Hey Everybody, As you all know, Maddy just finished a (very) long trip around Japan, then to San Fran and finally Canada, leaving me in frigid Morioka... : ( But she came back and we decided to head somewhere nice for the weekend, we chose Nyuto Onsen (an onsen is a hot spring). It's actually a little cluster of 6 hotels all having their own onsens, the one we stayed at is called Kaniba onsen. It's about an hour drive from our place, further inland and up in the mountains. On the way there, the drive takes you by Tazawa-ko (Lake [View Full Entry]

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Hi! My first week of work was great, but exhausting! I have a wide variety of students of different levels and abilities, which keeps me on my toes. Now that I've settled back into life in Japan I thought it was time to let you know about my trip to North America. It is strange to think of it as a trip: when I went through Canadian customs they made me check off 'visitor' instead of 'resident'! San Francisco was wonderful. The first five days I was there were sunny and gorgeous (the rain started on the day of the wedding). [View Full Entry]

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Hi! Sorry, between travelling and jet lag I've gotten behind on my postings. These are pictures from February 19 in Tokyo with my mom. I'm actually back in Takizawa Japan. I will try to post blogs on San Francisco and life in Japan soon. Thanks to Colin's parents, we now have a reliable computer at home so we'll be able to stay in contact with everyone :) Although, I can't guarantee too much because I start work tomorrow. I'm anticipating a bit of an adjustment period, since I haven't worked full time in six months and am still recovering from jet [View Full Entry]

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Hi Everyone, I'm finally getting to see more of Japan! My mom arrived last week and it started snowing an hour after we picked her up and didn't stop snowing until the day we left Morioka! It snowed a foot the night she arrived! Travelling with her is definitely a different experience, the main difference is everywhere we go people offer us special treats, help and sake! We shared a boat trip through Geibikei gorge with a tour group who insisted that we eat most of their elaborate lunch and drink sake and beer. It was 11am so of course they [View Full Entry]

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Hi! Yeah, we have internet at home!!!! Although, I can't promise that the postings will be more frequent. It does mean that we can now messenger, talk for free on-line and we have a land line now so it is much cheaper to call us! The pics are of the Hadakemeri festival I told you about last week. Things are great over here. Colin's job is going well and his main complaint is that he doesn't get to see daylight, since it gets dark just after 4pm and he gets home around 7. Japan doesn't follow daylight savings time so it [View Full Entry]

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Hi! Well, I haven't gotten lost so far, but I've only driven to the internet and I followed Yuriko in her car! We are renting a car for the month! It is a super cute, white, two-door, 4 wheel-drive, manual Daihatsu, Mira. Today was my first time driving in Japan and I love it! (Colin's company wouldn't let me drive any of the cars they lent us...) Even though I've only used it to go to a place that I go all the time, it is great knowing that I have the freedom to go anywhere! Driving on the left side [View Full Entry]

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I realize this is a bit late, but my excuse is that we live in Japan! The plan was to write this up on the 4th after our Internet was installed, but for reasons we still can't comprehend Yahoo (the net provider) had some difficulties and will not be able to install it until the 26th. So far 2006 has been a great year. Colin had a week off work and we had a car so we were able to see much more of Japan. We went snowboarding twice, which was lots of fun. Colin seemed to enjoy the fact that [View Full Entry]

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Merry Christmas everybody! A little late, I know... I hope everyone is warm and toasty. Here in Morioka it's been snowing like mad for the past few days, probably about 3 and 1/2 feet in the past 3 days, and it's snowing just as hard today. I borrowed a car from a co-worker while he's on vacation back to Canada so getting around hasn't been too bad, although driving is slow (I'm a Vancouver Island kid). We went out for dinner and a movie the other night and returned to find a foot and a half of snow covering our car! [View Full Entry]

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Yes, we are still in Japan. We went to a Spanish restaurant last night to watch flamenco dancing! We have made friends with a Japanese lady, Yuriko, who has been showing us around and some of her friends were dancing last night. Fun times. I just had a second interview for Prince Eibei Gakuin, a school family close to our house. I think I rocked it. This one was with the VP of the company and he said that I was very quiet, polite and modest--little does he know, that was only because I had to sit quietly and wait for [View Full Entry]

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Wow, I wish we'd tried this in Canada before everything on the computers was in Japanese! We've been here just over two weeks and are settling in. We survived 3 earthquakes in our first four days (only one was big enough to wake us up, magnitude 6.9), I've had one job offer, Colin's survived two company parties and we still have no clue when it comes to the Japanese public transit system--it is not comforting to know that they can't figure it out either. We had our first onsen(hot spring) experience last week. It was very relaxing, Colin was nice enough [View Full Entry]

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