Recently by Author (#3)

As the son of two parents who grew up in L.A., and one of two brothers who spent a few years in Japan craving and trying to faithfully recreate our beloved flavour of Mexican food, I have some pretty strong opinions about tacos.

I love food that reminds me of the way food tasted when I was a kid. I love my taco shells to be made of corn tortillas, freshly fried in olive oil. I love letting the cheese, preferably a nice cheddar, melt inside as the hot oil works transforms the texture of the tortilla from dry and grainy to crispy, slightly chewy, and a bit caramelized.

In Japan, corn tortillas were so expensive, and of such poor quality, that we subsided on flour tortillas, which could only be obtained during a rare expedition to the nearest Costco. Going to Costco was almost the equivalent of making a road trip to Vegas, only better because you were certain to return feeling 10 times richer than however much you spent, and some people I knew turned a profit from going on Costco runs for others.

Meat must be prepared with the standard "taco mix", and fried with diced potatoes, minced garlic, and chopped onions. By mixing the meat with these other ingredients, you will help to stretch out the meat, but more importantly, the onions will impart sweetness, and the potatoes will add to the textural flavourscape of your tacos.

Finally, to top off the tacos, guacamole is nice. I like mine to be a simple mixture of avocado, garlic salt, lemon juice, pepper, and minced garlic.

Recently, I have decided that lettuce is to be avoided, and replaced with a 50/50 mix of chopped cilantro and green onions.

On salsa: fresh salsa, both tomato and tomatillo based are awesome. Lacking these, Tapatio, or better yet Cholula, make for good substitutes.

Tacos should be enjoyed with friends and family. This is not to say you can't enjoy a taco alone, as sometimes this is a satisfying way to eat a meal, but I find that good company brings out the full flavor, both actual and sentimental, of the taco.

While starting the day, I noticed a red light leaking into the bathroom window, peeked my head out the door, and ran to the beach to take some pictures before work.

It's not every day that you get a sunrise like this.

Fastest Spray Paintng - Funny videos are here

Mark has been posting about the protests in these areas, and is probably closer to the action than you or I.

Read more about what's happening here.

Dueling giraffes are kind of cool, but I'd like to see you top this (the Morning Musume clip where they have steaks attached to their heads almost compares to this):

Congratulations to my favorite older sister (not to be confused with my favorite younger sister or favorite older brother) on achieving your goal.

I expect you to know everything about otters by the end of this year, and yes, there will be a test.

Here is the first challenge. Name all four of the otters pictured here.

This Coryphaena "showing a helmet" hippurus "horse tail" shows us that dorado means "gilded" in Spanish. According to one source, the mahi converts about 90% of its food into body weight, and can reach a length of 6.75 feet (and weigh almost 90lbs).

Apparently, they can reach 28 inches in six months and maintain a fast growth rate for the duration of their short lives. A really old dolphinfish might live to be 5 years old, but "current wisdom is that they live for a maximum of 4 years".

On a side note, I am truly baffled at how many people I hear ask "What's that fish that looks like a dolphin?". I know of no dolphin that has a blunt forehead and tapered body like the Mahi mahi. Their shape does remind me of a Sperm whale, though.

Wherever they are common, dolphinfish are also a major commercial fish. In many locations around the world, dolphinfish are attracted to bundles of bamboo or cork planks, then encercled with nets. (Examples are the Shiira-zuke fishery of Japan, the Kannizzali fishery of Malta and the Matas fishery of the Balearic Island).

Besides being delicious, mahi mahis put up a great fight if you hook them, oftentimes jumping out of the water and "spitting the hook". Apparently, they're not that bright. One of my old roommates, Brian, used to tell me of how he caught them by improvising an inside-out Fritos bag as a lure.

Though mahis will flash different colors when excited, they generally don't maintain this coloration for a long time. Hormones cause these color changes, which you will generally see when they are feeding, mating, or excited.

The color flashes of an excited dolphin fish are truly wonderful, but are short-lived like fireworks. When someone brings one of these home from a fishing trip, they usually mention how colorful they remember the fish being when it was brought on deck, and how colorless it looks after it dies.

I haven't reviewed food in a while, but one visit to the Grand Buffet in Seaside, California, gave my gastronomic system such problems that I must issue a word of warning.

It all started after a game of disc golf at CSUMB, when we were trying to decide on a place to have dinner. I had always passed by the Grand Buffet, but had never gotten around to trying it.

The place was pretty packed, on Labor Day, with all sorts of people, and a huge spread at the buffet. The variety, as well as the soft serve machine and chocolate fountain initially impressed me.

The food was not very good, but it wasn't awful. They had a strange variety that included Italian (pasta, pizza, garlic bread), Mexican (menudo! at a Chinese Buffet!!!), Japanese (the sushi was squeezed so hard that the rice looked like mochi), and a ton of Panda Express-style Chinese food.

I picked out a bunch of chicken and pork dishes, with some vegetables, and visited the buffet twice. It was there that I had the foulest hot and sour soup I have ever tasted. Bile, chinese herbs, and burnt something is what it tasted like.

The food was so greasy that I didn't have the desire to try dessert. Dessert, ironically, was probably the safest option at this place.

My stomach let its voice be heard by converting this meal and all following food and beverages for the next 28 hours being converted into diarrhea. This was irksome for many reasons. I was limited in what I could do and where I could go for a day, the toilet required constant cleaning, and I couldn't even use baby wipes without wincing.

I don't want anyone to go through this, so I am advising you to stay away from the Grand Buffet for your own safety. Learn from my mistakes, so that I did not eat there in vain!

Hopefully, future reviews will focus on places that serve food that don't give you explosive diarrhea. Ah, it's my own damned fault. Never eat at a Chinese restaurant that serves menudo!

Your Matisyahu video was really damned good, so good in fact that I have converted it into an MP3 so that I can load it on my IPod.

Now here's a funky introduction with some Ghostface, Roots, Gnarls, and more...

This is a polychaete worm that I found on a piece of drift kelp magnified at x50. Little beasties look a lot meaner under the microscope.

It's nice to have a mini-lab on board when you're looking at marine organisms.

Pycnopodia helianthoides (AKA Sunflower Star or Sun Starfish) is a nasty customer. This is the T. Rex of the starfish, and can travel a blistering 40 inches per minute to boot.

When you get one of these in a trap, it is imperative to remove them right away, or they will clamp down on whatever it is grabbing onto with up to 24 tube feet-filled arms with such force, it may be unable to extract the animal without ripping off some of the tube feet.

They also have pincers on their top side that are used to discourage potential predators. In addition, they can secrete a mild poison when agitated. In the ocean, it acts as a mild deterrent, but if this stuff is contained in a small tank, it could cause more serious damage to fish or other animals in such a constrained environment.

This is from the MBA Field Guide:

Juvenile sunflower stars start life with five arms—by maturity they sport up to 24 arms.

Most sea stars have a one-piece, semirigid skeleton. However, the sunflower star’s skeleton has a few disconnected pieces. They allow the sunstar's mouth to open wide and its body to enlarge and take in big prey. A sunflower star can swallow an entire sea urchin, digest it internally and then expel the urchin’s test—its external shell.

In Monterey Bay, the sunflower star eats—in season—dead or dying squid. After the star digests the squid, the indigestible squid pen—its internal shell, which is too large to be defecated—works its way through the body wall.

I know of nothing that likes to eat Pycnopodia helianthoides, and I can see why. Besides the toxins, pincers, and enormous size (they grow over a meter long from tip to tip), they are covered in a viscous slime, much resembling a suit made of snot (it has the texture of grated yama imo).

It might be worth handling, just to give someone a hearty handshake immediately afterwards. I can just picture the look of horror on the hand of the recipient as they quickly withdraw from the shake, with tendrils of mucus stretching and extending like strings of natto linking the tips of a pair of chopsticks to a bed of freshly stirred fermented soy beans. Mmmmmm... Natto.

Taking pictures in low light settings is challenging for me, but at least the moon stays still. Here are a few shots that I took from the past couple of nights:

This picture was taken yesterday with the D-50.

The moon still looks really full on this shot from today, taken on my DMC-TZ3.

My sister wanted to bring a surfboard up from Orange County so she could learn how to surf, but she has changed her mind.

I'm going to see if they've closed the beach over at Lover's Point as well. Here's a link to the article:

Shark attacks surfer in Monterey Bay

*BONUS* - MBA has a new white shark on exhibit. Only 4 feet and change, it kind of looks like a puppy, swimming around the Outer Bay Exhibit with the bubble curtain up.

The Yellowtails are the coolest fish in the Kelp Forest Exhibit. Not only are they my favorite sashimi fish and great fighting on the rod, but they're also fun to watch under water. They cruise around like a pack of attack submarines, and the bait fish try to keep as far away from them as possible.

Oftentimes, the other fish will use this to their advantage and snag an Anchovy that's broken formation with the rest of the school and preoccupied with watching the Yellowtail. Many a Rockfish has gotten its lunch in said fashion, thanks to the Yellowtail.

On this day, one of the 'tails was chasing a Leopard Shark, that was three times it's size, around the exhibit. It kept on rubbing against the shark, and despite trying its hardest, the shark was unable to run away.

I wonder if it was using the shark as a back scratcher, to dislodge parasites, or asserting its dominance as king of the exhibit. Maybe it was a bit of both.

We spotted an object floating in the water, and went to investigate:

From this distance, it is hard to make out. It was about the size of a small garbage can lid.

A naturalist once saw something very similar to this in the kelp forest and got very excited. "White Shark!" was the call heard on the radio, but alas, it was not a White Shark. So what was it?

It was a Mola mola, the awkward Ocean Sunfish, a ferocious predator of jellies, larval animals floating around as plankton, and perhaps seaweed and eel grass.

For some reason, my camera has been drawn towards this largest of bony fishes in different places. I am not the only one who likes the mola- I think it's the most popular fish in the aquarium. The big mola in the Outer Bay Exhibit, the one that weighs over 1000 pounds, has been given so many names by little children and smitten adults alike. If you were to tally the names, "big fish" would likely be the most common, followed by "ugly fish". I like to call it "Bob".

I love my Nikon D-50, but ever since I traded in my trusty old battle-scarred QV-R40, I've really noticed how handy a pocket-sized camera is. I've been waiting to find one that I really liked, and finally settled on the Panasonic DMC-TZ3. Aside from having a Leica lens that boasts 10x optical zoom and virtually no shutter lag, it's just a really nicely designed camera. I'll be testing it out for a while, but here are some preliminary pictures from a 5 minute walk around my neighborhood:

A bee pollinates a California poppy, which also happens to be our state flower. Its bright orange is much like that of the Garibaldi, California's state fish.

A few months ago, Pacific Grove installed these tsunami warning signs along the coastline. I swear I've seen a design very similar to this in Japan somewhere.

This barnacle shell has been taken over by seaweed. The shell broke off, the seaweed dried out, and now it is resting on the beach at Lover's Point.

With this smaller camera, I can be more discrete when taking pictures, I can take it places where the D-50 is impractical, and I can use it to shoot in ways that the D-50 can't.

With this new camera I'll be able to shoot using a display, which should be interesting. I find that the style of my photos is a bit different when I use a viewfinder, as opposed to looking at a screen to compose a picture.

It feels good to have more than just an SLR again. I wish every day could be New Camera Day!

A tiny sea urchin rests between closed fingers.

This is a shot of a polychaete worm and the same urchin.

The blurs in the background are (rotating clockwise from the upper top) a shrimp, an isopod, a melibe, a limpet, and some other creatures. In the foreground, there are the urchin, polychaete worm, and a couple of juvinile Kellet's whelks that are either being amorous or quarrelsome. Their proboscises were extended as they wrestled together in what must have seemed to be the macro-marine equivalent of the Colosseum. No, they did not fight to the death, but if they did my money would be on the worm.

I recall that Justin and I used to use polychaetes as bait when we went fishing in Awajishima for kawahagi and other strange, exotic fish.

The kelp crabs and decorator crabs are really good at hiding, and are not very eager to be photographed. It's amazing the variety of colors that they display, from lemon yellow to grass green to brick red.

Peace and quiet have once again departed from the harbor, with the return of the California Sea Lions. Adding to the cacophony, the Sea Otters have been shrieking like banshees lately. To top it off, the gulls consistently wake me up in the morning with their vocalizations, and follow me to work with their squabbles.

There is something to be said for peace and quiet, especially in the morning when you are trying to sleep.

Sometimes, when the gulls are particularly loud and persistent, I come up with some interesting ideas. For example, I may develop an urge to hold onto the extreme annoyance that is conjured up by the squawking birds, and use it to wake up the gulls when they are trying to sleep. It is only after I am fully awake that I realize how stupid it would be to actually act on the ideas that pop into my head when I'm irritated in this too-early-in-the-morning state.

If I live long enough to develop Alzheimer's disease, will I become the crazy old man who goes out at night blasting away on the drums, exacting my revenge upon the birds? Now that's a scary thought...

If you're wondering how I've been spending my summer, I think pictures would best illustrate what I've been doing four out of five days during the week:

The Derek M. Baylis is designed to be a research vessel, and a lot of thought went into its design to maximize workspace and to make it a model for all other research and educational vessels.

Among some of the notable features, the Baylis sports a wishbone boom (click here to read more about how the sailing mechanics work using a wishbone boom) and a motor that runs on a bio-diesel blend that "sips" gas. What is a wishbone boom and how is it different from a conventional one? The best explanation that I've heard is that a conventional boom is to a wishbone boom as a stick shift is to an automatic. The rig self-regulates the shape of the sail since it is suspended and not fixed to one point on the mast.

For more information on the Baylis, as well as Tom Wylie's other cool designs, check out this link:
Wyliecat Performance Yachts: Wyliecat 65

Monterey Bay Aquarium and Sealife Conservation run educational and leisure cruises in a joint venture. The aquarium provides the naturalists (of whom I am one) and sells tickets, while Sealife Conservation provides the crew and the boat.

I usually start my day below the docks, picking up the clipboard that holds the ship's manifest. As you can tell, all of the male California sea lions are coming back from their summer down south in the Channel Islands, where they were busy mating. It's amazing how quickly they've returned, and how valuable real estate has become around the harbor.

