a wonderland of mountain vegetables

Paragliding in Kagoshima

2008-04-14T04:36:00.000-07:00

my weekend

2008-04-07T02:29:00.000-07:00

...was pretty sweet. Went to an incredible Thai restaurant in Kijo, did 花見 (flower viewing) in Saito, saw Cloverfield at the only theater in Miyazaki, and to top it all off attended a concert in Nobeoka with no fewer than seven local bands playing.

yay!

graduation and farewell parties

2008-03-29T04:24:00.000-07:00

To clarify, I'm staying until the end of July.

The Japanese school year starts in April and ends in March. All my 3rd year middle schoolers (the equivalent of 9th graders in the United States) are moving on up to high school.

You can't tell from the picture, but that morning there was a bit of a flu outbreak. About a third of the 1st and 2nd year kids stayed home (and these kids never stay home, that's how I keep getting sick myself) and at least half the graduating kids had the flu. Throughout the ceremony (which was entirely too long for a 40-kid class) teachers had to escort kids out that were breaking into sweats and passing out. It was worrying.

During the time of feudalism in Japan, often the local prefects had to spend every other year in the capital. This was meant to prevent revolution or somesuch. Naturally this tradition carries over to the modern school system.

Every two or three years, teachers get shuffled around. They have little more than a week to pack and move their entire families to some arbitrarily designated corner of the prefecture. About half of my coworkers have to move this week, including a couple of teachers that I do team-teaching with. So of course there was a party.
Presents were given out
Speeches were madeSome of them were pretty goofy

And afterwards there was a "second party" - we went to a karaoke place

There was a lot of singing

楽しい

ski trip

2008-03-29T03:05:00.000-07:00

Back in February a handful of people came up to Gokase to ski.
Here I am on the edge of a cliff for no reason.

long overdue winter vacation post

2008-03-15T20:17:00.000-07:00

I've finally got around to gathering up the pictures from my week of ambling around the Kansai region. I went to Kyoto:
...and Osaka:

I ate some obscenely good food. This is an Oyakodon from what may be the best sushi place I've ever been to. Oyakodon (親子丼) means "mother-child bowl" and commonly is a rice bowl topped with chicken and egg (and rather grotesque name if you ask me). If you're lucky you can find this version: salmon and salmon roe.
In the middle you'll notice a raw egg yolk (which is among my favorite anythings nowadays) and below that is some sort of spinach-like green that tastes like butter and fairy dust.

Saw some cool things
Met some cool people
and generally had a good time.

Also I can't seem to find any Taiwan pictures that I want to post. Sorry team.

under the weather

2008-02-24T01:57:00.001-08:00

It's been pretty cold out here

The other week there was a local school event involving a card game called "karuta" - the kids played for hours, while I wondered what I was supposed to be doing.

old photos

2008-01-13T04:38:00.000-08:00

haven't had much time to update in a while, mostly been planning my vacations in Osaka and Taipei (just got back yesterday)

so here are some from Takachiho gorge, about a 20 minute drive from where I live.

my kids are way cute

2007-11-22T01:58:00.000-08:00

For real.

Hiking with Kamigumi Elementary

2007-11-01T05:03:00.000-07:00

It continues to baffle me that I get paid to have fun. My entire job today consisted of hiking and goofing around. Here's the initial pep talk:

They all have red hats to make them visible to drivers and such. Pretty smart actually.
We ate lunch on the top of the mountain（枡形山）which was way cool, which is to say chilly. It was probably in the low 50s.
Here's us passing a shrine entrance on the way back

And this is one of the kids with his puppy.

Yay hiking!

the leaves they are a-changin'

2007-10-25T22:20:00.000-07:00

秋

Quick! Someone call Zordon!

2007-10-19T06:34:00.000-07:00

This was not my team but I kind of wish it was. Maybe next year.

Nejime

2007-10-14T23:24:00.001-07:00

Busy cleaning my apartment today, but I figured I'd give you a little taste of my weekend. Note my fake mustache. More coming soon.

阿蘇山！

2007-09-30T05:18:00.000-07:00

Kevin, Kara, Alex, and I had ourselves a pleasant day trip to Mt. Aso. We went for the highest peak because anything less simply would not do. Here we are around the trail's head (the peak in view is in fact about 1/5th of the way through the trail) Note my awesome hat.
While climbing we decided to record an introspective classic rock album, though I ruined the cover by laughing:
The trail itself went from peak to peak
Ending at the highest with an elevation of 1592 meters
I liked this picture a lot
Our descent coincided with the sun's
The hike was somewhere between 4 and 5 hours. A big thanks to Kara for the pictures~

projects and pot

2007-09-26T06:44:00.001-07:00

I was wandering around school between classes and figured I'd take some pictures.

The kids made cork boards. These are two of my favorite. One because it is an example of excellent craftsmanship, the other because it's not.

The kids have a pretty nonsensical infatuation with marijuana, though they don't seem to have any concept of what it actually is.
On the other hand, the products they buy are unambiguous.

