Kanji

Here's the kanji of my last name, drawn by a student of mine, which means "celebrated always". I put why in another blog but i'll repeat myself - it means i'm always celebrating (10,000 celebrations to be literal), always happy and trying to make others happy, and am a celebrity. Hurray for ego boosting!

You read from top to bottom. Each "top to bottom" sequence (there's 6 total) is a different style of Kanji. Tell me which one you like the most! Who knows maybe one day i'll get it tattooed (to my parents delight i'm sure ;-D) Don't worry ma and pa i'm just speculating and pondering... :-P

Apartment and Kanji!

This is my famous apartment!

This is my hallway!

This is my washing machine beside my kitchen (i.e. sink and stove top), next is the door to my bathroom, then my fridge with a microwave on top. In the background you can see the doorway to my main room with my futon. I should have taken a better photo from that doorway but for some reason i havent yet. I will soon dont worry. Here's my bathroom

I tried fitting as much into the pics as possible so i wouldnt have to take many but it just ended up making my place look REALLY small - its small but not so small. Ive had 4 people sleep in it already together and it wasn't too bad!

Here's my closet, ladder leading up to another sleep area if you're into that...i havent experienced it yet, and my door way again leading back into the bathroom/kitchen area.

Some may think its tiny but i really enjoy it! My one beef is the lack of kitchen area, i don't mind anything else. I do wish my window had a nice view haha but what can you do when you're dwarfed by huge apartment buildings beside u?

This video may give you a better idea of my living space - sorry i hadn't cleaned up for the video shoot...usually my apartment is quite clean. honest! my friends were very surprised at how good i made the place look.

Here is what Kagoshima looks like on a rainy night from the ferris wheel atop of our huge shopping mall:

again, my photo taking skills are lame but I hope you get a small idea.

Lastly- the Japanese are very punctual. Meaning on Nov. 1st Christmas decorations were already up everywhere. I'm told on Dec. 26th they're already gone in an instant and no more christmas music is being played anywhere. Freaky. But check out some of the beautiful decorations they've put up in Tenmonkan (the downtown core i work in) and Amu plaza the big shopping mall down the road:

Nightlife and my new haircut

So these pics are of my new haircut when it was REALLY short, but now its awesome and ill be sure to take more pics of myself with it all styled and crazy anime. my students went crazy when i cut my hair and i look like a god now apparently.

Probably not but who cares, at school today i answered the phone and one of the other teachers students started gushing about how shes in love with me (shes a 40+ woman hahaha), with low level english skills talking about my blue eyes and hair colour cut style or something. i didn't understand half of it. ANYWAY enough boasting about how elderly Japanese women love me :-D

So here it be! In the background you can see a paper that has my last name in Kanji, meaning "celebrated always" which apparently means very good things and good luck, including - that i'm always happy and celebrating, and trying to make other people happy, and i'm a celebrity. Whee!

this is me approving the world, in my classroom. yayy! bad pics for the win

Here's a bad pic but whatever. No my sideburns dont usually look like this
Ta da.

NOW TO IMPORTANT STUFF. Like my favourite bar! Here's two of my favourite bartenders (theres 3 who work there and own the shop). They're the boys. the girl is a friend of mine. They're awesome, they give us free shots and seem to love us! Whee. Easily one of my favourite places to go besides my favourite ramen shop, favourite sushi shop, etc.
Here we iz again. The guy is another teacher and can't speak a word of Japanese although he's half Japanese himself. He's from California. the two girls are Japanese and speak pretty good English! Great people all of them
This time we're posing with our new zealander friend who i love dearly but is moving to Fukuoka in late dec. :-( we gonna miss her
THis is the street outside, any day of the week, at any time, its full of action. Always crowded, lots of drunk Japanese businessmen, and even more hosts and hostesses.

This is because in Japan a "host bar/hostess bar" is a place where you go to pay $30 an hour for a beautiful man/woman to keep you company. They pour you drinks and encourage you to spend as much money as possible. Its sortof sad but the Japanese society is so repressed right but I stilldont understand why they dont just approach people in real bars...
This is where i race little plastic horses!! Enough said. The video i made that i put on youtube explains everything. GO watch it if you havent, a link is posted in my last post before this.

Lastly- two signs that make me laugh!

Ohara Matsuri

Ohara matsuri was a festival that happens in Kagoshima every year, where people from all over Japan come to dance in the street outside my work. It was pretty awesome and a loaddddd of fun with some great people, and here's some of the highlights.

First though check out this very short video of taiko drumming, i was experimenting with the video on my camera so it's way too short but the song was awesome - taiko drumming is AMAZING!

My youtube videos

There you can see my videos that ill be uploading from now on. "Ohara matsuri" is obviously the taiko drumming one!

this was the cutest dancer ever:

Wheee
Oh so cuteeee (the kids one)

wheea bunch were celebrating hallowe'en too. Here's a big mofo:


Here's the taiko drummers


And that was my ohara matsuri!

I leave you now with a video of me racing plastic horses at the arcade with my friend Akane, but she was in the bathroom. We had wine while racing plastic horses. How awesome is that?

TURN UP THE SOUND!:
The best plastic horse game i can honestly say ive ever seen

Kaimondake!

First though i'll start with a picture of my favouite volcano, Sakurajima, as usual, taken from Dolphin port near my house:
Kaimondake is a mountain (or big hill...its not very big) in Ibusuke, which is about an hour south of me by car. Its called "Satsuma Fuji" (small Fuji) because it looks like a miniature fuji (has similar shape). So yes. Its 3.5km high and takes 2 hours to climb up and 1.5 or so to get back down. The first 3/4ths of the way are dirt paths and some rocks but the last 1/4th is all rock climbing really.

But by that time you've already seen some amazing views when the foliage breaks and you can see how high up you've climbed!

Here's Kaimondake and that adorable kitten i showed earlier

Super kawaii! So look at how annoying my camera is: the first pic is with flash, the second without.

THe trail may look hard but its not really. Im not really "in shape" and i was running up and down the damn mountain hahaha. Granted my coworker had a bit of trouble but hey he's an old man. Muahahaha!

Funny enough though - we met many Japanese people along the trail up the mountain and all were like over 50. They must be in amazing shape or its just a really easy mountain. I dont know which, but at one point we ran into grandparents with a 6 yr old....if they were coming from the very top im very very impressed.

Thats the view ^ of 1/3rd up the mountain. You may not be able to tell, but we were surprised at how high it looked we already were. A bit over 1km above ground i guess. The next pictures i think are from 1.5km up? I don't remember since this was like 3-4 weeks ago.

Whee now for some really bad photos of me, since im either too dark or making a stupid face. Being in japan hasn't helped me learn how to pose for the camera if you haven't noticed.
now for a blurry shot of the trail againand holy crap we're getting high up now But lets keep going! wheeeeeeeeAfter this you'll notice the pictures get alot darker - there were lots of storm clouds and it started to rain a bit - meaning we were royally screwed since the last 1km up we had been climbing flat huge rocks. i mean look at this:

Which means we'd be slipping and falling off the top of this mountain to our deaths...but luckily it stopped raining! Thank god since i was wearing sneakers with no traction.

Here's the views from the top - we actually saw twisters coming down from the sky or something, it was really weird, i tried taking pictures but my camera blows!




And lastly, final pictures of the mountain we tried so hard (and succeeded) to conquer. Hurrah! I celebrated with a double big mac. I felt sick.

Next time: the long awaited photos of my haircut hahahaaaa