Chads Blog

Just when I thought our chance has passed

2009-07-19T03:06:00.000-07:00

Some pics from the last few days of the trip.

Lunch on a Sunday afternoon in Syndey.

The Island we spent 4 days on.

Fishing on the Whitsunday Islands. I caught 1 fish, and also hooked a sea turtle but it got away.

Magnetic Island.

Beaches

2009-07-01T23:29:00.000-07:00

Since Port Douglas we've spent 4 days in Cairns, about 4 days in Magnetic Islands, and are leaving for the Whitsunday Island Tomorrow.

In Cairns I did a day scuba trip on the Great Barrier Reef. It was a pretty good dive all around, saw a few clown fish. The Reef is absolutely huge. We had to take a boat ride for about 2 hours off the coast to get there. When we arrived you could see the water breaking over the top of the reef as far as your eye could see in both directions. After I got up from my dive the tide had gone out and created what looked like a huge sandbar in the middle of the ocean.

So the next day we headed to a place called Magnetic Island. We camped out about 5 minutes off the beach and pretty much spent most of the days hiking around in the morning then sitting on the beach all afternoon. One of the bays had a huge rock, I'd guess about 25 feet high into the ocean. Micah and I climbed up to see if we could jump off it, then two Ozzie guys came up behind us and jumped off as if it was nothing. Micah jumps off and immidiately looks up to me and yells "wow that was scary". Of couse now I realize I have to jump off. So I did, of course while screaming the whole way down. Also we did a hike and saw a baby Koala. Probably the cutest thing in the world other than Beau Marley and Lilly. Also we had to say bye to our friend Darina who had been living and traveling with us for the past few months headed back to Dublin. We replaced her with our friend Paul from Melbourne, also from Dublin.

After Magnetic Island Micah and Jenni and I did another dive about 100 KM south. Its called the Yongala, it was a ship wreck from 1911. They advertise it as Australias Titanic. However the dive was at 100 ft down, and we had to do some new SCUBA training before they'd let us go down there. On the first dive I was a little freaked out because I couldn't see land in either direction and the dive was so low I could see the bottom from our boat. After a little calming by the dive instructor I made it down. But I had some ear problems from the depth and I couldn't do the second one. Got to see a sea snake and a huge grouper on the first dive.

Now we are in Wetsunday Islands. Tomorrow we are getting on a boat with enough food and water to survive on a desterted Island for three days. Supposesly we should be 5 of 12 people on this entire Island. Saddly though we will have to spend 4th of July without fireworks.

Port Douglas

2009-06-18T19:38:00.000-07:00

We made it across the Outback for the last time. We got upgraded to a 5 person campervan in Darwin, so we've been traveling in style for the past few days. However Saturday I shall continue to be homeless, but now also carless.

So far Queensland is really nice. Reminds me a lot of Hawaii. Its very tropical and mountainous. Its also been our best swimming experiences. We done the beach, where the water was finally warm, and a waterfall in the mountains, which was pretty much as cold as water can be without your body automatically swimming to shore and getting out once you've jumped in.

We are in Port Douglas today, which is way too nice of a place for us to be walking around . I haven't showered in 6 days, unless you count the ocean and the waterfall (which I do). And my shirt is inside out to promote 2 days of additional wearing.

Tomorrow we turn in the campervan and begin the greyhound / backpacking journey to Melbourne. We have a hop on hop off ticket and there are about 30 stops from Cairns to Melbourne, so the only prolonged bus journeys days should be narrowed down to a day from Brisbane to Sydney, then a day from Sydney back to Melbourne.

The joys of traveling

2009-06-12T19:56:00.000-07:00

So turns out the lowest we could fix the car for was $1,500. The closest clutch was in Brisbane and would have to be flown in. So after much diliberation, we sold the car for $500 and are renting a camper van to drive to Cairnes, then greyhound busing it from Cairnes back to Melbourne.

Its sad to see Logan (our car) go, but it will be also nice to change the trip up a little bit.

Next stop, Great Barrier Reef.

Darwin/Kakadu

2009-06-10T15:50:00.001-07:00

Sorry not a lot of time for any commentary. We made it to the Darwin. All the way across the Outback. However the station wagon now has no clutch, so we are working on getting it repaired. Not a bad place to be stuck but still annoying.

Central Australia

2009-06-01T16:05:00.000-07:00

We spent the last 3 days on a group tour of Central Australia. The Highlights; Ularu, The Olgas, and Kings Canyon.

This is Kings Canyon.

The bottom of Ularu

Me in front of Ularu
Ularu at Sunset
The Olgas
Ularu is the largest rock in the world. It may look like a mountain of dirt but actually is one solid rock.

Outback

2009-05-28T23:57:00.000-07:00

We have begun our 3,000 Km journey from Adilaide to Darwin. Actually we are half way there with 1,500 Km of the Stuart Highway behind us.

Some highlights...

This is the road we are on. 3,000 Km of nothing but straight roads and outback. Usually there is a roadhouse with gas every 200 Km. We pass a car about once every 10 minutes.

Stuart Highway Road train. Yes that is a 62 wheeler.

Our first night we spent in a town called Coober Pedy. Its the opal mining capital of the world. Since it gets to over 140 degree in the summer, everyone lives underground in the old opal mines.

Also a few movies based on other planets were filmed here. This is a prop from Pitch Black.
The Catholic Church, also underground.
We stayed at a campsite built from an old opal mine.

Some pics from Tasmania.

2009-05-25T20:29:00.000-07:00

Cradle Mountain.

On the port arthur cruise.

Micah and I at wine glass bay.

At the bottom of wine glass bay. Please excuse my seriously homosexual looking stance.

Our 2nd camp site

Our pet wallaby Shila.

1st camp site.

Tomorrow we start the 3,000 KM from Adilaide to Darwin through the Outback.

Tasmania

2009-05-20T15:45:00.001-07:00

Its been 4 days so far. We camped out the first 3 nights and are in a hostel right now.

The weather has been great during the day but cold at night.

Yesterday we went to a place called Port Arthur. It was the prison for the worst of the Australian convicts. Kind of like a Australian Alcatraz. I had never heard of it but it was a welcome suprise to the trip.

Today we are in Hobart. Heading backup to the north side of Tasmania then back on the boat to Melbourne.

Don't Call it a Comeback

2009-04-23T00:46:00.000-07:00

The lack of blogging has no excuses.

However the comeback will begin in t-minus 3 weeks.

The highlights will be:
Melbourne -> Tasmainia-> Adilaide -> Alice Springs -> Darwin -> Cairnes -> Brisbane -> Sydney -> Melbourne.

Proposed time: 2 months.

This will be done with 5 people in my 1989 toyota corolla and planning to sleep in a tent most nights.

Matching Albums to Life

2009-01-10T21:48:00.000-08:00

There are certain albums that remind me of times in my life. They aren't necessarily my favorite albums, but I was listening to them at a time in my life that was very meaningful.

For example:

Nirvana Unplugged in New York. Reminds me of 7th grade. Sitting in my room with my brand new boombox and listening to the CD over and over again. Sheets of guitar tabs from the internet spread around my floor, first learning to play About a Girl, then Polly.

A few others:

Blink 182 Enema of the State - Summer before my senior year of high school. Driving around with the windows down on a warm summer night. Swimming in the pool in my backyard with all my friends over.
Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - Spring sometime while I was still living with my parents. Commutes to work.
Ben Folds Five - The day I turned 16. Finally being able to drive in my own car and listen to music as loud as I wanted.
Bog Scheider Lonelyland - Living in East Dallas. Nights hanging out on the back porch. Driving down to Lower Greenville to watch Bob play every time he came to town.
Fountains of Wayne Welcome Interstate Managers - 5th year senior year. College drive at its peak.
The Shins Wincing the Night Away - Spring Time in Japan. Cherry blossoms, walking around Kyoto on my own. Train rides to Osaka.

As for summer 08-09 Australia - Kings of Leon Only by the Night.

Great Ocen Road Pics

2008-12-26T20:33:00.000-08:00

Last weekend we did a trip called the Great Ocean Road.

Its a highway built along the southern coast of Australia west of Melbourne. Its supposed to be some of the best scenery in Australia.

Also my friends from Japan came down, along with Slubbs and his next door neighbor.

Saturday morning we rented two cars, and headed down to Wongalong to stay at a beach hostel.

After a day of chillin on the beach and a night barbaque we woke up Sunday morning and started down the road. The pics at the bottom are all from the first part of the road. They are all at or near the Twelve Apostles, which are these huge rock formations along the shore.

We drove further down the road and luckily enough spotted some wild Koala bears. Sorry no pictures cause my camera is still down for the count, but trust me they were cute.

Drove futher down the coast and saw some other famous beaches. Tried to make it to Bells Beach (one of the most famous surf beaches in Australia, birthplace of Billabong, Rip Curl, Quicksilver) but it was late and we couldn't find the right turn off the road. Anyway, hoping to get a surf board and head back down there soon. Its finally starting to get warm here!

10 minutes to downtown

2008-12-08T23:28:00.000-08:00

So I've moved...again. I found out I'll be in Melbourne until May, so I got a place a little bit closer to the city.

There was this song I used to listen to by the Get Up Kids. The Chorus was:

Ten minutes to downtown

Is ten minutes too far

When my friends all say I’m crazy,

Maybe I’m being selfish.(Maybe I’m being selfish.

Maybe I’m just scared.(Maybe I’m just scared. )

Don’t be gone when I get home…I need you there.

If I had to explain itI wouldn’t know where to start.

It’s like you’re falling in love while I just fall apart.

I guess this is pretty stupid but I used to put this song on when I was going out to see my friends on the weekend. Its a great feeling, being done with work, knowing all your friends are going to meet up somewhere. Your heading into the city to meet them.

So I always had a 10 minutes to downtown place.

In Dallas it was Northwest Highway and 75.

In Osaka it was Kyobashi Station. Right after you exited the station before you went underground into the subway lines you could get a quick look at Osaka Castle.

But now, for the first time in my life. I'm actually living 10 minutes to downtown.

The view from my street.

Interesting Facts

2008-11-26T16:23:00.001-08:00

Things I've observed and/or heard...

I think most of them are true...

G’day is a normal greeting.

Kangaroos are easy to see anywhere; koalas are much harder to spot.

There is less o-zone so you have to wear sunscreen everyday in the summer.

People in Australia have never heard of Outback Steakhouse.

Bars are called Hotels.

Jail is spelled Gaol.

The Queen of England is on the money.

There are only 20 million people on the whole continent.

42% of people in Melbourne weren’t born in Australia.

Water goes down the drain counter clockwise.

The tallest mountain on the whole continent only 7,000 feet, that’s about the same as the highest mountain in Texas.

The English call them POME’s. Prisoners of mother England. But strangely Ozzies call English people POME’s as well.

They call American Football “Gridiron”

They call soccer soccer

They call Australian Rules Football “Footie”

The judges still wear old powder wigs in court. (I’ve seen them walking on the street)

When saying the alphabet for the letter “z” they say “zed” instead of our “zee”

Australia just took over America as the fattest country in the world this year.

80% of the people live on the East Coast. Perth, the biggest city on the west coast, is the most isolated city in the world.

Thats all I could think of...

Its Movember

2008-11-18T23:12:00.000-08:00

So theres this thing here in Melbourne called Movember. http://au.movember.com/ (I'm so seriously pissed that I didn't hear about this earlier that I almost don't wanna talk about it) The point is to raise money for charity, but I'm more interested in the fact that if you grow a mustache, you get free food throughout the city of Melbourne.

Thats right, lets get this straight. I've always wanted to grow a moustache, however I've never had the guts to face the public ridicule of actually sporting a stache in public. I'm not talking about the times that guys will grow beard, then shave everything but the stache, put on short shorts and some aviators and take pictures for a couple of hours to be funny. I'm talking about making a serious effort to sport a stache for up to and including 2 months. So as of November 1st in Melbourne, if you grow a stache, you get FREE FOOD at multiple restaurants. Its time to redefine the perfect "Win-Win" situation, because it just came here.

If you live in Melbourne in November, you get to grow a stache without being ridiculed, and you get free food. I'm on day 3, hopefully I can get something goin in the next 2 weeks.

Operation survive in OZ = Success

2008-11-09T22:54:00.001-08:00

I now have a place to live and a job.

I'm living 20 minutes outside the city in a house with a Malaysian architect named Ed. I looked at the room on Thursday. Moved in on Sunday, and was surprised to find he had purchased a hd flat screen. So I was able to watch Steelers vs Colts and Eagles vs Giants this morning in HD. (very Australian I know).

Also I start working tomorrow at the Accenture Melbourne office. I went and signed some papers with a contracting agency today, however I still haven't received word on what time to show up tomorrow. I said I assumed 8 or 8:30, but the woman said oh no, probably more like 9 or 9:30. Another great reason to love OZ, work doesn't start till 9.

My friends Micah and Nikki got here on Thursday. I've been showing them around the city. They decided to make a trip to New Zealand, so I'll be saying bye for a month or so, but they'll be back to celebrate Xmas in Melbourne. And I just received word that two of my students/friends from Japan are coming to visit me in December.