体育大会

2007-09-11T06:04:00.000-07:00

Sports Day!
I attended at both my schools on the same day. It was an elaborate disciplined version of the kind of color-war stuff I have vague memories of doing in summer camp.
The white and red teams competed in a number of events including foot races
miscellaneous races
and squabbles over large sticksadditionally there were some absurd acrobatics
and even a few Ouendan

Now everyone.... bow！

Welcome Party

2007-08-23T06:39:00.000-07:00

Tonight was my welcome party. It was an all-you-can-drink at the local hotel/onsen/restaurant called Kijiya. The setup was pretty neatand they provided some really novel foods like pig's feetand my favorite new thing: beesI had some lovely drinks for the first time such as the Red Eye, which is beer and tomato juice, as well as a Burdock- vodka and grapefruit juice. I topped it all off with a dip in the onsen. Overall a really lovely evening.

火の国祭り

2007-08-18T04:12:00.000-07:00

Before I head off on another adventure (Miyazaki city tomorrow) I should post about my previous one (Kumamoto last weekend). It was the Hi no Kuni Matsuri - and I took the bus down there to meet up with the Kumamoto JET crew. Friday night there was a pretty kickin' fireworks display, the Kuma-jets laid out some picnic blankets at Kumamoto Castle and passed around free (!) drinks (!!) The following day was the proper Hi no Kuni Matsuri in which they pour buckets of water on the streets to cool everything down and bring peace (what). There is a massive parade of dancing that goes around the town, each group performing a slightly different take on the traditional dance. There was a fantastic group of what I think were ballroom dancers that had a really tickling version of it, but most stuck to tradition. My pictures from this weekend are all pretty miserable, but I'll show you what I can.
Being a foreigner the parade organizers made sure I had a bucket of water in my hands before the big splash. Here's some aftermath:
The big international center in town entered a group of dancers too, I vaguely joined them.
This is a group of old dudes... one of the least exciting teams, but one of my only (relatively) clear pictures
They also had a large group of shamisen players
That night I slept at a net café, but that's something I should save to explain later

今日は

2007-08-17T03:30:00.000-07:00

Lunchtime in Kumamoto

2007-08-13T04:34:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I wandered over to Kumamoto for the Hinokuni Matsuri ("Country of Fire Festival" if you want to be literal about things) and to meet up with the Kumamoto JETs. It's a mere 2000 yen for the two hour bus ride. I'll write more about the festival later, for now I just want to share about a really wonderful restaurant I came across. It's called Asperge ... "Like the syndrome" to quote a Kuma-JET. For something like 1300 yen (not much more than $10) you get a really impressive three course lunch. I should explain that good western food is really hard to come by in Japan, and when it is good it's usually obscenely expensive. This place served the best French food I've yet to have, and it only had about 4 tables.
The first time I went I just asked for whatever the chef recommended and I ended up with some serious goodness. This was a slice of headcheese I think with a kind of artichoke tapenade:
Second course is a cool soup, judging by the color I'd say taro but who knows. It tasted like melted ice cream, but cleaner and with a touch of a flowery taste. It had just a bit of olive oil and some scallion in it as well:
The third course I got was fish and vegetables, again fantastic.

I liked it so much I went back the next day. Veggie course:Then the same soup again. And for the third...Delicious.

Weekend in Nobeoka and Hyuga

2007-08-12T03:27:00.000-07:00

I've been without internet for about two weeks now so I'll try to catch up quickly and in chronological order. Last weekend was the Hyottoko festival in Hyuga, in which there is much dancing and little clothing. It's fairly fantastic, the dance itself recounts a story in which a wily fox spirit seduces a beautiful princess. Meanwhile the villagers, knowing that this was a fox, watch and laugh.
This is what it generally looks like.
A number of the Miyazaki JETs got together and entered a group into the competition, we were all very proud.

Here they are just before the big parade:

Alex and I got harassed by some hilarious old men. I use the word 'harassed' in the loosest sense, as they bought us tons of food and beer. They even tried to set us up with these two festival mascot girls:

Afterwards a lot of us went off to what I have only heard referred to as "the secret beach" where we made a campfire, swam in the ocean, and generally chilled. The area is probably 40 minutes down a one lane highway serving two directions surrounded in forest. When we finally arrived we were at a beach no more than 200 meters long with mountains on either side. You could see more stars than I ever have, and everyone was all kinds of wonderful.

In the morning I made a pretty sad effort towards surfing, but it was not meant to be.

Bonus puppets:

shinjuku and yoyogi

2007-07-29T16:41:00.000-07:00

Met up with Sorin Shiopu from my time in Okayama 5 years ago.
We hit up a saké oriented izakaya and had their sampler. Three glasses with three different sakés from various regions and of various grades. Delicious

Sorin's friends had a concert at a small venue in Yoyogi- my ears are still ringing

I think I got this guy's pick. It's green and signed.

Afterwards we hung out with the bands and drank some fairly delicious beer and ate some dried fish.

We spoke in Japanese for a good 2 hours, it was nerve wracking but really fun too.

And now it's orientation time

UPDATE! Hey look what I did!

on my way

2007-07-26T20:59:00.000-07:00

Flying out in the morning!

testing　一，二，三，四，五。

よかった。