there is more you should know

hello blog,
i still have to post the rest of the pictures from when liz came over. i figure this is a good time to do so, because it is the first tuesday of the third semester of school, and there are just tests today, and i don't have to do anything at all today. here we go!

when we last left our blog, we were on top of osaka castle. here is another view. you can see the courtyard where we ate takoyaki and drank milk tea afterwards.

we took these pictures on the way out. liz is excited to see a very old cannon.

and here we are standing on the main platform. my skills at taking a picture of two people with one hand have improved, i think.

but sometimes, you just need to ask two japanese people to take a picture for you, so you can see the castle in the background.

that night we walked around town, and we saw glico man. i love him, even though he is just an advertisement for the company that makes pocky. we went to a cozy little yakitori place, and then we went to a tapas place, and it was a lot of fun.

also, this happened.

do you think she wants to eat tapas?

she looks more like she wants to go inside in this picture.

okay liz, fine. we will eat tapas.

then we saw this cool bike. it was awesome.

this is from inside a shopping arcade, long outdoor malls where rich people go all of the time.

i do not remember the occasion for this photo but it's pretty nice.

me chilling with some creepy mannequins.

this picture is from the middle of the longest shopping arcade in japan, in northeast osaka. we walked the entire thing, and it didn't seem that long. \

this picture is from a weird section of osaka that a guy led us to when we told him we wanted to eat shabu shabu. that big thing on the left is a fugu, pufferfish. you might think its poisonous but thats just the liver, every shop serves it here. supposedly that needle thing is a symbol of post ww-2 osaka building.

this was on a pachinko place. every day, even out where i live, pachinko places are full of people. they are the loudest possibly places in the world. it is said that if you are not japanese and you try to go inside, you will instantly get a headache. This space overflows with the dream, hope, stimulation, and the excitement. Dramatic development waits for you. Please be released from everyday life and enjoy yourself free. May the fortune goddess smile at you!

this is the statue of liberty, in americamura, or america town, which was near our hotel in osaka. this is not the original statue of liberty, which is in america, in new jersey. it just looks like that.

remember that ferris wheel on top of that 8 story shopping center building? well once we found it again, we went on it. liz is afraid of heigts, so she shows anxiety in this picture. i love this picture.

here is the view of osaka from the ferris wheel. i do not think it is a very beautiful city, it is not uniform and goes on forever and has no sense of cohesion. but liz likes it.

see? she is holding in her fear of heights and suppressing it with her admiration of the osaka skyline for this picture.

yes, we are very high up.
i am going to post this one right now because it already has a lot of pictures. i have to stay at work afterschool to help grade english tests. no english conversation group today at night, that's next week, which is also the once per month recycling day. i just drank a cup of coffee so this next post should be no sweat at all. okay, see you on the other side.
great!

finally, some pictures for you

dear blog,
i think the best place to start photoblogging my 3 weeks with liz is at the beginning. i got facebook to accept more than 5 photos at a time, so this is going to be more interesting. let's go!

i am really sorry about this one. the day we went to the momofuku ando instant ramen museum, i forgot my camera. they probably have a website where you can see the wall of all of the different nissin brands of ramen displayed over history on a timeline. it's great and it was veru fun and interesting, and it made me appreciate instant noodles much more. these two things here are our 300 yen custom made instant ramen souveniers, which are packaged in little inflated bags that we carried around everywhere. as you see, we got to design the cups, and liz's has nice colors on it, while mine just has a big red skull. you got to pick your soup flavor and 4 little dried topping ingredients. we ate these towards the end of the 3 weeks, and they were delicious.

this is me at the bowling alley across the street from our hotel. i got a strike!

this is liz bowling. she got a strike too! just not in this picture.

this is liz looking...pensive? apprehensive? calm? in the far background, you can see osaka castle. it is going to get bigger as we get closer.

yeah, more longing, passionate in this one. she really wants to see the castle, go inside the museum and learn about history.

me wearing a cool shirt that liz got me for christmas, and the castle is a small shape on top of the hill in the light. it's hard to see. i look like i don't care about history.

that is much better. this is osaka castle. don't worry, this isn't hundreds of years old or anything, it was destroyed by war and fire a few times and rebuilt.

me again. i care slightly more about history in this one. it was a really nice day.

liz at the top of osaka castle! we went to the top. it was scary, but you could see the entire city.

both of us, at the top. the lighting is not great on this one, but you get the idea.

a little battle diorama in the museum? just be glad you didn't live in the osaka area in the sixteenth century, because you probably got your head cut off by a warlord.