Thoughts on the US Election

2008-11-04T22:11:00.000-08:00

I've enjoyed being in Australia during the US Election. Mainly because its another country that speaks English, so I can understand what the newspaper, tv anchors, etc are saying when Barack or McCains face is on the front page. In recent weeks I've actually been amazed at how much coverage the US Election has received. Newspapers, magazines, news reports, they've all been giving up to date coverage of the election. I don't say this to boost our ego "Our country is so awesome everyone else follows our elections." Its really because the US President actually does effect everyone else so much. That whole "The Leader of the Free World" term is actually true.

(disclaimer: I'm going to tell you what the opinion of Australian people towards the election is. If you don't care what their opinion is then you can quit reading. I'm not suggesting to you that these opinions should matter to you. I personally care what other countries think of mine, however I know a lot of Americans might say, I could care less what Australia thinks of my politics. Ok thats your right to think that, I disagree, but I'm not here to have that discussion. I'm here to tell you what people down here think.)

Everyone down here dislikes Bush. The reasons are

The Iraq War. He started a war with a Iraq because that country was holding WMD's and he felt there was a possibility Iraq would use those weapons against the US. Its now known that the evidence of WMD's was incorrect. Austraila sent people to fight in this war, they now feel the war was unjustified and feel like they were lied to, mislead, however you wanna call it.
The Financial Crisis. I think I know enough about Finance to say that you can't blame this on one person or party. But it is a fact that America is to blame for this current crisis. Bush was the man at the top when it happened, so he is going to take the blame. The Australian dollar has lost almost 40% in value in the past 3 months. People here can no long afford to travel outside the country cause their currency is down so low.
He is not very well spoken. People just generally think hes not very bright.

So based on the fact that everyone hates Bush, McCain hasn't been given a chance to be his own man. People (ignorantly in my opinion) associate Bush = McCain. Palin is seen as someone they can't relate to. The fact that she didn't have a passport until 2006 really shows shes not very well traveled, something which is very important down here. Also her comment that "I believe America is the greatest force for good in the world" is laughable here.

Obama is seen as the young cool candidate who is going to change the direction of American politics. Obviously people down here could care less about American tax rates so Obama is the guy everyone loves. He says he will sit down with world leaders from hostile countries, try to end the war in Iraq asap, these things are very appealing to non American observers.

I watched the election today from the TV room in my hostel. It was me, about 10 Irish people, 2 from the UK, 3 for Ozzie, and a French guy. It was 3 Ozzie guys sitting in a studio talking about US politics. They would go back and forth from their own analysis to the ABC feed from America. I can't explain to you how strange it was to listen to Obama and McCains speeches around a bunch of non-Americans. Both of them kept repeatedly saying things like "America is the greatest country in the world", "Americans are the best at ...", etc... I'm not saying this was bad, just strange for me in that situation.

I thought Obama's speech was one of the better I've ever heard from a President. I literally had Goosebumps and wanted to bust into a "USA! USA!" chant. But I sat solemnly and tried to be respectful of the fact that most of the people didn't care as much as me, or cared in a much different way than I do.

One last thing I will say. You can argue that its based on incorrect logic and that you don't care, but it is true that Obama becoming President will greatly improve Americas reputation around the globe over McCain becoming President, and this is a good thing.

New Slang

2008-10-31T19:19:00.001-07:00

I've been hanging around lots of non American English speakers. I've noticed they use some really good adjectives when describing things. For example the I was at a football game last night, we ran into a couple of people from our hostel near our seats. At this point I would probably say "Hey thats pretty awesome." Instead, "Wow this is legendary."

Some other examples
Epic - as in , "You should have been boarding here yesterday, it was epic."
Wicked - as in, "The breaks down there are wicked."

Try them out sometime.

Thats about all the slang I've picked up so far. Pretty pathetic.

The problem with first impressions

2008-10-30T17:31:00.000-07:00

So as you may know or not I currently live in a hostel. My room has two bunk beds, so usually 4 people. I've tried to keep a good attitude about it because I know its only temporary, and I've actually started to like it. Most people there are long term, been there for 3-4 weeks and are in the same position as me; coming down to Australia for a while to work, looking for jobs and apartments, so its a pretty good way to meet some people. Recently I've been in a room with 2 French guys who work so they go to bed early don't make noise etc... Two nights ago a new guy walks in. Hes about my height, but huge, I mean looks like he plays linebacker for Texas Tech or something. So that night I have what amounts to the hostel goers nightmare, an extreme snorer. I'm not talking a little snoring, were talking full on sawing logs, like hes joking, snoring. So I turn my ipod on full blast and listen to The Hives and finally make it to sleep. The next day I walk in, he asks me where I'm from, I give him pretty cold short responses. I mean I'm super tired because of him. Also he tells me that hes in Melbourne to watch a Rugby match and he'll be here for another 14 days. This might be the low point of my trip so far, 7 more days of this (in a week my friends Micah and Nikki get here so I'll be outta this dudes room). That night I go to bed early thinking I can doze off before he gets in. Well he gets in around 2am and within minutes is back at working doing his jackhammer impersonation.

So this is the impression I've formed. This guy is just some old washed up Rugby fanatic who now spends his time partying, playing cards at the casino, working on cars or motorcycles, you know the type I'm talking about...

So yesterday hes in the room and I decide to start talking to him. If anything to ensure my impression of him is correct. So ask, "where are you from?" Hes originally from England but has lived in New Zealand for the past 6 years. (So your a bigger bum than me, I knew I was right (my inner monologue)). "What were you doing in New Zealand?" He tells me he's been a lecturer at the University in Wellington. At this point I'm starting to think I might have been a little quick to judgement. "What did you teach?" Glaciology. Turns out this guy has a PhD. in GLACIOLOGY. Thats the right, the study of glaciers and the environmental effects on them. I couldn't believe how wrong I had been. This guy might actually be one of the most interesting and intelligent people I've come across so far.

Anyway I asked him a ton of questions about glaciers and global warming since I've never really met a true expert. I only hear Al Gore and Sean Hannity taking about their expert friends, who also both happen to have completely different views.

Heres what he told me. The glaciers in New Zealand are actually increasing because of a weather cycle they have. They expand and retract every 30 years. Its been 25 years of increase, so in another 5 years or so they will begin retracting again. He said all glaciers have been retracting since the last ice age, about 18,000 years ago. Except there was a 400 year period in from about 1200-1600 called the little ice age during which Glaciers expanded because of colder weather. When I asked about global warming he said "There's no doubt that after the industrial revolution started you can see it drastically effected the retreat of glaciers. The more carbon we put in the atmosphere, the more it speeds up the warming of the Earth, which causes more rapid retreat of Glaciers." But to be fair he also added "Its probably not going to be a huge problem anytime soon. We still have much bigger problems in the world right now to worry about, like 3rd world poverty". So there you have it, from a licensed Glaciologist.

Anyway, just goes to show you first impressions aren't always reliable.

October

2008-10-25T20:57:00.001-07:00

Not a lot to report here. Tuggle went to The Outback to work on a vineyard for 3 weeks. I haven't heard from him since he started working so I have no idea how it is.

I'm still trying to get set up here in Melbourne. The job market is pretty terrible since all the Ozzies came back from the UK when the markets crashed. Plus the Australian dollar is tanking against everything. But from what I hear Australia should recover faster than most other countries. They have almost no investment in the American credit crisis and most of their growth over the past 10 years has been selling resources and food to Asia. We'll see.

Also my friends Micah and Nikki are coming in one week, so I'm kind of in limbo waiting till they get here. Usually I go to the library, hang out at the beach, and just hang out with people at my hostel. Two nights ago I lead a chours of about 15 germans and some other random nationalities in Sweet Home Alabama, then Free Fallin, then Wonderwall. However I had to confess those are the only sing a long songs I know so I proceeded to play obscure Weezer and Nirvana songs.

Next Friday the Australian national football team (Ozzies rules football not soccer) is playing the Irish national gaelic football team in a combined rules football game. I'm going with a couple of Irish and Scotish people so I"m not sure who I should root for. My family obviously has some Irish blood, but I've never even been to Ireland and technically I live in Australia right now. Any advice?

Also the thing Paris, Tokyo, London, and Canberra have in common is they are all counry capitals.

Updates

2008-10-19T00:13:00.000-07:00

Been back in Melbourne for over a week now.

Was offered a job with Accenture in Canberra Australia. I emailed back to see if theres anything in Melbourne. So we'll see where that goes.
I received my overseas voters card in the mail. I'll be sending that off tomorrow. So I voted from two hemispheres away. Anyone who doesn't vote, whats your excuse?
I cut off all my hair and shaved my beard. But I still have no camera battery so photo booth will have to do.
Tugg walked into a boat repair shop a couple of days ago and asked for a job. We'll see what happens but I liked the spontaneity (word?) of it.
I eat Subway about 5 times a week here.

What do these cities have in common

2008-10-16T20:22:00.000-07:00

London England
Paris France
Tokyo Japan
Canberra Australia

Ugly or pretty, this is my city

2008-10-07T21:01:00.000-07:00

http://www.melbournefestival.com.au/program/production?id=3480

Back in Melbourne.

Arts festival starts tomorrow. Hopefully it will be a lot of free stuff to check out.

Auckland

2008-10-06T00:04:00.000-07:00

Trip is almost over. Here are some pics of some North Island stops...

Ferry across

Cathedral Caves

Tugg at Cathedral Caves
Absailing into the cave
Glow worms in the cave. Not stars
Tubing the cave river
In the cave
As Tugg said, "Going thru the cave Vietcong style"
I lost the battery to my Camera somehow. Anyway, Tugg took pics of Scuba diving and I have some more pics of these huge trees. I'll get them up when I get back to Melbourne.

Stats for the trip:
Total km: 4556 (I drove, Tugg naved the whole trip)

North

2008-10-01T19:43:00.000-07:00

Well we've made it all the way to the north side of the island.

Took the ferry across, stayed in a sweet beach hostel, did repelling rock climbing and floated the river thru a cave, slept at a campsite that looked like a KOA in Sweetwater TX, went to a deserted beach for 2 hours, dug holes in the sand at hot water beach which then filled with volcanic hot water to make hot tubes during low tide. but sorry I don't have the pictures on my computer so I can't upload them yet.

We are 2 hours north of Auckland planning a scuba diving trip for tomorrow. After that just a few days left till we turn the Jucy Crib in at Auckland Airport then fly back home to Melbourne.

Video from Harwoods Hole

Glaciers and a Huge Hole

2008-09-27T00:26:00.001-07:00

We left the ski slopes of Wanaka and headed for the Franz Joseph and Fox Glaciers. Pretty standard glaciers as far as I can tell.

We then headed up the west coast along the Tasmainian Sea? Not sure what its called. Lonely Planet called it one of the 10 best road trips in the world. I have to agree, since most of my road trips have involved the state of Arkansas. We stopped for a few pics, the ones I included are at the pancake rocks. They are called that because they have layers of rock that look like stacked pancakes.

We spent the night in the van on the beach on the north part of the Island last night. We woke up and went to this place called Harwoods Hole. Its the largest cave in the Southern Hemisphere. So as Tugg and I are walking up we are discussing using our camera as lights to "splunk" down into it. Well it turns out it not as much a cave as it is seriously just a huge hole in the ground. We walked to the edge and my heart started racing about 200 bpm. I threw a huge rock into the hole, defintley took about 10 seconds to hear it land. And I might have started some kind of rock slide in the process.

Tomorrow we take the ferry to the North Island for 10 more days of NZead, then back to OZ.

Road trip up the west coast.

Pancake rocks

They filmed parts of LOTR here. Me trying to make elf ears.

Huge Hole

Sweet rocks near the huge hole

Fox Glacier

Fox

The damage caused by fox over millions of years

Franz Joseph

Sweetest waterfall I've ever seen near Franz Joseph

Snowboarding

2008-09-23T21:35:00.000-07:00

Its the end of winter start of spring here. Tugg and I decided to try and snowboard for the day because most of the slopes are still open. Plus we had a buy one get one free lift ticket from our rental car company.

We rented our gear drove 30 km outside of town to get to the bottom of the life yesterday, only to have them tell us they had closed the slopes due to high winds. Luckily our the rental shop let us keep the stuff an extra day. So we headed back up today.

Here are some pics. The trails are all above the tree line, so they aren't very long. Also it was hot so the snow turned to slush by the afternoon. But it was a great day of boarding for the most part. Also the view of the lake at the bottom was prob the coolest view I've ever boarded in front of.

Best Pics so far

2008-09-20T20:58:00.000-07:00

Beach on the south side of the south island

8 Nuggets Beach

Water Fall
Te Anu Lake
Southern Alps
Fiordland National Park

Milford Sound boat ride.

Shout out to the sis.
Tugg and I on the beach

The Internet came to NZead in 2007

2008-09-16T03:09:00.000-07:00

Or at least one could make that assumption from the lack of and slowness of access here. Pics and video may be tough but I'll try my best.

Arrived in Christchurch on Monday. Spent the night in the airport (it was 12:30am and picked up the car at 8am.) Spent Monday walking around Christ Chuch.