Over 90 percent of the sea lions up here are males. The females prefer the warmer waters down south. As one visitor put it, Monterey Harbor sounds like a big frat house because of all of the noise and displays of dominance among the male sea lions.

Giant kelp is the foundation of the ecosystem along the California coastline. It serves as a nursery, a food source, a place to hide, or a place to hold on to for countless organisms. On a piece of drift kelp that we pulled up today, we found polychaete worms, kellet's whelks, bryzoans, melibes, small shrimp, isopods, amphipods, a baby sea urchin, fish fry, decorator crabs, and kelp crabs. This was a spectacular haul and a great illustration that kelp is some really cool stuff.

Kelp crabs are good at letting you know that they don't want anything to do with you. Their pincers are sharp like needles, and painful if they catch your fingers. They make searching through kelp interesting for those willing to paw through the slimy kelp.

Anyone for paralytic shellfish poisoning? That's what you might get if you drank from the codpiece of our plankton net this afternoon (By the way, codpiece refers to the portion of the net where the plankton is concentrated, as the design was taken from a cod fishing nets and that's where the cods ended up. It is not, as I originally though, named after ye Medieval jockstrap.). The plankton that we've been pulling up have mostly turned the net a brownish green, but today it was red with dinoflagellates. Besides causing the red tide when they bloom, they are also responsible for phosphorescense.

I heard the following story from someone who works at the aquarium:

During WWII, the GIs in the Pacific learned that Japanese snipers used to target those using flashlights at night. At night time, some soldiers used their cotton shirts to sieve dinoflagellates out of the water, and allowed them to dry into a powder. By taking a pinch of the dehydrated dinoflagellates, they were able to read their maps with the faint blue light produced by smashing it between their fingers and avoid the snipers, who were looking for the yellow light produced by the flashlights.

So thanks partly to plankton, the Allies were able to achieve victory in the Pacific Theatre...

In addition, phytoplankton produces an over 60 percent of the Earth's oxygen and is the basis of the food web in the ocean. It sequesters CO2 as CaCO3 (chalk), and layers of fossilized plankton give us SiO2 rich deposits as well, which we use to filter out our swimming pools (salacious earth).

Plankton is some pretty cool stuff.

If you drop a crab trap, or "benthic sampler" (there are many designs, my favorite being a clamshell design that traps mud from the sea floor), down to the bottom of the outer edge of the kelp forest, most of what you pull up is likely to be batstars. This one has it's stomach out. You may recall that starfish eat by bringing their digestive system to their food. They hug whatever they are eating with their stomach, in other words.

Some other cool facts about batstars:

The orange ones range down to Mexico and the purple ones up to Alaska, and they meet in Monterey.
They often host symbiotic polychaete worms which clean the batstars of food scraps and parasites.
Predators of batstars include, but are not necessarily limited to sea gulls, sea otters, and other larger species of starfish.
They can easily regenerate an arm if they happen to lose one.
Batstars are echinoderms, related to things like sand dollars, sea urchins, and sea cucumbers. If you look at echinoderms, they all have a pattern of five points radiating from the center.
Some batstars have up to seven arms, and at each tip of each arm is a primitive eyespot, with which they can sense the presence or absence of light.

When the sails are raised, the boat starts to really show off how well it handles. We routinely hit 10 knots with a reefed main sail, without the help of the mizzen (the smaller sail in the back of the boat). Since the boom is so high, the foredeck is a pretty safe and comfortable place to enjoy the cruise. When it's time to put away the sail, the halyard is released and the sail quickly drops into the hammock below in a matter of seconds.

This is a shot of Monterey Bay Aquarium in the foreground, looking down the length of Cannery Row. We stick to this area in the bay, as it provides a relatively sheltered patch of water, and a great view of the coastline. In this patch of coastline I've seen Humpbacks, Grey whales, Common Dolphins, Risso's Dolphins, Pacific White-sided Dolphins, Harbor Porpoises, California Sea Lions, Southern Sea Otters, and Harbor Seals.

200 years ago, there were grizzly bears feasting on whale carcases, and 300 years ago there used to be a giant sea cow, the Steller's sea cow, that munched on the giant kelp. After the sea otters were almost hunted to extinction, there were long periods of time where the kelp disappeared from the coastline. Only after otters started to re-populate the coast did the kelp forests return and stabilize.

By telling these stories, making ecological connections, and facilitating discussions, we are able to really educate and inspire those who come along for a ride on the Baylis.

Some of the most accessible public canvasses in the world reside under one bridge or another, even in Monterey.

Unfortunately, graffiti in the US is dominated by taggers who lack skill and so desperately feel the need to be noticed.

Will the wild popularity of manga and anime in the States result in a shift from tagging to creating more legitimate works of public art? Hopefully, the answer will be yes.

Hahaha, it reminds me of the good old days...

To my brother, "irreverent Atom Boy":

I will celebrate your birthday by toasting you, and drinking a cold, crisp Fat Tire Belgian Ale.

I think this one turned out the best of the lot. Shooting at night is a bit more challenging, especially when you don't have a tripod. Luckily, the walking path provided a stable rail, providing the camera with a stable base.

Why do most people make new year resolutions during the start of a new year? If you need to make a change now, chances are that you will forget about what it is that you want to change if you wait until the next year rolls around.

I know I've been really light in the amount of posts that I've been writing since I've started my job. I could list off reasons why this has happened, but that would make for a boring post.

Instead, I'm going to start taking more pictures and doing more post-worthy things. I guess this means that I have an excuse to buy the "necessary equipment" that I require to do the best job that I possibly can.

Damn, I should make resolutions more often.

Last night was the Pacific Grove Chinese Lantern Festival, happening right next to my apartment. We sampled gyros, baklava, and calamari from the vendors who had set up food stalls next to the beach.

The residents of Pacific Grove obviously put a lot of effort into this event, as they had erected a faux pagoda on the tip of our small breakwater. A team of swimmers clad in wetsuits pulled a limo-sized dragon float through the water while a court of formally clad girls danced to multi-ethnic music (Japanese, Arabic, and Spanish songs were part of their repertoir).

We walked around for a bit, awed that so many people could fit on the beach and on the park at Lover's Point. Then we went home.

Just after the sun had set, we popped our heads out of the apartment to see this:

I love being able to see cool firework displays right outside of my apartment. In this respect, living in PG is kind of like living in Juso, where I was able to walk down to the Yodogawa and see one of the best firework shows in Osaka. It's as if I am destined to live in places that are home to other people, like me, who like to watch and play with fireworks.

...[fringeheads] have a great fondness for empty bottles and cans; the bigger the container opening, the bigger the occupant. In some areas, such as the beer bottle field at the head of Redondo Canyon, southern California, nearly every bottle will house a fringehead. A fish usually lies in its home (which it considers its territory) with just part of its head exposed. Fringeheads are extremely aggressive, and they will lunge at intruders (even divers) with jaws snapping.

I had already accepted that I would never see a live Death Valley Pupfish (I'm assuming that's the fish they're talking about). When I first heard about these guys, reports about their survival were pessimistic, but after reading this article I don't know what to think. Awesome.

It has happened in Japan, and it happens here.

To the postal workers around the world who check my mail from foreign countries: Would you all please start at least taping the envelope shut?

It's just common courtesy.

I used to catch bees and hornets and placing them in the freezer for a few minutes. After they had stopped moving, I tied a thread around their thorax and waited for them to warm up in the sun. There was something inherently hilarious about taking a bee for a walk.

It seems someone has one-upped me using flies and a match. Ah, being bored leads to strange diversions.

link

PBF executes this scenario way better than Extralife.

I love takoyaki and I love fried calamari, so what might be even better?

The octosquid might...

Garrapata is one of the best places to hike around Monterey, because it starts out on the coast, leads inland through cactus patches and chaparral, and ends in a grove of redwood with a seasonal waterfall.

A bunch of us went to go have a small party under the moon on a small mountain next to the ocean, but the winds kicked up and we cut it a bit short. Nonetheless, it's always fun to go out and kick back with good company when you're looking at a sunset, the heavens and moon, or falling blossoms.

If it wasn't usually so cold or windy, I would be more inclined to do these things here on a regular basis. Maybe I should just have more bonfires...

I saw a whale yesterday, when I was working on the boat, but it wasn't as spectacular as this.

Bonus links:
Twisted sea otters via Mika
Girls with spears and harpoons via Justin

Check out Robot Chicken's Star Wars Special here:

link

Unless you live near Nara-koen, it's not every day that you see a fawn grazing in the yard across the street. It's not like that where I live either, but this is the second time in a month that I've spotted deer right outside of my door:

Can you spot the Bambi?

I kind of wish that there were bears around here to keep the Bambies company. Then again, it's nice to be able to throw away the trash without worrying about being attacked by large carnivorous animals.

This morning, I was able to participate with two other researchers in capturing one of the 30 pound bluefin tuna out of tank #3 at the Tuna Research and Conservation Center. After stretching a slightly too small wetsuit on, we climbed down into the tank, which had been drained down to about 3 feet of water (about 1/3 of its normal level).

Two others herded the tuna into a modified length of blue, rubberized tarp. The tarp, 3 feet tall, was clipped onto the side of the holding pen, and there were 5 foot poles spaced at about 5 feet apart. The poles provided handles with which to maneuver the partition, and provided a surprisingly balanced mix of rigidity, weight (for the bottom of the curtain), and buoyancy (to hold up the curtain to the top of the water).

Once the chosen tuna was corralled into the enclosure, I closed the gap, and the two others began their work. I thought it was going to be an epic struggle between man and fish, but it was all over quickly. Once the fish was maneuvered between Alex and the partition, he gently hugged it and placed it in the stretcher where it was taken to another tank. It was amazing to see the tiger stripes on the sides of the fish when we were doing this. Tuna look so cool!

Changing subjects, a few weeks ago, I saw something that shocked me. I was working on the Derek M. Baylis, a boat under contract with the aquarium, when I spotted a sea otter dragging something that looked like a sea gull around. I took a look through the binoculars, and confirmed that it was indeed a dead bird that the otter was dragging around and playing with. Just to be sure, I asked a crew member to confirm this, and he was also taken aback with what he saw.

Talking to the folks who work at the Sea Otter Research And Conservation Center, I found out that otters will "take care" of sea birds who try and mooch their food. If a sea gull picks on the wrong sea otter, sometimes it will get throttled, or dragged under water where it will drown.

So do otters eat sea birds? Yes, to some extent, though birds are not part of their regular diet. If you put yourself in the place of an otter who is tired of having his food stolen by sea gulls, it is not hard to imagine yourself mauling one. At least for me, it isn't. Those dang birds used to get into my potato chips and other stuff I brought to the beach when I was playing in the water in Huntington Beach!

The lesson that I took away from this otter encounter was that otters are not as cute and cuddly as they look, unless they are in pelt form. Then, and only then, they are the softest, cuddliest furry thing that you will ever feel.

Justin bought this weird instrument a bit back, but I have a suspicion that he hasn't been using it. Well dude, here's something to aspire to:

Take a look at who's playing at this concert:

Rock The Bells

If you're down to go see this awesome show (either in San Bernadino or San Francisco), let me know!

I haven't seen a line up for a hip-hop concert this great since Dave Chappelle's Block Party!

This is a really good set of jump pics!

After an 8 month hiatus, I am have started to work on haniwa again.

For inspiration I've been thinking a lot about my childhood memories, of places I've been, of people I've met, and of music I love. Places I've traveled, movies I've watched countless times, and books I've read have also featured prominently in their creation.

It's been a challenge to actually break open a bag of clay and to actually start making something, but once I'm doing it I love the process. It's like that with a lot of things I find, whether it be cooking, exercise, or reading. In my mind, I know it's going to be fun, but I still need to push myself to actually do it.

Other notes:
I've taken the Komainu (guardian dogs) and reinterpreted them. The ungyo and agyo themes seem to work well as octopi.

I think I'll do a set of Japanese kana characters. Doesn't it look like he's saying "O"?

Patterns from kimono, ancient pottery, and other graphic sources make great sources of inspiration for patterning.

It's kind of nice working only with clay, and not messing with glazes and such. I'd like to start working with wood burning kilns in order to see what kind of effects that I can get by manipulating heat, ash, and clay mixtures.

In Japan, I very rarely used my credit cards and regularly carried large denomination bills on my person.

In the States I use my cards more, and only use cash when I have to. Cash is reserved for places that don't take credit, splitting the bill when eating with friends, and as a reserve plan, just in case I need it.

I like being able to use credit cards everywhere, but only because I am very wary of over-spending on my limited paycheck.

What I don't like is trying to find a place that will accept large bills. At some places, you can sense the reluctance to accept them. Some places won't even take them. I can't remember one time someone wouldn't take a 10,000 yen note when I was in Japan. It just didn't happen.

Then again, there were few times where trying to use my credit card was easy over there. Usually, the clerk looked at it as if it were a puzzle to be solved, and a few minutes later summoned other clerks and then the manager who would either apologize that they didn't accept credit cards (I suspect that some of them may have accepted them, but didn't know it themselves because no one ever had used one in their store) or would take over control of the register and demonstrate part of why they had risen to the ranks of management.

It's hard to say which form of payment I like better. On one hand, I can do almost anything I need to with my credit card. There's no going to the ATM or planning how much I will need before going out. One major benefit is that as long as you report a card missing or stolen, if you lose your wallet the only money you will lose is the actual money in your wallet.

On the other, having to handle money, instead of just signing receipts, makes process of paying for something less abstract. You can actually see your money entering or leaving your possession. Unlike a credit card, thieves on the internet can't literally pick your pocket.

I don't know which I like using better, cash or credit. It would be nice to have a lot more cash though.

I'm going to end this post on something a bit off topic:

I really like bartering. Trading something hot off the grill for a beer, trading some chips for some cookies, and trading a book for a CD. It's been transactions like that which have given me the most satisfaction.

I think we should bring back bartering on a larger scale. Can you imagine paying your taxes in candy, or trading a chef some fish that you caught in exchange for a free dinner? Ah that would be awesome!

