The nex day we rented an outrigger canoe and paddled around for a while. Not as easy as a regular canoe, but a lot more stable.

The hard life of a snorkel captain. Aside from the fact that this guy probably makes about $1000 per year, it's a pretty easy life.

It's a strange experience to snorkel for the first time. For a landlubber like me, it's a bit disconcerting to be able to see sunken wrecks 30 feet down as you easily float by. Of course, it's mostly about looking cool.

Here's a picture of just one of the bazillion picturesque beaches in the Philippines. If your idea of a good time is lounging on an isolated beach, you could do worse than the island of Palawan.

We spent the next day snorkeling around Coron Town. It's pretty amazing that for $9 a day you can rent goggles and snorkel and a whole boat.

Here is Coron Town where we stayed for the first two days in Busuanga. Don't let the idyllic scene fool you, all we heard all day whas the buzz and clatter of ill kept engines, motorcycle, truck and boat.

Here is a little view of the town from the top of a nearby hill. This photo was taken from the base of a giant illuminated cross.

And this is the airport. We were greeted by 4 airport employees, 6 mangy dogs, 15 chickens and 1 pet monkey.

Here's where we touched down.

We flew from Manila to the small island of Busuanga on a 15 seater aircraft. The view was spectacular from the airplane. Turquoise waters and then all of a sudden a reef or a white beached island.

This is a view of the first morning in Manila. It's already damn hot outside and we have yet to figure out how to get where we're going. The garbage pickers we saw as we entered last night have cleared out and it's rather sterile around our hotel at this time.

I didn't really expect it, but it takes about 4 or 5 days to get back into the swing of things from a vacation. I showed up to work on monday and it was just one of those times when i thought, "Gee, what do I do next?" The whole week has kind of been like that. I mostly just show up. I started preparing my lesson for the girls highschool about an hour ago. With luck it won't suck, like other lessons that I've made. Usually I just steal ideas from Jennifer.
Today we're slogging through the dregs of what is hopefully the last typhoon of the season. It's not so bad, but it has dropped a good deal of rain on us for the past few days. Hopefully it will dry off for the weekend and I'll be able to do something fun outside again.
Sorry for the boring post, but pictures are coming soon, brace yourself.

We're back safe and sound from the Philippines. Yay.
The week was over in a flash and at the beginning I thought that I was going to be hating life to go back to Japan, but as it turns out, round about the time I got sick, I totally changed my tune. I don't know what it is, but I really get ripped up inside on vacations. It was on our trip to Europe a couple of years ago that I really first got the travellers revenge and it was the exact same thing this time. Fortunately, I had learned about the lovely power of Loperamide!! This is the drug most commonly found in anti-motility pills and about 3-6 milligrams will stop you up like you can only imagine. It's pretty amazing how quickly it returns you to the world of the living.
This time was trying because we happened to be on an all day boating expedidtion when I first started to get sick and the combination of extremely loud motor, bright sunshine, intense heat and choppy seas made for an uncomfortable time island hopping.

Aside from the subject of poo, the trip was really a good one. Travelling was quite easy, though it took a long damn time. Something that really amazed me was that there was no language barrier. Almost everyone spoke English and most people spoke it well enough to be conversational. It puts the Japanese to shame man, it really does. You could talk to the grubbiest of boat drivers quite as easily as the desk clerk at the hotel. Travel is slow mostly, i think due to the fact that there are a lot of damn island in the Philippines. I started counting, but I lost track at 2 bazillion. I think in the whole archipeligo there are like maybe 6 or 7 bazillion. Roads are also pretty shit out in the provinces. We spent almost all our time on the island of Palawan. It took us about 9 hours to drive 100 miles, much of that over crappy dirt roads and washed out bridges. It just takes forever.

This is running on, so I'll post more about the details when we develop the film.

It's official y'all, i've been in this country for exactly a year as of Monday. And what a year it's been. I can now speak a smattering of japanese words and phrases, i have eaten a great number of raw animals and I've not gagged on many. I've learned how to do the mighty telemark turn on skis, I've spent nights drinking under the cherry blossoms and gotten the wicked hangovers to prove it. I've been hit by a car and insulted by 13 year old girls. It's been real people, it's been real.

Thank god i'm leaving this country (if only temporarily) this Saturday. The Philippines will be a welcome respite from Japan. Not like i really hate the place, it's just that it's not as good as home in many ways. For instance, my job involves talking at ignorant highschool girls for 3 hours every week. I would rather shovel manure to be honest, if the pay were right.

I've been flexing a lot in the mirror lately and I believe that I saw a muscle the other day. I can't be sure, but i've got a hunch that rock climbing has had something to do with that.
This is the first time in my life that I've done an arm intensive sport. From that perspective, it's ridiculously hard, my poor little pencils are just dying out there. I went climbing outdoors with Jodi today, it was rather an exercise in unbridled expectations and biting off a little more than I can chew. I tried to lead a climb, that is to climb up and put in the protecting carabiners ahead of me, and flopped miserably. Of course I picked two that looked cool and were ridiculously difficult to do-idiot. Anyway, I'm getting better and the hubris finally wore off and I managed to lead a climb successfully at the end of day. No crashes, but my toes are just murdered. It seems that my shoes expand and contract at random intervals, today they were too big for my shoes and it just killed. With luck I won't leave my toenails behind like Jodi did upon buying her new shoes.

The astute may notice that in my sidebar links area, the link to Doug's defunct website is gone and Jude's new one has replaced it. Also, i have conveniently added the website of one of my favorite publishers, Velonews. Alf's website is on the out-list and if there aren't any posts in the next week or so, it's outtahere (got that Hickey?)
How's that for a cyber-ultimatum.

I experienced my first earthquake last night. It wasn't particularliy "moving" shall we say, but it sure was cool to feel the entire building shaking for no good reason. It's all the more cool when you realize that it's not just the building, but the entire surface of the earth that is shimmying and shaking around. It was a good end to a frustrating and rainy day in which I had to fix Jennifer's 3speed belt drive bicycle. If ever I have worked on a more cumbersome project, i cannot recall when. It was a blight on my day with no uncertainty. The three hours that i pitched out the window while "repairing" her bike merely resulted in a 6km walk for her this morning as the whole rear hub came apart after my watchful and dilligent ministrations. Goddamn infuriatin.

