Due to the fact that this job gives me more than a little free time on a computer, I came across the blog of my successor. After looking through it briefly, I’m pretty sure his interests are somewhat different than my own. He did use WordPress though, which in my opinion is the right (if not most popular among ALTs) choice.

Now that some things have been booked I have a pretty good idea of what the next four months look like. It’s gonna be pretty busy, but hopefully lots of fun:

Feb. 15-24: Colin visits

Feb. 16-20: Thailand

Mar. 20-23: South Korea

Apr. 5-12(?): Dad visits

Apr. 14-May 19: Marla visits

Sometime in late Apr. : Andrea visits

End of Apr./Beginning of May: Trip to somewhere (Vietnam?)

May 19-29: Mom and Mel visit

So I have a lot to look forward to. As you can see Marla leaves on the same day my Mom and Mel arrive, so I will have visitors for about a month and a half straight.

I’m a little bored today, so I decided to write a post about some of the stuff I miss especially from home. I’m only talking about pretty trivial things though, not all the people I miss. Since Ryan commented that he likes pictures to appear as much as possible, I will try to include a bunch. Anyway, here is what I have so far:

Steak – Aside from Tajima Beef (which is too expensive to have more than very rarely) the beef in Japan isn’t very good. Also, it is almost always cut into really small pieces, probably to hide the fact that it isn’t a very good cut.

Beer – Specifically different kinds of beer. There are four major kinds of beer here: Asahi, Sapporo, Yebisu and Kirin. Technically they are different (Asahi is after all “Super Dry”), but it is pretty much like only having the choice between Blue and Canadian. The really weird thing is that each brewery has tons of different varieties, but each one tastes the same. Also, you can only get beer in cans, or giant bottles that are used for enkai.

Multi-lane Roads (with speed limits higher than 60 km/h) – Every road in my town is only one lane in either direction (sometimes one lane for both directions). The “major” highway is still only one lane, with three places to pass slower vehicles between Himeji and Asago. These extra lanes are about 500m long, and go up sharp inclines, so my car can’t use them.

The Snooty Fox – I really like it there.

That said, I am still happy in Japan, and I wouldn’t exactly say I am looking forward to leaving in about six months. There are plenty of things I will miss about this country when I am back in Canada, just not their roads, beer selection, or beef (or most of their food to be completely honest).

Today I got my first package from Canada in the mail. My sisters and Marla brought me stuff when they visited, but this was the first time I came home to find a packaged crammed into my little mail slot. So, since I don’t have your e-mails, thank you Paul, Big Mel, Little Mel, and Eamon. You made my day.

On Saturday night Marla and I went to see the Luminarie in Kobe. In 1996 (I think), there was a huge earthquake in the Hanshin area, and most of Kobe was damaged along with lots of people being killed. The Luminarie is a way of celebrating the rebuilding of the city. It looked pretty nice, but I don’t know if it was actually supposed to represent something, or just be lights. Also, we had to wait in line for about 2 hours, which really took away from the lights when we finally did see them. At one point Marla laughed so hard that she tipped her head back and bumped it on the head of a little old lady. After we saw the lights we had some food at the festival type place just behind them (I had steak on a stick, and Marla had candy covered grapes). Then we stopped at the foreign food just before it closed so I could buy some stuff for class, and then caught the train back to my car in Himeji.

See the Whole Album

A while ago Meghan showed me the Denshi Jisho website, and I found it pretty useful. I’m bored at work at the moment, so I decided to write about it. Basically it’s an online translator, but one that actually seems useful for Japanese. I’ve tried using Babelfish, and the Yahoo version, but both of those always return some pretty ridiculous results. With this site, however, a number of results are usually given in Kanji, Hiragana/Katakana, and English (so you can see what it means literally).

Today everyone at my school that can speak Japanese went to a presentation about fund raising or something. Since I wouldn’t understand what was being said, I was told to stay in the staffroom, which was ok because I actually had work to do. So then as the teachers are leaving Nohmi sensei stops and asks me “Are you coming to the presentation?”, so I said “no”. Then she just sort of smiles and says, “I know”, and then laughs a little. I’m pretty sure it was a joke, but if it was it was completely unlike the other examples of humour I’ve seen here. No one was wearing a funny costume, or getting injured, or eating something gross. I hope it was a joke anyway, because that means there is some chance of non-serious communication at work, and that Nohmi sensei is not really mean.

This post is pretty much just procrastination on my part, as my apartment needs cleaning and I hate cleaning. Anyway, everyone at my school loves “Sutichi”, or Stitch from the movie Lilo & Stitch.

I don’t know why he is so popular now, seeing as how the movie came out in 2002, but everyone seems to love him. Kids have all kinds of Stitch stuff, like pencil cases and things like that, and teachers give out Stitch stamps as rewards. No one cares about Lilo at all.

After recognizing that Hannah’s name meant either flower or nose in Japanese, I looked up the meaning of the other names I translated.

Karen – oppression, or poor, pitiful, cute, lovely, or sweet (pretty weird word)

Nana – seven

Also, Marla’s name (Mara) means something, but it’s colloquial, and pretty inappropriate. It’s also hilarious.

I just got access to a computer at school, so I decided to post something pretty much just for something to do. I`ve been writing posts at home, so when my Internet is hooked up I will post them all at once, along with the pictures I have taken since getting here. So…check back in a couple days.