Burento in Japan

I return to writing with tales of South Korea. And honestly it’s not a long or in depth tale. I can pretty much sum up the trip in 4 words: Eat, Shop, Drink, Repeat.

Obviously we did some cultural things and “saw stuff” but honestly, from what I can tell there really isn’t much to see in terms of historical or cultural icons. Korea has been taken over by so many different groups in its history that pretty much everything is destroyed. I hadn’t realized how new the current culture in Korea is. On the plane over I was reading things like, “the current writing system was officially implemented in 1992.” Um, WHAT?? How crazy is that? Apparently it’s one of the best writing systems in the world in terms of pronunciation or something like that. I actually had the hang of a few of the symbols before we left.

So, on to the “adventure.” We left Fukushima at about 10 am, got into Sendai airport around 11:30. It was awesome to fly out of Sendai, SOOO convenient. We were in Incheon Airport by about 3:30. We took a bus into Seoul. First impressions…um, not as “new world” as I thought it would be. Our bus driver and pretty much all drivers were erratic much like any other Asian nation. Honestly, it looked like China. I know, they’re separate and all, but it looked a lot like China to me. We got dropped off at Seoul station and then got tickets for the KTX train (Korea’s Bullet train) down to Busan/Pusan (at the other end of the country).

A map

Seoul Station was where my idea that South Korea would be like a middle ground between China and Japan was shattered. While Seoul station is gigantic and very modern, the mass amounts of homeless people sitting inside the building and smoking kinda made me realize that there wasn’t really going to be anything “super Japanese” about Korea. Also, soldiers EVERYWHERE. We found out later that after finishing high school everyone has to do either a year in the military or two years in the police force. But ya, after grabbing Burger King (they spoke English very well) we were on a train for Busan.

Seoul Square - just outside the station

We got into Busan around 10 or so and met Shannon and Clancy without any difficulty. Weird Korean fact…we bought tickets and got on the train without having to show them to anyone, as well, when we got off…there was no one to show our tickets to. We did have assigned seating and people were walking up and down the aisles checking, but still, at no point did I have to prove that I had paid to be on that train. Weird right?

Seeing as it was December 25^th at about 10pm, we promptly went out for drinks in Clancy’s area. Where he seemed to know just about EVERY single person that worked at the bar. I learned eventually that Clancy being Clancy, drinks a lot and hence, knows people. It was fun though.

Dave and Shannon’s apartment was pretty nice and for some reason they let us sleep in their bed and they slept on the spare bed/couch like thing in their living room. If it were me…no way guests would be sleeping in my bed. I even made my Mom sleep on a futon when she came to Japan. But ya, that was pretty sweet.

Full Day 1 or Day 2, depending on how you look at it. We hit a market first. Have I mentioned that it was COLD there? Cuz, it was. Really COLD. Not Canada cold or anything but still like -8 or so…meaning, colder than Fukushima. Why did Mo and I go on a vacation, in the winter, to a place that was COLDER than where we currently live? We definitely asked ourselves that question quite a few times. Anyway, we spent the day shopping as you do and then at night headed out for drinks…as you do. I wasted no time in immediately buying 2 pairs of sunglasses, I think within the first 5 minutes of being in the first shopping area. The markets gave me reason number 2 that Korea is like China; outdoor stalls. They were everywhere selling food or clothes or sunglasses or whatever. Just tables set up in the middle of streets with stuff all over them. There were big western stores all over the place too, but it didn’t matter where you went, there were street vendors.

Full Day 2 or Day 3…Let’s just say December 27^th, we headed to a national park in Busan for a leisurely walk to a shrine that the Lonely Planet said was a bit difficult to find.

We hit a tramway close to the top of a mini-mountain and then figured it wouldn’t be that far from there. About an hour and a half to two hours later, after walking through mud, up and down some pretty steep sections of paths, having to ask directions like a zillion times. We arrived…at the foot of a really really steep hill up to the temple (sorry, I’m writing this at work and don’t remember the names of places right now, I’ll put them up in the links to pictures). Upon our arrival at this temple my initial feeling was um…whoopdeedoo. That is until we walked past what looked to be the main building and discovered these gigantic rocks like 30m tall that had huge Buddhas carved into them and stairs that led up between these two rocks. It was fricken amazing. Hopefully I’ve put some pics below. These Buddhas were HUGE, check out the woman praying in one of the pics below to see what I mean.

Do you see how tiny that woman looks...granted, she is a tiny woman.

After that, Mo wasn’t feeling too hot so we went for drinks and then headed back to the apartment where she could try to sleep off the cold that she felt coming on. We grabbed pizza and just chilled out. Sidebar: Where the Wild Things are is a crap movie. We shut it off. I don’t remember the Wild Things being as emo or as moody as the movie portrays them to be. And the kid is a little ass.

The next day we went temple hunting again (Dec 28^th). Our guides took us to a sweet sweet temple right on the coast called Haedong Yongkung Temple. It wasn’t even in the Lonely Planet and I do NOT understand why. It was right on the coast, built in along the rocks and was really really cool. The weird things about temples in Korea, they all have kanji or Chinese characters because they’re old and that’s what the Koreans used to use as a language. How weird would it be, going to you know, a cultural/religious place of your own people and having to read signs off to the side that tell you what is written on said cultural/religious thing? Sooo weird right? It was kinda nice for me and Mo though, as we could actually read some of it so I at least felt like we were contributing something.

Clancy and Shannon pretty much led us around like children for the whole trip. Which was um, amazing. Although it wasn’t too bad as EVERYONE spoke English. Not everyone as in every single person. But pretty much any person that had to interact with people, spoke English. That was kind of nice, but made me feel bad, always putting the onus on the other person to be able to speak my native language. On the flip side…no one spoke Japanese.

On our way out of the temple, we passed a stall that just had, well, tree branches everywhere and Clancy then exclaimed, “Well, you’ve gotta try this.” This was my first and only experience with um, “tree juice” I guess? Basically, they grind up branches, I’m assuming of a specific tree and then, you drink the liquid. It was horrible. It tasted like they had covered the tree in dirt first and left the dirt in whatever you want to call the liquid that came out. I pretty much drank dirty tree. Gross.

After that we hit a popular beach…that’s popular in the summer. It was pretty, but it was cold. Then we rocked some good old fashioned T.G.I. Fridays! It was delicious. Korea definitely gets added points for having western restaurants everywhere. MMMM Burgers. We then hit a gigantic mall for shopping and then proceeded to get very drunk at a bar where we were the ONLY patrons until 4am.