Left Christ Church this morning for whatever the town we are in right now is. We saw some huge boulders called Elephant rocks and in general some great New Zealand scenery. The hostel here is great other than the bad internet access so we might spend a couple of days here.

Here are some pics so far.

Christ Church

On the road. Misty Mountains in the background.

The Jucy Crib. Seriously thats the name of it.

Elephant rocks.

Apparently scenes from Narnia were filmed here.

I climbed up on this huge rock, then Tugg had to help me down.
Sheep are everywhere.
Awesome sunset view.

First Trip: New Zealand

2008-09-11T18:47:00.000-07:00

I've arrived in Melbourne safely. I've spent the last couple of days getting things set up here in Australia.

Before I try to get job and housing set up Tugg and I are going to take a 3 week trip over to New Zealand. We leave Sunday and are staying until October 8th. We are flying into Christchurch and flying out of Auckland. We rented a campervan so hopefully we will get to see most of the country.

I'll try to give updates with pictures every couple of days.

Chad

Saiyonara Japan

2008-07-14T19:32:00.000-07:00

Bejing Pictures

2008-06-30T00:29:00.000-07:00

At last here are the final pictures from my trip to China. This was the Bejing leg of the journey.

China Trip: Shanghai to Bejing

2008-05-15T09:17:00.000-07:00

After two days in Shanghai we headed towards Bejing on the train.

We made a stop in a small town called Suzhou (I think). In Japan, if I want a ticket, I walk up to a machine, put in my money, and buy the ticket. In China I go to a huge ticket office, which consists of 30 lines each with about 100 Chinese people waiting in each one. Robbie and I wait in line for 15 minutes at the counter that says "English Ticket purchasing". It closes when we are 2nd in line. We run over the other English line and finally get our tickets.

We get on the train and find out Robbie and I have seats behind each other not next to each other. There are two people sitting in my seat. They say "Oh sorry" and one moves across the aisle. The girl next to me is kind of slouching in her seat and listening to a portable music player kind of loudly. In my mind all I can think is "Geez Japanese and Chinese people are so different. If this girl was Japanese she'd be so much more considerate to me." Anyway, after listening to her talking to her friends I realize I can understand about 5% of what she is saying. Wait she is speaking Japanese. So I ask her where in Japan shes from. They are a group of friends from Tokyo. Really nice group of people. One of the guys they are with actually lives close to me in Osaka.

We get to the town of Suzhou. Its known for its rock gardens. As soon as we get off the station, I realize we are definitely out of the International city of Shanghai. Mainly because people are staring and pointing at us, but mainly at my buddy Robbie since he's 6'8. We take a Taxi to the center of town. Eat a nice lunch. Walk around the city see some temples and gardens.

Head back to the train around 8pm.

This time its a 14 hour train ride to Bejing. It left at 8pm and arrives at 10am.

We get on the train, we have a bunk to sleep on. Its called a hard sleeper. I'd say its a room about the size of your average American bathroom. With 3 bunk beds on each side. Its cozy so I don't really mind it.

We hang out in the dining car until some lady comes up and says "You must leave now so other people can have your seat." The Chinese guy next to us says he doesn't know what shes talking about since there are empty seats behind us. But we don't want to cause a problem so we go back.

I sleep ok on the trip. I'm a little on edge since I found out yesterday (from my sister) that there was a huge train wreck on the same track I'm riding on just 2 days ago. I think 70 people died. So every time the train jolts (which was about every 30 minutes) I wake up in panic.

The next morning is spent looking out the window at the Chinese country side. Nothing but farms and Soviet looking schools and houses.

We arrive in Bejing 1 hour late. Wake up and head to the hostel.

Night trains are actually quite nice since we didn't lose a day and we didn't have to buy a hotel room for the night. The cost was about $50 one way.

Robbie at the garden called "Tiger face garden" or something like that.

This was the tiger, or lion.
Chinese school children.
Waiting to get on the train. It looked like an airport in here.
My bunk. In the middle.

Taoist temple
Two pagodas.
canal around Suzhou
Polar Bear?
Main view of the Tiger garden
Me trying to get this bird to speak some Chinese. The first thing he says is Ni Hao (Hello). The second thing, I have no idea)

China Trip: First Part Shanghai

2008-05-14T07:44:00.001-07:00

I returned last week from my two week trip to China.

I took a boat from Osaka to Shanghai. 48 hours later arrived in China. Spent 2 days in Shanghai, took a train to Bejing. Spent 4 days in Bejing. Then back to Shanghai, back to Osaka.

I took about 400 pictures and have a lot to share, so I'll just start off with the Shanghai part.

We arrived to Osaka port at 11:00am on Friday morning. The boat was scheduled to leave at 12. All night I had been feeling sick to my stomach. Eerily similar to the night before I left for Japan. I guess its the idea of going to a completely foreign land that makes me nervous. After waiting at the subway station for my buddy Robby part of me was kind of wishing he would be late. So I wouldn't have to leave my comfort in Japan, sleeping in hostels and carrying everything on my back. But in the same way as once I arrived in Japan I never felt nervous again, once the trip was underway, I was nothing but excited.

We got on the boat, met some other Western travelers on deck, and explored our new floating home. The boat was nice, nothing like a real cruise, kind of like a National Lampoons cruise.

The first announcement came on in Chinese ( I remembering Japanese sounding strange at first, now I'm used to it, even though I don't understand it), Chinese is a completely different animal though. Not to be rude, but it just sounds like someone speaking the same thing over and over again, (gaw bow wow gaw wow bow gaw wow). Then the broken English comes on... "Due to guidance from the Chinese government, our boat will be delayed 4 hours from departing. We will then arrive 2 hours late into Shanghai on Sunday." A great crash course into the bureaucracy of China. If we are only going to be delayed 2 hours why can't we just depart the port 2 hours late?

Anyway, the ship ride was great. On the boat was mostly Chinese people returning from holiday in Japan. About 150 people total I would guess. However us Westerners quickly made friends, there was a couple of Brits, an Aussie, a Swedish guy, a couple of German girls, and two Israeli guys. Funny thing about the guys from Israel. When I first met them, I'll admit they were the first Israelis I've ever met, so in my mind I said, "Ok don't say something stupid or controversial". So I asked the most common question I could, "Where in Israel are you from?" They acted like it was the weirdest question they've ever been asked.

Anyway fast forward to getting landing in Shanghai on Sunday. As we began to arrive in the Yellow Sea, lets just say the reason its called the Yellow Sea isn't really a mystery. As we approached mainland China I couldn't believe how many boats were going in and out of Shanghai. But I soon realized that while this was my first time traveling to China, my entire wardrobe was having a homecoming of sorts. I couldn't help but think about how many of the things I own had gone right past this narrow river leading into Shanghai.

We dock at Shanghai. The pollution is already unbearable. You can feel it in your lungs, kind of like hot sand getting it your lungs at the beach. There was also a lot of construction going on in the area we landed, so it might have been a pollution dust combo.

My first impression of Shanghai. It doesn't look like China. It looks like Soviet Russia. Everyone is riding these bicycles that look like they were made in the 20's. The street is covered in about 1cm of dust. The buildings don't look Asian, they just look Communist.

We check into the hostel, walk around Shanghai. Eat some good Chinese food for about $1.50. We get asked seriously about every 15 seconds "You want Watch, Shoes, Dvd".

There are people skating around on these "rollerskating shoes" trying to sell them to us, a group of 4 grown men. Its kind of like when you walk out of a carnival in East Texas and everyone is selling glow sticks or various other toys. Except they are literally everywhere. Thousand of people selling the same roller shoes or boncey balls. Seriously a women screams Hello to me, then takes this ball and throws it to the ground. It splats on the ground looking like a pile of slim, then it magically reforms itself back into a ball. "How much?" She asks me. This goes on for about 2 days.

Is this supposed to be Communism? People hounding foreign tourists to make a couple of bucks? I quickly realized China is definitely the most capitalist society I've ever seen. Communism is simply a guise the government uses to control the masses.

We spend the next 2 days exploring Shanghai. Its a city of extremes. BMW and Ferraris parked in gated high rise apartment building, surrounded by neighborhoods of the poorest people I've ever personally seen. Tibetean Women sit on the streets begging with their children. At one point one comes up to me and just keeps pointing at her child's mouth (prob 6 months old). I give her a couple of RMB's (less than a $). She then goes and yells at her 4 year old son, pointing in my direction. I can only guess she was telling him to try and get more money from that foreigner.

I can't help but look at these kids. Think about how different their lives are compared to the lives of my 2 unborn nieces and nephew. How easy my life has been compared to theirs.

Day 3 we head on the train from Shanghai to Bejing.

To be continued...

Some pics...

Old town Shanghai.

The boat freeway.

New School Shanghai.
Our boat looking over Shanghai.

On the way to China, the longest suspension bridge in the world. It connect the city of Kobe to Awaji island.
Sunset somewhere near Hiroshima.

Me in Shanghai.

Random street in Shanghai.

Hiking in Kyoto

2008-04-19T18:29:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I went hiking out in north Kyoto. I bought a book called hiking in Japan when I first moved here. This is the last day hike in Kansai that I hadn't done.

So I woke up with nothing to do on Monday, and decided to go out for a day hike. I love that I live in a place where I say "I wanna go hiking today" and be in the mountains in 1 hour. I think its a requirement for my places of residence in the future.

This is a place called Ohara　大原.

Its a small little farming town in a valley.

Sorry the pictures are out of order.

After the hike I found this field of flowers.

Looking down on Ohara.

Me at the top. Sporting my new rolled up jeans look due to the mud. About 2000 ft above sea level.
Some Cherry Blossoms. In some of the pictures you can see them growing wild on the side of the mountain. Kind of sad to think this might be my last cherry blossom season.
Texas Bluebonnets? Reminds me of home.

An old thatched roof style house.

Self portrait

If it wasn't for the hazy days of spring that would be a great view over the whole city of Kyoto.

SUMO!!

2008-04-01T19:54:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago some of my students and I went to a SUMO tournament in Osaka.

I was kind of excited about it because its one of those things that you say you have to do while your in Japan.

The first thing I noticed when I went in was "Wow theres a lot of foreigners here." Then I reallied, this is kind of like going to a rodeo in Texas. I mean how often do me and my friends actually go to a rodeo. Sure you have the random rodeo enthusiast sitting in the front from. But I bet if you go out to the mesquite rodeo you'd find the crowd is mostly people visiting looking for the authentic Texas experience.

So anyway we got there really early and watched the first few matches. Kind of like the minor leagues.

Then I got bored and walked around taking some pictures of some cool Japanese stuff.

This is the lineup for the day. Yes this is actually Japanese writing, but my students needed a magnifying glass to read it.

This was the main fight. Some guy from Mongolia against the top Japanese wrestler. It was pretty cool cause the Mongolian guy lost (who everyone hates) and the place went crazy and started throwing stuff on the court. I tried to uploaded a video but I think it was too big.

2 weeks until my China trip. I promise to upload a lot of pictures after that.

Still no camera charger

2008-03-03T02:53:00.000-08:00

I've been to cheap to buy the camera charger that the guy in Osaka wanted 5000 yen for ($45). So since my camera went dead while snowboarding last week, I haven't been able to take any new pictures to put up on the blog.

Since I finished taking my GMAT I've kind of had too much free time on my hands. Plus its too cold to go hiking so I've been spending too much time sitting in my apartment watching movies and TV shows.

A couple of things I've done lately:
1. Went to a sushi restaurant which had a bullet train instead of a conveyor belt. So you order your food and this small train comes along a track to your table with the plates sitting on it.
2. Had a party at my co-workers girlfriend's parents restaurant (was that grammar correct?). The food was Nabe (think boiled vegetables and meat). It was a fun afternoon of food and talking.

However in the next couple of weekends I'm going snowboarding again, and going to my first sumo match. So I think I'm gonna be forced to buy the camera charger. New pictures soon!

But in the mean time I thought I'd give you link to my buddy Davids flickr page. He's a casual photographer but I think a lot of his pictures really capture a part of Japan that mine can't. If you have time, check them out and maybe you'll get an insight into why I sometimes like this country so much. (But after going to 2 locations to try to renew my visa and finding them both closed, I can also really hate this place)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/leadsoup

Snowboarding weekend

2008-02-19T04:33:00.001-08:00

Here are some pictures from my snowboarding trip to Fukui Japan. Fukui is north of Kyoto, on the sea of Japan side. This is supposed to be the biggest Ski resport in Western Japan. (Nagano and Hokkaido being the best of snowboarding in Japan)

I went with my friend Marcelle (who is an English Teacher from Austrlia for the same company as me), the Japanese English teacher at her school Yuri, and their beautitian friend from Morocco named Raddy.

We took a night bus from Kyoto station at 12am, drove for 4 hours, slept in the bus until 8am, boarded all day, got on the bus at 4pm, and got home at 9. Pretty tiring day.

Me on the slopes.

Overall the mountain was somewhere in between Colordao and New Mexico size. But it was probably the best snow I`ve ever boarded in.
Marcelle Yuri and I on the lift, except my huge head is in the way.
Mario snowman.

