to check out some of Tiff's pics from the past few weeks back in the land of the rising sun: Tiff's Olympus Slideshow
In a move that deliberately echoes the rush release of "Ohio" in the wake of the Kent State shootings, Neil Young bashed out his 2006 protest record Living with War in a matter of days, sometimes recording songs the day they were written, and then seized the opportunities of the digital age by streaming the entire album on his website only weeks after it was recorded, with the official digital and CD releases trailing several days later. It's the best use yet of the instant, widespread distribution that the Web has to offer, and it also hearkens back to the days when folk music was topical, turning the news into song.
The cold of winter is officially over and the warmth of spring is emitting energies and emotions straight through the stratosphere.
My old hometown friend Brian arrived in Japan last week to move into my Heiwa-cho house and assume my English teaching responsibilities. He’s settling in really well; he even started a blog called The Fire That's In Me to write about his first impressions, and I think he’s got a great attitude towards living in Japan. He’ll do well.
At the same time, my good friend Cem left to begin a job writing for the Japan Times. He will be in Casablanca, Morocco for the next three and half months interviewing businessmen before departing for his next worldly destination. He will be deeply missed.
To celebrate this emotional changing of the guard, so to speak, we pooled our efforts to host a three-day squat party in Heiwa-cho. We had live didgeridoo performances in the living room, multiple DJs spinning dance music, fire dancers, a pot of curry to feed 50 people, a BBQ outside, a full bar that included three kegs of Tokyo Ale, another fridge full of bottled beer, and Brian’s very own liquor carousel shot dispenser. Hell, we even printed T-shirts!
Earlier this month I sent off an application to the School for International Training. I'm applying for their Master of Art in Teaching with an emphasis on teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL).
As part of the application process, I had to write a 1500 word essay on an international experience or cultural exchange that was important to me. It took me months before I decided on an approach, but I finally settled on giving a brief overview of my life in Japan.
If anyone would like to read my essay, please click here: SIT Essay.doc
It's not the greatest thing I've ever written, but it's the first time I've actually summed up on paper the impact Japan has had on me, and I'm very grateful to my good friends Cem & Alexis for proof reading it and giving me constructive criticisms and ideas.
Venture capitalist John Doerr made his name and fortune with early investments in Netscape Communications Corp., Amazon.com Inc., Google Inc. and other pioneering tech firms that went from scrappy startups to household names.
Now Doerr and his firm, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, are placing big bets on an emerging sector he calls "green technology," one he believes could become as lucrative as information technology and biotechnology.
The only way I can describe the Rolling Stones Bigger Bang concert in Nagoya Dome is with a string of expletives unfit to print here. To say I'm still buzzing or walking without touching the ground would be a mild understatement.
Before the show, I met my friend Toku, his girlfriend Nami, his colleague Motoshi, and a local promoter that goes by the name Go-Low. The night before, Toku and Go-Low went drinking with some of the Stones roadies and received an offer to come backstage. I got to tag along!
We met Pierre, the Stones chief sound technician, who escorted us backstage and gave us a tour of the area. He took us past Mick's dressing room, all the guitars, and up on the stage. I actually walked around on the Rolling Stones' stage!
Eventually, Pierre passed us off to Mike, Charlie's drum tech. Mike told us to bust out our cameras and he started talking pictures for us. He gave Motoshi a set of drumsticks and everyone else got guitar picks.
Check out this video of Mike showing us the drums:
The show itself was fun, but the Japanese audience was a little too conservative. Believe it or not, they didn't even serve beer in the place. Totally mind-boggling.
It took a little while for the audience to really get into it, but the latter half of the show was really fun.
Here's a short video of Honky Tonk Women:
After the show, we all went to a restaurant to chill out, get something to eat, and finally drink a beer. While we were eating, Bernard, one of the back-up singers came and sat down near us.
The whole night was surreal, as it should have been.
With the boom of blogs and podcasts, RSS feeds are becoming increasingly relevant to Internet users because it's an easy way for users to subscribe to websites and receive notifications when those sites are updated. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.
I'm still learning how to use RSS, and I have a long way to go, but in the meantime, I'm trying to offer this blog up for syndication.
In my opinion, the easiest way is to sign up for subscription by email. If you enter your email address below, you will receive an email anytime I post a new entry.
Alternatively, you can click on one of the icons below to add this blog's headlines to your Yahoo, Google, or AOL pages.