The next day, when Dave woke us up at some ungodly hour was when I realized that: 1) Unlike my friends in Japan, 1) Clancy can drink just as much as I can and 2) He can do it in such a way that allows him to get up after 5 hours of sleep and be good to go. This was a common theme throughout the trip as we did pretty much drink every night. Clancy is a machine.

The 29^th we grabbed coffee at this cool little coffee shop down the street from Dave and Shannon’s place. The owner spoke English really well and was a friend of Dave’s. The coffee shop was REALLY COOL. I got a bunch of video of it, I think. Like I said, I was a bit hungover. Next, although the pictures that I’m referencing to write this don’t show it, I figure it’s safe to assume we went shopping. Followed directly by…drinks, which were followed by Korean BBQ, which in no way can be healthy, but it was delicious.

On the 30^th we headed up to Seoul on the KTX. Clancy and Shannon had booked this ok little hostel. They said the one they usually stay at was booked but as hostels go, it was decent enough. It was weird that the shower, toilet and washing machine were all in the same small room. I can now say that I’ve showered inches away from a washing machine. The cool thing about the hostel was that we got to experience heated floors. There’s a Korean word for it by I forget it. I think it starts with an “O.” They were really cool and kept the room and our clothes for the next day nice and toasty.

After checking into our hostel we went and got some kimbop down the street. Kimbop is like a quick Korean food. I assume it’s kinda like grabbing a burger from McDonald’s. You can get one quick or actually go to a restaurant and have a better one made for you. So, we went to a kimbop restaurant. Clancy then used his stellar Korean skillz to decipher the menu and order us a bunch of stuff. Kimbop is pretty much maki rolls (you know the rolls you can get a sushi place that are wrapped in seaweed and have rice and some kind of raw fish in the middle) except better, cause they have meat and cheese and vegetables inside. FRIGGIN AWESOME. I should at this point discuss Korean cuisine a bit. First thing, everything is spicy. Not being a fan of spicy things a bit the bullet on multiple occasions and just powered through. It was all really good. Second thing, regardless of what you order, you get a million side dishes. Kimchi is served with everything along with a plethora of other little dishes that you can kinda pick at as you wait for your food or as you’re eating your main dish. It was nice cause you never know what you’re gonna get and you get to try a bunch of different things.

Kimbop

Apres le kimbop, we then ventured to the COEX mall on the south side of Seoul. It is reportedly the biggest underground mall in the world and the most confusing mall in the world, I might add. We rocked around there for, well, hours upon hours. Dave and I spent most of our time following the ladies through store after store. You may be wondering, “Brent, why so much shopping?” Well, let me tell you inquisitive reader…Korea is mafackin CHEAP. They have the same stuff we have in Japan as well as a plethora of western stores we don’t have as well as a yen to won exchange rate that made everything pretty much free. An average beer was no more than 3000 won. That’s about 240 yen or about $2.60 Canadian. So, uhh, it was awesome. If I was a tiny Asian man, I would have come back with more than, 2 hats, a sweater and 3 pairs of sunglasses. In total Mo spent 5 hours (3 hours one day and 2 hours the last day) at Forever 21 and spent, wow, I don’t even wanna know how much money, BUT think of how much fun that whole adventure was for me!!! Anyway, after shopping at the COEX mall where I bought 2 Korean masks we hit up…T.G.I. Fridays for some good old western food and obviously…drinks.

The next day was the 31^st so we made the first venture to Forever 21, 4 floors of girly apparel with a tiny little corner of guy’s stuff. Dave and I saw each other on occasion but for the most part we were leashed to our lady friends forced to give opinions on whatever they had discovered in the racks and racks of clothing. After a few hours of shopping we headed back to the hostel around 3 in order to get ready for the evening’s shenanigans. There was no real plan in place. So we decided just to wing it. We headed to the university district of Seoul where everything is supposed to be “bumpin’”. But, as Korea is a mostly Buddhist nation, New Years is like the western Christmas, a time for family gatherings and love etc etc. So, it wasn’t really “bumpin’” anywhere. Oh and did I mention that it was -18 without the windchill? Cuz it was. So, we pretty much dove into the first ok place we could find in order to plan out what we were doing. We ended up in Reggae – A Japanese Bar around 10pm. When we got in, I figured, ok, “Reggae – A Japanese Bar” in Seoul, a popular tourist destination for Japanese people, will definitely have an English or Japanese menu so we can grab some quick food and move on. Um, I was mistaken and the menu written in Korean referring to Japanese dishes proved a bit too much for Clancy to want to deal with, which I totally understand. So we grabbed hot cups of sake and tried to plan something out. I looked out the window and there it was in all itss glory…. HO BAR! Right across the street.

This was decided was the place we would spend the last moments of 2009 and the first of 2010. It turned out to be a decent place. It wasn’t packed, but there were people there and they had food, which we had not had in awhile. Funny thing though…even in Korea, they had New Years Eve prices going. So everything was, a little bit more than usual and there were a ton of “sets.” Around about 11 after we had eaten, Dave and I decided it was indeed shot time as we were nowhere close to where we should be on New Years Eve at 11pm. Funny thing though, at HO BAR on New Years Eve, you can’t just get 2 shots of tequila. You either get 5 with a plate of nachos and a plate of frozen peach slices for about $40 CDN OR 10 shots and peaches for $40 CDN. Well, obviously, we had eaten already, so…10 shots it was. By 11:50, the shots were gone and we were then handed…tequila shots for New Years. As the ladies did not want to partake in the lovely beverage, Dave and I decided it was only right to help them out and not only drink ours but theirs. Midnight struck, there was a tiny love-in at our table and we found ourselves 7 shots deep each. A beautiful start to 2010. Around 4am, after multiple jagerbombs and failed attempts at teaching Dave to dance we decided to head back to the hostel.

10am the following morning…a knock at the door and who is it but Clancy all bright and chipper. HA JEEZ! Mo and I sent Comandante Clancy away for a bit and got up in the early afternoon as normal human beings do when they’ve been on a bender the evening prior. When we did emerge as undead eventually do. We were taken to this sweet little tea shop that was really cool. Apparently it’s very big with tourists but it was down a random alleyway and it wasn’t too busy when we got there. The cool thing about this place. Birds. Live birds, like finches and swallows I believe of all different colours flying around freely. On top of that, the tea was THA BOMB. Easily the best tea I’ve had. We each swapped and tried each other’s and they were all AMAZING.