The lifts, snowboards, orange slow signs are all exactly the same as in North America. Its kind of strange really because the only way you can tell you are in Japan is because the Ski Slope names are in Japanese.

One thing I noticed was Japanese snow is stickier than North American snow. The snow forms into balls on the trees, espcially at the top. I`d never seen that before.

I would say the moutain was about 90% snowboarders. It was mostly young people though since all college students are on a hoilday right now.
Overall I have to say Japanese snowboarding is just about on Par with North America. Except I`ve heard it gets really crowded at the weekend. I went on a Monday so almost no lift lines.

First blog of the new year

2008-02-13T07:52:00.001-08:00

I can give the normal no bloggin excuses like I've been busy studying for the GMAT, or my bag was lost in Tokyo losing my camera battery and charger and the guy in Osaka wanted $40 for a new one. But mainly is been because I've been lazy and haven't really done much interesting in the past few weeks.

I went back to the States for Christmas which was awesome.

First made my way to Tokyo to hang with my buddy Tucker. Saw Shibuya which is the busiest crosswalk in the world.

Lost my suitcase in Tokyo, that sucked.

Slubbs and I at the LeBron game in Dallas.

Came back to Japan. Had the worst homesickness/culture shock of my life. It took me about a week to get back into Japan mode. I don't know why it hit so hard but it really took me by surprise.

Went to Spa World with my buddies. Its a 10 story indoor hot sauna. Sorry though couldn't take pictures cause its all nude... Guys only floor...
Went on a hike in Nara when is snowed.

Bike was stolen...

Fell asleep on the train and woke up 2 hours later in Kyoto with no ipod...

Going snowboarding this weekend...

Found out my contract is being renewed so I will be in Japan for the present future...

Now for my political rant for the week....
I'm not sure if the news has hit America, but a US Marine was arrested for raping a 13 year old girl in Okinawa this week. Its a tragedy and maybe if it was an isolated thing we could blow it off as one random crazy guy. However I read this article in Mainichi Daily News this today...
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20080213p2a00m0na034000c.html
I just wanted to share with anyone who reads this how much this embarrasses me as an American living in Japan. I can't even imagine the riots that would ensue if something of this nature were to happen in America at the hands of a foreign occupation. I'm not suggesting a solution, all I'm saying is it really really makes me mad, and I hope it does you too.

Luminarie

2008-01-02T06:31:00.001-08:00

Before I left Japan I went to this thing called Luminarie. Its a bunch of lights in downtown Kobe to remember the Kobe earthquake of 1995.

Me and my buddies went down around 9:30. The lights turn off at 9:30, so this was the line to get in.

After about 15 minutes. One thing that I was amazed by, how organized this even was. There were like 8 police at every street corner directing traffic, and of course making it impossible to cut in line.
The opening.

Charlotte MV and I.

So about halfway through the lights turned off. So I'm pretty sure this thing would have been sweet.
Afterwards grabbed some food on the most crowded street ever.

Watch the video below because I just happen to be video taping when the power shut off. The audible boo's were hilarious.

Christmas Party

2007-12-12T07:36:00.000-08:00

We had our school Christmas Party this weekend.

I tried to find a nasty Christmas sweater to wear but it was impossible to find on short notice in Japan.

We went ice skating and then to a Chanko Nabe restaurant (which is apparently what Sumo Wrestlers eat).

My student Tomoko and her daughter Chiharu. Shes the one from the pictures with my Dad at the Halloween party and from went we went to the amusement park.

Santa giving our presents. I brought a roll of toilet paper with the Japanese 10,000 yen bill imprinted on it. The guy who got it seemed less than excited, but I thought it was hilarious.
At the Chanko Nabe, you pretty much just boil tons of vegetables and meat in a big pot then eat it with some sauce. Its starting to really amaze me how Japanese food in America is only Sushi, but in Japan its actually only about 10% sushi and the other 90% is just as good in my opinion.
My student Hiroaki on the left (nicest guy in Japan, seriously he asks me out to the eat with him after every class with him and his coworkers and always picks up the tab), and Noburo on the right (aka chief red face part deux).
My student at the bottom left Masafumi (hes won the gold metal at wrestling for his weight class like the past 3 years in a row).
It was our school and another school combined, so we had about 70 students show up.
My student Makuto when I realized from across the room he had a Texas Flag on his imitation boyscout uni (seriously it had all this crazy English like "enjoy camping style" and stuff on it)

At some point I taught my students how to make the "bloods" gang sign. The reception was extremely positive.
After the party we went to Karaoke with like 25 people. I started the night off right with some Queen "Fat Bottom Girls" (Young MC Bust a Move wasn't working for some reason).

My Osaka friends MV (on the left) Charlotte (it was her Birthday) and my buddy Robbie. We went for some Mexican which was fantastic. Can't wait for the real stuff in a couple of weeks though.

Japan Light Up and Uji

2007-12-01T02:13:00.000-08:00

Japan has 14 World Heritage sites compared to 20 for America. However just to give you a feel of how great the Kansai region is (Osaka Kyoto Kobe Nara) 5 of the 14 are within 1 hour of me. And confusingly enough one those 5 is called "the Ancient Buildings of Kyoto", which is comprised of 14 separate shrines and temples.

So one of my "before I leave Japan" goals is to visit all of the World Heritage sites in Kansai/Kyoto. http://www.pref.kyoto.jp/visitkyoto/en/theme/sites/shrines/w_heritage/.

I've been to about half of them, so I've been spending my weekends trying to check off as many as I can.

These are a couple of shrines in Uji, a town about 25 minutes from me.

This is a shrine called Uji-gami. Its not the impressive (its only famous because it was built in the 14th Century) which makes it the oldest shrine or temple in Japan.

This is Byodo temple. If you've ever been to Japan and seen the 10 yen coin, this is the temple on the back of it.
Sean and I in front of Byodo. Me sporting the new shaved haircut.
A view of Uji no the river. The fall leaves are starting to change so its been really beautiful around here.
This is called light up or "レアイトウプ”(re-a-i-to-u-pu). Its were they open the temples at night and put lights on the autumn leaves.

Since Nintendo is based out of Kyoto, anyone else think this might be the inspiration for worlds 3 and 6 in Super Mario Brothers 1? http://ian-albert.com/misc/gamemaps/super_mario_bros/full/mario-3-2.gif

Some Bamboo

Last a couple of really cool pictures of Tokyo at night. I didn't take them but I think this really solidifies the idea that living in Japan is sometimes like living in a video game.

Other than that the only thing I can say is GO COWBOYS!

Halloween, Parents Trip here, etc...

2007-11-19T05:59:00.002-08:00

Long absence from Blogging I know.

Just some things that have happened in the past month.

My parents came to Japan. It was really nice to have them here, and I will say they did do their best to enjoy some parts of Japan. However Mom and Dad refused to speak even one word of Japanese (is it that hard to say Arrigato instead of Thank You?). We went to the Tokyo fish market, which is pretty much the freshest sushi in the world, but no one would take the plunge and try a piece. So you guys can give them a hard time for that.

Here are some highlights of our trip...

Himiji castle. This is where they filmed a lot of "the last samuri"

Gives you an idea of how big this thing is. Impressive since it was built in 1500.
Kobe beef. Mecha Oishi
Dad and I at the school Halloween party. Not a big turn out, but it was fun seeing my dad teach the kids some baseball.
Family in front of Kiamizu-dera in Kyoto.
My first trip to Tokyo as well. I honestly really did like it. The trains were a bit confusing, but being the biggest city in the world definitely gives it a unique vibe.
From the top of the Government building. All 360 degrees nothing but buildings.
For more pictures check out this...
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/hollee.ford/Japan07

I sprung my ankle last night running in Osaka. I hobbled around the city today trying to make it home. I'm really hoping I can walk tomorrow or I will have to call in sick.

I renewed my contact with GEOS as of Mar 19 2008. This means I'm obligated to stay in Japan until at least June of 2008. After that who knows.

Last, this is just too Japan to not share with everyone....http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/10/20/world/20071020_JAPAN_SLIDESHOW_index.html

Fall Festival

2007-10-20T02:54:00.000-07:00

One of my students is in charge of planning a fall festival here in Hirakata. From what I gather it has something to do with this temple that sits atop the tallest hill overlooking the city.

They build these portable shrines (omibashi) and then carry them all over the city. She asked me and Sean (the Canadian teacher at my school) to help out.

This is at around 8am. The first time I've been awake before 9 in about 3 months.

The kid in front of the Omibashi is my students grandson. His Mom is Japanese and his dad is Portuguese. His parents speak English to each other since neither one knows the other language, but since they live in France he has to go to French school. So he is 5 but already can speak Portuguese, English, Japanese, and French.

My student Kazue.

Getting ready to start carrying this thing. It was so heavy.
Carrying the Omibashi to the city center. This road we are carrying on it is the original road from Osaka to Tokyo built in the 7th century AD.

Notice the red head in the crowd.

Sometimes being tall is nice. However when you are carrying a portable shrine by putting the base of it on your shoulder its not good for the ole' back.

This is the train station in the center of Hirakata. There were 4 omibashis from around the city.
The town hall. All 4 omibashis met here and a bunch of people said stuff and then clapped. Notice video below.
Sean and I after about 3 hours of hauling this thing around town.
Around 4 everyone got together and had dinner at my students house.
Here are some good videos.

Updates on life

2007-10-05T22:58:00.000-07:00

So I haven't made a post in a month or so.

Sorry I've been busy with life as usual in Japan. Nothing really big to report.

Just thought I would share some funny thoughts or things that have happened in the last few weeks:

I had to introduce myself in Japanese to an entire room full of people. I`ve been taking classes at the local city hall. They made me hold up this sign with an American flag and my name written in katakana チャド　ヒュストン . There were two other new students both from China with names in full Kanji (chinese characters) and they were definitely able to say more than I did (Hi I`m Chad I`m from America, I`m and English teacher. nice to meet you). It was the most embarrassed I've been since I thought it would be a good idea to go as Lance Armstrong for Halloween and walk around Dallas all night in biker shorts.

I`ve really started to fell like I recognize people on the street and such. Sometimes its my students or friends, but most of the time its just people I`ve given nicknames to. Like guy with the huge white dog, or guy who smokes with his feet cause he has no arms.

I met this group of people in Nara the other day, and this new English teacher came, and after a while it came up that she was a lesbian. So I started talking to her about my theory of how I love gay guys but hate lesbians (because gay guys help the ratio for me, and lesbians hurt it). Anyway I don`t think she thought it was as funny as I did.

I`ve decided that when dealing with language barriers it causes you to be really blunt. Like last night I was hanging out with one of my friends and I told her I`m really excited about my parents coming because they treat me to dinner at night. And she was like I don`t understand. So I had to say "I get free dinners" (at this point I feel like a real cheap skate).

My parents and sister are coming to Japan in two weeks. I`m really pumped but also kind of nervous cause my Dad hates onions and Hollee doesn`t like seafood. Which is about 90% of most Japanese food. Of course we can always go to MacDonalds and get the new McPork (did that come out in America too?)

It went from really really hot, to really really cold in the span of about 3 hours. Weather here is so much more extreme than Texas (it changes so fast)

Went on I guess my first "date" since I`ve been in Japan. It feels really pathetic being 25 and texting her saying, I`ll meet you on my bike near the train station. I almost feel like we should hang out at the arcade or the mall afterwards.

I`m really trying to pump up Romo out here, but nobody has ever heard of him. I just say its Carri Underwoods boyfriend and they get really excited.

I'm really excited about introducing my parents to my students and saying "These are my English teachers!" Does anyone think thats as funny as I do?
I've been reading the Stand by Stephen King. I woke up mid nap the other day and screamed out loud cause I thought my backpack was "the dark man".

Here are some pics from my latest travels.

Osaka Aquarium...

Osaka on bay...

Me and my buddy Robbie with these Swedish girls who live next to him. We had to wear the head phones for the English translation, and the glasses for the 3d effects. This really took back to my glasses and braces combo days (when 78% of my face was metal)

So there are 3 of them, Charlotte the one taking the picture is who we usually hang out with and when its just her we speak English. But once they all get together it turns into the most confusing thing you can imagine. Hanging out with people speaking Swedish while everyone around you is speaking Japanese.

Another great memory, me and Robbie finding some Mountain Dew in the vending machine outside and "doing the dew" for the first time in months.

Manta Ray

Crazy looking Sunfish (this thing is about 4 feet long)

The famous Osaka Whale Shark. This thing was huge. (I'm prob about as big as its left fin)
Spider crabs. Very scary.
Doesn't this look like a picture that comes as a background on your computer or something. I mean am I a good photographer or what!

Candle festival in Nara. The girl on the left is my friend Seans girlfriend Sayumi and the other one is my friend Mari from Hawaii.

So many candles. Of course I knocked one over at one point.

Me and Sean in a hike looking over Kyoto. The telephone pole really adds to the Japanese Nature feel right? Also notice the Pocari Sweat (Japanese Gatorade) can in my hand which I bought in a vending machine at the top of the mountain.