Also, a shout out for dear old Mom. It's her birthday today, so if you're going to be seeing her soon, give her a hug from her vagrant son.

Well, we survived the eruption. Honestly in the city there have been no effects. I haven't talked to Andy yet, but I'm hoping to get some interesting info or pictures eventurally.

Another interesting thing; they're building a log house down my route to work and the thing has Pella Windows installed in all of the fittings. Those litttle sheets of glass and casements came all the way from my home state to be slapped into a log cabin in the middle of Nagano City. What a weird world. I imagine that the logs were shipped from somewhere in northern Minnesota too.

The volcano that we hiked earlier this summer Asama Sama is now actively blowing up. The bodies are scattered everywhere and the power is almost off, thank god for the battery life of this little laptop, i've only a few minutes in which to compose my last will and testament. Here goes:

Ian, you can have my stereo.
Asa, you can take my guitar.
Leah, you can take my cross country skis and crazy hats.
Claire, you get all the kitchen stuff, but you'll probably have to fight for it with Kelly. She's a pushover though.
Mom, don't worry about my student loans, I think that you don't have to pay them back if i die.
Dad, sell my bike and buy a nice urn for my ashes (if they can be sorted from the volcanic debris and the accumulated dust in my apartment)

Everyone else, just do paper rock scissors for the stuff of mine that you want.


Actually though, the mountain really is erupting and probably no one will get killed. Our friend Andy however lives only like 15 kilometers from the mountain, however. It could be a nice show for him tonight.

Yoda lives, and he's a japanese missile scientist. I have been proofreading for a professor from the local university who is actually a leading japanese expert in missile defense theory. He's really just Yoda in disguise though.
Get this, he's short, even by japanese standards, he has an unkempt mop of grey hair, he has brownish-greenish teeth from all the coffee and whatnot that he drinks and the clincher is that he makes the same throat noise that Yoda does, constantly. Who better to calculate "Force Vectors in Anti-Missile-Missle Countermeasures" than a Jedi Master? Believe me if I ever want to know about the Force, I'll go straight to Yoda.

Hey party people, has anyone been to the Philippines? If not, just wait till I get back and can tell you all how cool I am for going to such an exotic and wonderful place. If you have been there, then please feel free to give me all the advice you can. Jennifer and I are going sometime around the 17 of September, hopefully by which time the typhoon season will have settled down a bit. I've heard that the only gurantee is that there's no gurantee on the weather though. I'm hoping to have mostly sun and some serious sweat stains by the time I get back. The planning is still in phase 1, so any input would be greatly appreciated.

Today was an interesting one. I started off teaching the saturday class at the girls highschool that i pretty much hate. Moreover, the saturday class is 2 hours long, a long damn time in the annals of teaching and thirdly began at 9 which made it my earliest class of the week. When I arrived i saw 5 japanese girls and 1 blonde haired blue eyed tan skinned north american. There's an exchange student at the school and she was in the "Special English" saturday class. It was strange to have that sort of combo, not just a student who was better than the others, that's normal, but a full blown native speaker in the class. It went all right, she was a trooper and even though serious boredom clawed at her she perservered. Me, it's my job. I am no stranger to boredom. She is one of the Rotary Club exchange students and as such is a trooper. I can't imagine myself as a highschool student picking up and traveling to another country solo, much less living there for a year. It would be one thing to do as Laura Moench (Annie's first year roomate and my last summer housemate) did and travel to a European country where one may have at least studied the language and may have a chance at least of blending in, this girl however is shit out of luck in that respect, blue eyes, blonde hair, Canadian accent, the works. Good luck to anyone who can handle such a culture shock. I myself had a pretty damn hard time and I'm a quarter century old (good way of saying 25 huh) at 18 or whatever i would have folded like a wet McDonalds napkin.
After my strange english class I went rock climbing with my predecessor at my job Jodi and Lara. It was my third time to climb outside and it was soooo great to be better than the previous times. I really felt successful this time, I even started a lead climb and did reasonably well at it. I am looking forward to chances to try outdoor climbing in the future.
Lastly, i went to a barbecue where this Kiwi guy Hayden remarked, "Lemme just size those up here, good lord, you've got hobbit feet!" It was the first time my feet were called hobbity and while somewhat shameful, it was a really good slam, one of the best I've had leveled against me. Hobbit feet they are.

I just got back from a weekend spent on the small island of Sado, about 2 hours ferry ride from Joetsu in the neighboring Niigata prefecture. Jennifer, Lara, Jodi and a new kid on the block Carrie all drove up to Joetsu at 5am and hopped on the ferry going to the island. I really like ferry travel. It's a good time to read a magazine or a book and there's something really cool about being on a big frickin ship. As there had been recent typhoon activity the swells were pretty fierce on the way out. Lots of folks were seasick, barf smell in all the restrooms. I wasn't feeling so bad, partly because I was looking out at the bounding main the whole time. I'm glad I did because I'm the only one in our whole party to have seen a whale. I've really got no idea what kind it was, medium sized something or other. It took a breath and arched its back and was gone.

After arriving at the island's harbor we walked about 100 meters to the camping are, tres convenient no? We set up our tents and proceeded on to the festival area. The whole reason for the trip was to see the Earth Festival sponsored by Japan's renowned Kodo drummers. As it turned out, we didn't get to see the Kodo drummers, but we did watch many of the other acts and some lesser Taiko drum ensembles. The highlight was probably the Saturday evening show where we saw Fanfare Ciocarlia from Romania. THese guys are kind of like a combination Jewish Klezmer, Italian traditional brass band, some German Ooompah and a healthy dose of rural rowdiness. It was a great show all in all.

Island life is always mixed for me, it's nice to be in such a relaxed atmosphere, but at the same time, it's a little claustrophobic. I am a kid of the Midwest, i really need my stretching vistas and my endless highways to nowhere special.

And the smug look tells it all. I secretly think that I rule. Hard to believe that the handsome devil in the red jacket was hit by a car not two days previous.

Here we are at the summit, we're standing in front of a big friggin cliff, and honestly, if i'm going to go to someplace death defying, i'm not taking Lara or Jennifer. They're both pretty chicken when it comes to heights. Notice the crouch position.

As we walked up the ice the warm air hitting the snow created a great bloody fog bank that we walked through. I hate fog because it, not surprisingly, fogs up my glasses and makes it hard to see.