We then walked around the market that the tea house was located in. It was a market full of Korean stuff. So, it was less like the western style shopping areas that we had been to and more like a full out Asian style market. I bought some phone charm things for the once class that I teach every Friday and my English club and Mo bought a bunch of stuff for her co-workers. Look at us being so Japanese and buying omiyage.

Then, with the shopping component of our day over, we obviously went to eat. This being Clancy and Shannon’s last night we went for Korean food as most of the Korean restaurants did NOT have English menus, so it would be the last chance for Mo and I to eat Korean food. I have no clue what it was called, but what we had that night was amazing. Rice, mixed with mochi sticks (like pounded rice sticks, that’s the best I can explain it, think of a cheese stick pretty much), with chicken and cheese all mixed in. IT WAS AWESOME! Clancy made it all foreigner special getting 4 times the normal amount of cheese. Our waitress actually tried to argue with him saying that we probably only needed two. Clancy was adamant and eventually she gave in. All of it was cooked right on our table in the middle and our waitress pretty much did everything, although it was pretty evident that she was not happy to be cooking the abomination that Clancy had ordered.

We went to a Beer Hall (Bier Halle) near our hostel soon after that for…drinks as you do. Although Mo and I are not the drinking machines that Clancy and Shannon are, so we opted for orange juice and coke, respectively. My coke came with a tiny tiny glass, because, only children would be drinking coke at a beer hall. It made me feel manly.

The next morning (Jan 2^nd) we went to Namdaemun Market and obviously, shopped before Clancy and Shannon hit their train back to Busan. This was the only place I spoke Japanese at all. In an attempt to get directions to a big gate that was around the area, it was clear that the Korean guy did not speak English well and I had heard him speaking Japanese to some tourists, so I got us directions to this “big gate.” Unfortunately, a crazy person had burned down this old old old gate about 2 months ago, cuz he was crazy. And it was under construction. Lameness. Oh and in this market, there was some ginseng, EEE, I, EEE, I, OH. Koreans are crazy for this thing and sell gigantic bottles of the root. It’s nuts.

After we ditched Clancy and Shannon (it was a heartfelt goodbye) we felt the need to take pictures of this.

Dokdo is a collection of rocks off the coast of Korea. Apparently, there is a dispute with the Japanese over who is in fact the rightful owner of these rocks. God dammit Japan, what country are you not in a land dispute with. This ad right here was at least 20 to 30 feet tall. The picture doesn’t look like it but it was GIGANTIC on the 2^nd floor of Seoul Station and there were copies of it to either side in Korean, Japanese and Chinese. Apparently Korea likes it some rocks. Also notice the “EAST Sea” opposed to the Sea of Japan. Asia has some issues.

After we dropped the dead weight of Clancy and Shannon we were free from the reign of terror they had imposed upon us and ventured out into Seoul. (Just kidding) First we hit up Jungno (or something like that) park and saw some old temple like things and from there we went to Changgyeonggung Palace. Both of these were really cool and gigantic open spaces pretty much in the middle of Seoul. Although they were separate parks, they were pretty much one big park and it took us awhile to get through all of it. See the links to pictures if you want to see all of them. Mo and I both went a little crazy with the pictures because we had been to so few cultural spots.

Then we went to a Heunginjumun Gate, which had not been burned down and was in the center of a huge intersection. It was cool enough, but you couldn’t walk inside it, so that kinda sucked. I’d like to say a big thanks to the Sri Lankan guy that after I took his picture he took our picture in front of this gate, leaving the gate out of the picture completely, so it looks like we’re having our picture taken in front of a wall. Not just one time, but both times he took our picture. Thank you sir.

With 3 cultural areas out of the way in one afternoon, we then, shopped, for boots, for mo…it was…awesome. We rocked some beers at the Beer Hall from the night previous as we had recovered enough and then went back to the hostel to sleep.

Jan. 3^rd was our last day in Seoul and in South Korea for the most part. So, we split the day between things I wanted to do and things Mo wanted to do. First, we did things I wanted to do, which as you will see were WAAAY COOLER.

We started at a Shamanist temple (Inwangsa Guksadang), well, we didn’t start there, we hiked a HUGE hill to get up there. Korea, aside from being a largely Buddhist country as well as having a ton of Christians, has its own native religion referred to as Shamanism, which I thought was a bit odd. It doesn’t have its own name like “Shinto” or “Hinduism” or anything? Shamanism seems so generic. Anyway, I thought the temple would be a bit different or something but, it pretty much looked like a Buddhist temple. As well, the Koreans that were there did NOT seem happy to see us there AT ALL. Come to think of it, most Koreans did not seem happy that we were there throughout our trip. Instead of the inquisitive stares that we get from Japanese people we were met with the stink eye from pretty much everyone outside of the tourist/service industry. It was weird. I mean, maybe it’s a blanket statement for me to say something like that and maybe I’ve been in Japan too long but I did not feel overly welcome or anything.

The top of the mountain/hill offered a wicked view of Seoul and if you want to read about the Temple we went to, I took a picture of the explanation and it’ll be in album #2 of the Korea trip.

The next thing I wanted to do was Jogye-sa Temple. It is the main temple of the Jogye Sect of Buddhism, which is the biggest sect of Buddhism in Korea. It was pretty cool, with a huge golden statue of Buddha in the main building that I did not take a picture of. I could have gone inside and potentially taken a picture, but I just find that in places of worship I would rather look from afar than be that idiot tourist standing at the front of a temple with a bunch of people praying behind me, while I snap pictures of the “exotic religious figure” in front of them. I friggin HATE people that do things like that. I’ve seen too many tourists/new JETs act like assholes in Shrines and Temples here, pretending to pray and pretty much making a mockery of the whole thing. I have done a few things like the jumping pictures I have in front of shrines, but never am I right in front of it or trying to pretend like I’m actually taking part in the religion and I generally make sure that no one is around.

After that we were on to Mo’s “sight” of the day, Forever 21. She realized that she still had SO MUCH MONEY LEFTOVER that a second round was definitely necessary. So, 2 hours later, she had a bunch of new stuff. I bought a sweater out of boredom. We rocked some Chinese for dinner and they had some wicked Chinese masks on the wall. A bunch were almost exactly the same as the ones that I bought except way bigger. I didn’t get pictures because it was PACKED and I felt like busting out my camera to take pictures of masks that were directly behind about 15 people would be weird. Yes, I’m a scaredy cat.