Lastly, if you're using the newest version of Safari or Firefox, you can click the RSS or syndication icon in the address bar and simply bookmark the feed address.
or
I hope ya'll find this useful and it saves the time of checking for updates and being disappointed if I'm too busy or lazy to make posts.
Spring is slowly setting in, but the cherry blossoms look like they’re gonna take another week.
For April Fool’s Day, I went to Inuyama with my friends Cem, Yuki, Ethan, and Alexis for a festival. We spent the afternoon walking around casually eating all the usual matsuri snacks: choco bananas, yaki-mochi, squid, various meat sticks, butter potatoes, etc.
Here’s a video of Ethan demonstrating how to give a kancho:
If you don’t know what a kancho is, I suggest you read Wikipedia’s explanation here: Kancho
The following day I had plans to go to a cherry blossom party in Okazaki, but the rainy weather forced the party inside. Regardless, we still had a good time, and a couple from Okinawa brought a shamisen and performed a few songs.
I put a few pictures on my Flickr account that you can scroll through here: Okazaki Pics
Twentieth Century Fox has confirmed that popular animated TV series The Simpsons is to be made into a film.
The movie will be released in the United States in July 2007. A 25-second trailer for the film has been shown to US audiences at screenings of Ice Age: The Meltdown, promising to introduce "the greatest hero in American history".
It then cut to Homer Simpson, wearing only his underwear, who admitted: "I forgot what I was supposed to say."
For the past few years, during spring break, I've also done something with a group of my students. Past activities include a trip to the Higashiyama Zoo and a trip to the Nagoya Aquarium.
This year, due to the unusual cold weather in late March, we decided to go bowling. Most of the kids had only been bowling once or twice before, so I think it was a good experience for them.
For me, I just enjoyed watching them. Check out this short clip of my youngest student named Ha-kun throw a ball as big as he is.
Afterwards, we all went to eat McDonald's hamburgers and fries. It wasn't exactly an educational day, but it when else will I have the chance to throw rocks with a bunch of ten year old nihilists?
A couple weeks ago I went to see Damo Suzuki's Network play in Nagoya. Damo is an ex-member of the '70s German prog-rock juggernaut CAN. He's now on what he calls the Never Ending World Tour.
Damo travels alone to cities all over the world, and he has a revolving cast of musicians improvise behind him. In each city, he assembles a band of local musicians. Thus, every night is new and slightly or maybe even extremely different.
His show in Nagoya consisted of Hiroshi Higashi (Synthesizer), Makoto Kawabata (Guitar), Atsushi Tsuyama (Bass) all members of the Acid Mothers Temple. As well as local Zen musician Kei (Guitar) with pal Ryoko Ono (Sax), and Taiqui (Drums).
I've been messing around with YouTube a lot recently, so I decided to post this short clip from the show.
We stayed in a Japanese style, onsen hotel called Takemine, located on the top of the ski resort. The only way to get there was to take a snow-cat from the parking lot or ski in. After we arrived, everyone changed into the comfortable yukatta's provided for us, and we went to eat dinner in the dining hall.
The hotel served Japanese carp in a variety of different ways. I'd never eaten carp before, and I was shocked at how good it was.
After dinner, we returned to our room for a three-dimensional sound experiment. We played the Flaming Lips' Zaireeka album using two iPods, each connected to an iFusion speaker setup, and two iBooks, each connected to an external speaker set-up. For one night, we had the best stereo on the planet!
The next day we woke up, put our iPods in our pockets, walked out into a blizzard, and went cross-country skiing across a 3km cat track. At the end of the cat track, we strapped on a pair of snowshoes and went trooping through the woods like the March of the Rotten Vegetables.
Eventually, we decided to dig a snow cave. We managed to hollow out a deep snowdrift that provided us shelter for lunch. After eating, we went back outside and noticed all our tracks were snowed over. It took us some time to find our way back to the cat track, but we did it.
On the way back to the hotel, we stopped off in front of a mirror to have some fun with our cameras.
Pure silliness. Believe it or not, that was the music I was listening to at the time.
All jokes aside, that night I ate one of the best meals of my life; carp sashimi, carp in a kind of sweet miso soup, nabe, tsukemono, fish paste served with a shiso leaf, and a few bottles of atsukan.
