Golden Week in Kyushu

A couple days after Ali flew out of Japan at the end of April, Tara and I caught the bullet train down to Kyushu (3rd largest of the 4 main islands) where we spent our golden week holiday.

The first stop was Huis Ten Bosch, a Dutch theme park with a bizarre array of attractions. I later learned from my students that the park actually went bankrupt a few years ago... this perhaps explains the odd contrast of traditional dutch architecture, arts and crafts, etc. with newer looking 3D movie theatres, mirror mazes, and other intriguingly interactive galleries.

Why Huis Ten Bosch has a teddy bear museum was never clearly explained, but Tara seemed to have fun with these guys regardless of their mysterious origins.

The following pictures are of us posing in front of wall murals. Don't worry, there's little real danger involved!

The colour matching here was sheer coincidence!

Alice? What have you eaten now?


Sooo....there's really not much to say about Huis Ten Bosch, it was just a strange but entertaining place. I'll try to post more details of our trip soon, so please check in again later this week.

Adventures of a Quarter Century Man

The karaoke... IT NEVER ENDS!!!


A couple weeks ago I made a trip to Tokyo to pick up Ali (casting a spell on me above) which marks the beginning of Guest Star Season in Ichinomiya. Ali's a karaoke natural, so she fit in just fine here! As seen in Tara's pictures (previous post, please check links) many a crazy day was spent experiencing Japan. Unfortunately I wasn't able to hop around the country with them every weekend, but I kept myself busy with many manly things:

Last weekend I ended up at 2 barbecues, the Sunday version hosted by my favourite local Hawaiian Bar's Bartender. The weather was perfect, and it was my first experience with an outdoor Japanese bbq. Yes, it's different, and we still used chopsticks. Meat and vegetables chopped up into small manageable pieces, grilled up nice, and then thrown in your bowl of dipping sauce. Delicious! Oh, and of course there were skewers of mini-squid to be had as well. Mmmm....sooo many legs!

The previous weekend I played in my second Japanese soccer tournament. Yep, so far that's 2 tournaments, one practice, and one win.... out of the roughly 10 tournament games. After the tournament our team discussed the benefits of practicing again before we enter another tournament, and it was generally agreed that this was a smart move. More importantly than our successes, we had a good time running around on the mini soccer field and it has been good practice for my Japanese as well, since most of the team members don't speak much English.

The weekend I picked Ali up at the airport was my 3rd visit to Tokyo. Tokyo is big, crowded, bustling and energized as you'd expect, and it actually doesn't appeal to me that much. What I enjoyed more was getting to visit Yoshi and his family again! Yoshi was featured on this blog around the start of May last year when Tara and I travelled to Tokyo to meet her family. We first met Yoshi in Canada while he was attending Western. It's interesting to spend time with him because he seems a lot more Canadian than he is Japanese. I spent Saturday afternoon in Tokyo before Yoshi's dad met me at a train station to drive me back to their home. So, for anyone who knows Yoshi - Derrick, Justin, Kevin... - he and his family are doing well, and were most hospitable to me. Also, Kevin, I introduced Yoshi to your solo album and he "really really liked it a lot". Sorry to leave personal messages for Kevin on here, but he's been hard to track down recently since he's been TOURING NEW YORK CITY WITH HIS BAND!!! In case anyone hadn't heard.

The day after Ali arrived was my birthday. The picture (top) sums it up, and it was a great 2 weeks! Next up, Tara and I depart tomorrow morning for a 1 week trip to Nagasaki and area. As soon as we're back, Meaghan's coming into town. Check back soon, the fun promises not to stop!

Ian

Photo Overload!!!

Hisashiburi ne!!!!
Soo you may have noticed a lack of picks on here and you can blame me, because I discovered facebook is MUCH easier and faster to load pictures onto. However, I just discovered a link to each album that allows for public viewing! So if you want to see what we have been up to lately (and there is a lot) please check out these albums!!!

#1: Its Sakura time again!!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2298436&l=602ff&id=58013737

#2: A day of Ninja training

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2301164&l=1b0ba&id=58013737

#3: Birthday Bonanza!! We actually had a total of 3 parties; bowling on my b-day, Karaoke (with an Ali!) on Ian's b-day, and a combined blowout last friday (from which more pics will come..)

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2300296&l=6190e&id=58013737

#4: Small Bean Island!! This one takes slightly more explanation. Basically Ali and I had to pick a destination for this weekend, and ended up changing our minds about 5 time - until that is, we came across a little place called Shodoshima (Translation: Small Bean Island). Obviously we had to go.
However seeing as we decided this halfway through Saturday (the day we were supposed to leave) and the island is about halfway across the country and takes much travel, we were just a bit rushed!
I've posted our itinerary so you can get an idea of what we went through, and let me say, I have to hand it to Japan for their meticulous punctuality. The majority of our changeovers (and there were many) ranged from 3 minutes, to a wopping 13 minutes!!
Yatta!!!