Jan. 4^th was a total um, well, a clusterfuck of a day. There’s no other way to describe it. Our flight was at 10:30am so, we had to be at Incheon around 8:30am. A bus ran from right near our hostel every 20 min and took 45 min to get to Incheon. I set the alarm on my new Ipod Touch for 6am, so we could get up and have a bit of time before we hit the bus at 7. A little note to anyone using their ipod touch as an alarm: When you create an alarm time, it automatically selects pm, not am, so if you don’t change it…it won’t go off in the morning like you expect it to. So, waking up about an hour later than planned we were up and out the door in about 10 minutes to find a winter wonderland waiting for us…YAY!!! We managed to hit the bus at 7:15 and we were well on our way. Our bus took nearly 2 hours to get us to Incheon. I am not a good traveller; the prospect of missing buses, trains and especially planes freaks me RIGHT OUT. So, naturally, I’m LOSING IT at this point. I’d rather be 2 hours early than 10 min late, just in case. We get to Incheon, get in book to our plane and obviously, it’s been delayed. If you’ve seen the post prior to this, you’ve seen that Jan 4^th 2010 was the biggest snow storm on record in Seoul since they started keeping records of snowfalls. Our flight was delayed without a new departure time being given. Then they started to cancel flights going to China. At this point I was like, Oh man, sleeping in the airport in Korea, this is gonna suck. Eventually we boarded and then sat on the runway for about an hour and a half before actually taking off. At least we got the hell outta there.

All in all it was a decent vacation. We didn’t do anything spectacular but it was good to catch up with Shannon and Clancy and talk to people from home that are in the same position that Mo and I are in, just in a different country. The Koreans were a little bit meaner than I assumed they would be and we quite often got death stares, which threw me off guard a bit but that could be from being in Japan for so long. The general level of English was awesome comparative to Japan and that threw me a little bit as well. I have learned that if I’m going somewhere cold, I’m gonna make sure that I’m doing something that is done in the cold like snowboarding. Otherwise, I’ll wait till it’s warm to go traveling anywhere.

Gold star if you’ve actually read this far down. I’m halfway down on the 8^th page in Microsoft Word and after I add pictures into the body this’ll be well over 11 pages, extra points if you watch the video and have a look at the 2 albums that I’ve linked. Another video will go up soon, but I’ve just picked up a new video editing program and I’m trying to learn it.

Links to Albums

Korea #1

Korea #2

The vid below has been made totally in Adobe Premiere Elements v7 by clicking 3 buttons. That’s it, 3 buttons. I imported all my vids, selected a theme, hit next and bam, you see the final product below. How nuts is that eh??? I’ll try to make the vid that I actually edit myself as good as the one below. Oh and new camera, so everything is in higher quality. Enjoy.  (it should be here in the next few days)

Peace,

B

Well, not really, but still.  Vinnie, Nas, Alex and I went snowboarding on the first day at Nekoma this year and BAM, we made it into their first Web episode.  We’re “featured” from about the 3:30 mark to 4:10 of the video.  And all the Japanese people in between are just saying…”It’s fun” or “It’s very fun” (tanoshii = fun).

I wrote a blog quickly in the end of November, but it’s currently into the 2^nd week of December, so I feel like I’ll update it while at a visit school with no internet and then actually post it opposed to just letting it sit on my comp.

Mo and I have recently booked our flight to South Korea for the winter break. We’re going from December 25^th (yes, we’re traveling Christmas Day) to January 4^th. A guy I used to live with…Dave Clancy is currently living in Busan, meaning we’re going to have a travel guide…hopefully. We’re shooting over to Seoul from Sendai airport (only an hour on the local train from Fukushima). So, we’re both pretty stoked. We’re gonna head down to Busan the day we get there and hang out for a few days, then head back up to Seoul for New Years and beyond. It should be a nice short jaunt overseas and I’m happy I really don’t have to research anything. Although I really don’t have anything specific I want to see in Korea, even the DMZ doesn’t interest me at all. Wow, a bunch of soldiers staring at each other…why do I want to be there? If I was going into North Korea, that’d be a whole different story. Anyway, it’ll be my first cold Christmas in awhile but whatever. Then we’ll come back and snowboard our asses off, although there is currently no snow on the mountains…last year I had been boarding 3 weekends in a row by now.

Mo and I have decided to leave after this year. Meaning we’re out in August 2010. We’re currently looking into schools in New Zealand and Australia to see which ones have; 1) decent education programs for me and 2) decent masters programs for her. It’s going relatively well I guess, but we’re only in the beginning stages of all of this. So who knows. Interesting fact though, Australia has about 7 schools ranked in the top 80 of the world (McMaster ranks 143^rd). How crazy is that?

The Australian/NZ school year starts in around January or February, so we’re also trying to sort out where to live when we come back to Canada and I was looking at jobs the other day and kinda freaked out…what exactly am I qualified for? Certainly I could do something above and beyond a labour job…but what? Zero business background doesn’t exactly help and monster.ca freaked me out quite a bit. But I’ll have to put that on the back burner for now. Mo’s kinda pushing Kingston as it’s between both of our families and her sister lives there with her 2 kids, but its Kingston. So, I’m kinda against it. She seems to think we’ll get jobs faster there and I think…well, the opposite.

Anyway, moving on…the Fukushima-ken Mid Year Conference went down about 2 and a half weeks ago. Nothing huge to report, it was boring as hell as it’s pretty much the same thing every year, but here’s a pic of all the Canadians at the beer factory we went to afterwards.

Canadians......scary

About 2 weeks ago I threw Mo a surprise birthday party. It had to be one of the more difficult secrets that I’ve kept seeing as I started planning it about a month in advance. It went off really well. We had about 35 people come up and surprise her at chubbs (the bar we always go to). She was totally surprised and on the way there she actually said, “I don’t like big parties, so we’ll just keep my birthday calm this year.” But she seemed to thoroughly enjoy a party all for her when it happened. She also scored a ton of booze. I didn’t tell anyone that they should get her presents as that generally doesn’t happen here just because of the large group of people that everyone knows, if I had to buy gifts for everyone I knew I’d be broke all of the time (read: I’m SOOO popular). I on the other hand was obligated to purchase a gift and opted to get her a flight to south korea over winter break. She seemed happy with that. I also made her a card in photoshop. I’ll try to upload it somewhere so I can post it here. But in the mean time, here’s a “NICE” picture of the two of us.

well, maybe just "kind of" a nice picture

Um, since then we really haven’t done much. I spent this past weekend in a hockey arena watching the Tohoku Free Blades play High 1(a Korean team). Both of them are teams in the Asia Ice Hockey League. It’s ridiculous how much I miss hockey and it made me realize how much I took it for granted when I was at home. It wasn’t the highest level of hockey I’ve ever seen, but it was good enough. Tohoku is the northern region of Japan, so the Free Blades home stadium is in Aomori (the northern most prefecture on Honshu), but they played 3 games down here in Fukushima-ken. I went to all 3 including the one last night, so today I have little to no voice. Scores you ask, Saturday was 6-1 for the Free Blades (what kinda name is that by the way?) Sunday was 4-1 for High 1 and last night was 4-3 for the Free Blades. It was the best game of the series and after every game all the players come out and talk to the fans and everything, it was wicked. I bought a jersey…for about 100 bucks and got a bunch of the players to sign it. Awesome experience.