The first time I've really walked on a glacier. Honestly, I'm not sure that I'd really call it a glacier, but it's pretty damn close, this much snow in August is gonna stay, regardless of what you do to it.

Shane in his natural element, at 2700 m

So, i slapped a bunch of pictures up on the ol website. nothing is too new, in fact they are mostly from earlier this spring at the Ombashira festival. We're currently watching the documentary "Supersize Me", the one where the film maker takes it upon himself to ingest nothing but McDonalds for a month. It's pretty good edutainment. It's educational, not particularly biased and interesting to watch. I'll give it 2 thumbs up. Something I thought was interesting from the movie was that many of the "Nutrition Experts" or "Food Specialists" were pretty fat or flaccid themselves. I suppose it's either a case of "the pot calling the kettle black" or " maybe, "it takes one to know one".

Anyway, this week has been good. Why good? Because when it comes to the work week, short equals good. I've got a 4 day weekend this week due to the national holidays for Obon, or "Visit dead people weekend" where people go out to the cemeteries and clean and burn incense. It's kind of a nice family holiday, nobody is freaking out like for Golden Week in May.

Cheer Squad

Let's enjoy fun times.

Dazed and Confused

Community Involvement

Log Riding

Festival Food

Ombashira

Ok first, about my bike accident.
It was kind of the standard bicycle car affair, and i wasn't even doing anything really stupid. I was riding on the bike path/sidewalk along the main drag to Nagano Station when a car pulled out of a parking lot and cut me off. I tried to avoid it but just ended up smacking into the front fender and flipping over which landed me on my back, shoulder and noggin. Fortunately for me, I was wearing my beloved pink helmet (may it rest in peace). My shoulder is a little bruised and my knee as well, but according to the CT scan the next day (not my idea, the insurance company's) my brain is beautiful. My helmet is all smacked up as was my front wheel and fork. Overall it was rather a pain in the ass, but the result is fine now, I've got a new front wheel and fork and there's a fancy new helmet on order from the bike shop for me. I also got to see the scan of my brain, which is pretty cool. It looks grey and smushy, from what I could tell. The woman who hit me also dropped a box of fancy cookies off at work. It was my best bicycle accident ever.

IN the past 4 days i've had my front wheel, fork and helmet totaled by a car, gotten a CT scan, hiked up a glacier, ascended a peak of 2970 Meters, been passed on the trail by 70 year old women, hiked for 9 hours to get down and obtained a shitty old motor scooter for free. It's been a good week. I'm pretty pooped from it all and i've got to take the bus to work tomorrow to pick up my bicyle on the way back home, so i'm not really going to write much tonight suffice to say that I'm fine and that my knee hurts a lot when i bend it, so i guess I won't bend it right now. More later of course.

The Fuji Rock Festival was held in the fancy pants ski resort town of Naeba. The whole place was in a scenic valley that also served as a channel for rain and wind.
It was a pretty stacked weekend, but all in all i don't think that I liked it as much as the Winnepeg folk Fest. For one, it was rainy, and that always puts me in a foul mood. Also, the shows had a really different atmosphere, not so convivial, that really prevented any sort of connection between the crowd and the audience. I believe that the lead singer from the Aussie band JET summed it up in his crowd interactions. "Are you with me?!? I saaaaaid are you WIIIITH MEEE? Can you understand anything I'm saying?" Whether it was the language barrier or the cultural one, I'm not sure. Even with the ridiculously loud soundstage, it must be hard to put a lot of energy out to a crowd of 60,000 moderately interested people.

However, now I can say that i've seen, Ben Harper, Jack Johnson, The Pixies, The White Stripes, Lou Reed, Primus and PJ Harvey live. Of the aforementioned, i think that Lou Reed was the biggest letdown and probably the White Stripes were the biggest pleasure to see. I did really love Primus onstage though, Les Claypool is just plain wierd. It would have all been better if the crowd hadn't been dampened by rain and by the fact that they're Japanese. It just wasn't so charged up as elsewhere.

Aside from seeing the bands i knew, the best thing is always seeing people you don't know. I really liked three new groups; Buffalo Daughter (Japanese electronica/pop fusion) Santos (Spanish nerdy but talented DJ) and most of all Simple Kid (British alternative rock). I would thoroughly recommend Simple Kid to anyone with tastes remotely similar to mine.

It's gonna be a short post because I'm teaching a weeks worth of classes in 4 days to make up for my vacation on Friday. Why a holiday you ask? It's because of the FUJI ROCK FESTIVAL. With luck i'll be sickeningly tired of music of all sorts by the end of the week. I'll report more later.

It's a strange day here meteoroligically. The weather in Nagano city is hot as hell and Jennifer and I are rather holed up in our apartment waiting for the storm that may never come. It's perched over the mountains to the east, releasing lightning and thunder but no rain as far as we can tell. Though the mountains are only 11K or so away from us, they seem to be hoarding the storm for themselves. . .bastards.

This weekend sees the final days of probably the least exciting Tour De France since I started following bike racing religiously some 4 years ago. I mean, it's cool and all that Lance is such a phenomenal cyclist but I was soooo expecting at least some real challenge from one of his rivals. All my guys either crashed out or failed miserably and dropped out. Honestly, I'm not a huge Ullrich fan, but I really wanted someone else to win. I gotta say that my favorite team, however did a great job. CSC headed up by director sportif Bjarne Riis is just magnificent. They are by far the spunkiest team out there. Every day it seemed like there was someone on the attack from CSC. Riis just seems to rejuvenate riders and give them the fighting spirit. Anyway, I look forward to a more interesting Vuelta A Espana this fall.

Additionally, on a more sedate scale of entertainment, Jennifer and I went to a tea ceremony yesterday. It was my first experience and it was interesting but probably isn't going to be my bag of chips. Anything that requires me to sit uncomfortably for an hour or so and culminates in drinking something that is not radically alchololic is not really for me. It was certainly nice to see however. I think that if I were an old Japanese lady that it would be a really great thing to do, kind of like going out for coffee, but also more like a sport, because you have to train for it.

Jennifer also has, spurred by the aquisition of a new, non-composting 'frige, decided to utterly redo the apartment. The everything got switched around and it actually looks quite nice. Fortunately the place isn't big enough for me to really be of help, so I just let her go about her business while rocking out to Liz Phair.