Trip Details: 4:30 pm: leave nagoya and head to Okayama (2 hour shinkansen ride)
Sat. night: check into the local Toyoko inn; Ali debates the risks of them hunting me down if she steals the pajamas. Then we find salad, juice, and hot sake. Okayama is cooool.
Sun 6:20am wake up
7:11: catch train to port. We later find out that there was actually a port IN Okayama, and this train ride was unnecessary, however if we had caught that we wouldn't have gotten the chance to ride a train for an hour filled with Highschool boys. Anyone who has seen highschool kids here will know that this was hilarious.
8:35: Catch ferry
10:10: Hello Small Bean!!
11:11: After MUCH confusion, and a brief terrifying moment where we thought we would have to take a ferry back at 1:30 (because 3 hours is just not enough for Small Bean) our tour starts. However during our wait for the bus, we realize that Small Bean is actually quite famous for Olives.....
Olive Chocolate? Olive Mochi? Olive Candy? Anyone???
11:11-3:17 : We wind through the mountains via bus, cable car and feet; we visit a gorge; have someone compliment our eyelashes and feed us free noodles; buy olive paraphernalia; See a few monkeys; and then the tour ends
3:30: With AMAZING teamwork we pull off running from the bus terminal to the ferry port, grabbing our backpacks, buying our tickets, and jumping on the ferry to okayama
4:45: bus to station (and a nice sleep..)
6:28: Shinkansen to Kyoto/Nagoya.
8:00: Ali gets to Kyoto
9:00 I get back to Ichinomiya
Ummm yeah. We pretty much spent 30 full hours travelling nonstop halfway across the country for an island called "Small Bean"

Best random trip ever...

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2302642&l=a5f23&id=58013737

TARA!!!

Crick to Byew Bideo

The internet gods just didn't want this one to happen, but at long last I have come out triumphant. After the previously noted set of problems with producing this video I have completed it 2 more times only to have it rejected for being 1. uncensored and 2. too long. Here the video is split into two parts, which really is probably better because watching 12 minutes of this straight is really just too painful.
I'd appologize for this, but remember... you asked for it.

Ian


*** April 16th: OOPS! Looks like when I cut the file in two I somehow screwed up the order of all the subtitles. Wow, this video just loves to be difficult.

*** April 17th: OK! The abovementioned issues have been resolved, hopefully for the last time. I also added credits to the end of the film, and changed the "Part 1" and "Part 2" titles below to a flashier yellow. I also realized that the title screens in the movie were in fact purple and not black. This was my mom's fault; but anyway they have been changed to a stylish black. If you have already seen the movie these changes aren't really worth a second viewing.


PART 1




PART 2

Where have we BEEN?

Hello!
I hope we still have some fans, and I apologize for the update-drought. April marks the beginning of the Japanese school year, and as such March is a heck of a busy month for us child-trainers. A lot of students begin new grades, or classes, and so their schedules tend to change. As a result my schedule has been somewhat hectic, and in constant flux over the past month.

Ok, but I'm not going to fool anyone saying that I've just been working for a month straight. No, even at the busiest of times I always seem to find lots of time to play. In fact, with all the great people I've met here it's hard to fit everyone in. I'm decidedly much more popular here than I should be by any Western standards

Early in March Tara and Yukiko were lucky enough to get a Friday off work so that they could go to Tokyo to see Canadian rock stars Stars and Broken Social Scene!
Coincidentally they met Yoshi there (our friend whom we initially met in university, but now is living in Japan again).
I was pretty jealous about missing the concert, but while the girls were shopping in Tokyo, I made good use of my man-time by fixing my bicycle, playing soccer, and eating raw beef mixed with raw egg. Our soccer team didn't manage to win a single game (out of the 8 or so 7 minute games we played), but we're planning to practice again this weekend and become the Mighty Duck success story of the league

So what about this long promised karaoke video? Well, I've been working on that as well, and it is still coming. Unfortunately the editing program I have here didn't allow me to realize the video as I had envisioned it. See one weekend THESE GIRLS came to stay at our house, and for some reason decided to do yoga in their pajamas. Not wanting to miss this artistic opportunity, I filmed them. In particular I filmed their legs to suit the theme of my karaoke selection, hoping to splice the images of hot legs over the sweet sounds of my Rod Stewart rendition. Unfortunately the editing software does not seem to want me to do this. SO I've changed my plan and am going to make a montage of various performances from that evening. Sorry, you'll just have to imagine girls doing yoga, and a camera weaving through their legs. I also tried to post the yoga video as is on the internet but ran into two problems: 1. I was unable to acquire consent from anyone featured in the video, and 2. when I tried to just post it anyway under the title "my hot girlfriend and her hot friends have a pajama party," the internet rejected the file. It seems the internet has already been oversaturated with files of this name, and cannot possibly accept any more. Yoga really must be popular these days!

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Images from a strawberry picking road trip in February. By Yukiko!