I notice that it's a lot easier to face the morning now than ever before. I never liked waking up, but up until I started high school, I used to force myself to wake up on the weekends so that I could catch the morning cartoons.

Between high school and college, I gave into the urge to sleep in whenever possible. Up until 2 years ago, the sun coming up signaled time to go to bed on days that I wasn't working.

Now, I wake up an hour before work in order to shower, cook and eat breakfast, and walk to work. Sleeping in means staying in bed until 10:00 a.m.. It's nice not to feel dead in the morning, and I'm curious to see if, one day, I will routinely rise in time to watch the sun rise without feeling like my head is full of fog.

It feels so strange to not feel weird about going to bed early, and to actually want to go to bed early. I had to train myself out of trying to stay awake for a few years after college. In the end, it helps to live in a community made up of older folks, where there is nothing to do at night time.

Is this what it's going to be like as I get older? Is it going to continually be like how it was when I finally started to appreciate spicy foods (before I was a teenager, I didn't like spicy foods), beer (it took me until my 2nd year at UCSB to really appreciate the taste of good beer rather than the entertaining effects of drinking beer in general), or going to sleep early? How many things are there like this? I guess I'll just have to wait in order to find out.

I've turned off comments for now. Too much Spam. I don't like Spam.

I will turn them back on in the future, but for now I've had enough Spam. Damn Spam!

According to this story, it appears that hammerheads and possibly other species can reproduce without a father.

Here's an unrelated story on a new anemone found on the bones of a dead whale.

This is why I love marine bio. It seems like every month there is at least one new exciting discovery!

I really don't know what to say about this story from Kumamoto:
link

Some people should really not reproduce. So much unnecessary suffering and hardship is caused by people having babies that will not be adequately cared for.

And whose idea was it to create an anonymous unwanted baby drop off? I can't see how anyone would ever think that was a good idea! They were practically inviting this kind of thing to happen.

The poor kid is at the mercy of a bunch of idiots. It's things like this that make me depressed to be a part of humanity.

This post is dedicated to my little sister, who asked for me and Justin to post stuff for her to read in between tests:

This is Yvel. She now has a new, stupid name, but her real name is and shall always be Yvel. When she was young, I used to carry her around in my pocket and she would fall asleep.

Yvel was the smartest of the puppies, and the craziest. She would stop at nothing to attack your toes, and relentlessly smashed through obstacles in order to lick her victim. She also had the strange habit of hopping around like a little bunny.

Aside from her name, it sounds like Yvel is doing well. I have heard that she dines on filet mignon, drinks expensive mineral water, and rolls around in a Bentley. I bet she liked my pocket better.

The Deep has some awesome photos of deep sea creatures, many of them taken by MBARI, and featured in Mysteries of the Deep (not to be confused with the National Geographic series of the same name), one of the shows at Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Check out the impressive gallery on the book's site (the link is on the bottom right corner).

It's coming out in June. Check out the preview here.

On the way up from Huntington Beach, Kohei and I picked up some fresh, wild-caught shrimp in a small town right before we reached Santa Barbara. If you are familiar with that stretch of coast line, it's the place that used to have the banana plantation back in the day.

Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures, but the place selling the shrimp was like something you might encounter in Mexico or a rural coastal village in Thailand. I saw no signs advertising their shrimp, only a broken down taco truck converted into a produce stand, which also sold long skateboards.

Kohei inquired if they were the place that sold shrimp, and the young dude cleared some lettuce off of a battered box, and removed the lid to expose some really fresh shrimp. It still had bright pigmentation, and the only smell was of fresh sea water.

I drove off with my mind blown that such a place could exist, hidden from everyone other than the locals right next to the 101. This is what I had grown addicted to in Japan: finding places that no one else knew of that were extraordinary. Since returning, I've found such places, but not nearly as frequently as I did in Kyushu and Kansai.

What was the chances of finding 2 places that surprised me in one day, covering a stretch of California that I have driven through countless times? Well, it was pretty good that day.

"What do you recommend for lunch?" is a question I've asked Ko on many occasions, and he has never done me wrong. Tri-tip burgers in Long Beach, Pink's Hotdogs, and the best chili fries in L.A. are only a few things that we have enjoyed on an afternoon. This guy knows good food, but I was still more than a bit confused when he recommended a Chinese place for Mexican food.

We walked into the restaurant at about 2pm, and there was no one to show us to a seat. Instead, we walked up to a window next to the kitchen, wrote down our order on an order pad. We summoned the cook, and he shaved a seemingly insignificant portion of meat off of the stack, serving us 3 tacos apiece.

This beautiful ball of sizzling pork reminded me of all of the great chunks of roasting meat I've sampled, notable those of the kebab places in Pike's Place Market in Seattle, of tacos in Mexico, and of Churrasco in Kobe.

The salsas and condiments were top rate as well. Notably, they served their tacos with a side of canned pineapple that perfectly complemented the tacos. Pico de gallo, cilantro and onions, jalapenos, sliced radishes, guacamole, and other toppings rested underneath two Shisars, a lacquered hyotan, and a samurai helmet display. Could this place be any more awesome?

The owner clearly liked fishing and hiking in the mountains, as he decorated the restaurant with mounted fish and family pictures in the Sierras. I have no idea about the history of this restaurant, but I intend to return and find out. It will give me a good reason to go back and enjoy some of the best tacos I have ever tasted!

On the China Bowl website there is no mention of tacos, but take my word for it: it is well worth your time to stop by this place if you find yourself passing through Santa Maria. Long live Chinese tacos!

This is what I get to look at every day on my walk to work:

It's a little under 2 miles from my apartment to work, and takes about 18 minutes to walk from start to finish. Of course, I'm talking about walking at an Osaka pace, so it would really be more like 25 minutes at a leisurely stroll.

Every morning, I am very aware that I could be sitting in traffic on the 405. Yes, I know that I am a lucky bastard.

This is Hopkins Beach, the home of many sausage-shaped harbor seals. I saw some newborn pups last week, so there'll probably be a lot more of them when I get back to Monterey.

Thanks to the changing seasons, the sun is higher in the sky when I walk to work. It's kind of cool getting up in time to watch the sun rise, but I much prefer the longer days of summer.

I hadn't realized how large my backlog of photos has grown since I've started working at MBA. For the sake of posting, I think I need to take more vacations.

Take a look at this fish. What would you say its face looks like?

The monkeyface-eel lives along the coasts in tidepools and eat mainly algae and crustaceans. A friend of mine has gone fishing for these, using a poke-pole, and says that they taste pretty good, though cleaning them can be problematic. Their skin is so slippery that it is hard to cut a fillet off of their body.

Alright, I have a bone to pick. Some jerk ripped off my pictures, and his page got Dugg to the #1 spot today:

(This site has been completely changed now, thanks to the support of readers like you!)
http://www.bloggingwv.com/the-worlds-most-amazing-fishtank/

Here's the Digg link:
http://www.digg.com/general_sciences/The_worlds_most_amazing_fish_tank_PICTURES

And my original post:
http://www.cosmicbuddha.com/adam/archives/002230.html

If you're as disgusted as I am by this individual, please drop by the West Virginia Blogger's site and Digg and let everyone know how you feel.

This sucks: I'm flattered that the Digg community liked my content enough to earn a #1 ranking, but I'm pissed that someone would post the content and not give any sort of credit where credit is due, let alone ask permission.

Who does this individual think they are? Wouldn't they think that I'd be keeping track of my page after I'd been Farked and increasingly thumbed-up on Stumble Upon? Ultimately, in seeking attention through Digg, he pwned himself.

The following is a comment that I left on the guilty blog:

As the owner of the pictures that you posted without my permission on your site, I am asking you to take them down.

I also think that an apology is in order.

Re-posting other people's content without making it clear that you had nothing to do with anything other than copying and pasting stuff to your own page is dishonest and misleading.

I think you owe it to yourself to modify your behavior.

I hope that you are as disappointed in yourself as I am of you.

All right, I'm through for now. Gonna go to bed.

***Update***

The comment above was successfully posted to his page, but he deleted it like a coward. Below is the comment and response that he left, after deleting the other one:

# Adam Says: April 8th, 2007 at 12:25 am

Yo, if you’re going to repost images from my site, the least you can do is give credit:
http://www.cosmicbuddha.com/adam/archives/002230.html
# Bucky Says:

April 8th, 2007 at 1:40 am

ADAM,

I didn’t get the images from your site. They were sent to me as an email FWD.

Nice blog BTW.

I could really care less about what "Bucky" thinks of my blog. What I want is for my pictures to be removed, and for an apology. Is that really too much to ask?

Just to give fair notice, I've just posted this:

I couldn't care less about what you think of my blog.

I will ask again:

1. take down my pictures
2. apologize

I will remind you that my content is protected by a Creative Commons license and I DO NOT give you permission to have them on your site. It doesn't matter how you acquired them. For the record, your excuse is pitiful.

Erasing my comments will not make me go away.

along with the other comment that he erased. OK, now I'm really going to sleep.

***Update 2***

Bucky has blocked me from commenting, but I really need to get some sleep. Let's see how things pan out tomorrow.

***Dirt off my shoulders***

Thanks to everyone who backed me up on this, and thanks to everyone who dropped by my post and left comments.

Both of my requests were ultimately met, with a twist.

He kept the post, deleted all of the comments pertaining to my post and from those who backed me up, and has posted a story (that has already been Dugg in the past by someone else, big surprise!) to bring in residual traffic. It's kind of funny to see how much he still treasures getting exposure. It's also amusing to see how poorly the old comments match up to the remodeled post.

I wish I would have kept a record of the comments that urged him to do the right thing, as no one really was overtly hostile. Most of the comments were civil, and sounded like something a nice first grade teacher would say to gently nudge a misbehaving child in the right direction. It would be a stretch to call any of the feedback that he received "flaming", though Justin's challenge of letting the comments stand used some colorful language. I have a feeling Justin would make a good high school teacher, and perhaps a preschool teacher as well.

Lastly, check the comments to this post. I was a bit surprised about his request, but will chalk it up to sleep deprivation and extreme embarrassment (on his behalf, of course).

Watching this conjures up memories of awamori, umibudo, goya champuru, taco rice, and stewed pig's feet while listening to the laid back twangs and beats of the shinsen and taiko, accompanied by hauntingly beautiful vocals of a dialect that I love to listen to, yet do not understand.

The 3rd season of Ultimate Fighter has Jens Pulver and BJ Penn as coaches on opposing teams, and they're going to fight on the last show!

Both of these fighters are among my favorites, and despite being conflicted on who I want to win, I know it's going to be a good fight.

In other news, Sam Sheridan's book, "A Fighter's Heart" is really good. I remember watching him on National Geographic a few years back, and it's interesting to see how he's progressed in his fighting career. This guy trained with Team Miletich and got a magazine to foot the bill in return for writing about his experiences. He has that special mix of eloquence and grit, the qualities that make a warrior poet.

This fish has big teeth:
link

This set was actually taken in the Fall, but the 7 seem more like harbingers of Spring to me. As much as I don't like small dogs, these puppies were the best puppies in the world. They weren't the smartest, nor the most ferocious or dependable, but they were the happiest dogs I have known.

I hope that they're all living happy lives. I feel like an uncle to them.

Killer and Pinky are under the care of my parents, Yvel (now named "Chanel") now rides in a Bentley in Carmel, Cat and Spanky are also millionaires and live in a multimillion dollar house near Monterey, Blaze lives in Fountain Valley, and Monster resides with a Veterinarian in Huntington Beach.

These are a bunch of lucky dogs. Thank goodness for that, as they would have zero chance of surviving in the wild. They have very few wits amongst themselves to fend off wolves, coyotes, and mountain lions.

These dogs, my dogs, now eat filet mignon and drink only expensive mineral water. That's kind of cool, hahaha!

What's the difference between the words "fish" and "fishes",? This was explained to me a few weeks ago in a lecture about fishes (and if you feel I've left anything out, please let me know):

Fish (I'm just dealing with the noun form, pertaining to language used by aquarists, keep in mind) can mean an individual or a group of the same species of fish.

Fishes, on the other hand, deals specifically with the plural of two or more species.

So does this mean that the sentence "I eat a lot of fish." is wrong if you enjoy eating salmon, tuna, yellowtail, barramundi, and other types of fishes? I don't think so, but I'll ask around.

Anyhow, on to the pictures. One fish pictured is a gar. The other fish is a goldfish. One of them ate the other one, and though the outcome was predictable, I was not expecting to see the following play out.

I don't know enough about gars to hazard a guess at which species this is, but I can tell you that it is the King (or Queen) of the tank.

Maneuvering by using mostly its muscular pectoral fins, the gar slowly positions itself for a meal.

The attack is lightning fast, and devastating to the goldfish. Pressure sensitive canals are lined up along its snout, and function much like a lateral line, letting the gar sense changes in water pressure. It attacks by lining its prey up right next to its mouth, and then snapping it up with its needle-like teeth while flexing its body to one side.

For some reason, the gar spat out its meal, and started to drag the disemboweled goldfish around. It reminded me of a master walking his dog.

After a few minutes, the intestines finally snapped, and the gar finished its grisly meal.

Brian Herbert, with Kevin J. Anderson, took up the Dune universe's story after his father, Frank Herbert, passed away. I thought he did a very good job in staying true to his father's vision, and really enjoyed the two books of his that I read ("House Atreides" and "House Harkonnen").

I am very interested to read "The Children of Hurin" by Christopher Tolkien (son of J.R.R. Tolkien), which is coming out next month. Just like Brian Herbert, Christopher Tolkien used his father's extensive notes to complete a work in progress that was never finished.

One of the major themes of the worlds of these books are the legacies that previous generations hand off to future generations. It is fitting that the sons of two great authors, Tolkien and Herbert, have finished the work that their fathers had started.

I remember hearing about another whale exploding on the streets of China a few years ago. Well, it happened again in Taiwan. This time with a Sperm Whale:

link

Why would the researchers wait until now to move a whale from the beach. Did they not think about the consequences of letting a whale decompose for 2 months before doing a necropsy?