i love this one. liz and some japanese little kids who only wear harsh pastels. they were not afraid of heights at all. photos weren't allowed in half of the museum, but you aren't missing much. i bet the wikipedia article on osaka castle is much more interesting and easy to understand.

and here is the view from he west side of the castle. osaka looks ugly to me, not very uniform and kind of all over the place. you can see the hep 5 building's ferris wheel in the middle, it's on top of an 8 story shopping center and we went on it! okay, enough photos for this post. let me get some more up and i will keep posting them.
all i have to do today is play ping pong with the girl's club. my forehand needs a lot of help. class doesn't officially begin until friday. this is one positive aspect of being a teacher - the school year is only part of the regular year. there was a former student who ran in a marathon this morning right by the school, so we stood outside in the cold and cheered. it was cool to see all the police escorts. going to do laundry and use the coin dryers at the laundromat today, which i didn't use until liz got here, when i realized that they get your clothes very dry. it's going to be great!

guess what! i will tell you things!

oh blog,
it has been so long. too long in fact. i dropped liz off at takamatsu airport a few hours ago, which makes me alone for the first time in three weeks. now i am going to type a short list of everything i can fondly remember doing over this long vacation. pictures are going to come later, and there are a few.
we slept til noon, went to the instant ramen museum, went on a ferris wheel on top of an 8 story building, went to osaka castle museum, went to my karate dojo's year end party and the after-party, watched dewey cox, wet hot american summer, an examined life, the king of kong, the sorpranos and the wire, watched lots of japanese tv including nanikore aka "what is this rare thing?", very young childrens' first experience shopping alone, and don't laugh or you will get hit on the butt as you pretend to work in a funny hotel game show. we ate takoyaki, ramen, tonkatsu, udon, gyoza, sushi, shabu shabu, nabe, curry, okonomiyaki, mcdonalds, subway, kfc, starbucks, pizza, squid, and snails, went to the osaka aquarium where they have 2 whale sharks and the second biggest tank of water in the entire world, walked around a lot, went to tokushima city on new years day when nobody was there, played a lot of new super mario brothers for the ds, played chess, badminton, ping pong (at gyoza stadium), drew pictures, and liz gave me an awesome haircut.
but now i have work tomorrow, which is why i have to go to bed like right now. i feel okay because this means that this year i am spending in japan is about half over. it is 2010 now, two thousand ten, a new decade, and i might be an adult or something. that is kind of exciting. more teaching english tomorrow. i have to study japanese at a triple pace because the test is due on the 20th and i have barely opened the book. i already miss my girlfriend, it was so much fun to have her here but it is going to be even better when i am back in america.
great!

blog,
on the last day i have to work before my 3 week vacation with my girlfriend, who gets here tomorrow, i not only have to teach three classes back to back to back in the morning, but in the afternoon there is an "evacuation drill" that takes up two hours. also my right tail light is out. i guess putting a rubber band around my wrist is going to help me remember to take care of that. however i did get paid today, and it was garbage day. you probably want to hear more about japan and japanese things? listen, i have to stamp some english notebooks with today's date. all of the english teachers agree that there is something very wrong with english education in japan. it is going to take them a while to come around and make it better. basically i think you need to use a language for something daily, and mostly "everyday life" becomes the required use of a langauge, but when you are learning it just so you can use it in class and pass a test, you really dont need to understand it at all.
great!

keeping you updated

hello blog,
the e-prime experiment is over. some people don't like it, and it takes a little too much effort for right now.
today i went christmas caroling with all of the other foreign english teachers in my city area. we went to nine schools and sang about four classic christmas songs at each. i had to wake up really early but it was better than a boring day at work. we went deep into the basically uninhabited foggy river valley, and then back into my part of town. i am so glad that i dont live an hour plus away from a food market. i had a very big, delicious lunch of pork and rice and beef udon, which was only around $8 and so satisfying. it was a good day, mostly because of the social interaction and because we made so many japanese middle school students happy.
tomorrow i am going to clean the entire house, bottom to top, do laundry, take care of some minor errands, and get ready for liz to get here on tuesday. anything i dont finish tomorrow can be finished on sunday. i am waiting to take a ton of wet laundry to the laundromat so i can sit there and finish reading paradise lost while my things dry. i ordered a super mario vidogame for my DS which i hope gets here tomorrow. i know now that i should have used amazon japan which everyone says is much faster, and you can even pay at a convenience store, which sounds too convenient.
so monday is the last day i have to go to work this year. chatting with everyone here just makes me more sure i want to leave in july. i dont know what i want to try to do when i get back to america but living alone is just too lonely! ah i cannot forget to pay my rent this month. i have a few weeks still. i worry too too much about money and it should not be a problem at all. i am just much more thrifty than everyone i know.
happy new year, everyone
great!