Tunnel heading into the Aquarium. It was a holiday, and man I thought all of Japan had come to the Aquarium this day.
So I think the fish in this video have more room than I do at this point. I think people in America go to Zoo's and think, man this is sad the animals live in such a small space. People in Japan are envious at the size of their cages.

One last thing. I got a letter today saying I have to either extend my contract or tell them I'm leaving in March by November 19th. Wow time flies right. Well I'm trying to make my decision, right now I don't want to leave, but I also know I don't want to get stuck being too comfortable with my life here. So if you have any input let me know.

Also I will be in Dallas from December 23rd - January 4th. So everyone make an effort to come and see me if you can.

Chad

Hirakata Park

2007-09-11T07:36:00.000-07:00

There is an Amusement Park near my city called Hirakata Park. I pass by it on the train almost every week but our school went for a trip this weekend so I got a chance to check it out.

It was kind of like a cross between the state fair and six flags. Kind of small, but wasn't crowded at all.

This was the first ride. It was called Meteor drop or something.

Top Gun was closed. I was really really disappointed.

Me at lunch time with one of my students daughter.

The standard get soaking wet huge tube ride.

This ride was pretty sweet. It was like this gigantic seesaw thing. I went on it with my manager first and we rocked the house so this girl asked me to take her on it This is about the point where I have the thing going up and down pretty good and she face plants right on the bars in front of her. She was ok but I was really freaked out for a second.

Later that night I met up with some friends to hit up a rooftop place in Umeda (downtown Osaka). It was about $25 for all your can eat and drink. Plus they had the Hanshin Tigers vs Yominuri Giants game on a jumbo tron on the building beside the roof. The Tigers and Giants are tied for the lead going into the home stretch so it was really good to have your hometown baseball team competing for a playoff spot.

Here is a video of me walking around Hirakata Park. Notice the Dixie Chicks playing in the background. It was all country music the whole time which was AMAZING. I heard some Pat Green at one point.

Climbing Mt.Fuji

2007-08-30T17:45:00.000-07:00

So one of my goals when I came to Japan was to climb Mt.Fuji. I found out that its only open July-August, so a couple of weeks ago I realized that I only had a two week window to climb it, otherwise I'd have to stick around another few months next year. So I called up my friend Leo who also likes climbing to see if he was planning on going. He said he was going the next weekend, so I met up with him and one of his buddies from Nagoya to climb the mountain.

Here is a picture of Fuji. Be aware this is the only picture you are going to see of the mountain in full. In the summer the mountain is usually covered with clouds so its really rare to get a full view without it covered in snow.

Fuji-san 3,776 m

We took a shikansen out there (bullet train) then had to take a bus from the shikansen to the 5th station of Fuji. Its right at the tree line. The great thing was it had been about 35 degrees in the town below, but once we got up to the 5th station it was a nice and cool 18 degrees. (I'm going to talk in the metric system because I have no idea what the F or Ft was)

Me and Leo at the base.
Me and Gavin at the base. Those sticks we are holding are climbing sticks. You get them stamped with the elevation at every station (from 5 to 10). So as we go on you might notice more stamps on them.
Fuji-san surrounded by clouds. It was actually really anti-climatic traveling to station 5 because we kept wondering where the mountain was.

Completely surrounded by clouds now.

Finally we get above the clouds.

Me and Leo at station 8.
Me by this sweet Tori at around station 8.5
We made it to around station 9 by sunset. Luckily we had reservations at a hotel at station 9. When I say hotel, I really mean normal sized house that sleeps 150 people.
Our bedroom. 6 people to a room. I slept next to this old Japanese guy who kept snoring. So I would roll over and hit him as hard as I could, then he would say something in Japanese and I'd act like I was asleep. Gavin had to sleep next to this 30 something Japanese couple. It was a strange nights sleep.

View from the front of the "hotel"

Sunrise on top of Fuji-san. Its prob 4 degrees and 80 km per hour winds.

Below those clouds is the city of Tokyo, which I have still yet to visit.
Me freezing but enjoying the sunrise.
So I think I've decided Japan is in fact a small place. Since I ran into my friends Quinn and Anne on top of Mt. Fuji. This is us around the volcano crater at the summit.
The very top of Fuji. We were so tired by this point we just hiked back down.

Fuji isn't really that hard of a hike, its just really long. It took us about 8 hours up, and 3 hours back down.

Summer Sonic

2007-08-20T19:06:00.002-07:00

So I went to this convert festival called Summer Sonic last weekend.

The lineup I saw:
OK GO (surprisingly awesome band)
The Editors
MXPX
Interpol (fell asleep during them, but they were good)
Modest Mouse (always the best at concerts I attend)
Gwen Stefanie
Travis (came out to the Rocky theme song)

Bands I didn't get to see but wanted to:
Avril Lavine
Black Eyed Peas
Polyphonic Spree
Fall out boy
Bright Eyes
Artic Monkeys

Here are some video's from the MXPX concert. About 10,000 Japanese teenagers and me. Oh well it reminded me of my punk rock days so I went along with it.

A picture of the festival. The festival proved to me that Japan is in fact a Utopian Society. No fighting, no massive amounts of drugs being taken. Just a group of friendly cordial people enjoying some music. Actually maybe that took some of the excitement out of it honestly

If you ever feel like Japan has too much influence on America by their domination of the electronics industry and how about50% of cars in America are Japanese...

Remember this: here is a concert being held between two baseball stadiums, with approximately 100 bands, 80% of which are from the USA, the rest from Canada or the UK, the entire crowd is wearing English t-shirts (mostly incoherent Engrish) and eating hot dogs and freedom fries.

Points is; we both have a lot of influence on each other. Japan more industrially, America more culturally. Regardless I think its great that Japan and American relations appear to be at an all time high.

So maybe its time the US government quit passing laws about how Japan needs to apologize for the comfort women of WW2. (http://www.japantoday.com/jp/news/413654/all did anyone else hear about this?)

This is a trash burning plant. So back int he 90's Japan had so much money they just started wasting it. In turn they decided to build the plant to look cool and modern so it wasn't an eye sore.

The main stage with Gwen Stefanie.

Me and my student Ryoichi at Travis.

More Hawaii and some Kansai

2007-08-11T08:48:00.001-07:00

So I was going to put up more pictures of Hawaii but most were of me while I was riding4-wheelers. Since the helmet was way to big for my body I decided against including most of those.

Here are a couple of goods ones though.

So last weekend I went hiking to this place called Roku Gaiden (Rock Garden). Its between Osaka and Kyoto so I figured it would have some good views of both cities.

This is a panoramic picture I created. As I walked up to the summit of this hike and turned around I actually said out loud to myself "holy crap". Thats how amazing the view was.

A little explanation, this is looking towards Osaka. You can see the tall buildings of Umeda (downtown Osaka) to the left right on the bay. It was a little cloudy today so you can't really make out the airport on the top right. Does anyone else think this looks like a simcity 3000 picture? Maybe just me and Slubbs.

A waterfall I passed on the hike.

There were all these signs that had the Japanese Kanji for "dangerous" on them with a picture of a pig. Now I know why.

This is Kobe. I haven't actually made it over here yet, but I figure the city which created Kobe beef and inspired the Bryant family to name their son must be pretty sweet.

Again more Osaka.
This is looking towards my house. Kyoto is in the valley up on the left. Is this picture as shocking to you guys as it is to me. Sometimes when I'm living down in that cramped space I forget just how much crap they fit into such a small place.

After the hike I went to one of my friend cities because there was an Obon festival.

They started doing this dance were all these old women in Kimonos were dancing around a bunch of old men playing drums. Well it wasn't 30 seconds until some old women grabbed me and forced me to participate. So this is me making a fool of myself in front of approximately 300 Japanese people.

Oh well there ended up being a cute girl in front of me.

So I'm having my first bit of culture shock. I think Japan might be worse than a country in Europe or something similar, because its so homogeneous. I mean seriously, everyone here is Japanese. Sometimes it really starts to wear on me that I'm such an outsider and stand out like a sore thumb. But thats just part of living abroad I guess.

Trip to Hawaii Part 1

2007-07-28T09:44:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the long absence from posting. I was lazy for a week in Japan, then I went to Hawaii and was even more lazy, but mainly it was because I was spending every waking moment watching English TV or eating American food.

So I headed to Kauai, Hawaii last Sunday. I left at 7:00 pm Japan time and arrived in Hawaii at 7:00 am. Had I realized that I was going to travel back in time I would have participated in massive amounts of illegal activity on Sunday afternoon since I had a foolproof alabi.

The flight was only 8 hours so its wasn't near as bad as my 12 hour gut wrenching "why am I doing this" flight to Japan. One of the greatest feelings was arriving at customs. Since my flight was about 99% Japanese people they were all rushing to customs because they knew the line would be ridiculous. But me, no I strolled my way through and arrived 2nd in line for the residents line.

The most shocking things about being back in America.

Not being the tallest person everywhere
I don't out weight everyone by at least 50 pounds
The clerks at McDonalds asked me what I wanted in English
I could actually read signs
Americans are all really really aggressive
It was weird to actually understand the conversations going on around me. But then I realized that most people are talking about ridiculous stuff like Lynsey Lohan or the calorie content of Diet Pepsi. I guess when you don't understand a language you always assume people are talking about something really profound, or actually I always just think they are talking about me.

Here are some pictures from my trip. I decided to do 2 posts cause I don't have all my pictures downloaded yet. So check back later for the rest.

This is Wameya Canyon. Its the Grand Canyon of the Pacific (Mark Twains words not mine).

The pacific ocean facing West. Sometimes its weird to think about the largest barrier on the planet is between me and my home.
Here are some pictures from our scuba/snorkel trip.

They guaranteed dolphins or your money back. No money was refunded.

This is the beach our hotel was on. Sam, Heath, and I did some boogie boarding. It was fun but it was like 5-6 foot waves. If you hit the waves wrong they would just throw you underwater for like 10 seconds, and I'd have no idea which way was up or down.

The family in front of a waterfall on the boat.

This is the north shore of Kauai. This is the part of the island from Jurassic park. This is where they filmed the helicopter flying up to the island. Its also the second highest seaside cliffs in the world behind Dover in the UK. I took over 80 pictures of this coastline in 1 hour. It was honestly one of the most breathtaking things I've ever seen. Here is a link to some more pictures of it if you are interested....
http://picasaweb.google.com/hollee.ford

This valley is called Hanali. Like from the song puff the magic dragon lives by the sea, and frolocks in the (autumn fields?) in a land called Hanali...

Our tour guide said that 300 years ago this valley was home to over 5000 Hawaiians. They kept it so well manicured it looked like a botanical garden from the ocean.

Me and the fam on the north cost of Kauai.

This is where we did our snorkeling/I did scuba diving. Not really the clearest water ever but the scenery was amazing.

I am alive

2007-07-16T22:45:00.000-07:00

I just looked at CNN.com and realized this whole Japan earthquake thing has gotten a lot of international press. So I figured I would let everyone know that I am safe. I actually didnt even feel the earthquake. It was in a town called Niigata. Niigata is about 200 miles northwest of tokyo. Osaka is about 200 miles southeast of Tokyo.

I do have a friend however that lives right outside of Niigata. He said it was about 20 seconds of his apartment shaking so hard he thought it was going to collapse. He also said lots of buildings in his town were either hurt or destroyed.

So while we are on subject I figured Id write a blog post about earthquakes in Japan.

Here is an article from CNN.com which has some interesting facts.

Japan, situated on the "Ring of Fire" arc of volcanoes and ocean trenches that partly encircles the Pacific Basin, accounts for about 20 percent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.
• A tremor occurs in Japan at least every five minutes, and each year there are up to 2,000 quakes that can be felt by people.
I always feel these small shakes in my bed at night. I thought it was just in my head.
• The Great Kanto earthquake of September 1, 1923, which had a magnitude of 7.9, killed more than 140,000 people in the Tokyo area. Seismologists have said another such quake could strike the city at any time.
This is a pretty big fear around the Tokyo area. Its the theory that Tokyo has a huge earthquake once about every 100 years. So since its been about 80 years they are due for another big one.
• On January 16, 1995, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.3 hit central Japan, devastating the western port city of Kobe. It was the worst earthquake to hit Japan in 50 years, killing more than 6,400 and causing an estimated $100 billion in damage.
Kobe is in my area of the country. This earthquake actually did some damage to the town I live in. Many of my students have stories about where they were when this happened. There is also a memorial every year to remember the victims. They decorate the whole town in these bright christmas light looking things. I really want to go next year its supposed to be beautiful.
• On October 23, 2004, a 6.8 magnitude quake struck the Niigata region, about 250 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, killing 65 people and injuring 3,000.
• On March 25, 2007, a 6.9 magnitude quake struck the Noto peninsula in Ishikawa prefecture, about 300 km west of Tokyo, killing one person, injuring more than 200 and destroying hundreds of homes.
I actually felt this one. I was sitting in the office of my school. The funny part was I ran to the closest window (out of instinct I guess) so that I would have a way to jump out if the building collapsed.
* The Tokyo metropolitan government said in March 2006 that a magnitude 7.3 earthquake under Tokyo would probably kill more than 5,600 people and injure almost 160,000. Official estimates of economic damage have topped more than $1 trillion.
• German insurer Munich Re was even more pessimistic, saying in 2004 that a severe earthquake in the Tokyo-Yokohama area would kill hundreds of thousands of people, cause damage running into trillions of dollars and have global economic repercussions.
• The Tokyo-Yokohama metropolis, with a population of 35 million, has the highest "at risk" rating from natural disasters such as earthquakes of any of the world's 30 "megacities", the report said.
This is actually pretty scary when you really think about it. I have never been to Tokyo but from my understanding its basically a city of 30 million people living in buildings built as cheap and as quickly as possible since most of Tokyo was destroyed during the war. Also when the Kobe earthquake happened it caused a massive decrease in the Japanese economy. If the same thing happened to Tokyo, especially this day in age, it really could cause some huge problems.