Can you imagine the carnage? Putrid whale entrails splattered on the buildings, cars, and the street with such force and volume that it stopped traffic...

The latest issue of National Geographic magazine is exceptional, which is the highest praise I can give it. I've grown up reading this magazine, and the two main stories are both on topics that I love.

The main story is entitled "Saving the Sea's Bounty" and is broken down into:
The Majestic Bluefin
Safe Haven in New Zealand
Village of Empty Nets

The smaller story is entitled "The Roots of Hip-hop".

Both stories are really well done.

You can take a look at what's inside at the National Geographic Magazine website.

For the moment, comments are down, so don't feel bad if they aren't getting posted. I'll be working on updating this blog, and will let you know when comments are back online. Thanks for your patience.

One evening, the moon was intensely bright and illuminated everything on my walk home from work. Ignoring my hunger, I grabbed my D50 as soon as I got home, and snapped some pictures.

This is a view from my front door. Lacking a tripod, I improvised by resting the camera on a rail, and using my SOG multitool to get a better angle.

I wanted to see what it looked like in front of the trees in the distance, so I put my shoes back on and headed over to the Point.

There were many families down at Lovers' Point, mostly Hispanic. I thought it was cool that as I was shooting, more and more of them showed up, and started having picnics on the grass. It was a cultural remix of the tsukimi parties that I'd attended in Japan.

As the seasons transition from Winter to Spring, I find myself remembering all of the flower viewing parties that I enjoyed in a time not too long ago.

Located not a minute away from my apartment is a park located right on the beach, with public picnic areas and barbecues. Now all you(and you all know who "you" are) have to do is drop by, and we can enjoy grilled meats and vegetables while watching the sun set by the Bay. Beer is in the 'fridge... Let's 'Q.

You have two marine animals to choose from:

Fabien Cousteau's Shark

Innerspace's dolphin

(thx Brent)

There used to be a cool show on public access television in Santa Barbara called IV TV that chronicled the happenings in Isla Vista, U.C. Santa Barbara's college town. This was the best independent TV show ever, and dealt with controversial topics as well as the crazy stuff that went on back then.

One of the craziest shows captured the aftermath of David Attias slamming his car into 5 pedestrians, killing 4 of them. I was one of many that night that was out on those streets that night. I think the whole town felt united in their rage and sadness, following this senseless act. IV TV was on the scene, and showed us what happened.
(for more on this topic, check out this post)

It was in college that I was introduced to the Troops vids. These shorts were pretty cool, and gave us a glimpse of the Star Wars Universe in much the same way that Dante and Randall speculated about the loss of innocent life as a result of blowing up the Death Star in The Return of the Jedi.

I watched the following video, which brought back memories of IV TV and Troops:
Stabbing at Leia's 22nd Birthday

Add to My Profile | More Videos

Ah, it brings back so many memories...

Like my brother, I get a real sense of satisfaction from keeping a car in good condition. I don't particularly enjoy washing, waxing, vacuuming, shampooing, or doing the other things that make a car look great, but it feels pretty good to know that it is being maintained in the best condition possible. Waxing a car is a tedious, time consuming process, but when you wipe away the haze to reveal a mirror-like finish and see a previously hidden depth exposed, it is all worth it.

Most of you don't take the time to wash and wax your cars yourself, and unless you do, you won't understand the exact feeling I'm talking about. No, taking your car to the car wash won't accomplish the same thing.

Since I've returned to the States, this is the 3rd car that I'll be involved in selling. I'm getting it into the best shape I can before it's going to be sold, as I have done with the previous two cars.

On another note, I know I haven't been posting any great posts or new pictures lately, and I apologize for that. Give me a bit more time to figure things out and to regain my equilibrium while I develop my focus. I'll be working on it, even if it isn't apparent right now.

TMBG are cool because they explain seemingly complex scientific things through song.

One of my favorite TMBG songs describes fusion on the Sun:

"The Sun is a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace where hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees The Sun is hot, the Sun is not a place where we could live, But here on Earth there'd be no life without the life it gives."

link-check out the cool animation of the bio-mechanics of the ear.

Do you want to see what they were able to do with the circulatory system? Check out this cartoon titled Bloodmobile.

The Sunfish (aka Mola mola, Headfish, Mambou (Japanese), or as many children and adults call it, the Uglyfish) is one of the Aquarium's most popular attractions.

I would write a post dedicated to the Mola mola, but Fogonazos already has. Take a look here:

link

That's right, octopuses don't have tentacles, they have arms. Squids have 8 arms and 2 tentacles.

So how are tentacles different from arms? They are usually longer and, in general, only have suckers at their ends.

If the cephalopod doesn't have tentacles, it's most likely an octopus. If you want to get even more confused, check out why the Vampire squid isn't quite a squid or an octopus here.

I hate discovering that things that I've believed since I was a child are wrong! Sometimes I'm just not in a mood to be humbled, I guess. In search of knowledge, the road is windy and endless.

Apparently the arms and tentacles of the cephalopods that we know and love fall under the term "muscular hydrostat". According to Wikipedia, a muscular hydrostat is:

"a biological structure found in animals. It is used to manipulate items (including food) or to move its host about and consists mainly of muscles with no skeletal support. It performs its hydraulic movement without fluid in a separate compartment, as in a hydrostatic skeleton. The principle behind the hydrostatic skeleton is that water is effectively incompressible at physiological pressures. Thus, a fiber-wound chamber full of water will act as a constant-volume system. What makes the muscular hydrostat unique is that it relies on the same principle, but there is no water-filled cavity. Instead, the bulk of the organ is made up of muscle, which also has constant volume and is effectively incompressible, its main material being water. Thus, instead of a cylinder wrapped with muscle and connective tissue that changes its shape, a muscular hydrostat is a cylinder made of muscle."

So what is a muscular hydrostat? The bodies of worms, the trunk of an elephant, the arms and tentacles of cephalopods, and the tongues of animals.

So even now that I know this, I don't think it's necessarily important for me to correct others who say that octopuses have 8 tentacles, just as I don't think it's important that people stop using the term "Great White Shark". After all, even if you use these incorrect terminology, people will understand what you are talking about.

Language, in itself, is an imperfect metaphor for us to make sense and communicate these ideas of our perception of reality, so isn't being understood more than sufficient most of the time? If not, most people wouldn't care to debate the issue anyways...

I guess I'm still experiencing lingering annoyance at my ignorance, but since I've typed this out of my system, I feel much better!

Here's a story about the largest known creature that has muscular hydrostats:

link (via my Mom)

"(Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni a.k.a. the Colossal Squid) attains a size larger than the giant squid. Giant squid is no longer the largest squid that's out there. We've got something that's even larger, and not just larger but an order of magnitude meaner."

On a lighter note, take a look at this Conservapedia entry on the Pacific Northwestern Tree Octopus. Ah, good stuff...

It appears that Taningia danae, a deep-sea squid, uses "bright flashes to disorientate potential victims", much like Ts and CTs use flashbangs in order to blind, confuse, and incapacitate their opponents in CS.

Check out the story here, and don't miss the video.

Fire in the hole! Me ga mienai!

Ah, sometimes it's fun to revel in one's own nerdiness.

On a side note, I am willing to bet that T. Danae tastes nasty. I know that the smaller, bioluminescent hotaru ika (firefly squid), considered a delicacy in Japan, doesn't rate among my favorite calamari dishes.

***Update 5***
Um, this is getting to be pretty hard for Mencia to explain away...
link

***Update 4***
Carlos Mencia and Bobby Lee weigh in on the feud.

***Update 3***
Techdirt discusses the irony of the DCMA taking the side of Mencia, who allegedly plagiarized other comedians' acts, against Joe Rogan, who exposed Mencia.

Also, this video actually works (for now):

***Update 2***
Ah, this keeps on getting better:
link

***Update***
Joe Rogan got banned from the Comedy Store as a result of the video. Luckily Joe has his gig as a UFC commentator and other venues to perform comedy to fall back on.

Mencia might have won this battle, but it will be interesting to see if his credibility can remain intact in the long-term. For that matter, I'd like to hear his perspective on all of this.

(This video is the one that the DMCA had taken down)

My brother and I enjoyed watching the first season of The Mind of Mencia, but then his stuff started getting old and repetitive to the point where I would change the channel if his program came on. I noticed that others felt similarly about the show. Why had Mencia's show started off with such a bang and then fizzled out?

Joe Rogan's account of his on-stage confrontation with Mencia gives the reader a possible explanation.

Did Mencia, or "Ned", really steal some of his material? Why is he not forthcoming about his non-Mexican heritage?

The video and Rogan's entry are undoubtedly biased against Mencia, but after reviewing the video I am left questioning the integrity of Mencia and his material.

Like Calvin, I don't like to think of apex predators as scavengers. This is fascinating footage, but it is kind of disappointing to my childhood perceptions of white sharks, like the theories of the T. Rex being a scavenger made Calvin angry.

From a conservation standpoint, it is essential to dispel the myth of sharks as killing machines. The overwhelming majority of shark attacks on humans are accidental, and more people are killed by lightning each year than by sharks. Jaws is what we imagine a creature as awesome as the White Shark to be.

This isn't to say that shark myths shouldn't be preserved and enjoyed. Jaws was a good movie, and sharks make great antagonists in a story. These stories, however, shouldn't be used as justification for hunting sharks to the point where they are unable to sustain a healthy population.

Much in the same way that people should stop blaming violence on TV and in video games for the violence that occurs in the real world. When we're children, most of us can figure out the difference between the pretend world and reality. As long as some of us are unable to (which I am guessing is a very small minority), or, more commonly, are desperate for a scapegoat it will continue to be frustrating for those of us who have to watch these things unfold.

(thanks to Justin, via Maven, for the link)

What does an uncooked lobster that has been stripped of its shell look like?

link
(scroll down)

I'm not one to cry for lobsters, or anything else that I eat for that matter, but I would imagine that being processed in this fashion would hurt. For us, this would be the equivalent of not only peeling away the skin, but more importantly, extracting all of our bones as a whole.

The Police are reunited!

link

I have always felt cheated that I wasn't able to go to a Police show, but now I might be able to listen to their music live and in person.

I feel the same way about Bob Marley and the Wailers, but maybe it's for the best. Bob is immortal.

I don't think the Police will be disappointing, but then again I didn't think that the Star Wars Prequels would be anything less than awesome. If things don't pan out, I can ignore the new stuff and just keep on listening to their older recordings.

I only wish I could do that with Star Wars, but my copies of episode 4-6 show Greedo drawing his blaster first and all of the other "enhanced" bollocks that George Lucas appended onto his original works.

On a side note, isn't "bollocks" a great word. We should all use it a bit more often than we do.

Bollocks!

"After a long search for a better way to stop extreme bleeding, the U.S. Army has purchased more than 400,000 bandages made from chitosan, a polysaccharide extracted from the exoskeletons of Icelandic shrimp."

Japanzine did a pretty good write up on the Tenri City and the Tenrikyo religion:

<blockquote>Unlike the Mormons' inner sanctum, the Tenri main temple is open to unbelievers. We were allowed to walk anywhere we wanted within the 800 meters of the building. In some rooms people were casually praying (doing the te-odori hand dance and singing), while in others, the solemnity and seriousness of prayer was quite tangible. We walked by women receiving the Sazuke, or Divine Grant, an official license to begin spreading the word and recruiting followers.

To my dismay, no one tried to convert us while we were there. We found everyone to be quite friendly, and encountered zero hostility. As an added bonus, arriving a few days after New Year, we also received massive bags of mochi, free, from God herself!</blockquote>

link 

I have embarked upon a mission to catalog all of the fish on exhibit, including common names, scientific names, and Japanese names, along with interesting facts about these fish.

One thing I discovered while consulting "Probably More Than You Want To Know About The Fishes Of The Pacific Coast" by Milton Love (I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the fish of the West coast of the U.S.) is that I have been mixing up the names of 2 similar, but different, fish.

Many people I have talked to have told me that "katsuo" is Japanese for "bonito", but this is wrong. The Pacific Bonito is "hagatsuo" in Japanese, while "katsuo" is actually a Skipjack Tuna, a species that only reaches about 40 inches in length.

Generally, Bonito, or "Boners" as some people like to call them, are not considered a delicious fish, but Love says that if you bleed them right away and keep them moist and cool they are good to eat.

Another interesting thing about Bonito, tuna, and other tuna-like fishes is that if you don't store them properly, they can develop scromboid poisoning which is caused by bacteria breaking down the flesh and creating histamines. The symptoms include "nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea..." (Love, p.315).

No treatment is listed, but I'm guessing that maybe you should treat this like food poisoning, maybe take an anti-histamine, and if things get bad enough, definitely seek professional help. Better yet, if the tuna smells funky, maybe you shouldn't eat it. If the can is bulging and releases a rancid gas when you pop the top, it's best to not eat that stuff. Scromboid, botulism, it doesn't matter- it's not worth risking your health!

This is a bit off of the topic, but my friend Matt asked if we have Albacore on exhibit. We do not, and it seems like they are not an easy fish to keep in captivity, so we probably won't be having any of those any time soon. Nor are there any Blue Sharks in the Outer Bay Exhibit.

Here's another weird tidbit. The Bluefins and Yellowfins are very, very hard to tell apart on exhibit. In Love's book, an easy way to tell these tuna apart is to look at the second dorsal fin. The Yellowfin's pectoral fin reaches the origin of the second dorsal fin, while the Bluefin's does not. Also, the Yellowfin's finlets are yellow, just as the name implies.

Yet, on exhibit, these two fish have morphed to such a degree that even the experts can't easily tell them apart. Whatever the case, the largest fish in this exhibit (estimated weight 600 lbs) are the Bluefin, which can get over 1000 lbs in the Pacific. Those fish are found closer to Japan, which is unfortunate for those of us in the States, and for the tuna. Irony is a b*tch sometimes...

After 137 days with Monterey Bay Aquarium, the juvenile male white shark was released this morning. I feel lucky to have been able to see this one up close for the past month and to learn so much about it.

Here are some interesting bits of information:

The male shark was originally caught by MBA's white shark experts, by line and hook, just off of the coast of Malibu, California.