Go Let's Free Blades!

And just for fun, here are some Halloween pics, cuz I haven’t put any up as well as pics from Mo’s parent’s visit.

Christian and I

Christian and I later in the evening

One of the only pics of Mo and I together. She was Snow White

What can i say, Mo's Mom and I get along.

At Shiroishi Castle...Asian pose

BAM!

Brent

I’ve had a lot of manly things going on lately. First and foremost of those things is MMA. A few posts ago, I put up a link to an article I wrote for the FuJET newsletter on why everyone should watch MMA (Mixed Martial Arts). Well, about 2 weeks ago, I started training MMA. It’s crazy because the dojo, if you can call it that, is about a 5 minute walk from my apartment. It’s pretty much just a small room in a building that has a very thin mat covering the floor with 2 punching bags and a ton of equipment on shelves. I’d put up pics, but…I suck the most thus far and don’t wanna be the guy in there taking pictures of everything.

Anyway, Smith, a friend of mine got me into this mess. Smith is a Peruvian guy who’s engaged to a JET friend. He’s a black belt in Brazilian ju-jitsu and we are always talking about fighting and MMA. Mostly in Japanese, as his English, while improving is not as good as his Japanese and my Spanish is non-existent. Anyway, he found this club and let me tell you. There are some hardcore guys in there. This is not your, oh, let’s go screw around kinda place. Guys with full out sleeve tattoos are packed into this room 3 times a week. It was a bit nerve wracking at first, cuz I’m the only white guy and I suck.

But ya, so I’ve been doing it 3 times a week; Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 7 to 10 or 11pm. It CRUSHES me. The sensei, I don’t know his name, I just call him sensei, used to fight K-1, which is a premiere kickboxing league in Japan. He’s awesome. Anyway, we train boxing for an hour, kickboxing for an hour and then do ju-jitsu for anywhere from an hour to two hours. And keep in mind, this is all non-stop. I’ve been paired up with smith for the striking part of training, because he’s just learning that, so we’re about the same level, except for the fact that Smith is JACKED and a MONSTER when it comes to training anything. The other night, we were practicing leg kicks and I was holding a pad against my leg that had to be at least 8 inches thick and he was kicking it. I left that night with gigantic bruises on my thighs.

The ju-jitsu part has been awesome, although it is definitely what I’m the worst at and Smith has been kicking my ass all over that place. Positives….well, I know 20 different ways to render a human being unconscious now. Negatives…everyone else knows like 100. So when we grapple, I’m getting my ass kicked, which is fine. It’s been KILLING my body, but I absolutely love it and after a month or two of this, I’ll be a MACHINE. Look out jacked little brother, I will tap you out! I could go off about this forever, about how I can’t seem to sink in a triangle choke correctly, no matter what I do and how I tapped a guy using an anaconda choke the other day, but, you know, that’s just kinda boring.

In other man news, we had a boy’s night for the Fukushima-ken boys, outside of Fukushima-ken obviously. We went to Sendai, the big city in the prefecture over. It really wasn’t as “epic” as they used to be, as 13 of the 14 guys were in relationships. You know, just drunkenness and clubbing. Everyone got to see just how bad we all are at picking up girls cuz we’re in relationships. And obviously, prior to that, Alex, Vinnie and myself went shopping, as you do on any guy’s night. Spend the day shopping first. LOL. SOOO MANLY. I bought shirts from Zara (currently wearing one, I look awesome) and you know, vin and alex bought jackets. That’s about it for now. Halloween parties galore the next few weeks and my calendar tells me I’m booked up until the 21st of November and then hopefully I’ll be snowboarding!

Peace

B

A JTE (Japanese Teacher of English) just came over to me and said that she attended a funeral over the weekend for a former student. She then said that his parents weren’t saying how he died and that they said it was something about him falling down stairs or something like that. She also said she had heard people talking about how he had been found in his dorm room.

So, okay, that’s a bit weird. But then she says, he went to “nani-nani” university in America on an exchange and that’s where he died. So I’m like, ok. Then she’s says, “Here’s the website for this university. Can you see if it says anything about him?” So, I figure, ya, why not. I type the kid’s name and the state the university is located into google. BAM first hit the title of the article includes suicide…

The article doesn’t go into specifics but it does say that the kid (turns out, I taught him, cuz he was pretty young still) did indeed kill himself. Well, now this jte has told another teacher quietly and has printed out the article.

I find myself in quite an odd situation, as anyone doing a google search of just his name would have found that. But the fact that I’ve found it and now, the whole school will know that this kid killed himself, even though his family decided that’s not how they want it to go down.

So ya, I don’t remember the student, but that’s just weird right?

Ok, so now that I’m done with my rant about the school I’m currently sitting in (either above or below this post, I can’t decide which order to upload them in). I’ll give a brief summary of what’s happened since the last blog.

So, we met Mo’s family in Tokyo, and that went relatively smoothly. Mo found this sweet deal for Shinkansen (bullet train) tickets to and from Tokyo with a stay in a sweet hotel for 17,000 yen ($170cdn). I should say, her secretary did, teaching private does have its perks! To put that in perspective, normally, just the tickets down and back cost 16,000yen. Soooo, an extra 1000 yen (10 dollars) for a night in a sweet hotel in one of the best areas of Tokyo is AMAAZING!

