Relaxation in Nature

After a long night of partying we decided to hit up the waterfall nearby. It was absolutely beautiful.

It was a long walk down winding stairs and trails but well worth the short journey.


At first I had to sit and take it all in. This is the back of Rowan, he's a Kiwi a couple towns away. He's an amazing guy.


You'll notice on the larger size of the above picture there is a shrine just to the right of Rowan. I have no idea what it is for, but its pretty old and is a perfectly natural place for a shrine. I wish my descendants would put a shrine up in such a beautiful place for me and my family.


After taking in the view we jumped in the cold water. The water was absolutely crystal clear. We could lay on the rocky bottom and look up at the falls.


There was a rock protruding out of the water. It was a great place to jump off of.


This is our crew, Tim is behind the book, Rowan is behind him. To the right is Chris and Eric is the big guy in the front, thinking about video games.


It was so unreal.


This is a Mukare, a dangerous little creature that likes to hide inside your house and bite you. The bite hurts really bad and sometimes requires a trip to the doctor!


Eric snapped this shot of me jumping off the waterfall. I climbed up the fall a bit and found a good place to jump off. I'll definitely be back to this fall.

Party in the City

This weekend we journeyed to the biggest little city on the Hanto (peninsula) to see our friend DJ and to live it up. We had a great time, here is a photo tour.

Some embarrassing photos of myself follow so please be warned.

First we stopped into a Kaitenzushi (Conveyer belt sushi) for dinner. I ate RAW HORSE MEAT!!! In this area of Japan, basashi (the raw horse meat) is quite popular. I was unable to snap a photo of the basashi because I was stuffing it in my mouth. This place was different from the Kaitenzushi place i went to in Tokyo. It was at least 5 times bigger and had a huge variety.


This is salmon, i think. Raw salmon is unbelievably delicious! All the fish is ridiculously fresh and reasonably priced.

They also had cakes, crepes, fruit and corn dogs on the plates. Sometimes, kids won't eat the fish, so a corn dog gets stuffed in his mouth.

Raw fish sits just heavy enough in your belly to feel full without the sluggishness that often follows overeating. We asked the the cashier at the restaurant to call us a taxi (yea, they do that for you!) and bring us to the club.

Our friend Kara djed her set and got the place dancing. The next dj was incredible in so many ways. He spun old punk and rock and roll. He started off with the Clash and Sex Pistols and kept it rolling. After a couple songs he dropped his pants. A couple songs after that he disrobed completely. So there was our DJ, naked and shameless in his great song choice and naked dancing. The DJ booth was low enough to remove any doubt about his naked talent, but high enough to keep his dignity hidden.


Next we stopped into a Karaoke place. We packed into a tiny room that the AirCon struggled to keep bearable.


We all sang songs, I was no exception.


In fact i had a great time, singing songs I didn't know, no mic needed...


...And dancing like an idiot in a room not nearly large enough for such antics.


Me, Chris and Tim, the new Boys of the Hanto, rocked it.


And I definitely sang with my eyes closed, many times. But so did everyone else.


I love japanese Karaoke, you get drinks included (or a few drinks at least) and cheap food!


Chris and I posed for some shots...


... While we sang (yelled) with way too much emotion.


This might have been Prince's Purple Rain we were destroying... I'm not sure.


Things got crazy when a crazy irish kid named David Ding started climbing through the windows.


Then tried to strip tease a very annoyed Jenny...


The next day, Chris and I walked around Shimabara a bit while Tim and Eric went to buy a new bike. I snapped this shot of the this tiny man made lake in Shimabara with Mt Unzen in the distance.


The Japanese are fearless with their hair styles and sometimes rock what we call the "Jafro" (jaf-ro). Which you can have done here:


Across the street is this great place that sells who knows what. Check out the sign:

Anarchy.Peace, Life is a journey with love and free. You said it man...

Kumamoto Capsule

We had a long weekend last weekend so some of us headed to Kumamoto. Kumamoto City is a really happenin place. It draws people from all around. For us, its a little bit of a haul, but by no means difficult. This is a photo log of the journey.

::Waring:: This is a long post with a bunch of pictures!

We bummed a ride to Shimabara, about an hour's drive from our town.



I just love japanese streets. They are so organic and ancient feeling. They twist and turn and slither narrowly through the little towns.


Next we took a ferry to Kumamoto Prefecture, I can't remember the name of the city we land in. On the ferry we saw this little kid with an engrish shirt. It says California Department of Auditors! Oh if only I could be so cool, to be an Auditor! This ferry was a pretty standard ferry, similar to a simple american ferry. On the way back however, we rode the swanky ferry. Complete with a bar and fancy staircase in the center. Unfortunately I was too tired to enjoy the return ferry so I just buried my head in my nintendo DS.


Next we hopped on a bus into the city. I'm sure we looked funny, all these foreigners crammed into the back of the bus. All these folks are ALTs near me.