It's age is estimated at just over a year old.

This white shark was 5-feet, 8-inches, and weighed 104 pounds when he was first put on exhibit. Upon his release he had grown to 6-feet, 5-inches long and weighed 171 lbs.

This is the second white shark ever successfully kept on exhibit anywhere in the world. By "successful", I mean that the shark was able to safely navigate the exhibit he was placed in (the Outer Bay Exhibit) and took food. Monterey Bay Aquarium has been the only aquarium so far to do these things.

The female white shark was with the aquarium for 198 days and reached 6-foot, 4-inches with a weight of 162 pounds. During her time on exhibit, she grew 1 foot, 4 inches in length, and put on 100 pounds!

The male shark was released just off of Point Pinos, and was tagged with a 90 day PAT tag.

This shark never attacked any of his exhibit mates, instead feeding on plenty of wild-caught salmon steaks which were personally delivered to him on the end of a pole (the salmon was tied to the pole with an easily digestible cotton string, in order to prevent the voracious tunas from nabbing it).

During his stay, the white shark generally cruised towards the top of the exhibit with his dorsal fin occasionally breaking the surface of the water.

Flashes from people taking pictures seemed to cause the white shark to spend less time towards the front of the glass, and more time in the back of the exhibit where he was a little harder to spot.

It was amazing to see how many people's perceptions of sharks as malevolent, murderous monster were changed by simply watching him calmly cruising around the exhibit.

"Why isn't he attacking the other fish?" is a question often heard in the Outer Bay Exhibit. When people find out that these creatures don't kill everything in the oceans, and in fact help to keep the wildlife populations healthy, they want to learn more and generally start to develop an interest much different from the morbid, sensationalized portrayals that they are used to seeing on TV and in the movies.

A lot of people seem truly surprised to learn that most white shark attacks on humans are accidental. A human with four limbs sticking off of a surfboard looks like the silhouette of a sea lion or a seal from below. Upon tasting human, most white sharks don't seem to come back to for seconds. It's kind of like biting into what you think is a caramel flavored chocolate, and finding out that it is in fact the chocolate covered fruit and nut loaf.

Isn't it cool that the aquarium keeps its animals' welfare first and foremost in mind, when considering whether or not to keep them on exhibit or to release them. From what I've seen at aquariums around the world, this is not always the case. 

When I was in Japan last year, I looked forward to seeing a new episode of 24 each week. It was one of the highlights of the work week when I could discuss the show with my brother and a few like-minded friends.

I believed Justin posted this site last year, but I'm going to put up this link again:

http://jjafuller.com/mirror/bc/v3/index.php/season/show/6

It's about to start, time to go! 

Killer and Monster wish you all a happy 2007!

It looks as if the same team of Japanese researchers who took the first still pictures of the giant squid have now succeeded in capturing one on video, though it is still unreleased.

Read more about it here.

Not too long ago, I read about the Barramundi in some fishing magazine. It's a fish native to Northern Australia that is not only puts up a good fight and is a good candidate for fish farming (unlike salmon, which is not only bland when farmed, but bad for the environment and wild salmon stocks) but it is also delicious.

In fact, it is number 36 on the BBC's 50 things to eat list. I got mine at the Portola Restaurant in Monterey Bay Aquarium. It was dusted with paprika, served on top of purple sweet potatos and fennel, topped with braised spinach, and garnished with a tamarind relish. The flesh was like that of sea bass, only richer.

Forget about talapia and catfish, barramundi is one sustainable option that I actually want to eat (and catch, if I ever get the chance).

How many songs can you think of that use the same chord progression as Canon in D (the Coolio song doesn't count because it straight out uses the piece, like Vanilla Ice took from David Bowie)?

We have video of a fish sitting on the molten sulphur and then moving off after a couple of minutes, apparently unharmed.

I hope you like reading about fish, because I'm going to start posting more and more about topics dealing with the ocean and things that live in the ocean.

Justin, I have one-upped the story that you linked to.

link

With the support and encouragement of my family, I've moved to Monterey after accepting a position with the aquarium. Though I'd ideally like to live in Southern California, I can't complain about living up here- the possibilities for hiking, diving, fishing, and other activities are more plentiful than I could have hoped for. They even have jiu-jitsu up here!

One thing is for certain: I am glad that I didn't have to take any of the jobs that I was offered in Orange County. With the exception of teaching sailing, I wasn't having much luck finding a job that I wanted to do. All of the jobs that I was offered where I could use Japanese left much to be desired.

Instead of making a pitiful amount of money, spending a few hours a day stuck in L.A. traffic, and working insane hours for a Japanese corporation, I'm going to be doing something that I want to do for a living and during my leisure time. I realize that most people are not lucky enough to get to pick and choose what they want to do, and am very grateful for the opportunity.

Life just seems so unreal sometimes. As soon as I've ended one leg of my "career", another one starts in a different place. I still don't feel like the adventure that I embarked on when I left for college has really ended.

It's cool to see what you end up with if you are always on the move. It turns out, in my case, that I don't need a lot to be content- clothing, a camera, some books, music, computer stuff, sports equipment, assorted tools, and my camera can all be fit into a few suitcases, and are all that I need.

Posting might be light for a while, since I'm still in transition. While I'm getting started up here, I think I'll buy a new computer. What a great excuse to get something that I have really wanted, as I've been without my own computer since I left Osaka! Hmmmn... What to get?

I just started watching Robot Chicken, and I like it.

Mark is referenced in the St. Louis Post in an article about the Hash House Harriers. My question: why did they omit the "ass" and keep the "Disco"? You can't have the Disco without the ass!

link

This sign reminds me of the opening to Happy Gilmore. I love the signs in Japan!

On Sunday, I went for a walk by the beach, where the Santa Ana River drains into the Pacific Ocean. I hesitate to call this place a delta, because this river, the victim of massive amounts of concrete and man's will to use every inch of real estate in So Cal, is severely channelized and is is really just a massive rain gutter. As I was walking by, this area really started to remind me of the Yodogawa.

The following pictures, on the top of the bodies of text, are those of the Talbert Marsh (Huntington Beach) area, and those on the bottom are of the Yodogawa (in Osaka).

Input/Output

North of the river, the Talbert marsh is flanked by a sewage treatment (I'm guessing this because of the smell) or some sort of wastewater treatment facility.

The Yodogawa doesn't stink, but I wouldn't eat any fish I caught out of it, nor would I go swimming in that water. That being said, the residents of Osaka depend on the Yodogawa as a water supply. This is one place in Japan where water does not taste good straight from the tap.

Life by the River

There is a whole community living in improvised housing next to the Yodogawa, and the trailer park on the Newport/Huntington Beach border have a similar appearance. A key difference would be that the people living in Newport are paying (and I bet rent isn't really that cheap, relative to other trailer parks), but the community living across from the Osaka side of the Yodogawa are very resourceful homeless people.

Waterfront Property

Another thing that these two groups of people share is that they both live in an area with a fantastic view. These wetlands provide a home for people and for a great assortment of birds.

Invisible People

There are homeless in both places, but not so much in Newport Beach. In both cases, I found their makeshift houses under the bridge, and out of view of the public eye.

Juxtaposition

Concrete, asphalt, and rusted iron girders don't blend into their beautiful surroundings. These are the places that people explore and fewer have to depend on for shelter. It must get cold during the winter time, especially along the Yodogawa. Where do they go when it floods?

Boundaries

In this one block of Newport, the Pacific Coast Highway divides the wealthier from the trailer park. You can see that the people who live next to the beach have a glass wall that blocks the noise, while the trailer park has little to mitigate their situation (the top of low brick wall is at street level).

The Yodogawa is the border that separates the more upscale Umeda from the seedier Yodogawa-ku, across the river. I liked to spend time on both sides- Fireworks, house parties, and festivals were more fun on the Yodogawa-ku side, while Umeda offered more places to shop, eat, and go out with friends.

Cat and Spanky are waiting to be fed, be it toes or avocados.

Here's Spanky, pictured after eating half of an avocado. They also like guavas.

I used to play video games regularly up until a few years back. For some reason, playing video games just stopped being something I wanted to do on a regular occasion, but if I need to get my Half Life fix without going through the hassle of installing it on my computer, I think I'll drop by this site: link

I caught a cold that prevented me from eating a proper Thanksgiving for the 4th year in a row, and I plan on nuking it.

Today I kept warm, making sure to dress in layers and stay in blankets. I drank a few liters of tea with honey (an antibacterial substance used by ancient people to treat infections, and more recently gaining popularity in modern medicine), and soup with a metric buttload of garlic. I've been taking vitamin C with a bunch of other supplements, along with Cold-Eeze lozenges and Theraflu - Nighttime Severe Cold. Just to be safe, I'm going to bed early tonight. With any hope, I will have obliterated this bastard by tomorrow morning.

I don't care that Thanksgiving is past, I refuse to wait another full year to enjoy my own Thanksgiving. As soon as I'm well, I'm getting myself the turkey, yams, stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, pie, and other foods that I've been waiting so long to eat.

BTW, the Theraflu tastes rather unpleasant, so I will not be happy if I don't see results...

Update: It's still with me, but I am seeing immediate results with a secret weapon- pizza topped with crushed garlic.

I am topping each slice of pizza with at least one large clove of pressed garlic, and toasting it in the oven. It immediately cleared up my nasal passages, and has given me awesome breath! It has the added benefit of tasting really good (my brother and I discovered this almost unheard of topping on a trip back to Huntington Beach when we were searching for the best pizza a few years back).

Equipment:
QX4
Assorted maps
Fishing poles and tackle
2 tents and assorted bedding
DC power converter
Generic LG mobile phone
Nikon D-50
2 SD memory cards
250 GB Buffalo external harddrive
Compaq Laptop
40 assorted music cds

This summer, I flew out to Chicago to meet my little sister and her boyfriend for a road trip back to Southern California. I was really excited to have an opportunity to explore such a large swath of my own country- it's crazy to think that in 3 years I have explored most of Japan, but at age 27, I still haven't managed to see many places in the United States.

I had no idea that I would experience culture shock on this trip. Maybe it caught me off guard, being a domestic trip where I feel familiar with the culture, language, food, etc... In retrospect, it's not surprising that things were different enough to make me feel like I was traveling abroad once you take the demographic differences into consideration, especially when you realize just how large America really is.

CHICAGO

Ferris Buller's Day Off. The Blues Brothers. Common. Da Bulls. Pizza and sausages. These are the things that come to mind when I think about Chicago. It's funny, but these things, more or less, summarize my time in Chicago. Except I didn't get to see the Bulls. Or Common. Or Ferris Buller.

One of my favorite sketches from classic SNL is the Superfans, with Chris Farley, Mike Myers, and Joe Mantegna (with memorable apperances by John Goodman and Michael Jordan among others). The hot dogs and pizza are awesome, and it is a bit spooky to see how right on these sketches capture Chicago. "This", I thought, "is a place where I could easily become overweight, with the delicious food and weather that makes you stay inside and crank the AC or the heater to stay comfortable.".

I loved the deep dish pizza, sandwiches (from Potbelly Sandwich Works in particular), and hot dogs and sausages. It was strange being told that I was not supposed to put ketchup on the hot dogs though. I got no good answer for questioning why using ketchup was a faux pas- does anyone care to tell me why? People feel strongly, it seems, about tradition and their hot dogs in this city.

Riding the subway was a trip. We started from the Chinatown station, which had the strongest, most concentrated smell of urine I have ever experienced (which is saying a lot, because I used to live in Isla Vista when I attended UCSB).

On the ride into the city, it was interesting to see who got on and off. Getting closer to the city center, most of the black folks got off at once as the percentage of white people gradually started to increase. At one point, it was as if there was an invisible filter through which everyone except for white people had trouble passing through (this is not unique to Chicago by any means, its just more noticeable when you're riding on a train, which doesn't happen too often in So Cal).

I think we were the only Asians riding the train. It's strange to be in a place where you stick out like a sore thumb, yet speak a common language, share many aspects of our culture, and belong to the same nationality.

Chicago was a beautiful city with lots of trees, forests of deciduous trees, and scattered lakes. I was glad that I got to visit at a time when the weather wasn't too miserable, and wouldn't mind checking it out again at some point in time.

The things I enjoyed the most about the Windy City was the food and the botanical gardens. If I return, I intend to check out the music scene, to attend some sports games, and to try to find the best hot dog and pizza places.

After a week (or two) we finally hit the road in a QX4 that was stuffed to capacity with all of Merin's stuff and our traveling provisions. There was just enough room for 3 people to sit in.

MINNESOTA

The first stop was Minnesota's own Mall of America. I was underwhelmed by this really big shopping mall, probably because I don't like hanging out at malls and because their aquarium was closed. I can't believe that this place is the vacation destination for some people. Then again, I can never understand why South Coast Plaza is so jam packed with people during the middle of the day. Shouldn't these people be working or going to school?

SOUTH DAKOTA

The next stop was the Badlands National Park in South Dakota. Here, you can see the very bones of the Earth being slowly ground away by the wind and water, painstakingly formed into landscapes from another world. Prairie dogs, bison, coyotes, and other animals (that I remember killing for sustenance in The Oregon Trail) fit in perfectly among the vast grass plains and the giant sandcastle-like formations.

Sitting at home or in the office, it is easy to romanticize life in the great outdoors. Insects, the fickle elements of nature, wild swings in temperature, and unexpected encounters with agitated dangerous wild animals will purge one of these silly ideas pretty quickly. Luckily, these things were not a problem. I didn't appreciate being woken up by a very noisy corvid, but I'll take that over being attacked mosquitoes or bears any day.

The Badlands isn't only a great place to see the prairie, awesome geologic formations, and wildlife- it's also rich in fossils. Walking along a creek, we found fossilized shells and what I think was the leg bone of a bison four feet under the soil exposed by the creek. I get the feeling that many of the early paleontological discoveries were made by people taking a walk in an unfamiliar place without the intent of finding anything in particular, just like we did. Not that we found a T-Rex or anything like that.

The Badlands was so cool that I think it deserves a separate post all by itself.