As scary as it is though, you have to remember this is part of living in Japan. Japanese people are just as scared of earthquakes as anyone else, maybe more scared actually. But they don't have a choice, this is where they live, they have to deal with it.

Weekend at the lake

2007-07-09T04:32:00.000-07:00

This weekend I went up with a group of people to a place called Lake Biwa. Its the biggest lake in Japan, just north of Kyoto. The south side is nasty and polluted but the north side is actually very nice and clean. We stayed at a Ryokan (Japanese Traditional Hotel) right on the beach.

Here are some pictures of the Hotel.

This is a big dinning room.

Hallway

View from the Hotel

view from my room.

Traditional Futon style sleeping. Hey it was only 3500 yen a night. (about 30 bucks)

view from my balcony

restaurant on the beach

I took these pictures in the morning when it was a little foggy. This afternoon the clouds opened up and it ended up being a really nice day. This is looking across the lake.

another view looking across the lake.

The group I came with. The weekend was pretty come and go. Lots of people in and out. But a few of us stayed the whole weekend.

The Saturday cookout feast.

This was what I cooked. A little culture note on Japan. No matter what the situation, food is always shared. Even though I brought this and cooked it myself, you still share it as a group. But the great thing is everyone does that, so you get to try lots of different things. Its actually such an integral part of Japanese culture that even when a group of gaijin get together, we still do the same thing. Theres really no such thing as walking into a restaurant with a group of friends and ordering something for yourself. Everyone orders a little bit and shares with the group.

I kept asking people if they wanted more skrimps, but they didn't know what I was saying. I had to explain in Texas, at least with my friends, we call them skrimps.

A little Jack Johnson on the radio, it felt a little bit like I was already in Hawaii. Only two more weeks!

Overall it was a great weekend. It was one of those weekends where I wore my swim trunks for all 2 days and the only showers I took were going swimming.

Late June

2007-06-26T07:36:00.001-07:00

So here are a few pictures from a hike I did on Monday.

They are out of order and two are sideways, but I can't figure out how to change that so... sorry.

The hike was supposed to be easy, but after about 3 miles of straight up stairs (I'm not kidding). And the fact that I was behind because I read the kanji wrong and got off on the wrong bus stop earlier that day. Sadly I say that I turned back... So these are the pictures I took before I brought shame upon myself and my whole family, or at least thats how a Japanese person would put it.

This was the farthest I got. It was really nasty muggy since it had rained the day before. And I'm not kidding when I say it was probably 90 degrees at the time of this picture. I felt like I had jumped into a pool I was so sweaty. Like my camera which was in my backpack in another case was wet.

This pretty sweet bridge at the start of the hike.

This was one of those hikes were I take a bus by myself out to the middle of nowhere. And I find sweet stuff like this, but I also get looks from 80 year old Japanese women equivalent of if I was an alien. I think more than anything they are amazed that a gaijin can actually figure out how to get here.

I don't know if you can tell but there are 4 or 5 little waterfalls coming out of this rock. There was a cup by the main part which made me believe it was safe to drink. But I didn't risk it.

So a few things I've done in the past couple of weeks.

I've been playing a lot of basketball. Japanese basketball teams are like the phoenix suns, if the suns were 12 Steve Nashes. Seriously we had 4 guys over 6 feet tall and they had 4 guys under 5'6, and they still beat us.

I've been hanging out in Osaka a lot lately, which is fun, except the trains stop running at 12:00pm and don't start again until 5:00 am. Its not that bad since everyone is in the same boat so we either go to a ramen shop or a karaoke bar to kill the 3:30-5 lull. But last week I feel asleep on the first train and woke up 2 towns over. So I didn't get home till like 7.

Lastly I leave you with this video. Its from a south park episode. Don't worry there is nothing offensive in it. All I'm going to say is this explains a lot of things in my life...

Kinkak-ji

2007-06-16T04:24:00.002-07:00

I'm uploading some pictures from last weekend.

I was still recovering from being sick so I took it easy for the first part of the weekend. Then on Monday I went to visit this temple in Kyoto. Its called Kinkak-ji which means Golden Pavilion. Here is some information if anyone is interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinkaku-ji.

This is the first view as you walk into the temple gates. They kind of throw the whole shabang at you all at once.

Close up of the temple. Its actually covered in real Gold.

The rest of the temple had some nice waterfalls and ponds.

People in Japan are all about good luck. In fact I think if they saved the money they spent on fortune tellers and throwing yen into Shrines, they wouldn't need luck since they'd be rich.

Top of the Golden Pavilion.

Nice little reflecting pond. But at this point my stomach bug had started to come back, so I couldn't really enjoy it as much as I wanted.

Some things that happened this week worth mentioning:

Tuesday my Manger and Native Japanese teacher were gone. So I was the only person at our school all day. Which is pretty scary when people try to call or come by to deliver packages and stuff.
Thursday I went to Osaka for teacher training. It was actually pretty good tips on how to improve my English teaching. It felt kind of weird being on the train in a full suit with all the Japanese businessmen going to work though. I felt like everyone was like, "does this gaijin really think he is normal?"
Training was from 12-8. At 8 we left the building, and they made us say some Japanese phrase to the workers up at the office. I asked what it meant, and our trainer said, "It means I'm sorry for leaving work before you". Geez we left at 8 pm and still had to apologize. These people really do love to work.
Friday I made one of my children students cry. She's in the class with her brother who is like 3 years older than her. So at the end of the class we are practicing writing and I notice she is just looking at the ground. Well after about 5 minutes I realize is full on balling. My manager comes in and speaks about 3000 words in Japanese and come to find out she is upset because she can't do what her brother can. Again, Japanese people really do love to work and study. Even at 7 years old.
My friend Takuya is DJing at a local club tonight. He came by the other day and asked me to think of a cool DJ name in English, all Japanese DJ's have English names. So I said since your first name is Takuya why don't you go by DJ Tic Tak. Well he didn't really like that so I said, Since your last name is Sasuda, why don't you try DJ Sasquatch. So I'm about to leave for the worldwide debut of DJ Sasquatch.
I also turned 25 yesterday. I bought myself some cakes bites at the store to celebrate. Not really I actually eat them almost every day. Anyway I'm halfway through my 20's. Which is really depressing. And since I don't have a car I can't celebrate the only positive of turning 25 which is lower car insurance.

Chad

Weekend of Physical Exhaustion

2007-06-06T08:35:00.000-07:00

I bought this book called Hiking in Japan last week. It has a few of the best hiking spots near my area. One place it called "The Best One Day Hike In Kansai". So of course the first free day I had I spent the $20 in train fee to make it up to north Kyoto to see what this hike was all about.

Its called Yatsubuchi no taki. I have no idea what that means but it sounds cool. So last Monday I head up to the town where the trail starts (which is in the middle of no where). While I'm there I hear a couple of girls speaking English (2 college students from Georgia on a school trip), and sure enough they are headed to the same spot. So they convince me to take a bus stop before my book says as to make a short cut to the trail. Well it turns out we get lost and end up turning back. Which wasn't all bad because I ended up meeting them in Osaka that night to eat at Outback Steakhouse. Which was amazing because the waiters spoke English and they had free refills on Sodas.

But after I was conquered by Yatsubuchi last week I felt the need to go back. So I grabbed a couple of my buddies and made my way back to the small town of Kuradani.

Here is Kuradni, a small rice village just north of Kyoto.

This is the start of the Yatsubuchi no take.

Its a waterfall hike that then goes over a mountain and back down the other side.

The book called this hike Medium to Hard. Word to the wise, when a book made by hikers for hikers says something is medium to hard, they mean its pretty hard.

There were chains and ropes in some parts to help you climb the wet rocks.

Sean and I next to the engraved stone that says Yatsubuchi no taki.

Some nice waterfalls we passed on our hike.

Me and Robbie next to prob the best waterfall of the hike.

Robbie and I decided to go swimming. Well it was about 60 degrees in this pool, so it wasn't very comfortable. But quite refreshing once I got my clothes back on.

So here is the top of the mountain we climbed. This is Lake Biwa, the largest lake in Japan. One thing that Robbie said that I agreed with is its amazing how Japan still looks like Japan from above. Maybe it doesn't to you guys, but where else do you see thousands of small mountains just popping out of the ground.

Here is the town the we started from Kurdani.

So we were supposed to find this cable car to take us back down to the train station. But we decided to hike down the backside to get some better views of Lake Biwa.

Well not the smartest decision, since Sean and I were both low on water.

So by the end of the hike we are all struggling pretty bad. We are out of water and the sun is quickly setting behind us. We managed to make it out of the forest right before daylight.

All said and done, that was the most physically exhausting thing I've ever gone thru. Maybe the dehydration was part of it, but I came home and laid on my floor for 3 hours before I could even move. I had to call in sick to work the next day, because I think I caught some sort of stomach bug during the whole process.

(Also I can't help but feel lucky that I didn't end up finding the trail with those two girls last week. Like it seriously probably would have killed them. I might be in a Japanese prison right now.)

And in case you are wondering, it is not fun to be sick in a foreign country. I went to the drug store and bought the first piece of medicine that had a stomach on it. For all I know it could actually have something to do with menstrual cramps, but I just took one (against advice from my mother) and it appears to be working slightly.

Oh well, here is to me hopefully feeling better soon.

Also a big congratulations to Mr and Mrs Jason P. Purser and Mr and Mrs Bryce D Doty. Wish I could have been there for you guys, but I'm really happy for you!

Chad

Japanese Baseball Game

2007-05-29T07:44:00.000-07:00

So this weekend I was finally able to go to my first Japanese Baseball game.

A couple of weeks ago in one of my classes I had mentioned wanting to go, and of course one week later my student Hideki had bought tickets and already planned the entire day (Japanese people are great planners). So Sunday I headed out for Koshien Stadium stadium.

If anyone is interesting in getting some more detail about the Stadium, or Japanese Baseball check out this link http://www2.gol.com/users/michaelo/Koshien.html.

Otherwise here is a brief overview. Baseball was actually introduced to Japan before WW2. Somewhere in the later 1800's I believe. The stadium I went to Koshien was built in the 1930's. It was designed after Polo grounds. The famous old Yankees and Mets baseball stadium. Babe Ruth actually came to Japan and played at Koshien stadium back in the 30's. The stadium reminded me alot of Wrigley Field though. It had Ivy all around the outside and inside walls.

The Hanshin Tigers is the team I went to see. Hanshin is actually a Japanese company. In Japanese Baseball the team is named after the company. So it would be like the Ford Tigers, or the Walmart Red Sox. Kind of lame, but anyway... The Tigers are in the Central League. Japan has two leagues the Central and Pacific. The Central league has no DH, the Pacific does. Each leauge has 6 teams. In the Central league is the Hanshin Tigers, and the Yominuri(Tokyo) Giants. I've mentioned here before that Tokyo and Osaka as cities are huge rivals. Well it carries over into baseball as well. The Giants are the Yankees of Japanese baseball for sure. They have the biggest payroll, the best record of championships, and they play in the biggest city. What does the make the Tigers? Most people compare them to the Red Sox. They are the lovable losers, who usually don't win that many games. But they still have ton's of fans all over the country.

So as I walk in I can already hear the chants from the Japanese fanatical fans. All I can say is Japanese baseball is what American college baseball should be like. It really feels like a American college Football or Basketball game inside. They have bands, cheering sections, and these people could put the Aggies to shame with their devotion to their team.

While looking at these pictures keep in mind this is a team that is in last place, and ends up losing the game 14-2. Yet in the 9th inning they were still cheering.

A view of inside the park.

Outside the park. The green part is ivy underneath, but they are doing repairs s it wasn't visible from the outside.

Me and my student Mami outside the stadium. Of course, the peace sign.

My Student Hideki, had this HUGE camera lens. Well he actually let me put my SIM card inside and take some pictures with it. So these are the close ups....

The team we were playing. None other than the Chiba Mariners. Lead by the Japanese Baseball icon himself, Bobby Valentine.

A close up of the Chiba fans section. Yes just like a college football game there was a visitors section, only made up of Chiba fans.

This is the Chiba section. You can tell by the black to yellow contrast.

Instead of old men walking around selling beer out of a can. They have beer girls with Keg Backpacks.

A view of the Ivy.

Score board. You can see that Chiba came out firing and scored 7 runs in the first two innings.
Me and Hideki...