I learned something very valuable on our trek down to Tokyo. You see, Mo’s mother does not pack lightly and in all fairness they were going to the Philippines following their 8 days in Japan, so they all had 2 climates to pack for. So, because of all this, the 3 of them had…6 bags. One of them was full of stuff, mostly for Mo. Like a zillion boxes of white cheddar Kraft dinner, ranch dressing…you know, a bunch of stuff you can’t get here that she wanted. I think she went a bit overboard, BUT, whatever. I got toothpaste. Anyway, they had 5 bags after coming to Fuku. They left 2 with us; 2 big suitcases. It makes sense, they were traveling around Hiroshima, Kyoto, etc and they only needed one bag each. We decided that Mo and I would bring the other 2 to them. So, this is what I’ve learned. “Traveling with someone is not the difficult part. The difficult part is lugging a heavy bag. Well, going through the physical stress of dealing with a heavy bag and NOT lashing out at the person you’re with.” By the time Mo and I got to Tokyo, and keep in mind we didn’t even really have to move the bags that far, we were ready to KILL each other.

Anyway, we took the Barrys on the Tokyo tour…whirlwind styles, as we arrived on the Sunday to meet them and they left to go to Narita on Monday night, for an early flight Tuesday morning. First, obviously was TGI Fridays in Shibuya for a late lunch of straight up WESTERN food. Sidebar: I don’t have many pictures of them, cuz, I kept taking pictures of the 4 of them with Mo’s camera and then with her Dad’s camera, so I was too lazy to use my own. I’ll punk some from Mo when I have time and put them up here. After Fridays that we took them to the Meiji Shrine in Harajuku/Yoyogi park and then, because Dr. Barry’s birthday was on the Tuesday we took them to NINJA! God, I love this restaurant, it is soo cool! I’ve been once before with Drew and Haley and it was just as good the 2^nd time around. Mo, Kathleen and I paid, for the first time since the Barrys had arrived. It felt good. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for being treated or whatever, but, it killed me inside a little bit every time my girlfriend’s father paid for me. 27 years old and being treated to everything…ha jeez!

On Monday, the ladies went shopping in Harajuku, I believe, and Dr. Barry and I (I can’t seem to call him Brian, it seems weird, especially when he’s paying for everything) went to Akihabara, the technological capital of the world. I figured he’d be right at home there and he was. This was probably the best part of their trip for me. As much as Dr. Barry is very academic and knows everything about everything, for instance, did you know that when buying memory cards for cameras it’s never a good idea to get a card above 8 gb if your camera isn’t brand spanking new, because programmers sometimes don’t write programs that allow for bigger cards because they don’t have the foresight to see that a bigger card is possible and sometimes those cards won’t work with the firmware? Neither did I, but now you do. But aside from all that, at one point we just sat down, grabbed coffees and talked. You know, about life, relationships, families, and all that other stuff. It was good. I’ve known Mo’s father for awhile and we always get along, but our relationship had always been very academic, even when discussing hockey, which we did at length…as if the Senators will be good this year…ha jeez. The conversation was something beyond those academic discussions about why Japan has continued to promote agriculture when it is a country that is not at all suited for that type of industry. I think that it helped both of us to, you know, bond. It was good. Afterwards, we met the ladies with their bags of new clothing at the Imperial Palace. Mental note, the East Gardens are closed on Mondays and Fridays. Burn. We rocked Asakusa after that to see Senso-ji, I have been to this shrine a MILLION times. It rained a bit at that part but it was cool. Then we headed back to Ueno, got them tickets for the train out to Narita and hit the Shink back to Fuku. All in all, a cool weekend.

It’s only been a week since then. And I really haven’t done a whole lot. I hit the final day of the Nihonmatsu Lantern Festival (watch I’ll write it in Japanese now, cuz I’m awesome 二本松提灯祭り). I’d never been to the last day (it’s a 3 day festival), because I’ve always been told the first day is the best, but I really really liked the last day. And all my students pulled me into the huge crowd following the Mikoshi (float like thingy) and made me jump around with them. It was wicked. There’s a good picture that one guy took, but it isn’t online yet. I’ll put it up when I can. This last weekend was a long weekend; I think it was Sports day…maybe. I did nothing other than getting really really drunk one night, which was the goal after 2 weekends with the “in-laws” being Tour Guide Tom. Other than that, I slept. And I mean, for more than 12 hours every night. It was wicked. Not much on the horizon, a guy’s night coming up October 24^th and obviously Halloween. Both should be a good time. Anyway, I’m out for now, class in 10 minutes…I think, I still have no clue what the schedule is at this school.

B

Here I am again, back at this visit school with no internet, god I hate that. The last blog went up a few days after I actually wrote it…but whatever. And I can’t remember if I posted the video of Alex’s festival with it or not. If I didn’t it will appear below, like at the very bottom of this post.

I don’t know if I’ve fully profiled this school yet, this new one that I hyped when I learned about it. If the phrase “don’t believe the hype” was ever applicable to anything, it is applicable to this school vis-à-vis that blog. Don’t get me wrong, I like the teacher (singular), that I came here to teach with, but, there is another from Higashi, who left a year or two ago and she has NO CLUE what she’s doing with ALTs. And based on the level of her 3rd year (12^th grade) students, I gather she’s not quite sure what to do in the classroom either. The last time I was here, an entire class of 3^rd years (san-nenseis) couldn’t tell me the meaning of ichi-ji-kan (一時間). It means one hour. They didn’t know one hour…um, WHAT?? 6 years of English education, no clue how to say 1 hour. A few kids could actually tell me 30 when I asked what 30 minutes is in English…mad score!

The low level isn’t really what bothers me. What gets to me about this school is the general lack of respect the students have for the teachers. Like, I love my other lower level schools because I assume they’re like classes back home. A bit rowdy and out of control, some bad asses, but some smart kids as well. Not easy to control, but definitely controllable dependent on how you approach them. These kids, because of the tiered Japanese Senior High School system, meaning, “smart kids” go to “smart schools” and “dumb kids” go to “dumb schools” (NOTE: this is not always the case and a lot of kids just screw up when they’re 12 and pay the price by having to go to a middle level school). Anyway, this school is literally full of just bad assess. Not all of them, but a significant amount. And they don’t give a shit about any classes, let alone English, which to be fair is the least important for any of these kids. They walk all over their teachers, at least the tiny female English teachers they have. I actually had a kid get up and walk out of my class the very first day I taught here. 5 minutes in, he just decided, “Naw, I’m not doing this.” Got up and walked out. The JTE let him go to. She actually said, “It’s better if he leaves.” She’s clearly fed up as well and she’s only been here since April!

For the first time ever, I have come across kids that do not give a flying fuck who I am, what I say and have zero regard for myself or the JTE. Now, I know that in saying this, I sound like I’m whining and I totally realize that being here 3 years has changed my perception of students and what their behaviour should be. I saw one of my grade 11 students out at 4am and promptly told her she was a high school student and that she should go home. The next morning was definitely one of those wake ups where you say to yourself, “Did I really do that….GOD DAMN, how am I gonna face that kid now?” As if drunken foreign sensei should have anything to say in that situation other then, “Oh, hello there, good bye now.”