When I asked a woman why she wanted to learn english in her private lesson on tuesday she responded with a grimace, " Well, actually I don't like my life. I am always not happy and I can only remember the time that I lived in New York for 10 months and I miss it."

THis is what they pay me for. I'm part english teacher, part cheerleader, part counsellor and 100% sexy. Well, it's all true except for the sexy portion. However, I think that an unscrupulous person could really take advantage of situations such as this one and wreck havoc on the dissatisfied populations of central Japan.

The place to see internationals in this city is to go to the buffet restarurantse at about 9:00 pm. We went monday evening and sat down, as usual, the only gaijin in the place. It wasn't as crowded as I had expected and soon the Japanese families started heading out. Heading in was a small but constant stream of non-white foreigners. I pretty much recognise all of the white people here but this was different. Many were Brazillians speaking portuguese or other south americans speaking spanish. By the time we left the restaurant it was about 80 % foreign.

Recently I've been wondering what Brett Brinkmeyer is up to.
I was thinking about guys I knew who were really good at starting
things but not so hot at finishing them. Brett is probably top of
my list as a person who is just wonderful at picking up a hobby or a
job or a sport and quickly becoming proficient and then losing interest
just as quickly. I would probably say that my dad and I tie for a
close second. If you've seen my parents basement, you know what I
mean. Half finished projects abound. At first it was just
my dad's crap, but now it's filling up with the residue of my hobbies
as well. Since I could hardly carry all of my crap with me
to Japan, now the basement of my house. There's the bike stuff,
the beer stuff, the half made projects and the camping gear, skis,
boots and shoes. Now i've picked up two new hobbies, rock
climbing and telemark skiing. I'm waiting for skydiving to become
more realistic.

As if I don't have enough hobbies. Here's one that I can really sink my teeth into, nyuk nyuk nyuk. (It's surprisingly hard to type nyuk)


IFOCE Internation Federation of Competitive Eating

My real hero of course is Sonya Thomas. She's the American champ and holds numerous records. Take for example the Cheesecake, - February 21, 2004, Brooklyn, NY, NY, Cheesecake: 11 pounds in 9 minutes.
- September 13, 2003, Indianapolis Indiana, New World Record for Boiled Eggs: 65 in 6 minutes, 40 seconds
Cool Hand Luke aint got nothin on this woman.

This is my new hero, Takeru Kobayashi. He, as you may know, is Japanese. He is also the worlds most skilled hot dog eater. Lastly, he comes from, drumroll please...NAGANO CITY, LETS HEAR IT FOR THE HOME TOWN HERO!!! For his amazing feat he ate 53 1/2 hot dogs in 12 minutes. He's my god!

There has been a disturbing trend on the crappy radio station that is piped into the office. It's Paula Abdoul. I thought that "Straight up now tell me" was relegated to the dustbin of the music world, but now it's getting some air time on "KRAP 97.4 Hawaii."

I've got to learn some key Japanese phrases. For example, I need to know how to say, "I don't care," and also I really should learn how to say words like "rude", "impolite" and "snot-nosed-kid" as well as "Tell it to your mom."

The reason for this is, as you may expect, that I've been dissed. Not only have I been disrespected, but it was by a 12 year old. That's the worst. In my Junior Highschool private lesson with 4 girls one of them with help from her dictionary and some friends,laboriously informed me, "I don't like English-Speak humans."
While it was funny in some ways, her general attitude pretty much sucks in general and i would have given a great sum of money to be able to lay into her they way I want. Here is what I had in mind:

"I don't care. Shut your damn mouth you whiney, snot-nosed-kid. What the hell do you know about 'English-speak Humans' anyway. If you don't want to learn English, fine, don't come and fuck around in my lessons any more. None of these other kids give me the bad attitude that you do, what is your problem. If you have a problem with all gaijin, tell your parents and have them take you out of here. Stop wasting your parents money and my time."

I am a murderer.

Yesterday while riding my bike along near the river I made my first kill. This sparrow flew out of the tall grass and skimmed along the ground, and attempting to go under my bottom bracket. The sparrow screwed up. The sensation of running over a goober-peanut was how I could describe the trauma from my end, but for the sparrow, it was much worse. I smushed 'is lit'l brains in.


I'm going to have to check, but I think something like this happened to my Dad while he was riding to work one day, but I think that the animal in question was a squirrel, and that maybe the squirrel lived to tell the tale.

Anyone else ever committed a vehicular homicide with a bicycle?

It's july, and what does that mean for people who love bicycles? The Tour de France!!!

Yes people, i'm going to be rotting my brains thinking about cycling, cycling and more cycling until this glorious event is over. I have to say that honestly I don't want Lance Armstrong to win. I'm personally a little dubious about him with the doping allegations that have recently surfaced and I also just think that he's kind of a jerk. Just personal preference.

If i had to choose who I wanted to win it would be either Tyler Hamilton (a possibility) or Bobby Julich (a long shot) from the USA and as far as internationally, I take my hat off to Iban Mayo, the Ventoux record smashing Basque. It will all come down to the mountains however and we'll just have to see how it goes.

I know that I will be entertained.

I just got back from a weekend Yoga retreat. How's that for strangeness. I also got pummeled by a waterfall, got naked with a bunch of men and had my picture taken by Chinese tourists.

Overall, i'm not a yoga sort of guy. While I may be lazy, i'm not actually that interested in relaxation time. I'd rather be doing something interesting or outdoorsy than sitting and relaxing or meditating any day. All that time doing yoga I felt like i was just frittering away while i could be outside riding my bike or rock climbing or something.

Jennifer and I both got a little bit of sunburn while poking around in the waterfall (read concrete spillway) near the yoga retreat. She is a total "robsta".

This is my first fourth of July in a country where it is actually legal to buy fireworks. I bought $30 worth of them last night and we went out to the ol' rice field to blast them off. For your information, it's the Bees that are really the highlight of any home done show. They make a little noise, they fly erratically, glow like freaking UFOs and are cheap to boot. Next time i'm getting $30 worth of those and kissing off the rest of the crap.

