Meeting the Coworkers!

So I have few pictures of them really, but you can see them at our website (with hilarious pictures of me as well!) here: http://www.geos.co.jp/school_j/contents/kagoshima/index.html

Of course im the first picture to come up. Boo yah!

So here's my first most important coworker, you may recognize him:

Tommy lee jonesssss! He did a whole SERIES of commercials here for "Boss Coffee". He's an alien who's come to earth DISGUISED AS TOMMY LEE JONES. How amazing is that? Check this out they're the funniest things i've seen in my LIFE

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=xft37LZP0g0&feature=related

They make my life worthwhile. If you watch that one and want more - watch "#13 Rice Farm" or #11 "Hot Spring". Honestly ive watched them all at least 30 times by now and they never get old

ANYWAY
Here's some fish (coi fish i think) near a famous shrine by my house. They're crazy - if you pretend to feed them they all swarm where you'd throw the food. I trick them for hours. Thus is life in japan. Next is a guy on a motorcycle who was blaring music and has lights that go crazy all over his bike. They flash and turn diff colours. I'm so impressed i took a pic buddy!

This was my manager for 2 weeks before she went back to work in another city (she's high up in the company, too high to work at one school. Seriously. Look at her. I love her) No shes not drunk, if you leave your camera/phone unattended she starts taking ridiculous photos of herself. I have no idea why, but i've seen it happen wayyyy too often


Look at her go! the other is my coworker who i love dearly as well.

Lets finish off the coworker section with two other coworkers who i also love dearly!

Only the woman is a coworker. The guy was this guy who i just yelled at when we were outside sitting at a table infront of the bar, i was like "HEY YOU! YEAH YOU! COME CHILL" so he did. Thats friggin' amazing.

This is the other coworker i was talking about, a Brit playing with a rabid feline. Honestly i dont know if its rabid but it was at the bottom of Kaimondake on its own (Mount Kaimon - dake means mountain!) which brings me to my next big adventure....CLIMBING KAIMONDAKE!

Lets end with a beautiful picture of Sakurajima from Dolphin Port, a port (and park) right near my place.

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!

Arriving in Japan

So here you go, some Japan pictures! First off: look at how much friggin food they give you on Japan Airlines, holy crap. They fed me like 3 times, and gave me free booze whenever i wanted. I had 3 beers and 2 plum wines! Woohooooo. And the beers were huge compared to what u get on NA flights! jeez! and each Seat had a small TV monitor and you got to choose what movies u wanted to watch! i watched Iron Man and Indiana Jones, and a Jackie chan movie i forget the name of.

And theres Japan when we were over it. Some small town or something i gues.
and whats a better first Japanese picture than...a friggin vending machine in the airport. Honestly theres a vending machine on every corner, its not a lie. They're really there.

Here's me at Narita airport, exhausted cause its 3AM vancouver time, after a 10 hour flight. Thats yumi! my friend who i met at York last year on student exchange who moved back to Tokyo.
And then i had a 2 hour wait before a 2 hour flight to Fukuoka, where I drank with a boss of mine from Head office (i didn't know it at the time and was probably a bit too casual but he seemed to like me, he was too casual himself!) and a few other teachers.

Here's my first glance at urban japan. Fukuoka random street. I should have taken a pic of a way better area...


There's me having a few drinks at 6AM Vancouver time before i finally went to my apartment for the night and crashed and went to sleep after watching some crazy Japanese TV. The other picture is a giant Alien replica made out of scrap metal. yep.


More pics of Fukuoka, awesome city really. Size of Toronto in population, not so sure about actual land mass...anyway, those are some pictures of what one of my bosses called the "smallest protest he's ever seen", done by the Japanese civil labour union or something, consisting of like 6 people with a Police escort. amazing. bwahha

Then i went on a 4 hour bus ride to my city Kagoshima! the bus ride had amazing scenery but you can't tell when its a rainy day and your camera is inside a bus with dirty windows:


Then i arrived in Kagoshima to find two teachers waiting for me at the bus station, who drove me to my apartment, and then we promptly went out for drinks with some of the other teachers! 2 from California, two Brits, and one New Zealander. All are damn swell :-D


That's it for my arrival in Japan, stay tuned for lots of drinking with coworkers, seeing the great volcano Sakurajima, climbing Mount Kaimon, and the long awaited pictures of my tiny apartment! woohooooo! And much more! Does anyone care? I don't care if you care! Im gonna post them anyway!

Leaving Vancouver

Training was a blast and all the teachers got along great, our trainers loved us so we went out for drinks together on the last night, they're sweethearts and i miss them dearly! The one in the pink is actually the one who interviewed me in Toronto and offered me the job, the one on the far right who's NOT wearing pink is the other trainer who was the biggest sweetheart and laughed hysterically constantly, despite the fact no one said anything funny.

:-D, this is all the teachers minus Phil who was out grabbing dinner.

Phil was probably the one i got the closest to as we went out a few times on the town while everyone else preferred to stay at the hotel. He's in the next pic:


Honestly I've taken so many damn photos but I don't really know which to put up so i just am picking some random "important" ones.

Us at the airport waiting for our 10 hour flight to Narita (Tokyo).

Next blog...finally i'm in Japan!!!!