e-prime no matter how you judge me

dearest blog of blogs!
another week in japan has come to an end. i had a good time at karate today, sensei said to only use 30% of our power for sparring because of the tournament that i cannot go to on sunday becase of work. on wednesday, sensei broke 2 pieces of wood and a baseball bat with his legs. this looked amazing, and i have photos. they will be posted, all in good time.
i asked a few of my wonderful professors for their insights wrt President Obama's decision to send 30,000 more American soldiers to fight Al Qaeda in afghanistan. the responses i have gotten so far appear very thought-provoking and valuable. i will put some time into crafting my own official opinion. i wish Obama the best of luck but i go back and forth.
what can i say about japan that i have not already said? tomorrow will become saturday, and i feel thankful for a day off to clean up and do some minor chores. if my posts sound less than enthused or satisfied, then you must understand that i miss my home country and have been experiencing the zizekian notion of how my homeland and culture is experienced as totally contingent and arbitrary. it can feel stressful and upsetting sometimes, but like my dad says, this experience has no replacement and i appreciate the chance i was given every day. self control seems like the most difficult concept i have encountered, maybe even harder than being true to oneself. socially i feel totally deprived here, but that will all become okay once liz gets here and i get three weeks, the same amount of time i used to got to know her with initially, to spend with her again and relax. today i had my last day of the year at tsuji elementary school, the one near my house, where i teach with a japanese teaching assistant who writes all of the lesson plans. it can feel like a difficult environment to teach in, but utlimately i feel thankful for her presence, as i rely on it. i heard that the job market in america has suffered less than usual this past month? that bodes well for my chances upon returning to the USA, hopefully it doesnt hurt the strong yen.
i will to buy myself a christmas/hannukah (confused because of secular japan) present tomorrow in the form of a small video game. this week and a half will go by very quickly. i will now go read paradise lost, the end of which i slowly appraoach, and then retire for the night. in case i forgot to tell you, i received my blue belt, second level, in karate on wednesday. it looks cool, and i feel good about it.
great!

this post has 4 karate pictures and one landscape. also i try out e-prime for the first time on this blog!

welcome back, blog.
(note: here you can read about e-prime, something i heard about which i have decided to try as an experiment. this post has been composed, to the best of my knowledge, entirely in e-prime, and i will continue to try to do all of my writing in this language.)
december has finally come. does this mean winter has started? it feels cold outside, but it still feels more like autumn. i took a picture of a mountain after i went food shopping the other day. i spent more money during that food shopping than i have in any other since i got here. here you can see the picture. the leaves change, and japanese people sincerely love to talk about how much they appreciate looking at the changing colors.

the rest of these pictures i took before a karate lesson about a week or so ago. my left foot has almost reached its normal status again. i might not even have to favor the other one in karate tonight. i did get kickced in the nose last week, which did not feel like fun at all. i learned that the nose piece demands constant protection. every time before my karate lesson starts, the lesson for the little kids ends, and if i get there early enough i can watch them spar. i got some action shots here which you may enjoy.

sometimes they really go crazy and i like to watch such small kids use so much enegry. yamamoto sensei stands with his arms folded, giving criticism and encouragement.

those white things on their arms and legs, the supporters (sah-poh-taas), help absorb the impact of feirce blows. even with those on, a good fight can still hurt. and no, i had no head protector when i got hit in the nose. we don't use those. it would have been very nice to have had one then, i imagine.

here you can see the rest of the kids lined up, waiting their turn. those green shirts with yellow writing look great; they say seikoukai (the type of karate) on the back in yellow and "full contakuto karate" in white on the front, which i find funny.

and here you can see a closer shot of some kids hanging out. the japanese peace sign, or victory sign, has become ubiquitous. the boy on the right, sensei's son, seems young but will become strong one day.
and that would exhaust everything i have to show you today. yesterday i bought 2 bus tickets to and from osaka for christmas week, and even though i felt nervous about carrying on a conversation in japanese, i still got a compliment on my language ability, which felt great. today for lunch we ate a big piece of brown bread, watery vegatable soup, milk, an orange, and what the japanese call "american dog", which you would recognize as a "corn dog". i received two because i come from a foreign country, and the baseball coach laughed at this. i will probably eat gyoza and edamame for dinner. liz gets here in under two weeks, and it will feel so nice to not work and relax for a while.
great!