When we rolled into Kumamoto we noticed that there were groups of people dressed up. It turns out they were practicing for a festival the next day. Chris walked up to random people and asked for a picture.


Each group had their own colors and style. There was black, blue, red, yellow, and colors in between. I loved this guys hair, and he was eating a delicious popsicle.


So in this practice parade they had this drum, accompanied by a small metal drum, not unlike a cymbal and BUGLES. The marched and sang merrily throughout the heart of Kumamoto.


This is a close up of the bugle guys, I think they just blew as hard as they could, without regard to the notes they played.


But the best part was that each of these groups of people was lead by an angry horse!


The groups would stop into shops of family members or people that had supported them, financially I think, and sing, yell and bang their drum for them.


Japan is also famous for the number of vending machines it has. They are on every street corner and sometimes have their own alleys devoted purely to vending machines. I wanted to snap a pic of a bunch of vending machines.


In the Arcade, as in a bunch of shops in one big place, there was a pet shop with the cutest dogs in the universe. It was way too small for the number of dogs they had. Think of an american pet store like petsmart or something. cut down to less than a 10th of the size and triple the amount of dogs.


While waking in the arcade we stopped by some TV people. Chris speaks japanese, so they asked him some weird questions about girls. "Do you have a girlfriend? What is most important about the girl you want?"

Girl Qualities

A : Gets along with your mother

B : She cooks well

C : She is cute

D : She is smart

At first Chris said "She needs to be cute." The interviewer asked him why he picked that. He said "Because she's cute! If I have to look at her all the time, I want her to be cute." I think the answer's comedy was lost in translation because the interviewer just sort of looked at him and chris answered "Gets along with my mother" and that solicited no more questioning.


We then walked in the rain to Kumamoto Castle. I was absolutely beautiful and if I were an invader I wouldn't attack a castle like this.


Like most big things in the world, this castle took a while to build. During the time of this castles construction many other castles in japan were being built. Technology advanced for castle building and they started building new walls. So this picture is the "old" walls, the other side of the castle has the new walls. The newer walls are more steep.


At the top of the castle we were allowed to take photos. This is some of the city of Kumamoto.


As the day wore on, we popped into an arcade ( a real arcade) for some games. They had a guitar hero like game that Chris is playing in this shot, but notice the chap in the background. He's in a business suit playing a drum game. People often stop in after work for a few games and a beer.


Just off the main drag, the Arcade, we found this weird restaurant. They had this really neat and silly tiny door. It was jungle themed on the inside as well.


After wandering from bar to bar, we heard some guys shouting at us from inside another place. They invited us in a gave us drinks. They spoke some english so we talked with them about all sorts of stuff. They were super nice. This sort of deal, just meeting random folks, has always made my trips worthwhile.

Sleeping Cheap

The first night we stayed in a capsule hotel. The capsule hotel was actually really not bad. It was about 3200 yen, which is no more and 35 bucks or so, on a good day. The first floor is your locker/dressing room. Second floor is the lounge, TV's and lazy boys. Third is the bath, a couple of shower sitting areas and a big tub. So the way it works is you sit on this little stool and take a shower. Its an open shower so you can't be shy. You wash really well, then sit in the big tub. Its like a hot tub minus the bubbles... So you soak in there for a bit, maybe hit the sauna, then you can cool off in the cold tub. The capsule is only where you sleep. Its pretty miniscule but gets the job done.

This is Tim in one of the capsules. Only big enough to sit up in and you can't spread your arms wide. I loved it actually. It closed with a curtain.


The next night Chris and I stayed at the Cybac, which is an internet cafe. If you know what Gamelan is in Baton Rouge, it helps give you an idea, but a million times better. So you rent a booth, single or double on an hourly basis. You get all the video games/DVDs/comics you can stand for the allotted time. You also get a computer capable of playing most current games. You get a tiny cubicle where you can stretch out in an play games until you passout, wake up then game more. So for about 20 bucks you can sleep in one of these. Its a step up from sleeping in the park or something, plus you get free drinks cola, water and tea, and you can check your email.

In this pic you can see a blue sign that says Cybac, thats where we stayed.


And the place is just too small to take a decent pic, but this is what our cubicle looked like. There's only enough room to stretch your feet out and lay flat. Its quite tight.


Thats it! I loved Kumamoto.

- Paul

Lunchtime!

In japan, most smaller schools have the students serve the food to each other. They also have to wear an apron, head scarf sort of deal and a mouth cover so's you don't get ya stanky breaf on the food.



The boys certainly helped out by carrying the food up the stairs to the class room, but i think girls usually serve the food.


Lunch was soup, rice, pickles and NATO, blech. Nato is some kind of gross bean stuff. Smells awful.


So the students sit in their classrooms and arrange their desks in groups according to their social groups and munch on their rice and nato.

This is my lunch uniform.


I love this setup for school lunch. Even if the food is bad, you don't have to smell that disgusting cafeteria smell I'm so familiar with. Cafeterias in general are gross, and this way, a teacher only has his or her own class to deal with.