While in South Dakota, we also visited Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Monument. After growing up and seeing them on TV and in the movies, and studying them in the classroom, it was kind of an underwhelming experience. It also sucks that they charge you to see these things up close. In my humble opinion, it cheapens the experience, and deterred us from visiting the site It was fun taking pictures of my finger picking the nose of George Washington from the side of the road, though.

I didn't eat at Taco John's, a popular fast food restaurant in middle America, but I think I can safely say that is sucks. Call it "taco intuition", an ability developed over time by eating at too many disappointing restaurants that serve stuff that they call "Mexican food" and only once in a great while, finding some really good food. This place has liquid "nacho cheese" written all over it (Nacho cheese, while delicious, is neither Mexican nor is it food).

The only Mexican food that I ate on the trip was made of buffalo meat served on top of indian flatbread and topped with standard Tex-Mex condiments. This is one of the rare opportunities in which trying the regional ethnic food was even an option.

Jewel Cave was also a pretty cool stop in South Dakota. At 136 miles long, it currently the second longest cave in the world (it's still being explored, and it might one day claim the #1 spot). The rock formations are stunningly beautiful, and I would love to come back and go cave exploring. Notice I use the term "cave exploring". I'd rather go cave exploring than spelunking any day. Spelunking just sounds so...

Immediately after spelunking Jewel Cave, we checked out America's first national monument, Devil's Tower (also known as Bear's Lodge). This place was awesome. Indian princesses fleeing a great bear and climbing the rock into the heavens almost seems possible, looking at this massive column of basalt.

The reverence that American Indians have for this place reminds me of how aborigines feel about Uluru (or Ayer's rock, as the white man calls it), as do the problems that arise. There were some a-holes climbing this sacred site, even though there were signs posted by Native American groups asking people not to climb during what was a holy time for them. And people wonder why Americans have a bad reputation around the world for being disrespectful and rude. There is a very visible minority in our country that can't even treat each other with dignity, let alone people with different customs, beliefs, and languages. Sucks for the rest of us who enjoy living and traveling outside of our country.

WYOMING

On the way to Yosemite, a waitress told us about a Thermopolis, home of the world's largest mineral hot springs. My arm was pretty scraped up- the results of an unsuccessful jump picture off of a small mesa in the Badlands. I will take any excuse to go to the onsen, and this one fit quite nicely.

Thermopolis turned out to be a land of extremes. The weather was so hot that I was the only one to go soak in the waters. I enjoyed this place, but it was decided to carry on to Yellowstone with haste.

YELLOWSTONE (located in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho)

Yellowstone was more magnificent than I had ever imagined. This was nature as I had never seen in America, and I didn't even have to fly or hike for days to get here. Geysers of all sorts put Beppu to shame. It was as if my memories of the diaramas of the Natural Museum of History, that I had seen as a kid, had come alive.

For someone disenchanted with life in the city or the vast expanses of our suburban sprawl, visiting this place can be as profound an experience as I imagine making a religious pilgrimage to others is. This is a place that I would like to live in for an extended period of time.

If you do go, please, don't be a jerk and stop your car in the middle of the street, set up your tripod, and take pictures while oblivious to the line of cars behind you. It would be better for everyone else if you stayed in your apartment and watched the Discovery channel.

We fished a little bit along the way, with little success. While in the Grand Tetons, we saw a storm roll in over the mountains across from the lake. Just before the rain reached our shore, the trout went crazy, and were biting everything that we threw at them. When the rain reached us, the bite stopped for good. Ah, the mysteries of fishing...

IDAHO

Potatoes are what come to mind when I hear the word "Idaho", but Idaho is much, much more than where we get our French fries and potato chips from. The land is beautiful beyond description, especially in those fleeting moments when the rain and sun fight for domination of the skies.

We drove through a land of lush green mountains, rivers, and fields, painted by light piercing the dark rain clouds. Above is only one of the many rainbows that we saw. This is one state that truly caught us off guard. I think that I'll have to find my way back up to Idaho one day.

From this point, we decided to just drive straight home and so there are no pictures of Utah, Nevada, or California. To sum up, I drove from dusk until dawn, sustained by a lot of caffeine and loud music. I do not recommend driving along the straight, long expanses of highway at night time, as it is tedious and becomes hypnotic unless you have someone to talk to. In the morning, when night sky started to hint of the next day coming, I found myself hallucinating, singing along to They Might Be Giants's album, Flood. We had reached California, and though exhausted, I spent the rest of the trip awake. It was a good finish to a good road trip.

Road trips are awesome because you are constantly moving, trying new things, eating new food, and meeting new people. I feel as if my life kind of mirrors a road trip, as I have been able to do all of these things on a regular basis.

I think road trips should be a mandatory part of our educational system, especially trips to foreign countries overseas.

I don't think you can truly know what it is to be an American unless you spend some time out of your comfort zone, out of your culture, away from your family and friends. I don't think you can know what it is to be an American if you don't travel around the many different parts of America. How can you know what it is to be American, or any other nationality, unless you experience and explore other perspectives than the ones you are comfortable with? I don't think you can, and I know that I'm extremely fortunate to be able to have done these things.

Anyone up for a road trip?

Mark, Joy, Eric, and I took turns jumping off of things, giving the senior citizen bird watchers something to look at.

Mark and I saw this upscale Asian-fusion restaurant on Sunset Blvd. when we went to go see the Cut Chemist on Thursday night. With the amount of Japanese people who visit this area, they must know that their sign really means.

1) Italian (and sometimes French): 'Cheers!' Derives from the sound of the glasses clinking together.

2) Japanese: Penis. Cause of much puzzlement when Italians travel to Japan, or when Japanese travel to Italy.

Italian guy: OK, here's to our time in Osaka. Chin chin!

Japanese guy: I beg your pardon?

It looks like HBO is working on a version of Band of Brothers in the Pacific theater.
link

The second season of Rome will be coming out next year.

HBO has renewed its epic drama series ROME for a second season, it was announced today by Carolyn Strauss, president, HBO Entertainment. Production of the 12-episode second season will begin next March, with the debut set for 2007.

It's too bad that I hate waking up early. You can see some pretty interesting stuff is you get up early in the morning. My bed usually wins the decision when I ask myself "should I get up or not?".

I must say that I don't sleep in nearly as late as I used to. At this point in my life waking up late is like waking up really early when I was in college. I wonder what will happen in another 10 years...

This is apparently what you get when you cross a whale and a dolphin. I'm a bit confused, though. If something can produce offspring that can produce offspring, isn't that the standard definition of a species (a category of biological classification ranking immediately below the genus or subgenus, comprising related organisms or populations potentially capable of interbreeding, and being designated by a binomial that consists of the name of a genus followed by a Latin or latinized uncapitalized noun or adjective agreeing grammatically with the genus name)? For example, donkeys and horses are not the same species because their offspring are sterile.

The same thing goes for ligers and tigons. It is hard to think of lions and tigers as being the same species, but doesn't their ability to produce offspring capable of reproduction make them just that?

I caught this set partway through, and noticed that the tracks sounded a little bit different. It turns out that J5 did a live in-studio session on NPR of all stations! This is worth a listen:

link

Beck is a genius!

Go check it out-
link

This is Bach and it rocks...

In order to make sure that the haniwa (here is another interesting article about haniwa) were completely dry, they sat exposed to the air and sunlight for 2 weeks. Since the smaller haniwa dry more quickly, I was able to fire the octopus, robot, and a few other smaller pieces prior to the bigger pieces.

This is the first group of haniwa. From right to left the group consists of a kabutomushi (rhinocerous beetle), a fugu (puffer fish), a bucket-headed sanshin player (made out of a gourd and bamboo stock), a ninja, a soldier with butterfly swords, a Taiko spirit, a Freeza-like spirit, and a Satsuma (not this Satsuma) samurai.

The second group is made up of a DJ, my version of a Daruma totem (a dual skull on top of a stormtrooper on top of a ninja turtle wind god), a snowtrooper (based on the kind that raided Hoth at the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back), a two-headed warrior wielding a naginata, a bear, the squid Pope, and a ronin bearing a cane sword.

I fired the first group last week, and unfortunately, a few of them cracked. The samurai lost a piece of his helmet, the Taiko spirit lost part of his back, and the Fugu was badly damaged. I was able to fix them all with some super glue and used Gorilla Glue to fill in places where the fugu was badly damaged.

I just finished firing this group, and they all look like they survived the process intact. I guess it just took a little bit of time to refine my technique.

The clay I used was special in that it is made to be fired at 350 degrees for 1 hour, so I was able to do this in a household oven. I plan to make more as soon as I get more clay, but I need to find someone with a kiln so I can get those fired as well.

So far, the project is off to a good start.

In case you are interested in haniwa and kofun (Japanese burial mounds), these links might be of interest:
Sakai City's site
Charles Keally's Kofun Culture page
Kazumasa Ozawa's page about kofun
A page that shows what kofun look like from the air and ground
Abstracts from the Japanese Archaeological Association
A concise article about haniwa by the Cleveland Museum of Art

This picture has nothing to do with the news I just got from Chris, but it seemed appropriate somehow. I just learned that Sarah is pregnant, but I don't know when they will be expecting. I'll add more info to this post (or check the comments) as more news becomes available. Congratulations guys!

It feels weird to know that my brother is on a plane, and on his way, to a new life in Thailand. Over 10 years in Japan has molded him into an American who is very Japanese, so it will be interesting to see how he changes after being in Thailand for a while. Dude, best of luck!

On a side note, I think that your next car should be a turbo charged tuk-tuk.

It's hard for me to listen to the radio without constantly switching from station to station. It seems to me that there was a greater variety available on radio when I was younger, and now there's less space on the mainstream airwaves for anything other than pop, especially when it comes to hip-hop as this article points out.

Though there is new music coming out that I enjoy listening to, it is harder to find it. The pop has taken over like an invasive species- like the Kudzu vine has taken over the South, turning what used to be a space filled with diversity into a uniform plot of artificiality. MTV has only gotten worse about this over time, and when they do actually play videos, you can really see this. It seems like the formula of showing off material wealth and looking like a thug are enough to make you popular. But this stuff is just the same old noise, given new beats and repackaged.

Listening to radio today is like being forced to do your grocery shopping at a(n American) convenience store. No one can deny that the products it stocks appeals to the masses, and as much as I like things with nacho cheese and food that has an infinite shelf life, being limited to a diet of those things sucks. A diet of twinkies, skttles, and slim jims gets old fast.

Artists like the Roots, Binary Star, Talib Kweli, Common, Dead Prez, and Mos Def are seldom heard, and this is a shame. I'm sure I'm not the only one who wants to hear artists like these on the radio. When you have to listen to independent radio, college radio, and NPR to hear what anything other than the stuff that they rotate on the commercial stations, it is really frustruating.

I'd rather listen to nothing at all, rather than having to listen to songs like "Promiscuous Girl", or anything by 50, Ludacris, or Justin Timberlake(!?). I have nothing against this music, I just want to be able to choose to listen to something else without having to pop in a cassette or cd or boot up my computer.

I took Killer out to play with Boo and Yoda today, and after playing with a guava, he charged Yoda.

Yoda was a good sport. He played with Killer for a while, and just let the little puppy do whatever he wanted to.

Boo was less tolerant. He played with Killer for a little bit, but when the puppy started to get hyper, Boo gave him the one-two-neko punch! Killer whimpered for a bit, but went right back to playing with Yoda.

Wow.

I find myself frustrated at how desensitized I've become towards the war in Iraq. The news is saturated with depressing stories day after day. Sometimes, I hear how many people have died in an explosion and think "That's not too bad.", and am sad at how these people have become numbers, as impersonal as the stock prices scrolling along the bottom of CNN.

I'm writing this post after reading this letter from Time.com. It's a good thing to personalize the war every once in a while, because it's way too easy to just tune out the noise all together.

Over the past week, I've been thinking about making our front garden into a haniwa forest. I want to make hundreds of haniwa and find the right places for them so that they become part of the environment of our front yard.

The haniwa of the Kofun period were guardians of tombs and tumili, but mine will watch over the home and garden environment in which they are to dwell. Who knows what forms they will take? Certainly not me, as I found out.

Today, I had an irresistible urge to sculpt haniwa. I opened up a package of clay, and slowly started to remember how to work in this medium. There is something very pleasant about working with clay- the earthy smell and cool, malleable properties of this stuff brings me a similar type of comfort that I get when I enjoy a hot cup of tea. They seem completely different, yet somehow they are linked in my mind.

I'm half planning what I want to make, and half letting the clay decide. This octopus came to be after I started to make it.

This robot haniwa was originally going to be a plain haniwa, but it clearly wanted to be a robot. That is the nature of haniwa. A spirit will take any form which it desires, as long as you let it. Hopefully they'll dry out without any cracks forming.

May peace be upon you.

Why do people like to dress up their dogs? I think that some people truly consider their dogs to be human and feel the need to clothe them. Others enjoy dressing up their dogs in the same way that children enjoy dressing up their dolls and action figures. I generally don't like to dress up pets, but this was just too perfect- my older sister had a bunch of butterfly wings hanging around so I had to tie them onto the puppies.

Have you ever seen such an unhappy butterfly puppy? If I dress him up any more, I think I'll give him issues, so I'm not going to make this a habit.

Killer's little sister doesn't like the wings much either, but she doesn't seem so depressed about the whole affair:

Though still a juvenile, the great white shark at Monterey Bay Aquarium exudes the presence of an apex predator. Nothing in the tank was running away from it, but they weren't coming near it either. Right now it's only 5 feet 8 inches, but I still would not want to fall into that tank...

This sign in front of Morro Rock (in California) makes me wonder, "Why do they want to keep us out?".

A big post about my road trip with my little sister looms in the not-so-distant future, but in the meantime here's a small taste of our journey:

We were walking through Yellowstone on one fine afternoon, admiring geysers like the one pictured above. Little did we imagine that one of our group would be taken down in a most unexpected incident in front of Vent Geyser.