I just got back from a bar containing like 45 gaijin. It was the most foreigners I've seen in one place for 9 months and it was scary. We are loud, obnoxious people, particularly when young and drunk. I was also surprised by how hoochie all of jennifer's JET colleagues dress. I saw a lot of titties and hoochie dresses tonight. I guess that loving in Japan is sparse, so people must be going all out for a shag tonight. Anyway, i felt pretty annoyed to be an american, or just a westerner tonight.

This was great, I just got so much love via the email. I simultaneously got emails from Annie, Jude, Ian and most notably my long lost roomate Brendan.

Annie can still complain while saying that everything is sooo great ( a unique skill), Jude is looking into gene therapy as a way to build muscles and Brendan is kicking it for real in central America. It sounds like his peace corps experience is a little bit more similar to my stint here in Japan than to Meghan's in Guinea.

Lastly, Ian is apparently starting to turn into our dad, I'll post the reasons why.

Aaron,

Finally, after all these years of blissful ignorance or sturdy denial I
have reached the unmistakable and inevitable conclusion that I am most
certainly a Ritz and that I am turning into Dad. This is maybe not necessarily a
bad thing but something scary all the same. I think I have felt it coming
on for a couple years now and it finally fully manifested itself in me
these past few weeks. This is not just meek conclusion that was decided on a
whim; no this is a process of deduction.

Here are my reasons:
1) I am working far too much and spending far
too little time on myself. I work in the mornings coaching at a soccer
camp and then I work out. I have maybe an hour of rest in which I grab a snack
and then I go to work at Jimmy Johns for 10 hour shifts from 5-3.
2) I spend too much time on my bicycle. I have been tinkering with my bike ever
since I got it up here, mostly fixing flat tires. It is fucking ludacris. I
have had 6 flat tires in as many weeks. I even got new tires from Dad and I
just flatted this morning. I'm going to try replacing the rim strips now
but the whole thing is a bitch.
3) I eat whatever is available. This is not anything too new but a contributing factor none the less.
4) All my activities i.e. work and soccer keep me far to busy to spend time with
my significant other at the moment. I have a little thing with a girl
from the beginning of summer and I just have too much stuff going on.

All of these reasons and many more attached with them have led me to
this state. However, I am trying to postpone the transformation a little
while longer...

Ian, if you're pissed about me posting your email for all 6 of my friends to see, then just tell me and I'll take it off.

This is a shout out to Alf Hickey.


EITHER POST SOMETHING OR SHUT THE SITE DOWN!

I can't believe I waste my time checking your crap website. I'm going to remove the link if something doesn't happen soon, and then where will you be...Hmmmm? Hmmmmmm?

I got kinda pissed at the highschool students yesterday. This was at the good higschool, the one where they can actually understand when I give directions. The scenario is this: I give the students questions, which they can understand, and they must ask their partner these questions. To check that they do this I go around the class and interact a little bit and I also ask students to answer, "What did your partner say?" at the end of the activity. I usually ask 3 questions and usually quiz 6 students. THis sometimes works. It's such a bitch because the students, even the ones who do the activity, always freak out and shit themselves when I approach their pair.
For example, yesterday I asked them, "If you had 100,000,000 yen what would you buy?" I ask one of them, "What would he/she buy?" and it's like the end of the world. I feed them the answer, "He would buy..." and still, freak out time. The person I ask has most likely forgotten what the other said, so they have to re-ask their partner, which is where it all goes to shit because to this question "What would you buy..." they look like they have no idea what they would buy, they struggle, make thinking faces, purse their lips and keep saying, "Nandaro, nandaro" (what would it be, what would it be) under their breath. I was thinking, "Honestly, if you have a hundred million yen, you can buy almost anything, so if you say anything, anything at all, you can buy it, so just spit out one English word and I'll be happy."
I think that next class I'm going to start out with a lecture and make the Japanese guy translate. Here is a possibility:

For christ sake people when I ask you a question, particularly an easy question, I don't honestly give a shit whether or not it's the right answer, a particularly thoughtful answer, or anything special. I just want you to say something, anything in fact. When I feed you the answer like I do, it shouldn't take 2 minutes to grind away in your brain, just try something, you can do it you little halfwits. Now I'm not talking to the 5 of you who really do a good job, i'm talking about the 90% of you who just sit and stare. Enough of that, if i ask you a damn question, you should give me a damn answer, even if it's totally wrong. If you don't try I'm a-gonna smack-a you face eh?

i went to a barbeque with some Japanese folks the other day and in the process met up with a guy from Stillwater Minnesota. Imagine the odds of that. Here we are in the middle of the armpit of Japan and i meet up with a big tall guy from Stillwater. What's more, he knows/knew Liz Hajek and her boyfriend Josh, the only other two people I know from Stillwater. Creepy eh? What's more, he was a small time pyromaniac in his youth...just like me. Still even more creepy, his name is Andy, which starts with an A... just like my name does. To top it all off, he teaches English to Japanese people...just like me.

All in all the similarities were striking and eerie, I will in the future avoid this evil twin doppelganger with all of my ability, for fear that he weasel his way into my love life as well.


Umm, actually that's just a little bit nuts. However, it was great to talk to someone from the same part of the world. I love my canadian friends, but someone from the upper midwest can only really connect with another man from the upper midwest. It's just how it is.


Coincidentally, I completed my total Iowa/midwest revival day by watching the movie The Straight Story by David Lynch. This is a movie about Alvin Straight, the guy who rode his lawnmower from Iowa to Wisconsin to see his ailing brother. While some of the bit characters were kind of rough and amateurish, the movie was really superb. I say that particularly for the way that it portrayed Iowa as a land of subtle beauty. I was made intensely homesick for the flatness and the corn and the wide open expanses. Nagano is great, but rather claustrophobic. You can't just hop off your bike and expect to be able to take a piss anywhere on a lonely country road. Here there's always some shrivelled old lady digging a hole or picking some fruit or wielding one of the souped-up weed eaters they use to mow lawns here. I miss the corn, I miss the sky and I miss the thunderstorms. I'll always appreciate where I come from, even if I would be bored to live there again.

Readership going down, can't fight tides of indifference, giving it my all, but can't....break....through....to....audience.



My site meter reported that all six of you who visited me last week did a nice job of keeping the love, however the rest of the world just didn't give a crap.

This should be a signal to me to put s'more love into the ol website.

Here's another one of Aso-san. I would imagine that the fiew from the top of Asama is about the same, except for a little more plant life and a lot more fog.