Sorry, got off topic there. Anyway, these kids are a challenge to say the least and every time I’ve been here, I get more and more frustrated as the day wears on. I’m attempting the stern, no nonsense; don’t fuck with me approach, which normally in any situation (in Japan) works well. I’m a big, bearded gaijin (foreigner) and that in itself normally commands the respect of the students. But for the first time since I’ve been here, it isn’t working. It doesn’t win over the classes. I keep telling myself that this is a challenge and I will overcome it. I just don’t know what to do though. With only one shot a month, there’s no way that I can create a rapport with these students and they’d rather screw around with me than learn something or even be on friendly terms with me. I feel for my 3^rd and 4^th classes each time I’m here, because by the time I go in to them, I’m ready to KILL these kids. The 2^nd year English teacher who I’ve never taught with was definitely caught off guard the last time I taught with her (my 4^th class of the day). I went in there thinking, alright, screw these kids. They will pay attention. Annnnd, they did not. We were playing a GAME too! A GAME!!! And they still didn’t give a crap. Like, it was EASY and they just kept talking and screwing around the whole time. I mean, I just gave up. Talked over them, but didn’t even attempt to get everyone into it. If they didn’t want to do anything, they didn’t have to.

How do you go about teaching students like that? I mean, I get it when it’s one or two kids and you just realize that you most likely won’t get to them. It’s a bleak outlook but there’s no way every single kid in a class is gonna give a crap about English. I understand that. But when you’re looking at a class of 40 and 30 of those kids could care less about everything and anything you’re doing or saying or teaching, it’s…well…it’s crappy. It’s just crappy.

Today I have one class, just the one, with the teacher I like and that’s it. It will be the class that has screwed around with me the most. They’re 1^st years, and that normally means, they don’t screw around. First years are normally afraid and timid and all that other good stuff that makes a class run smoothly. I have slowly been making strides with them, but we’ll see how it goes. The first class I had with them, one kid continually hit me as I walked by him…UH WHAT?? Ya that’s right, he hit me, smacked my ass, punched my arm, etc etc. I’ve put a stop to that since then, but still, how crazy is that?? The kid just felt that it was ok to hit the big, bearded, male, gaijin teacher. He didn’t know me. This school has never had an ALT and a lot of the junior high schools in the area don’t have them either. This was potentially his first encounter with a foreigner or maybe he’s had several and he felt it was ok to hit me?? WHAT? I don’t care where you are in the world, no kid is ever gonna have a new teacher and smack them on the ass…that’s just craziness. It was a male student as well.

So ya, there’s that. This was going to be a blog about what’s been up and how the rest of Mo’s family’s trip was, but it kinda turned into a rant about well, this school. I could write 4 billion pages on the Japanese education system and what’s wrong with it, but I’ll leave that for another time. The good thing is that I still have 7 hours of work day left and only an hour of that is spent in class. So most likely, the other blog I want to write will appear above or below this one. Hope Canadian Thanksgiving was awesome…honestly, I totally forgot about it until last night (Monday night). God I’ve been here too long.

B

Brief update – I have taught that one class. It was an EPIC FAIL. I have no clue how to teach at this school. Back to the drawing board.

Kunimi Matsuri

Wow, just looked at my last update and there are a bunch of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors! Go me! God, I HATE when people have errors in stuff they’ve written but because I immediately assume their intelligence is sub-par, but for me I think, well, whatever, I just hit a wrong key somewhere in there, no biggie. This is because my intelligence is clearly superior to that of a mere mortal with or without errors and it must come through regardless? Obviously I am not at all delusional.

With that little blurb over with, last week was Silver Week, much like Golden Week in April/May, but shorter. A new law was enacted that said that if a holiday fell on a day where there was one day between say a weekend and the holiday, the day in between would be viewed as a holiday as well. An example being, if a Tuesday was a national holiday and everyone was supposed to work on Monday, instead the Monday becomes a holiday as well. Pretty sweet deal eh? So…last week was the first time EVAR(evar spelled that way on purpose) that this law came into play. Monday was Respect for the Aged/Elderly day and Wednesday was the Autumn Equinox, so Tuesday became a random national holiday! Sweet deal, 5 day weekend!!! We didn’t really get up to much, a good friend of ours, who came the same year I did but left and has now returned came up to Fukushima on the Sunday, after quite a Saturday night of drinking. He stayed for a few days, so, my time was spent playing x-box and listening to Mo talk to him about movies and tv shows (cuz that’s how they roll) with drinking sprinkled throughout his Fukushima adventure in the evenings.

On Wednesday we rocked out to Alex’s town’s samurai festival. It’s the same day as the gigantic samurai festival in Aizu-Wakamatsu, which I’ve been to a bunch of times, so we decided to head to rural Kunimi and check out this tiny festival (The Kunimi Machi [国見町] Yoshitsune Matsuri [義経祭り] ). Also, Alex dressed up as a samurai (Musashibou Benkei) in the and walked on geta for the whole procession. It will be turned into a video eventually. Hopefully I make some pretty pictures appear below.

Why both Mo and I have our hands on our hips, I don't know.

Friday was the arrival of the Barry Clan. Mo’s sister, along with her parents were arriving in Japan. So, I as the lovely gentleman that I am volunteered to go and pick them up from the airport. The day began as a disaster and was pretty much disastrous throughout. I had agreed to work for the first two hours of at my visit school on Friday because I teach an Oral Communications class of 7 students and I love that class, so I didn’t want to miss it. The deal was that I’d teach until 10:30, then catch the train out of Fukushima and bam be in Tokyo in time for the Barry’s arrival at 3:35. I knew it was a bad omen when I woke up at 8:44am, seeing as my class starts at 8:50, in Nihonmatsu, a 15km drive. So, I showed up 40 min late for my 2 hour day and taught my 1 and a half classes. After that, I made it back into Fukushima and onto the Shinkansen no problem. I would be at the airport with plenty of time. PLENTY OF TIME!!!