Our last day, we woke up to beautiful sunshine and went snowboarding all morning before catching a 3pm snow-cat back down the mountain.
At the end, I concluded that any time Jason, Mark, and I get together hilarity ensues.
It was a bittersweet occasion. I taught these students for four years starting when they were 5th grade at elementary school. I have many fond memories with them; for example, these students wrote letters to my uncle when he was sick, and in return as thank you notes, they received baby pictures of me from my father.
I was very proud to watch them walk and receive their diplomas, but the event also marked the end of my tenure at this school. From April, the town of Jushiyama will merge with a neighboring city, so my contract with the local BOE will be lost.
I enjoyed myself here immensely, but it's time to start moving on...
Less than 24 hours after returning from Hokkaido & Aomori, the mental and physical top of the world, I've descended into one of Dante's icy hells.
My first night back in town I was driving in the rain to a friend's house for dinner. On the way, a Toyota Crown stopped suddenly in front of me; I hit the brakes, and skid into it.
The driver jumped out of the bruised car, stormed up to my door, and proceeded to yell at me in incomprehensible Japanese as I asked him if everybody was all right. The only bright side of the situation was the shock on his face when he realized I was a foreigner; then he started yelling again.
To complicate matters worse, there's been a miscommunication with my insurance company. Evidentially, they still have me insured for a car I threw away over eight months ago. Because of this conundrum, they're telling me I can't use my insurance policy.
Now, I have an irate Japanese redneck pretending he hurt his hip in the accident calling me several times a day demanding he get compensated for his car and hospital bills and a Japanese auto insurance company who I've been paying money to for three years telling me they're not gonna cover me.
If that's not enough, I had to teach twenty-eight English lessons last week as my penance for taking time off to go to Hokkaido and Aomori.
Dear God... have mercy on a poor soul that just got back from vacation and looked down for a split second to turn the Stones up on his car stereo.
I meant to get this post up about my snowboarding trip to Hokkaido and Aomori much sooner, but last week was really busy.
Powdertopia is an annual snowboard/ski trip organized by JET teachers. This year my friend Tyler organized everything and invited me to come along. It was an offer I could not refuse.
I took a slow ferry up to Hokkaido and met everyone at the lodge. We had four tremendous days in Hirafu Village. Unfortunately, I accidentally deleted some of the best pictures of the trip, but some managed to survive.
The second part of Powdertopia took place in Aomori Prefecture at Mt. Hakkoda. Our group members changed around a little bit, but it was just a continuation of the same kind of fun. We had three days on Mt. Hakkoda and stayed in a great lodge called Sansou.
Saturday was one of those days when everything just worked out perfectly. My buddy Ethan and his friend Takeshi came to my house just before 10am. We had a cup of coffee and then drove down to Seibu Elementary School for a mochi festival.
I used to work in Seibu Elementary School last year, but it'd been a while since I was there. The kids were happy to see us and we got pound rice into malleable putty… then eat it.
On our way back to my house, we stopped off at my friend Fumio's place to pick up a small gas range stove. He served us a nice ramen lunch; we grabbed the stove and were on our way.
Next, we stopped at the grocery store to pick up some fixin's for a Japanese Nabe. We bumped into my elder purple haired neighbor named Kato-san who walked us through the store and instructed us on the best ingredients to buy. She even advised us not to buy certain veggies because she had them growing in her garden patch next to my house.
After buying some beer, we got back to my house and Kato-san was waiting for us. She took us into her garden and started unearthing a bunch of daikon, carrots, & green onions.
That night a few more friends showed up and we cooked a tasty vegetable soup flavored with Korean kimchi, drank a bottle of Imo-shochu, listened to records, played cards, & tried to watch Blade Runner before passing out.
Sunday, my buddy Jason showed up and we went into Nagoya for a night of food and fun. We had dinner at a dirty yakitori-ya named Kadoya where my other friend Toku ordered every part of the chicken most Americans never eat. Liver, ligaments, intestines… hell, he even ordered suzume which is a small Japanese sparrow served on a skewer with it’s head still attached.
Last, but not least, we saw an insane Japanese band called Turtle Island. Their name sounds like some relaxing beach resort, but their music was quite the opposite. It was part jam part punk part p-funk and all aggressive! The band consisted of about 14 members (mostly drummers) while the crowd was full of black leather jackets, mohawks, and crowd surfers.
