Blogs from Japan, Asia - page 735

After 2 weeks, I've finally found a moment to upload some pictures from my Kyoto trip. Kyoto is beautiful. Hirakata City isn't exactly the most beautiful area of Japan, but Kyoto is a much nicer place. Eventually, I'll post some pictures from Tokyo and the Tokyo Game Show.... read more

SO I haven't written in a while so I will give a quick synopsis of whats been going on so far. well my first week and Sunagawa was great the teachers were all really cool and the students were great.I was working with a student teacher again and we seemed to mesh well. the week also was a great help in figuring out how to be a teacher. On Saturday I played basketball with the Sunagawa basketball team which was quit a workout but a lot of fun. After that I met up with owen and went fishing. didn't get much though. On Sunday there were sport festivals (undokais) going on at two of my schools. I spent the morning at Fukumine and the afternoon at Seijo. The sport festivals were pretty cool. they are pretty ... read more

The first week at Gusukube went well. I felt that it had a bit of a shakey start for what ever reasons but it all worked out. the students are all pretty active. I only ended up teaching here three days this week though because of monday's holiday and a holiday again on thursday. I have a lot of control over the lesson planning here which is nice also. This week I've also really started to get serious into the fishing scene. I went night fishing tuesday and wednesday and thursday I spent the day exporing the island and fishing. I've only caught a lot of small stuff recently but I bearly missed a huge fish yesterday. I could be doing better but I've refused to to resort to what I have deemed as cheating. There ... read more

CDRWs are notoriously unreliable, and that's one of the reasons my Kyoto pictures aren't up yet. I'm going to have to get a USB flash drive. Tonight, though, I'm going to Tokyo -- by bus -- to the Tokyo Game Show, which means that, by the next time I make an entry, I'll have an obscene number of pictures.... read more

Last weekend was a three-day one, so I went to Kyoto with a friend. Another person was supposed to join us, but she couldn't come. Despite that, it was an incredible experience. I love Kyoto. Unfortunately, I left the pictures on my computer, which I don't have at the moment, but I'll uplod them tomorrow. Additionally, my friend has some more pictures that he's going to share with me. (I actually took quite a few with his camera after my picture card ran out of space.) suffice it to say that Kyoto is beautiful. This is my second trip, but I liked this one even more than the first. I bought some souvenieers, since, I know, many people will want me to bring them something back from Japan. There were plenty of places to get ... read more

Before leaving for Osaka I competed in a log pulling contest in a town about 25 minutes from April's village by the name of Agematsu. This experience evoked both positive and negative feelings for it was very exciting and quite miserable at the same time. First, let me explain that Agematsu holds an annual log pulling contest because they are a famous logging town and all they are all very proud of it. The contest consists of 2 parts, one of which my team did quite well and the other in which we didn’t. The main event at the contest was to pull a very large log using ropes around the event track while the entire town watched and cheered. While our mighty group of 5 did not take the first place award home for this ... read more

Well its my first day at Sunagawa and things seem to be going well. I already had my 2 classes of the day which were pretty easy because it was just my self introduction. It seemed to go well though. The weekend was pretty casual too. The weather here has been pretty misersble its like being back in portland almost. there aren't any typhoons but its be consistantly cloudy and raining on and off. it sucks. all I want to do is go to the beach or do some fishing. On friday night I went to Pizza which is a weekly ritual for most of the foriegners on the island. the owner of the pizza place is really cool. he is old and doesn't speak much english but he gives us a pretty good deal (1 ... read more

"I'm studying Japanese." To anyone who is reading this, I must apologize for the mundane entries as of late. Fortunately, some fairly interesting events are approaching. Sometime this week -- whether tomorrow, Thursday, or Friday I cannot recall -- about 10,000 Japanese students will be returning from their summer vacation. Additionally, next Friday I shall travel to Tokyo. I've been so tired lately. Yesterday, I had no meat during the entire day. For dinner, my host family cooked chaahan, because I said that I liked it. Chaahan is fried rice; it's actually from China, apparently. Inexplicably, Japanese people eat gohan (white/steamed rice) with chopsticks, but chaahan with a spoon. I asked for chopsticks, because eating rice with a spoon, for me, psychologically, is difficult. Every day, I ride at least 4 trains: two coming to school, ... read more