Extensive wooden walkways have been installed all around in order to minimize the impact that the park welcomes each year, as well as to keep people safe from the hazards of walking off of the known path. Once in a while, someone will wander off path and fall through the earth into super-heated water, resulting in burns or even death. It's refreshing not to be over-protected from things that can hurt you but won't unless you do something stupid. In a country where too many things are ruined for us all because some dumbass does something to ruin it for us all, it is nice to be able to go somewhere where you are given responsibility for your own safety.

Merin is pointing and laughing at Chris, a fellow med school student at Rosalind Franklin University, after he got his ass kicked by a park bench. As he was walking along the edge of the trail, he failed to notice the bench in front of him and hit it with such force with one shin that he tripped and smacked his other shin into the bench seat before falling forward onto the bench. It looked and sounded painful, but no sympathy was forthcoming.

"It really hurts!", whined the pre-med.

"Hahahahahaha!", we replied. From that point on his responses, no matter what he said, elicited nothing but laughter. It still makes me laugh just thinking about it. He's not quite ready for the responsibilities that come with walking around shin high obstacles.

I live to take pictures so that I can remember moments like these. Yes, be proud America, for he is among the students destined to blaze the path of the future of medicine!

This entry marks the beginning of a series on a road trip that I took with my little sister and her boyfriend a few months ago:

The rabbits have been out in great numbers everywhere. They don't seem to need much to proliferate. I've seen them in the grass, chaparral, and riparian habitats.

Young bunnies seem to be less spooky than the adults. This one liked to get really close, and then started spazzing out, running this way and that. I think I saw them do the same thing to coyotes on the Discovery Channel. I don't remember why they do this, butt it reminds me of the behaviour of young humans.

If you like bunny rabbits, you might check out Daniel Chong's short story.

I tried stewed rabbit in France, and remember it being a mild, succulent meat. Trying rabbit was one of the first times that I tried something not usually eaten in America, and this experience set me on the path to eating animals, parts of animals, and other things that I would have never been able to try had I stuck to the McDonalds diet when visiting foreign lands. I'll take stewed rabbit over a Big Mac any day!

Doesn't he look cute/delicious? Mmmmm. Stewed rabbit.

Mopar sponsored an event that made for a strange gathering of people who either came to see their favorite NASCAR driver try and their hand at drifting, or to see some of the best drifters from Japan's D-1 circuit. I tried taking pictures of the event, but my lens was way too slow and I was too far away from the action. Though the pictures are way too blurry, the event was too interesting not to post them.

The Japanese drivers were, of course the highlight of the night. Unfortunately, we arrived a little late at the Irwindale track and missed most of their performance.

Seeing these guys race brought back memories of over 7 years ago, when I first saw cars like these tearing through the giant intertwined maze of bridges and streets in Yokohama. Back then, I had no idea what drifing was, and was amazed to see these cars evade the police with such grace and ease, and then returning shortly after the cops left to continue racing.

One NASCAR driver demonstrated how hard it is to drift in a NASCAR racer. I have to admit, it was pretty funny.

The NASCAR fans went wild watching their favorite drivers attempt to drift, but I quickly became bored of watching them.They didn't practice beforehand like they were supposed to, so we were watching them learn how to drift. Thankfully, the Japanese guys came back on the track for an unscheduled finale.

Bigfoot also had a go at drifting. Watching that huge truck lunge from side to side was entertaining, but this is not the Bigfoot that I remember from the old days. The old solid blue design was much better! Now the sponsor's name is written in larger print than the name of this iconic monster truck.

There were many strange things about this event: First of all it was sponsored by Mopar. It was also weird to see absolutely no Autobacs signs.

This was my first time actually being around NASCAR fans, and likely my last. I've never seen so many mullets in one place at one time! Nothing against NASCAR or the people who like this variety of racing, it's just not my scene. I'll take rally racing any day over doing donuts or drag racing.

I think the lesson from this event is to avoid Mopar sponsored drifting events, and stick to ones that are sponsored by Autobacs.

Killer is the first puppy of the litter to open his eyes.

Pretty soon he'll be able to walk about instead of just inch around like a caterpillar.

He's just eaten, so he wants to go back to sleep.

Over at Wired, Jennifer Granick makes an interesting comparison between the music industry and ramen:

People play guitar in all sorts of styles, riffing on notes the way the Japanese riff on the basic concept of Chinese noodles in soup. What if the original ramen chefs tried to stop others from developing their own ramen recipes and making differently flavored ramen broth?

They'd form an association -- say, the Ramen Industrial Alliance of Asia, or RIAA -- and announce a clampdown on the proliferation of infringing noodle shops. Their arguments would echo the music industry's. "The chefs who created ramen deserve to get paid for their creation," they'd say. "These noodle shops are taking profits away from the creators, while peddling an often-inferior product to an unsuspecting public that believes they are getting real ramen."

Just as the music industry claims that tab sites are publishing "derivative works" related to the original musical compositions, the ramen industry lawyers would argue that ramen varieties are derivations of the original product. Kyushu's tonkatsu (pork) ramen, Sapporo's miso ramen or Hakodate's shio (salt) ramen divert customers and take ramen sales away from the original chefs.

In a world of Maruchan, Nissin, and other instant crap, it's nice to know that somewhere, pig bones are slowly simmering over a low flame, releasing collagen and combining with the other ingredients to make a rich, delicious broth. Long live tonkotsu (and tonkatsu, but not in ramen)!

The cow patterned puppies will blend in well with a zebra pattern.

Their pattern against the zebra stripes reminds me of the dazzle camouflage used in WWII.

This one doesn't quite blend in as well as the other puppies.

Young "Chunk" reenacts a dramatic scene from "The Goonies".

She fell asleep right on the keyboard. More shameless puppyblogging to come...

Up until a few days ago, much of Bolsa Chica was closed off to the public, so when I heard that they had opened it up I went to go check it out. The water under the bridge is murkier because the water is now able to get into and out of the estuary a bit easier, now that they have widened the opening to the ocean. You can already see a difference.

We saw about 6 stingrays in different places, all within a 30 minute span. This one seems to be missing his tail.

Something was scaring all of the smelt, and we couldn't quite make it out. Whatever it was, it was just shy of 2 feet long.

Upon careful inspection, it turns out to be a white sea bass! I have never seen these in Bolsa Chica before. And there were a bunch of them munching on the the smelt!

A few days ago, a school of bonita came up next to the docks in Newport and attacked the smelt as I was teaching a class. The frenzy only lasted 10 seconds, and when it was finished, there were a bunch of baitfish flopping around on the dock. This was exactly how it was in Catalina last weekend, except I have never seen this happen in front of the Sea Base or Sailing Center in the 10 years that I've been around this area.

I'm taking these unusual sightings as a good omen for the fisheries along the coast. It looks like things are starting to recover. It's about time.

All of these pictures were taken from the road as we traveled around Kyushu. Though the destinations were all great, getting there was half of the fun. These are some of the passing moments that we witnessed on our road trip, complete with commentary.

A old horse in Yufuin pulls an endless procession of tourists around town. This is some tired basashi.

The JSDF and other Jeep enthusiasts regularly drive their vehicles in the mountains of Kumamoto and Oita. In these areas, you can really put an ORV to the test.

The "Mika" sits in front of a massive ship on the coast of Oita.

Japanese construction workers dress like the Beastie Boys in their video for "Intergalactic". Or maybe it's the other way around.

Many of the bridges have fish on them. This one looks like a sardine.

"Kick his ass, Sea Bass.". At least, I think this one is a sea bass.

If my little sister or younger cousins owned a storage container, they would probably do something like this to it.

Work is constantly being done on the two lane highways, and they use timed stoplights to direct traffic through parts where one lane is closed off. This is a good idea, except when you get stuck at one of these and have to wait a few minutes to proceed, even if there is no one else on the road. Sometimes people get impatient and go on a red. If you have the green, this can be a problem.

We barely made it across this narrow bridge. It was only just wide enough to accommodate our car.

Three motorcycle cops bust this guy on the stretch of expressway leading into the SeaGaia resort in Miyazaki. If you are traveling down this road, watch your speed. There are a bunch of speed traps, and an abundance of police officers riding bikes.

Driving through Miyazaki reminds me of home, with the beautiful beaches lined with tall palm trees.

Swans guard the coastline of a volcanic lake in the countryside of Miyazaki.

This would be a great bridge to take pictures of an old RX-7, hachiroku, or NSX. Having none of these handy, the Familia has to make do.

This antique pump is still in use. Sometimes, a word or simple phrase in Japanese is so much easier to convey one's sentiments than in English. In this case, that would be "monomochigaii".

Sometimes tunnels will focus the signal given off from radar guns positioned just outside of tunnels. Often times, speed traps are set just outside of the tunnels and around a bend, so it is wise to watch your speed when you come out.

Tonkatsu? Shabu shabu? Yakiniku? These are the questions that go through my mind as we pass a truck carrying some pigs.

I love these animatronic dummies that pose as construction workers and cops. Often I have had the impulse to take one home for my living room, but have always exercised self-control.

Whenever I drive by a truck carrying petroleum products, I imagine what would happen if it got hit by a car, a carefully placed bullet, or a missile, and how much it would suck to be in close proximity to it if this happened.

Here's a picture of my former residence that I took while driving through Ubuyama. It still looks the same.

A fire k-car. There are smaller fire vehicles, but this one is pretty compact. These firefighters were taking a break on Daikanbo, eating soft serve and enjoying the sweeping view of the caldera.

I think it's kind of cool that this motorcycle group has boy's day decorations on their bikes. Friendly bikers are so much more pleasant than scary ones. Only in Aso...

This torii is built on the banks of the lake in the tourist town of Yufuin, Oita-ken.

This one and the next torii are in the small coastal city of Usuki, on the same grounds that house the magaibutsu.

The forests of bamboo and deciduous trees filters the light into intense beams that pierce the thick shadows. I can't describe it well, but these places evoke similar feelings that I felt when I visited the aincent churches in Toledo, Spain.

The shrine at Udo Jingu resides inside of a cave on the Miyazaki coastline. I recommend going just before it closes. There are fewer people at this time, which is always a nice thing. I got goosebumps walking through the cave and looking at the ancient shrine with the auto focus light on my camera.

This one is also on the grounds of Udo Jingu, on the way up a forgotten stairway to some ruins on the top of a hill.

A lava floe forced the residents of Sakura-jima, in Kagoshima-ken, to flee for their lives. Days before, the water started to bubble, and dead fish floated to the shores of the volcanic island. Those wise enough to heed the warning escaped. This torii stands next to an elementary school on the island, mostly buried in magma that has frozen into volcanic rock.

This torii stands in front of a shrine on the entrance to Iso Teien.

Tucked away in the gardens of Iso Teien, on the outskirts of Kagoshima city, is this Torii that serves as the entrance to the tombs of members of the Shimadzu clan.

A strangely pruned tree sits in front of a shrine in Kagoshima. I think it's supposed to be a bird.

The body of Miyamoto Musashi, the greatest swordsman of all times, rests just outside of Kumamoto city in a peaceful park in the town of Musashigaoka. It is a nice place to enjoy the momiji in the fall, and the sakura in the spring. Surprisingly, not too many people visit the park. It's kind of sad, but most people know Musashi, not from reading "The Book of 5 Rings" or the book by Yoshikawa Eiji, but from the NHK television series or from the "Vagabond" manga.

I look at the words of Henry Cisneros, a former mayor of San Antonio, and am sad that he didn't do his research or bother to write a better tribut to Musashi. Words that would almost guarantee anyone else an F on an elementary book report are cast into bronze for all to cringe at.

How do you take down a whole school of swordsmen bent on killing you to protect their honor? With a katana in one hand and a wakizashi in the other. This is when it helps to be ambidextrous.

Here is Musashi demonstrating several positions where he holds 2 swords. Before Musashi, Japanese swordsmen pretty much only used 1 sword at a time to fight with. Fast forward to present day swordsmanship and the arts of kendo and iaido. No one uses 2 swords! Oh well. Kendo is kind of disappointing to me anyways, as are the other martial arts that have been made into sports.

It is interesting to note that Miyamoto Musashi prefered to use a wooden swords in his bouts. According to some accounts he defeated Sasaki Kojiro, a prodigy of the nodachi (a long two handed sword), by carving a sword out of an oar that he found in the boat that he rode to the site of their duel.

We departed from Huntington Harbor at 1A.M., bound for Catalina Island. The plan was to look for kelp paddies along the way, to go after the mahi mahi that had come up from Mexico along with the warmer waters, but we had just missed the bite by a week. Though we didn't bag any dorado or yellowtail, the trip was still a lot of fun, and we limited out on bonita.

After catching some calico bass just before sunrise, we decide to go look for kelp paddies off of the coast of Catalina. We reel in, anchor up, and head out.

Kelp paddies are hard to find, so every extra pair of eyes helps. We're also scanning for boils on the surface, whales, and flocks of sea birds that might indicate where the fish might be.

We spot some small whales and dolphins breaching the surface, but they're loosely grouped together. It doesn't look like there are any fish with them so we part ways.

We toss in a net full of bait and get our lines in the water next to a paddy in hopes of raising some big fish. Nothing is biting, so we return to the island.

Matt hooks into what he thinks is a tail...

...but ends up being a baby calico. Our bait is bigger than this fish!

Our sardines are too big for the perch and blue bass to swallow, but they like the frozen squid. So do the calicos.

We bag a sheepshead...

...and then all hell breaks loose. Boils appear all around us in every direction. Several large schools of bonita and barracuda swarm up and down the coast, attacking the balls of bait fish. The small anchovies breach the surface in an attempt to flee the ravenous predators. The carnage is an awesome sight to behold, and I am too busy to take a picture. If you have a line in the water, is is almost impossible not to get a fish on your hook! This is the very definition of "wide-open".

Bonita flop all over the deck, as we pull in fish after fish. The deck becomes a sticky mess of oily, dark blood. The fish stop going after our big sardines, so we switch to iron. Krocodiles and blue and white UFOs are like magnets to the bonita.

A seal is drawn to the commotion, and tries to get our fish as we pull them in. It's a race to keep our fish away from this persistent pest. Luckily, we're able to reel them in fast enough to land them intact.