This is not a picture of the mountain that I climbed today, but of the one from our Kyushu trip. It is pretty much the same sort of martian scenery, but on this particular day, you could see it.

So today we hiked to the top of　浅間山. This would be Asama-Yama, as i'm sure anyone who has traveled in Japan or possibly watched enough samurai movies knows, Yama means mountain. Anyway this is actually the 3rd vocano that I've ever seen personally and the second that I've climbed to the top of.

Lara, Shane, Jennifer and I went with Andy, a guy from the south eastern part of Nagano ken. Though his house is but 80 kilometers from us, it still took about 1:45 to get there because of the crazy-ass roads here and the super traffic and the mountains. At any rate we spent the night at his house in Mochizuki (the name means rice cake moon) and awoke at about 3:45 this morning to get cracking at the devilish peak. This seems insane to me, but actually the sun starts rising at around 4:30 because the Japanese in their infinite wisdom have forsworn the wonders of daylight savings time.
Anyway, we were climbing the mountain before 6:00 and had reached the summit at about 9:00 amid gale force winds and fog. It was a rippin good time while we ascended into the bomb shelter on the top and had a bit of breakfast. Honestly, I couldn't stand up straight, the wind was so fierce. It's possibly a result of the Typhoon that's coming our way tomorrow. Honestly, the hike up to the rim was really wonderful, some of the best scenery I've seen in Japan. Should anyone actually visit me in Japan, I'm all over hiking that one again.

I've posted some pictures of our previous hike to mount Aso in Kyushu. The landscape was pretty similar, but in this case we couldn't see it.

I don't care what anyone else thinks, Elton John sucks.

To provide the appropriate "atmosphere" for an english conversation school my employer utilizes cable radio to pull in a preposterous number of stations. The one that has been selected is an easy listening/soft rock channel from Hawaii. Every day we listen to "romace through the night" piped in from across the ocean. It seems like the damn station (while probably owned by the Clear Channel) is sponsored by the Elton John fan club. There is at least 1 of his songs per hour. Let me tell you, you can only listen to "Yellow brick road" so many times before you go mental or punch out your eardrums.

Ahhh the buffet, how I had missed it. We went to a buffet restaurant on sunday. It was an unusual eating affair by japanese standards. For the most part japanese restaurants are sullen and over-polite, not necessarily welcoming in the American way. However, there's something about buffet style eating that really makes people behave like americans around their food; huge piles of fried things, mountainous salads and long ques when the specialty dishes are brought out. Maybe that's why they call it "viking" meals. That sort of atavistic eating behaviour is rather rough and tumble compared to the rest of the japanese eating experience.
As might be expected, I gorged myself to an uncomfortable level of fullness and felt like puking for a good 2 hours afterword. It is honestly so nice to do something like that after trying for months to keep my composure around the small serving sizes offered here.

I almost got my ass busted by a big friggin truck the other day. I've taken to riding my bicycle to the more far flung places that I teach at, mostly because it's good exercise and it's more fun than sitting on a sweltering train wishing that I could be riding. With the rainy season upon us, it's pretty imperative that I get out the door as often as possible to avoid going crazy. Anyway, as for the truck incident, it was the standard squeeze out into the curb that I deal with every day here. This time however the mirror sailed right by my ear and I tried to evade by hopping up onto the sidewalk via a driveway. Unfortunately, like almost all joints in the road here it was separated by a 2 inch ledge, which in turn skidded me onto my ass.

Sure roads are narrow and all here, in fact many streets are passable by only one car at a time, but jezus, give me a break. I get to my destination at approximately the same time as the car drivin man, they can give me a break and be patient or at least courteous once in a while.

Instead of the fun fun silly willy weekend I had planned, I got a rippin good sore throat. Soooo, jennifer and i spent a lot longer in the apartment than out. However, i did watch all of the Pride and Prejudice mini-series and did a good deal of reading as well.
The most interesting thing that resulted from my shitty weekend was my discovery of a new and novel sore throat cure. That is, you take Methylene blue, the biology stain used to dye tissue for microscope slides, and you apply it via cotton swab to the back of your throat. THis in turn tastes like shit and gags you, as well as turns your tongue, throat, urine and stool a strange blue color. Apparently it's an antiseptic as well as an anisthetic which is nice, it reduces the healing time quite drastically, so I've heard. Give it a try if you've got a sore throat. I did and look at me now!!!

And the best one yet. It makes me wish for vacation eternally.

the ubiquitous romantic shot on an island paradaise.

Oh yeah, can't forget the butt shot. Just so you know, i'm the one with the less hairy ass.

when the waves are small, one still can have a bit of fun. I really enjoyed getting thrashed by the sand.

A rather flattering picture if i do say so myself

I am kinda bummed about the old 仕事　(shigoto, ie: job). I learned today that my boss Tomo, the Japanese post hippie that I've come to love, is leaving to go back to gradual school. Not that I really blame him. His job sucks even more than mine. He teaches a bunch of classes and he's got to deal with all the bullshit from above and below. Alltogether he works a shitload, which must be tough; he's Japanese afterall, but he's got the heart of a slacker deep inside. I'll miss him for sure in the office, but most worrysome is the prospect of some "I gotta prove myself" wanker filling his spot. I'm not relishing the prospect of something like that. I guess I can only take it as it goes.

We spent some time meeting the locals

Us posed by a waterfall, island paradaise to the max.

One of the monster trees on the island. THis is the Yaku-sugi (yakushima cedar)

The first rainforest I've ever been in. They say it rains 35 days a month here.

I almost got Tarzan in the shot, but he yodeled like hell as soon as he saw us and off he shot.

One of the many waterfalls on Yakushima. THis was by far the high point of the vacation. Not this waterfall, but the island itself. You'll probably notice this because of the preposterous number of pictures I took there.

gettin frisky with the fauna (sea slug in this case). THe sea slug is pretty strange, you flip the little dude on it's back and in just one or two belly rolls it's right side up again. If only we had no spines...

The mighty sea urchin attacks

some lava from Sakura-jima (Cherry blossom island)

They're playing Weird Al Yancovic on the weather channel here. We've got "Eat it" blasting as I look at the high temperatures and rainfall forecast. That's an awesome blast from the past.

in Sakurajima, night picnic 

on the shinkansen, lara and shane 

the Megane-bashi, or Glasses Bridge, nagasaki 

this little dude lives in Chinatown in Nagasaki 

we camped next to this hotel in Fukuoka. 

