There is one thing that the Japanese understand and celebrate more than anything, and that's food. Nothing is more appreciated and enjoyed more than a day sitting with friends, surrounded by food, and having a good time. In every town, there is a famous food or preparation of food. Omiyage, or souvenirs, are brought back from a business of family trip for the day or weekend; it's all food. This culture is so rich with such a strong and complex food tradition that it's not surprising that food is something that would be celebrated with weekend long festivals for the masses. [View Full Entry]

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Wednesday I was awoken by the 6am train going past my hostel the next morning and moved around in the slight darkness to find and stuff all my things into my backpack before heading out into the morning light. Walked up to the station taxi stand and rode off into the dawn to get to the ferry terminal before the 7:45am ferry took off. Since I had made a reservation the day before I had to go back and get my ticket and pick where my seat would be. Still feeling a little green around the edges from the day before, [View Full Entry]

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Ah New Years, the 3 times a year that I have a week off to explore and indulge my travel hobby. This New Years vacation though, would prove to be one of my more interesting travel tales. It will also take a couple blogs to fill all of it onto the screen. Monday Let's begin the holiday vacation at 5:00am on the morning of the 29th, because that when I got myself out of bed to get the 6:00am shinkansen out of Sendai. After going through my morning routine and making sure I had all my needed things in my backpack, [View Full Entry]

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It's that time of year again! Winter is frosting everything together and making laundry somewhat time consuming. It's also Sendai's Pageant of Starlight again! Jozenji-dori is a huge shinny mass of pretty trees, people, and yaki imo (grilled sweet potato) going down it's long street. I made the annual pit stop with my new co and her BF. It was gorgeous and lots of fun to walk around and enjoy such a winter sight. Along with the lights a skating rink has been set up outside for the public! A couple of my co-workers and I went together and skated for [View Full Entry]

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Let's begin "get out of Sendai" weekend with the 1st first visit yesterday. I headed out to big and wide Tono Valley yesterday. Tono is famous for folklore and having a very easily accessible rural scene. There are wide ride fields here and many different places to ride a rented bike or car. When I left Sendai yesterday morning it didn't look cloudy at all. By the time I got into Shin-Hanamaki station it was pouring a cold and bitter rain. I asked the lady at the information desk if she thought I should even try to go into Tono today [View Full Entry]

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This weekend was my "get out of Sendai" weekend. The last couple weeks I have been busy on weekends and have had no time to go out and do anything before the winter cold sets in. So yesterday and today I was out of Sendai and out enjoying Tohoku to it's fullest in a weekend dripping with historical content. Today I met my manager, yes my boss, in Koriyama station and we drove together to Aizu-Wakamatsu. Aizu-Wakamatsu is famous for the Byakkotai "White Tigers". The story goes that during a time of civil war a group of samurai were waiting at [View Full Entry]

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A year ago today I started training in Okayama in preparation for my current life. It's a little surreal to think that I have been here a year, but it also doesn't seem like I've been here that long either. This last weekend was a 3 day weekend for me because Tuesday was the Fall Equinox and a national holiday, so I ended up in Aomori visiting one of my friends who is also teaching in Japan. It's the first time I've seen him in over a year. Even though we live close together our schedules often conflict, so it's pretty [View Full Entry]

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In Sendai we have this weekly newspaper called, Sendai Weekly. It's a lot like the Independent in Raleigh. It has ads for restaurants, concerts, coupons, and articles about things that are happening around or in Sendai. It's in Japanese but I have been going through it and practicing my Japanese and trying to learn new kanji and vocabulary. It is fall, or becoming fall, up in Tohoku, so most of the newspaper is about things that families can do together in the fall. This weeks Weekly was about Yamagata; which is the next prefecture over from Miyagi. There were ads for [View Full Entry]

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Well, the end of the trip was drawing to a close. Amy and I got back to Taipei in the early evening and found our hostel pretty quickly. We stayed in the Taipei Travelers Hostel. It's on the 22nd floor of the electronics store next to the Mistsukoshi building. The owners were great and very helpful in getting us information and also just having fun conversation. I also discovered that the Travel Channel's 5 Takes: the Pacific Rim show stayed there. We ended up at the Fine Arts Museum that afternoon. It was really nice! The first floor was an architecture [View Full Entry]

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The trip back to Taipei was a little longer and a lot funnier then the trip to get to Keelung. As typical foreigner behavior we tried to get to our platform early. Walking up to the ticket gates Amy put in her ticket....only to have it shot right back out the other end and onto the platform floor. It had to wait till a station worker came by to retrieve it for us. Luckily, a lovely old man came over and explained why we couldn't go through, and then we checked out tickets to see that they didn't have magnetic back, [View Full Entry]

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