The first adventures of Japan

So here's the view from my classroom, you can't tell but its the centre of Kagoshima and an amazing place, tons of restaurants, stores, bars and clubs all right beside my work. So really i fluked out with placement.

and here's a picture of "sticky poo" which i bought as a present for my manager at the 100 Yen shop (1 dollar). it says "MYSTERIOUSLY TOUCHABLE CUTE TOY" hahahahahah! the 100 Yen shop is cheap and therefore a great place to find "engrish" (badly translated English - i bought a mask called "Narcissistic Blue" for example which was completely random)

And a sign for a bar called "Crack". There's also a bar called "Fuck". hahahah i'm not even kidding, ill get a picture of it soon.

Here's two of my coworkers leading me down an alley in the plaza where we love to go to bars and restaurants like i mentioned. This was my first weekend here.
I can't take pictures for crap but trust me its a veryyyy cool alley. Thus why i tried to take a picture!
THE FIRST REAL ADVENTURE was bike riding around the Mighty Sakurajima (my volcano seen here). The first pic is from the ferry, the second much closer. Unfortunately the weather sucked and you can't see how mighty and awesome it really is. note the clouds of smokeeee or just normal clouds running into it!!


Look at how friggin beautiful it is tho! and theres a small city that lives at the base of the volcano (those crazy buggers).


I look bad in this pic because we bike rode 36KM around the volcano, and the first 12 KM i did on a bike with flat tires!


Check this out yo, beautiful



Here's a nice graveyard i saw


and this is the top of a Shrine that was buried in ash after the volcano erupted in 1914. It covered the island with a few meters of ash as you can see...crazy no? But don't worry about me, i'm across a very large bay from the Volcano incase it erupted, and they have systems to tell when its going to erupt and evacuation plans if necessary. Its all very safe apparently my elderly students tell me


And this is a lava path to guide the lava away from the villages. I dont know how well it would work haha. underneath this line is a cool fishing village i saw.

and a cool island:

And me in someones cool garden - if you look, see that shell? that's like an old WWII shell, so we figure the owner of the garden is some old WWII nazi japanese guy! eeeeeee. Otherwise why would you ruin your beautiful garden with a random old weapon???

and lastly a cool rock garden! after bike riding for 36KM, we were exhausted, and went to an onsen. An onsen is a hot spring - basically a pool that is heated by the natural heat from the earth (in this case volcanic heat). It was amazing, and my first time getting completely nude and walking around with old nude Japanese men.

It used to be that if you had tattoos you weren't allowed in the onsen because it showed you were a Yakuza. However times are changing and most onsens don't mind anymore cause of the growing popularity of tatoos - plus, i'm a stupid gaijin (foreigner) and obviously am NOT yakuza. So i had no problems. So that was my trip to Sakurajima!