Ok, here's the deal, i've just figured out Blogger's new posting deal and I can apparently post pictures for free. Over the next couple of day's I'm going to be posting a simply massive number from the recent trip to Kyushu.

Cheers.

Yasuko, one of my co-workers told me this story yesterday:

Earlier in the week one of the little boys from the elementary kids class pulled Yasuko aside and told her, "Yasuko, this is top secret right?"

"Yeah sure, what's up?"

"Well, when I grow up, i want to be like Aaron."

"REally, why is that?" she asked incredulously.

"Well, he's tall and he wears a pink helmet. I want to wear a pink Helmet too!"


That's it folks, I'm cool. I can honestly say that it's the first time in my life that I've been cool. Let's just pray that it's not the last.

I got some of my classes switched around on friday nights. Apparently I'm to be teaching jr highschool girls because, "They don't like Stephen," my co-worker. He puts them on the spot and then touches them, probably innocently, but all the same, annoyingly. The japanese don't much do the body contact thing. Now since I'm from the midwest and we, like the japanese never touch unless we have to, I should be a safe bet to teach these little pukes.

Another little cultural aside, the japanese word for "pervert" is, すけべ which sounds like skebbey and is what my mom would jokingly call spaghetti when we were kids. Just a coincidence, but a strange one.

An interesting aside found by jennifer.


In an annual global survey of sexuality, Japan consistently ranks last
in
terms of the frequency of which people have sex. In Japan the average
is
a paltry 36 times a year, compared with a global average of 97 times a
year. When asked what activities they would rather do than have sex,
20%
of Japanese said sleeping, and 13% said shopping. Japan fares better in
other areas of sexuality though, ranking 7th in the world in the number
of sexual partners, with an average of 10.2 partners compared with the
global average of 7.7. Japan is close to the average in the age of
first
sexual experiences at 18.2 years old, close to the world's average of
18.0. Another statistic of interest from a survey within Japan is that
almost half of Japanese men have paid for the services of a
sex-professional, 75% of those by visiting brothels in Japan and 25%
using prostitutes in a foreign country

I met my first gay japanese guy last night. He visited my class and is thinking about signing up. The "flamer" persona is a little bit strange when compared with the standard american male, discernable when compared with a stereotypical european guy and when it comes to the standard japanese guy it sticks out like a sore thumb. The japanese are famously stoic and this fellow was actually expressing emotions! What's more, when I suggested that he visit a class on Friday he responded, "Really, on Friday evening, you must be kidding." Not in all my time here has anyone objected to a Friday night class. It's just that they don't seem to do anything special on Fridays, no relaxing or whatever, it's just another work day on saturday for many. That was the clincher, gay.

The idea for this weekend was a rock climbing expedition to someplace about 3 hours from here in eastern Nagano prefecture. We left at about 7 on saturday morning to some kind of hazy skies and then drove to this place called Ogawa Yama (big river mountain). The whole place reminds one of your archetypal japanese landscape painting. Strange rocks poking out of the forest canopy and mists shrouding various parts. Apparently this place is like the climbing mecca of central japan. The campsite was pretty full of people, almost all of them rock climbing. You can tell by the rugged look and the gnarly forearms. We got in and set up camp and shortly therafter we set out to go climb some rocks. We found a really easy pitch and two of the experienced women (5 women plus me and Shane) went ahead and scrambled up to the top to prepare the way down for the rest of us. This is when it started to rain. Steph and Ellium were up on the rocks and getting the smackdown from some increasingly hard rain. It was a little nervewracking but mostly just cold and wet. A wet rock is a slippery rock which makes it a dangerous rock. THis is no fun. Saturday was effectively shot since the rocks were all wet and there was nowhere that we could safely climb. So we went to the climbing festival that was going on. This was probably the single most fun part of the weekend because they had some super bargains on clothing and gear for the climbing minded. I got a new jacket and a new pair of pants for 8000 yen($77), both of the items significantly reduced from original retail, i might add. I also scored 2 climbing harnesses, one for me and one for Jennifer for the grand sum of 1000yen ($9.50). And i got a chalk bak for 300 yen. It was an extravoganza!!!

I had to think positively because the remainder of the weekend was quite the flop. The next day started positively, I honestly thought I saw the sun peeking out from the clouds. This was not to be however and as soon as we touched the rock it started to rain again, effectively ruining the day for climbing. We then headed back to Nagano and spent a couple of hours in the climbing gym to make up for lost time otherwise. Unfortunately for my carmates, I was the spitting image of Bloodnut the Flatulent and was uncomfortably ripping them all the way home. This was complicated by the fact that my window broke and wouldn't roll down. There are few things substantially more embarassing than calling out your incoming farts to your carmates.

For some reason I bought a recorder, you know the musical instrument most favored by third graders, today at the music shop. I don't know what posessed me, but it certainly wasn't logic. Now i'm either going to learn to play it (unlikely) or to stash it in the closet. At least it wasn't the jaw harp that I was considering.

I just wanted to let Ben know specifically that I shaved myself a Fu-Manchu specifically for my recent vacation and I've got some pretty good photo footage of it. Believe you me, it's the first moustache I've had for more than a day, and it probably won't be the last.

I'm recovering from the weekend.
Saturday progressed from rather droll to nervewracking to embarassed to relieved to drunken to sleepy.

Saturday was the JET community's talent show. I mentioned before that I got roped into it somehow, well actually with the aid of some beers and flattery, I was involved. We left for Matsumoto, the cooler twin sister to Nagano city, about 60 km south early-ish in the morning and went through the obligatory practice, set up and whatnot. Things seemed to be going fairly smoothly (well not that bad at least) up until the show actually began and one of the performers began his drunken merriment. Leon, an alchoholic englishman who was supposed to be playing guitar in the middle of the show, had been up to his usual (so i've heard) stuff. Rather inebrieated at the outset of the show he was up and down all during the show drinking and yelling. When the time came for his act, he was actually supposed to be yanked since he was so drunk, he got onto stage yelled and wandered a bit and then proceeded to bang out some songs and then afterwards stomped his guitar to bits. It was a shocker to the japanese let's just say that. This was made worse by the fact that the Emcee, Tiffany, was pretty much inable to do her job effectively and kind of got into a tiff with the drunken Leon.
On the other hand:
Jennifer's act went pretty well. She and a host of other people in Nagano had been practicing a STOMP-like performance and they got through it with only a few minor glitches and the audience, which to this point had been full of rudeness, gave them good reactions for the first time.