So, here’s the twist, with all the planning Mo had done with her father, there had been one little detail that was neglected, any of the details of the flight had not been discussed…other than that it got in at 3:35. Mo and I both figured, ahhh, no big deal. They’re probably flying Air Canada, I’ll just get there and sort out what flight they were on. Ya…this didn’t go as planned at ALL! I arrive at Terminal 1, totally chill. Look up at the board and here we go…one flight from Toronto arriving at 3:05 and one flight from Vancouver at 3:30. Um, no 3:35 flight…but did Mo maybe mess up the numbers? The only flights at 3:35 were from Bangkok and Washington. So…definitely not those. Did the Barry’s fly from Ottawa to Toronto and then to Japan? Mo’s sister lives in Toronto, maybe that’s the deal…or maybe they took separate flights and met in Vancouver and then came over…to make everything worse, Mo was working, so I couldn’t even talk to her. I was still pretty chilled out and figured alright, they’re gonna come out, the time is just messed up…but you know me…not very chilled in a situation like that. So, soon, I start to freak out. I’m pacing the airport, checking my cell every 8 seconds. To make matters worse, some random sketchy Canadian dude who has apparently been abandoned at the airport has attached himself to me cause he doesn’t know what he’s gonna do if his “girlfriend” doesn’t come and pick him up. GOD GET AWAY FROM ME DUDE!!!!! MY GIRLFRIEND’S PARENTS ARE ARRIVING OR HAVE ARRIVED SOMEWHERE AND THEY’RE SITTING AROUND THINKING, WHO IN THE HELL IS THIS IDIOT WHO’S DATING OUR DAUGHTER????

As I watched the Vancouver flight disappear from the board I knew drastic measures needed to be taken. This happened as I was talking to Mo’s boss, Dane, on my phone and my phone died…cuz sketchy Canadian dude kept asking to use it to call his “girlfriend” who did eventually show up. So, I hopped the shuttle to the other terminal and as I walked through the doors, there were the Barrys. YES!!! So I grabbed them and we got the hell outta dodge. We made it back to Fukushima by about 9:30, checked the Barry’s into their hotel and headed back to the apartment with Kathleen, Mo’s sister. The weekend was full of dinners and drinking and we headed to Shiroishi Castle in, believe it or not…Shiroishi. Which is just over the Fukushima border in Miyagi, it was nice because it was somewhere that Mo and I have never been.

It has been interesting watching another family dynamic. The way Mo’s family operates is very different comparative to well, my own. The fact that Mo’s father is probably the smartest human being I’ve ever met in my entire life is a bit daunting and being around him is like well, I don’t even know how to put it. I mean, I learn about a zillion things from him in about an hour, so that’s cool. It’s just amazing how much stuff he has packed in his head and how he can just recall anything at any time. I can barely recall the plots of movies that I watched last week, whereas he can quote a 5 min monologue from a movie he watched in 1978, tell you everyone that was in it and then discuss the impact that movie had on society as a whole. WHAT??? His specialty is supposed to be math and computers shouldn’t he be giving me the hundredth decimal place in pi and leaving the humanity type stuff to me? The fact that his Japanese historical knowledge far surpasses mine is um, like I said…daunting. I can’t even begin to fathom growing up with that…I guess that’s why Mo is smart. How intellectual a statement of me eh? Der derr…mo is brain is good…derr derr…

Mo’s mom is just straight up fun. She and I get along wicked and I get to joke around with her so that’s a ton of fun. It is interesting how totally different her parents are. One moment I’m debating the socio-economic repercussions of an agricultural based society in Japan and the next I’m talking about how 1000 yen for an umbrella is too much or trying to persuade someone to try sushi.

Mo’s sister, is well, her sister. They’re like best friends and have spent their time talking about how fat this celebrity is or how good this one looks. Creating all new inside jokes and you know, just generally being girly, as one would expect with sisters. So far this trip has just made me miss my own family and after a very drunken phone call to mom and a drunken email to brother dear, Drew’s going to come out again for Golden week, which I am TOTALLY STOKED about. My friends weren’t as excited as I was the other night, which lead to me repeat it, over and over again. But then again, if they said, wow, my sibling that you’ve never met is coming over; I wouldn’t really give a shit either.

Anyway, I’m at a visit school today, with no internet, hence is this blog is 3 pages and it’s only 9:33am. What will I do with the rest of my day? Good thing I have 4 classes after this. Mo’s family leaves for Kyoto tomorrow and then we’re meeting them in Tokyo next weekend before they head to the Philippines. Nothing really big after that planned. Like I’ve said before, just trying to lay low, I’ll upload pics later tonight and hopefully there will be links to them below. p-p-p-peace!

p.s – like the new theme? I like it more, cuz it highlights the titles of the blogs a bit better and you can tell where one stops and the next begins.

September pictures!

So, I just got an email from the guy that ran the Kyushu Golden Week Hitchhike Challenge. I’m just going to copy and paste it.

The much-coveted Best Team Name bonus went to…V-V-V-Vinnie and the Brent, with their Elton John tribute nomenclature!
With those points added we have a Top 3 Hitchers of ‘09.
In 3rd place, with a very impressive 1,600 points…
V-V-V-Vinnie and the Brent, aka Vinnie and Brent

In 2nd place, with a ground-breaking 1,695 points…
Hitching Hotness, aka Becky and Peter

I included Becky and Peter because they’re friends of ours. The winners, well, I don’t know them nor do I care. LOL. The winners had over 2000 points…what the hell? This is the first time in like 4 years that someone from Fukushima hasn’t won, BUT, 2nd and 3rd ain’t bad.

The vids of the trip are in a post below if you haven’t seen them.

…if I can post from work through the firewall…we shall see.
Spent Sunday this last weekend at the Sendai Jazz festival. It was the first time I’ve ever been. Good enough, but less about the jazz and more like a day in Sendai with live music being played all over the place. I didn’t even drink and had a good time. How crazy is that? Who knew you could have fun without alcohol. Um, my school’s been closed for the last week because over 10 percent of the students have “new flu.” Which is just a new strain of the swine flu or whatever. BUT all the teachers still have to come to school and sit in the staff room staring at each other. It’s been a blast (read: I want to kill myself). Thank god I have visit schools that I can go to. This way I can carry the flu to different areas of the prefecture getting other schools sick before I realize I have it myself! YES!
Definitely in a I could easily do a 5th year in Japan type mood today. Which is interesting I guess. I have 2 days of work left before silver week (a 5 day weekend!). And then Mo’s parents and her sister are coming over for a week. Should be a pretty good time as I haven’t seen them in 3 years and we get along well. At least, I think we get along well, maybe they secretly hate me and are plotting my assasination as I type this. LOL.
Alright, well, let’s see if this works. Nope, didn’t work….

Just for good measure, I’m gonna throw in a picture of Grant (I went to his wedding last year), Kenta and myself.