Looking at the score board you can see its the 9th inning and we are down by 12. Yet this guy is still leading cheers. He isn't a cheerleader or anything, just a volunteer fan.

Hot Dogs. This things tasted pretty gross. It had lettuce and what I think was mayonnaise. Anyway it was worth eating a dog at a baseball game. Just doesn't feel like Summer has started until I do that.

These are the Chiba fans doing some chant while their team is up to bat. You are only allowed to cheer when your team is batting.

Instead of the 7th inning stretch, they blow up these balloons and then let them fly into the air. Notice how Mami's balloon (the huge red one right next to me) hits the guy holding the flag right in front of us.

The rest of the video's are just random chants going on during the game.

Weekend Pics

2007-05-22T18:47:00.000-07:00

So this weekend I had a barbeque in Osaka with some of the JET (Japanese English Teacher) at my school friends. Here is an overview of the setup. The grill was built into the table. The main things we made were: Pork, Beef, Fish, Eel (Unagi), Mushrooms, and Corn. BTW corn is not easy to eat chopsticks with.

On a side note my Dad asked me often I use chopsticks the other day. When I thought about it I realized I pretty much use them all the time now, I only use a fork or spoon when its required by the type of food, i.e. curry or spaghetti.

At the end we made (and by "we" I mean "they") flaming Chinese noodles. I wasn't that impressed, they were not that spicy.

Found a four leaf clover. First time I've ever seen one in real life. Amazingly the four leaf clover is also lucky here in Japan, and it has nothing to do with the Irish influence. Some Japanese actually think the four leaf clover thing is a Japanese creation.

So with the lucky four leaf clover, of course I wished for "World Pace". Seriously we need to Pace ourselves....

After The barbaque, the next morning I went back to Osaka to check out Den Den town. Den Den town is a section of Osaka known for its cutting edge really cheap electronic stores. So its kind of picture of heaven for me.

This is a random store I walked into, its like Fry's Electronics, times 1000.

A video game store I walked into. Just thought this picture was so visually shocking I had to take it...

More Den Den.

The main street of Den Den.

After Den Den I headed to Osaka Castle Park. I stumbled upon this information booth. Read the part in English, I think it gives a semi-interesting view into the perception of the war from the Japanese.

From my understanding basically Japan thinks a. War is terrible b. There were terrible things done to us c. we did terrible things. I'm not going to get into a commentary or anything, but I did think it was worth showing.

So we lit some fireworks in the park after dark.

Some nice views of Osaka and the Castle at night...

16.33% done

2007-05-18T08:48:00.000-07:00

So today is my 2 month anniversary. Which means if I only stay in Japan one year I'm already 16% done with my stay. I guess the normal thing would be to say if feels like its gone by so fast. In some ways it has... But for the most part, I feel like I've already lived here for a year. I guess just because I seen and experienced so much in only 2 months, its like I've crammed the amount of experiences I have in one year in the states into 2 months in Japan. That might sound like I'm saying Japan is better than the US, but realize I'm including the negative things I've experienced in that too.

I guess I've reached a point where Japan feels "normal" to me. Its feel like my home, I'm comfortable here. So I decided to make a list of the things that are starting to become normal to me, but at first were the biggest shock.

So here it is, my strangest things about Japan list:
1. They drive on the left side of the road
2. I'd say about 70% of the population smokes
3. The 10 biggest Japanese companies make everything here (Toshiba, Mitsubishi, Honda, Yamaha, etc...) Seriously elevators, pencils, TV's, windows, wicker baskets full of clams. Let me put it this way, Asahi, makes my Soft Drinks, my bicycle, and provides my internet.
4. There are vending machines everywhere. You can buy food, drinks (alcoholic included), dvd's, cigarettes within 100 yards of my house.
5. The pencils have no erasers on the ends here. All my students carry a pencil and a separate eraser.
6. Everyone has a cell phone, but never talks on it. Minutes are so expensive here, that everyone just TXT messages with their phones. Its also considered rude to talk on the phone in public.
7. Its rude to walk down the street: eating, drinking, well basically anything I do on a regular basis is considered rude to them. The best analogy I can give for Japan is: Remember that scene in Titanic where Jack shows up at the fancy dinner party and has no idea what to do. Yeah thats like being a foreigner in Japan. Everyone is acting by an unspoken set of strictly defined rules and you no matter what are going to break them on a daily basis. The good thing is you aren't expected to follow them.
8. Japan is still a really formal place. Everyone wears suits to work.
9. The population is shrinking. Walking in downtown Osaka you wouldn't feel like there is shortage of people. But the population of Japan is shrinking rapidly. Its become a pretty serious concern for the general public.
10. Prison Break (the TV show) is huge here
11. Since there is no room for landfills they have to burn their trash. Which means you have to be very careful about separating burnable and unburnable (or they might stop taking your garbage). This leads to some pretty hazey days.
12. People rip on Americans for creating garbage, but I think Japan takes the cake. I swear if you buy a doughnut, they will wrap the doughnut, then put that in a bag, then put the bag in a bag, then tape the bag shut. I then proceed to go outside and open all 3 layers of wrapping, eat the doughnut and throw the 4 pounds of wrapping away.
13. They love English letters even though they never use them correctly. You know how people in the US get Chinese character tattoo's. Well English is like that here, except it doesn't make any sense. I've seen some of the most insane English on t-shirts you could ever imagine. My friend saw a shirt that said "I'm a sucker for diction", but usually its just stuff like "California, bright rays on great land shine ever through the basic forest."
14. This might be the windiest country ever.
15. If you walk into any store, you will immediately get bombarded with insane Japanese phrases, which I've come to find out basically mean "Welcome to our store, please buy anything you'd like!!!!!" "Can I help you? Please let me know if I can!!!!!!".
16. You pay your bills at the gas station.
17. The ATM's close here at night and on holidays because they are afraid people will break into them. HEY JAPAN, NEWS FLASH, America has about 1000 times more crime and our ATM's are open 24 hours. I don't really think we have a problem with it...
18. There is a gun store by my house. And by gun store I mean it says Gun Store on the front, except they sell plastic imitation guns. They really do look like real guns though....
19. There are probably about 1000 times more shrines in Japan than Churches in the US. However religion here is so strange, its more like a hobby than an actual way of life.
20. Bread here is only sold in packs of 5 slices.
21. They have McDonalds, KFC, and Wendy's, and they are exactly the same as in the US. No Taco Bell, Chipotle, or Taco Bueno though. BTW I'm willing to pay $100 for a fresh Chipotle burrito, in case anyone can get that taken care of.
22. Westerners, specifically Americans might have the weirdest stereotype you can imagine here. Its like we are loved but also feared on so many levels.

Thats all I could think of right now. But rest assured there are plenty of things I know I'm leaving out.

Anyway I miss everyone but I'm still having a great time. Mom don't worry you can still be assured that Japan is only my temporary home...

Horse Races in Kyoto

2007-05-11T07:26:00.000-07:00

After spending most of Golden Week visiting temples and shrines and other historical buildlings.... We decided to hit up the local horse racing track to see a different side of Japanese culture. The fact that they love to gamble....

So we pay 200 yen to get in ($2) and soon realize that we are the only foreigners in the whole place. I've gotten pretty used to feeling like the minority, but usually in a crowd of about 7,000 people there will be at least 50 foreigners or so, but not here. 7,000 Japanese, and 5 foreigners. Lucky most of them were way too concerned with betting money too give us glaring eyes.

So here is how horse racing works. You go to the back and look at the horses and the odds, pick the ones you want, and make a bet. Well it works a little different in Japan, because all of the odds, the horses names, and the betting sheets are completely in Japanese. So the first couple of races it was my two friends who speak Japanese and one of their girlfriends helping me and my friends Shawn (we both have 0% Japanese ability) to make our bets.

It was about 90% Japanese businessmen.

So after about 4 races we started to feel pretty comfortable betting, even though the card was completely in Japanese. Shawn and I both can't really order food, or talk about the weather, but we now know how to place a superfecta box, and a place, show, win bet on any horse.

I think by the end we were actually telling Robbie's girlfriend how to bet, even though she's the one who speaks Japanese. Kind of like how sometimes when I'm with a group I all of a sudden take on the navigator role, even though I don't speak Japanese. Yeah I guess its just part of our genetic makeup to know how to navigate and bet on horse races.

But hey I'm sure most of my lower level female students can still talk about their feelings in English better than I can...

Of course they had to put a shinto shrine in the middle of the track.

A view of the crowd.

For the whole day I think I won about $.20.

I'd like to go back one day when it isn't raining.

Nara

2007-05-08T18:09:00.000-07:00

Golden week is over and I'm back to teaching. It was a lot of fun, but its nice to get back into a routine again.

Here are some pictures from my trip to Nara. Nara was the first capital of Japan. But only about 100 years it was then moved to Kyoto (also close by), then it was finally moved to Tokyo (booooo). If you don't know there is a huge rivalry between people from Tokyo (Kanto) and people from Kansai (Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto, Nara). Of course I think Kansai is much better. Kansai is know for its great food, friendly and funny people, and historical treasures. Tokyo is known for its prestigious companies and colleges, stuck up people, and Disney world.

Here is me and my friend Shawn in Nara. Shawn was born and raised in New York, and he now lives in a town of 18,000 in north Japan. Its safe to say he's experiencing a little more culture shock than me.

This is one of the protectors of the Temple.
It was a holiday, so it was really crowded. Shawn and I keep looking at each other and saying "Geez, where did all these Asians come from."

This is a model of Todaji. Its the building in the middle. Its the largest wooden building in the entire world. Inside of it is a iron Budda statue that I would guess is about 6 stories tall. Also to the right you can see 2 pagoda's (The multi-level temple things). These are no longer standing, but when they were built in the 700's they were the tallest man made structures behind the pyramids. I thought that was really cool, as it showed that ancient Japan was technologically just as advanced as anyone.

This is a hole cut out of a pillar. One thing to keep in mind, the hole in this pillar is the same size as the nostril on the nose of the Budda. Kids try to walk thru this hole for good luck.

So here it is, Dabatsu (I just call it the big budda). This was made in the 700's by Buddhist monks. Its hard to get a feel from this picture of just how huge this thing is. Notice that it almost reaches to top of the building, so later when I've posted the full view of the building, you'll get a better feel of the size.

Here is me in front of it.

A look on the outside of Todaji (the building that houses Dabatsu).

A full view of Todaji. The largest wooden building in the world.

Thought this dragon was cool.

Deer roam free thru the streets of Nara. It took all the patience I had not to grab a gun and try to kill one.

Shawn trying to punch a deer, which then just smelled his fist looking for food.

This was another pagoda, I don't remember the name of it... Its the oldest wooden structure in the world.

A nice pond in the middle of Nara...

This was a graveyard I found in Kyoto, just thought it looked neat.
Tomb of the Unknown soldier in Kyoto. It was closed so I couldn't go in. I prob wouldn't have gone in anyway though...

A video I took of some guys making some biscuit looking things.

All in all I'd say that Nara and Todaji is probably the coolest thing I've seen since I got to Japan. If anyone makes a trip to Japan, Nara has to be on the top of your list.

Golden Week

2007-05-02T19:37:00.000-07:00

Right now is a time called Golden Week in Japan. Its 4 national holidays all in one week, so they just let the entire working population off for the whole time. So far its been great but I haven't really had time to do much blogging because I have 3 guys staying with me, so space is a little tight.

We went to a place called 48 waterfalls on Wednesday. Its a day hike where up into a gorge.

This is the town where we started, its about 1 hour from osaka. Nothing but rice fields all around.

This guy was using this machine to plant the rice...

Waterfall 1 of 48.
Me with my eyes closed...

These are my friends. To the left is Terrell and Sean.

On the bottom is John and Hanna, Hanna is from this area.

Great view of the gorge. It took us about 4 hours to do the whole hike.

This was a cool part. The whole forest was covered in Moss.

Nice view of some lake I took while on the bus.

This is the end of the gorge where we ended up.

GO Mavs.

New Apartment pics

2007-04-26T07:58:00.000-07:00

I've rearranged the place a little bit since I first moved in. Feels a little more like home now. Thought I'd show you guys the pictures.

Brought ole glory with me...

I'm now sleeping up on the loft. Its kind of dangerous because if I roll of I might die...

My friend Takyu from next door gave me his couch. He said he's too scared to sleep up on the loft, so he didn't have a place to put it. Anyway its about the size of a loveseat for kids in America, but hey it was free.

Glad to hear the mavs won.

I'm officially an alien

2007-04-22T20:36:00.000-07:00

So I've finally gotten my Gaijin card, which is kind of like a green card. It allows me to get things like a cell phone or internet (hopefully I will get soon). Here is a picture of mine. Notice the top right next to Nationality: it says Texas. I don't know if they were looking at a map of the US circa 1825 when Texas was still a sovereign nation. Anyway I was still able to get a cell phone with it, which makes me feel a little more at home here.

I got a brand called softbank. They have the best options for English phones, and their commercials all have Brad Pitt and Camron Diaz... butt thats not why I got it...