I was up second to last and I was surprisingly not so worried once I actually got up onto stage. I kind of remembered the old rush from highschool plays and I just enjoyed hamming it up a bit. I did my introduction, sang my songs and had a nice time up there with the power of the microphone in my hand. There's something nice about having a mic. I think its the fact that no matter what some idiot yells at you, you can be louder without even really trying.

Afterwards, we packed it all up into Lara and Shane's car and headed over to the pub. See, matsumoto is cool enough to have an honest to god English pub. Certainly the beer is ridiculously priced, but hey, it's good beer. They had Kilkenney, Guinnes and Tetleys on tap and we also sampled from their selection of ciders.
Overall the night ended on a good note, I even ended up finding out that Leon's not really a bad guy, just a goddam alchoholic. It made me feel more sorry than angry with him. I was actually more pissed at the rest of the foreigners in the crowd, many of them having smuggled drinks into the auditorium and gotten drunk, would yell things at some of the acts. What a great impression to give to the Japanese people in attendance.

At least the whole sordid affair is over now. I'm happy to say that I don't have anything like that to do for a while.

We got the photos back from Kyushu the other day. Out of about 72 exposures there are 15 really good ones. I think that's about par for my average however. I'll work on posting them maybe tomorrow. Today jennifer and I are all busy with the JET talent show. Somehow I got roped into playing the guitar in front of people. My playlist includes "Just like Tom Thumbs blues", "Blackbird" and of course "Get your Copper Kettle".

Blogger has changed its format in my absence. This is probably ok, since the old one continually ate my wonderful prose.

I'm back from 9 whole days of fabulous not work. It also happens to have been the most expensive vacation (per day) that I've ever been on, probably due to the fact that we're in Japan, which is ridiculously expensive to begin with. Thank god that we were camping most nights instead of staying at hotels.

The first day was pretty much spent just travelling. Jennifer and I took off from here at 8:00 on the bus and we met up with Lara and Shane later in Tokyo at the monorail stop. It was good to be underway and during some shopping time (shane's birthday was on Earth Day) I found that the Tower Records in Tokyo has Cyclesport Magazine on it's racks, IN ENGLISH!!
I gladly paid the $10 and happlily had something to read on the various plane, train and boat rides of our trip.
We flew domestically from Tokyo to Fukuoka, the biggest city on the island of Kyushu. Airports are pretty much all the same no matter where you are, but I was surprised that no one ever looked at our picture identification. This seems rather foolish to me. If I were a terrorist, this would be a pretty easy place to hit. Anyway, we landed without mishap and proceeded to eat the local Ramen specialty which consists of some greasy noodles and pork broth. It was pretty good. We then staked out our claim on a bit of the public beach there. It was convenient and free and the security guard who hassled us seemed generally sorry to have to bother us and assured us that if we left in the morning it would be just fine.

The next day we travelled to Nagasaki and saw the sights there. The city has a good feel notwithstanding the fact that it was blasted by the second A-bomb. What a major fuckup that was. The hypocrisy of american foreign policy based on WMD is never more clear than when you are standing among relics of a blast dropped by your own government. The hardest hitting display for me was the human hand bones fused into a hunk of molten glass caused by the blast.

Since it started to rain about halfway through the day we booked some rooms in a love hotel, complete with mirrored wall and S&M on the TV. What a great place, but cheaper than many other options. The shower was nice at least.

The next day was spent travelling to Kagoshima, home of the nastiest Sho-chu (japanese crappy distilled alchohol) in the country, and also of one of the more active volcanoes. We camped and ate on the volcanic peninsula of Sakura-jima and got pretty wet in the process as it rained all night. Lara and Shane had it worse since their tent was less than waterproof despite being more expensive than ours. We checked out the volcano and the seashore which was totally awesome for me since there were so many crazy things that I'd never seen before. Oceanic life is all new and interesting to me, an Iowa boy.

We then took the jet boat to the rainforest island of Yakushima off the southern coast of japan. THis place is kind of similar to the Olympic peninsula of Washington, but there is a more jungley feel to it since it's so much further south. We camped the first night at a campground that was half kooky garden, half woodcarving museum. The associated restaurant had a gigantic wooden torii shaped like big penises arching over a larger than life carved tiger. Pretty damn crazy. The island is famous for its really old cedar trees. Some are 7000 years old and we hiked to see some of them on the following two days. SInce the island has such a small population, there is no regular bus service and we rented a car for the 3 days we stayed there. The convenience was superb and we really "did" the island properly. We were also graced with the good fortune of beautiful weather for 2 of the 3 days. Yakushima also boasts one of the few co-ed, fully naked, seaside open natural onsens in the world. After meeting some really cool Brits at the campsite we went back to the onsen and soaked in hot water with the sounds of the seaside crashing just meters away. This place is super cool because you have to time it with the tides, at high tide the pools are submerged and a low tide they become hotsprings again.
I had always scoffed at people describing their island getaways as perfect paradaise, but realisitcally, after visiting Yakushima, I totally believe it. I really didn't want to go back home and still am dragging heavily at the thought of work in a few hours. Working sucks, no matter how good your job is (as far as I can tell.)

For our last day of vacation we travelled to Aso Dake, the most active volcano in the world. The hike was surreal, over the broken shards of volcanic spew and the stinky crater visible from the peaks surrounding it. It was stunning in its wastes. You can totally imagine what Mars or the moon look like up close. Also, I imagined myself slogging through the bowels of Mordor to Mt. Doom, it was just that cool.

Some general observations:
Kyushu is the place to go if you want to live in Japan and don't really have a giant thing for skiing. The people are super friendly (for Japan) and they actually want to have conversations about stuff, even if it is just the basic bullshit about your name, job, home country, etc.
My Japanese is shit. I had the worst Japanese of the group and so was consequently feeling a little embarrassed about it. I gotta get to studying and really be able to communicate the basics at least.

More to come and pictures will soon follow.