Also having a cell phone in Japan makes people look at you a little differently. If you walk around the city most people just assume that you are a tourist. But when you do things like pull out a cell phone or ride on a bike people realize, "hey this guy actually lives here."

These are some pictures of downtown Osaka I took last week before the Ben Kweller concert. Thought I'd put them up here...

Seriously how many bridges do they need to cross this river...

Downtown Umeda Osaka on the river.

Its election time right now in Japan. Which means I'm even more confused than usual. Instead of putting commercials on TV openly questioning the honesty and policies or your opponent like all other democracies, Japan hires people to put speakers on top of their cars and drive around yelling and screaming things I don't understand. All I know is it wakes me up in the morning and I try to figure out which politician it they represent so I can make sure to never vote for them, even though its 100% impossible for me to ever get voting rights in Japan.

Anyway here was a huge crowd that was watching some Japanese guy yell things, I don't know what it was about but about every 30 seconds the crowd would break out into thunderous applause.

Yesterday me and some friends went to a public park in a town called Kobe. Its about 30 minutes west of Osaka.

This was the park, it was the biggest open space I've seen since I've been in Japan. Seeing a field with this much grass was kind of shocking.

It was a cloudy day but it kind of created a cool looking scene on the mountains with the fog...

After the park we went back to my friend Nayan's place to play some Wii sports. It was tough to play Wii with 4 people in a Japanese size apartment but we did it. Then we ordered two medium pizza's from domino's which ended up being $40 and seriously the medium pizza's were only a little bit bigger than a personal pan pizza.

I'm listening to the mavs game right now, they are down by 5 with only a few minutes left, geez this sucks...

Ben Kweller concert

2007-04-16T19:09:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks before I left for Japan one of my favorite bands/singer was playing in Dallas, Ben Kweller. So I called a couple of friends and we bought tickets to go see him at the Gypsy Tea Room in Deep Elm. A couple of days before the concert I looked on his website and noticed that he announced a Japan tour in April. Amazingly he was gong to be in Osaka on April 16th, and at that point I knew I would already be in Japan by then. So I went into the concert in Dallas with the mindset of trying to meet Ben or someone associated with him who might be able to get me a free ticket to the concert in Osaka.

The night of the concert we ended up being a little late, so we walked in while Ben was playing. I was a little bumbed that we 1. missed some of his show and 2. we had to stand in the back since the place was already so crowded. We walked to the back and stood for a few minutes. Then this girl came up to me and goes, "I just wanted to say that I think you are a really attractive red-headed guy." I was like wow ok thanks, then realized her husband/boyfriend was standing next to her, so it actually was making me a little uncomfortable. Then she said "me and my boyfriend just had a baby with bright red hair, and its nice to know there are some good looking red-headed guys out there." Wow what a great compliment. So I responded with "So does anyone in your family have red-hair?" She paused for a second then said, "Well my grandfather goes, and so does my baby brother... hes on stage right now" (as she points to Ben Kweller). Oh my gosh this is Ben Kwellers sister! So I make conversation for a couple of minutes then drop the bombshell, "So I'm moving to Osaka in 2 weeks, Ben is going to be there, you should tell him to hook me up with some free tickets." She tells me to give her my email, so I write it on a piece of paper and hand it to her.

A few weeks go by without hearing anything and I'm starting to think, well its prob not going to work out. Then right before I leave for Japan, Heidi Kweller (Ben sister) emails me and tells me I'm on the list for the Osaka show. Wow I'm so pumped, I've never been "on the list" before.

So fast forward to yesterday. I email one of my friends who also likes Ben Kweller, we meet up and decide to head towards the concert. First of all I felt a huge sense of accomplishment that I actually found the concert since I had to look at a map in all Japanese to find it, and also that I was able to meet up with my friend Robbie without having a phone. We decide to meet at the Osaka Umbeda station, which is like saying, "hey lets meet at DFW airport". However since he is like 6'6 and I have red-hair we are pretty easy to find in a crowd.

We head over to the concert, also luckily my friend Robbie speaks Japanese, so we go up to the front and he says, "Watashitashi wa namae ga geesto listo". Actually it was prob something different but thats what I heard. Anyway this guy tells us to wait outside for a minute. Its raining so at this point I'm thinking, ok if I really was on the list I don't think this guy would make me stand out in the rain. But also this is Japan so you really just never know what is going on. After a few minutes he brings us in, they look at the list and it has one name on it: Chad Huston + 1 VIP guest. Sawweeet. So we got these cool VIP passes...

The concert was awesome. We weren't allowed to take pictures so I have nothing to show for it other than the pass. Ben played an entire concert by himself, guitar for half and piano for the other half. There were some pretty funny moments that reminded me I was in Japan. First the entire crowd was so silent during the concert. Between songs I swear you could hear the air conditioner. Secondly at one point he goes "Is everyone having a good time tonight", which was followed by 5 seconds of silence. I guess he didn't realize that there were only 2 people in the crowd that spoke english well enough to understand that, or maybe they did understand but didn't want to respond out of respect (who knows). Also all thru the concert he would try to get people to sing, which was so funny because you could hear a chorus of japanese accents singing things like "I'ma jusuta pennaya ona trainu tracuku".

So afterwards Ben went out front to sign some t-shirts and cd's and stuff. I walked up to him and he goes "So you must be Chad". I was like "yeah man thanks for the free tickets". We talked for a few seconds about how I meet his sister and what we were doing in Japan. He signed me and Robbies press pass. And then we left since there was a long line of people wanting to get stuff signed.

All in all it was an awesome concert and it was free.

Chad

My School

2007-04-15T21:28:00.000-07:00

So I've managed to find a few places in my city where they have free wireless internet. Right I'm at McDonalds. So it gives me another excuse to satisfy my huge American appetite since I can get free internet while I'm here.

I decided to give some info about my school. I work for a school called GEOS, which is one of the big 4 English language schools in Japan. My school has about 150 students, with 3 teachers and one manager.

This is my classroom. I think its actually bigger than my apartment.
Not a bad view on a clear day...

Front of the school...

Managers office. This is the most confusing place I've ever been in . Its a complete mix of Japanese and English written everywhere.

Hallway, my room is on the left.

View of the city from the balcony thing outside my window.

This is the center of my city, Hirakata.

These are the train tracks that head to Osaka.

The main train station in Hirakata.

My books and teaching materials. Lucky the teacher before me left everything.

My desk. Do you think this means I can say I've had my own office now?

I'm heading to Osaka to try and get into the Ben Kweller concert tonight. Hopefully I'll have some good pictures to upload later this week.

Chad

Bad News

2007-04-11T05:45:00.000-07:00

So I woke up this morning and opened my computer, only to find the wireless internet connection I had been using now has a password. I guess my neighbor started to realize the loss in bandwidth. Anyway this means for at least 2-3 weeks I will only be able to post once or twice a week. Hopefully after that I will get my own internet connection installed in my place.

Just wanted to let everyone know in advance that the future lack of posting isn't voluntary.

Chad.

Weekend pictures

2007-04-09T17:36:00.000-07:00

Here are a few pictures from this weekend all mixed together.

On Sunday a girl that used to teach at my school came in from London to visit all her friends. So a bunch of people met in Osaka at a place called a Shabu-Shabu. Its another all you can eat type restaurant where they give you sliced meat and vegetables, that you then cook yourself in a boiling pot of water sitting on the table.

You can see the pot to the right...

The girl to the right of me is the one from London. The other two guys I met while I was there. They own their own school up in the countryside.

Some Easter eggs...

Of course, karaoke afterwards...

So after the get together in Osaka on Sunday, I headed out to Kyoto to see some Cherry Blossoms on Monday.

A train track covered in Cherry Blossoms.

I decided to take a walking tour from the Kyoto book I borrowed from my friend Noah. Its called "A philosophical meandering through northern Higashiyama." This is a traditional Japanese rock garden the book recommended.

Some more temples along side the Cherry Blossoms.

A roman style Aqueduct. I didn't really see any information about when this was built, kind of strange to see this in the middle of traditional Japanese architecture.

The top of the Aqueduct.

A shrine under a waterfall about 1 KM up into the mountains.

View looking down from on top of the waterfall.

I walked a couple of minutes further into the woods from the waterfall. It was the first time I've felt completely outside of the city since I've been here.

A very organized baseball practice. No wonder they are so good at baseball. This was a group of about 25 kids practicing hitting and fielding, with no coach or grownup in sight.

These pictures are from the "Path of Philosophy." Its a small canal running thru southeast Kyoto covered in Cherry Blossoms.

Close up view.

I liked the palm tree next to the cherry blossoms in this picture.

Some more cherry blossoms parties...

Took these pictures from downtown Kyoto as I was leaving...

Cherry Blossom Party in Osaka

2007-04-07T05:58:00.000-07:00

Since the Cherry Blossoms are in full bloom the traditional thing to do is get a group of friends together and have a party under the cherry trees. A couple of other teachers I met a while back invited me to come out to Osaka for the day. So I headed out a little early to see some of the sights then met up with them later.

This is called the Umeda Sky Building. Its a huge office building right in the heart of Osaka. Pretty impressive structure. Notice how the elevator shaft goes right down the middle. Its supposed to be a pretty scary ride to the top. But I figure I'll go up when its a clearer day. The visibility was terrible, again due to all the sand blowing in from China.

This is a view of Osaka right off the bay. Its kind of weird, Osaka is a huge city but there not really a downtown like Dallas. Its more as if lots of skyscrapers are scattered around the entire area. Like Houston, except times 1000.

This is a far away view of Osaka Castle. We had our cherry blossom party underneath the trees right by the castle. You can see a couple of cherry trees to the right here...

More cherry trees. This park is kind of like central park. A huge park right in the middle of a downtown metropolitan area.

A good view of Osaka castle. This was rebuilt in the 50's I believe, after we bombed Osaka. Its kind of weird to think about that...

Me and this British guy I met at the party, can't remember his name...

My friend Robbie decided to climb up in the cherry tree. Just to put this in perspective, this would be equivalent to seeing a Japanese person shooting a bald eagle with a gun, then going over and burning an American flag over the dead corpse. Still it was funny...

Also, this guy looks and talks just like my friend Josh Tardy.

After the Cherry Blossoms we made our way to a local Karaoke room...

This is a pretty terrible picture of me...

One of my buddies singing...

Kyoto Part Deux Video's

2007-04-04T09:17:00.000-07:00

These are the some other video's I took while at the Shrine in Kyoto.

I tried to turn the camera to myself in a few this time so you could see my face. But it turned out looking really awkward.

Kyoto Part Deux

2007-04-04T00:26:00.000-07:00

So this is a post of my second trip to Kyoto. I guess I should start coming up with more creative titles, since saying Kyoto Trip part 2 is like saying Dallas trip part 2 when you live in Garlington (Arlington or Garland).

So me and my friend Sean headed up to Fushimi Inari Taisha (伏見稲荷大社). Here is a link to wikipedia for a description of what the shrine is for:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fushimi_Inari-taisha

In a nutshell its a shrine that has torii (the red gates) lined from the bottom of a mountain to the top. This is the first torii to the shrine.

Up ahead is the main shrine at the bottom of the mountain.

There were people standing around throwing money into this building, then ringing a bell and clapping their hands.

Steps leading up to the mountain.

The shrine had something to do with a fox. Since the animal I resemble most is a fox I felt right at home here. Except the fox in this shrine were really evil looking...

Sean and I at a fork in the road. A bunch of Japanese girls that kept looking at us went left, so naturally we went left as well.

It was really amazing how many torii are in this shrine. This part specifically had thousands and thousands of torii.

Tried to take a picture of the other side, you can see how close together the torii are.

This is looking backwards. I realized they had writing on the back. I think each torii is sponsored by a family...

End of this section into another part of the shrine.

This is a map that kind of shows how big this shrine is. Its at least 2 miles to the top, and there were multiple different routes to the top and down the back. All covered in rows of torii.

This was a small shrine we found in the middle of the woods.

Good view of the torri from outside...

A nice little waterfall/stream along side the path.

About every 200 yards the torii would stop and there would be a small shrine like this.

View of a nice little pond about half way up the mountain.

You can see the torii winding thru the forest.

The path was also lined with these small tea houses.

View overlooking Kyoto. It was kind of a cloudy day. And also I later found out that during this time of year sand gets blown in from China and makes the visibility terrible. I kind of thought it was just pollution so that was a relief.

Nothing like a cold bottle of Pocari Sweat to quench your thirst after climbing a shrine.

Top of the shrine.

Me overlooking Kansai valley. My house is somewhere in the middle of that urban sprawl.

If you look at the bottom of the mountain you can see the oranges gates that start the shrine. So from that point to here is all pathways lined with torii.

Going down the backside.

Down the back the torii were spaced out a little further.

Nice little waterfall behind a tea house.

This building had a lot of noise coming from it. But the gate was locked so we figured not a good idea for two gaijin to walk in.

Proof to my dad that Japan in fact does have grass and trees.

At this point we got lost and ended up next to some high school. Anyway it had some nice cherry blossoms outside. We finally made it back to the train station.

I've got a few more videos to upload, but youtube is down right now so check back later on.

Chad