We quickly fill up a sixty gallon cooler with fish, and then top off a separate 40 gallon chest. The boat looks like the scene of a crime, with blood spattered everywhere. We rinse the deck down every few minutes, but new fish just spurt more and more blood everywhere. We limit out on bonita, and decide to start heading home just before 4 in the afternoon.

On the way back, Alex clears what ends up as well over 50 pounds of fillets, and the trail of carcasses attracts a flock of seagulls. One of them goes after a cedar plug that we're trolling. Luckily, we're able to get it off the hook relatively unharmed and it flies away.

We come into port just after sunset, clean the boat and our equipment, and head home after a great day of fishing at Catalina.

I'm not one to regularly write posts about my pets, but I'll make an exception because our shih tzus just had puppies. The ultrasound predicted 5 of the little guys, but we ended up with 5 females and 2 males.

Here's little "Killer" being born. He is clearly the most vocal of the group.

Molly is exhausted after giving birth to 7 little puppies.

Jack, the father, is freaked out by his little squeaking kids. He maintains a good distance away from Molly and his new family, and paces around nervously.

The pups literally fit in the palm of your hands, with room to spare. About the perfect size for a water balloon toss or juggling.

More puppy blogging to follow...

I don't know how this fish tank works exactly, but from what I could understand, the tank on top that joins the adjacent tanks works as a vacuum. The result is that there are feeding holes in the side of the tank, and the water does not flow out. I could not wrap my mind around this technology, but it works.

The fish were swimming between the side tanks over the tunnel. The smarter fish would swim across to the side where we were giving them shrimp.

As you can see, the water stays within the half bowls that are affixed to the side of the tank.

You would think that the water would come gushing out, but it doesn't. In the words of Arthur C. Clarke, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Magic.". Yup.

These are all fish that you can find off of the coast of Oita.

This guy got a little carried away and jumped out of the tank. He was delicious!

A brightly colored wrasse goes after some krill and misses. Not the most coordinated fish in the tank...

This rockfish was by far the most tenacious fish in the tank. He boxed out all of the other fish, until he had his fill.

The squirrel fish was a bit harder to lure out.

A trigger fish takes his time, and grazes on a shrimp buffet.

This is my favorite picture of the lot. Puffers, box fish, and cowfish all make me happy for some reason. They're such goofy fish, and tough to boot.

Mexican food is not very popular in Japan, so I was surprised to find a taco truck (a broken down k-jidosha) while walking around the quaint town of Yufuin, Oita.

My father orders a taco from the old lady, and finds out that she learned how to make tacos in Mexico. Tacos don't get much more ethnic than that...

There is no carne asada, carnitas, biria, lingua, or chile relleno here. The vendor takes out a block of homemade roast beef, and puts a few slices on the grill

We are offered the choice between a white or "brown" tortilla. We go for the brown. The tortilla, much to our delight, is obviously hand made out of whole wheat. A good tortilla is hard to get and can easily cost ten times as much as the going rate in the States(unless you shop at Costco). This is also put on the charcoal grill.

The taco consists of a tortilla, roast beef, onions, tomatoes, cabbage, cucumber, and hot sauce. Irrational as it sounds, I am relieved that there is no fish sausage in the taco. Could that be a surprisingly good combination? No. I don't think so.

The taco is small, but it is a harbinger of food to come. It's as if I was destined to eat good Mexican food.

My father enjoys his taco, but reflects that a nice large horchata would be nice. Horchata would probably go over well in Japan. After all, it is made of rice.

The Oita Marine Center catches a bunch of oceanic sunfish every year, and puts them into their salt water pool. Visitors are encouraged to feed the mambou, but it is best done from a distance. You have to be careful when you feed them, because their razor sharp teeth can easily chomp off a finger or two.




No, not really, but it sounds cooler when you make things sound dangerous! You can safely touch these guys without fear of harm. They actually kind of gum their food to death, like the elderly without their dentures. They mostly eat jellyfish and other easy to catch food.

The year before I taught at Engei High School, the previous English teacher had only made it a few months into her contract. From what I heard, she tried to discipline the students and lost. It all culminated on one day when the students acted up to such an extent that they made her cry and run out of the classroom. She left school and was in New Zealand before she knew it.

I started school, and the teachers were watching me, wondering how long I would last. This wasn't paranoid delusion, they actually told me that they didn't think I had the fortitude to be able to put up with the situation for more than half of a year. These teachers were lifers, who had seen many before me come and go, as they were doomed to repeat the process over and over again. Their light at the end of the tunnel was retirement, and they weren't going to waste any energy on the latest English teacher.

I was able to make it through a year and completed my contract. I had to use every resource and every ounce of my will in order to create a feasable curriculum without the help of any of the teachers. The disrespect in the classroom coupled with an almost complete absence of motivation on the parts of the students and teachers alike made work a formidable challenge, to say the least. It was cool being able to help out the students who wanted to learn English or about foreign culture, but by the end of the year I was burnt out.

I just received this letter from a colleague still working at the high school:

Dear Adam,

Thanks for the recomendation letter. I appreciate it. I hope you are
doing well. By the way, you might be interested to know that the ALT who
replaced you quit 3 weeks into the school year and we still don't have a
new one. Nice, huh? Can you come back?? ha ha ha! ^0^

Sorry, I wouldn't come back even if they gave me a raise. Life is too short!

Reform in education, especially for the English programs at all levels of education, is sorely needed. There are people that can get the job done, but there is little interest from the higher levels to retain us. If the Japanese educational system will only pay for gaijin clowns in the classroom, then that is what they will ultimately end up with.

Right before I moved back to Southern California, my father and I embarked upon an eight day road trip, touring our way through the Southern Japanese island of Kyushu at breakneck speed. Each day, we traveled through an average of exactly 2 prefectures.

It is impossible to enjoy more than a fraction of what Kyushu has to offer in such a short time, but with a lot of thought, flexible planning, and a desire to explore as much as possible, we visited six out of eight prefectures and covered a good chunk of the perimeter of the island. The only prefectures that we were unable to visit were Nagasaki and Okinawa. In order to visit everywhere I wanted to go and do everything I wanted to do, we would have needed at least a month! Keep in mind that much of the distance traveled was on windy, ill-maintained country roads. Add to this an average speed limit of 50 kph, which many country drivers prefer to drive under, and it takes a lot longer to get from point A to point B.

Here is a rough outline of our journey:

Equipment:
Mazda Familia
Assorted Omiyage (spices, chocolate, beef jerkey, and assorted snacks)
Super Cat Radar detector
Kyushu Super Mapple
Extra-large map of Kyushu
Docomo D251
Nikon D-50
2 SD memory cards
250 GB Buffalo External Harddrive
Canon Wordtank G50
40 assorted music cds and Blink (by Malcolm Gladwell) on tape
Hohner harmonica

Day 1- Osaka to Kumamoto
My father and I depart from Itami, arrive in Kumamoto, and pick up our rental car, a Mazda Familia. We wanted an RX-8, but it cost about $200 per day.

After driving into downtown Kumamoto, we had lunch at the tantanmen restaraunt on the 7th floor of Tsuruya.After this, we dropped by Kumamoto castle and enjoyed the blizzard of falling sakura petals.

We meet up with some friends, and visit the Kumamoto Traditional Arts and Crafts Center (definitely worth a visit), watching local artisans make cutlery and make gold and silver jewelry in the local style.

After this, we eat ramen at Ajisen, and I go out drinking with Luke, his new girlfriend, Jin, and Joe. My father goes separate ways with a cousin, and they sample basahi with the local varieties of shochu.

We stop by The (now closed) Sharp and drank at Jeff's World Bar, the new Sanctuary (it's too bright and clean now), Cowboy (did 2 hours of nomihodai), and various places along the Kamitori and Shimatori.

I finally stumble in at 4 am to the Green Hotel after going to 2 other Green Hotels and being told that I was at the wrong place! That's what 2 consecutive rounds at a nomihodai joint will do to one's cognitive abilities, I guess.

Day 2- Kumamoto to Saga
I wake up with a hangover and quickly depart for Saga to visit relatives and friends.
On the way, we decide to visit Miyamoto Musashi's Grave in Musashigaoka en route to the expressway.

My father gets directions to our relatives' church, which turn out to be bad, On top of this, a typhoon starts to roll in. We overshoot our destination, and find out that we can not go past the Saga Airport, as the directions tell us to, because to do so would mean driving into the ocean.

Getting directions to Higashimatsura, from an old man who speaks with a strong Saga dialect, tests my comprehensional abilities of Saga-ben. According to the old man, it would take another 2-3 hours of driving to get to the city of Higashimatsura. Something is obviously wrong.

We give up and call our relatives, and finally find out that HIgashimatsura is the name of the church (which moved to its present location from the city with which it shares its name) is in Saga city, only 45 minutes away. They quickly come and retrieve us from the airport.

Our cousin takes us out to eat the famous beef from Saga. It is among the best beef I have ever had in Japan, which is to say, the best beef I have ever had. A cold mug of Malt's beer and a stomach full of wagyu eases my hangover.

We spend time going over family history, and find out just how hard our relatives had to work to get educated and earn money to save up for bringing the family over to America. Everyone had to work in order to send one child to school. Public education was non existant in those days, and education was not taken for granted. How much things have changed...

My father spends the night with our relatives, and I take the train to Tosu and stay over at the Tanaka's house. I finally get to meet Sachika-chan, Ko-chan and Kaori's baby, and take too many pictures of her.

We eat a homemade dinner of tonkatsu, miso soup, and daikon salad. Later we drink beer and reminisce about teaching and life in Ubuyama-mura.
I transfer the pictures of 2 SD cards onto my harddrive before passing out.

Day 3- Saga to Oita
The typhoon rages during the morning and I wait it out with Kaori and Sachika-chan. We buy breakfast from the panya in front of the Tosu eki and eat in their Subaru Forester. My father is 2 hours late showing up to the rendevous point. We depart, planning on stopping in Usa and a few other places on the way to the Oita Marine Center. We stop at Yufuin on the way, and find what is probably the only taco truck in all of Japan.

The weather starts to clear up as we continue to Usuki to visit the aincent stone Buddhas (an awesome sight) and eat some cheap and delicious bento and onigiri from A-Coop on the steps of the castle ruins.


The road to Usa is obliterated and impassable, so we regrettably don't get to see the largest collection of haniwa and head onto the Marine Center. Along the way, we drive through some great mountain roads along the coastline. They test my father's driving abilities, and there are a few hair-raising moments and appropriate expletives exchanged as a result. We climb an observation tower in the middle of nowhere and admire the view. The coastline is unspoilt by seawalls of tetrapods, a rare sight in this country.

As night sets, we check into our room at the Marine Center, and head to Usagi Tei, the local izakaya. The food is exceptionally good. My father especially enjoys the peanut tofu (he hates the boiled peanuts of which this tofu is made, but the alchemists in the kitchen have turned it into a culinary delight), and I enjoy the locally-caught yellowtail sashimi which is among the best I have ever eaten. This is, I reflect, the last sashimi of this quality that I will be eating for quite a while.

After another full day, we enjoy sleeping in a private room, in an almost deserted minshoku. We timed this one just right.

Day 4- Oita to Miyazaki
We eat a breakfast of salted fish, rice, nori, and an egg and bacon that we cook atop a sterno-heated ceramic pan, and spend the whole morning checking out the Marine Center/minshoku. We play with friendly sea turtles and oceanic sunfish, hand feed tropical fish in a seemingly impossible fish tank, and stroll around the sleepy fishing village.

We hit the road, and head south for Miyazaki city. Lunch is ramen at Gofu. I take many pictures along the way. Unfortunately, the weather turns bad, and we don't get to enjoy the famous beaches of Miyazaki.

The price of admission into SeaGaia, the famous indoor beach next to the beach, is prohibatively expensive, and we arrive when it is just closing.

Instead we visit Udo Jingu, a shrine inside of a cave on the Miyazaki Coastline, and throw little tablets into a hole atop a turtle-shaped rock for good luck.

There is no sunset today, but the transition from day to night is beautiful, regardless.

We have dinner at a local izakaya with Tsuji, a friend who I hadn't seen since high school. The jidori sashimi (raw chicken) is exceptional, and the liver turns out to be the highlight of the meal. We end the meal at a melon-panya outside of the izakaya and part ways.

My SD cards are full again, so I stop at a Cybac, pull the gaijin card, and avoid paying membership fees. It takes 20 minutes to transfer all of the files to my harddrive. It's nice to have enough space to store all of the pictures that I have taken.

We stay at cottage Himuka, and regret that we are not able to use all 4 beds. This place would be good for a larger group vacation to Miyazaki. Maybe nextime...

Day 5- Miyazaki to Kagoshima
Breakfast at Himuka is unspectacular, a Japanese-continental spread. The bacon is limp, the sausage lacking in flavor and texture, and the eggs are over-cooked. Cereal, salad, and fresh fruit take up the slack, but we are itching to get on the road. A gaijin dad and Japanese mom scold their children in the next table over. Poor kids. The father looks like a proto-expat who has clearly overstayed his time in this country.

We hit the expressway from Miyazaki to Miyakonojo. Here we stop by a waterfall, and take a hike in the rain.

It is refreshing, and a welcome break in between.

On the way to the ferry, we get lost in the woods and ask some locals working at a small lumber mill for directions. They speak in a deep Kagoshima-ben (one of the hardest to understand dialects in Japan) and draw a map on a crosscut section of cedar. The directions, unlike their dialect, are very easy to understand and get us back on track.

We arrive at Sakura-jima, the famous volcano that sits across the bay from the city of Kagoshima, and explore the desolate landscape.

Due to continuing vocanic activity, we are unable to proceed up the volcano.The roads have been torn in two from fissures in the earth and eroded/covered by lahar after lahar.

We take the ferry from Sakurajima to Kagoshima city,

and I have a decent bowl of udon and enjoy the view. We see bullet holes in the castle walls as we drive through the city to, Iso Teien, our next stop.These spectacular gardens were built by the powerful Shimadzu clan of Kagoshima. We spend the better part of the day enjoying the museums and hiking around the massive grounds, until it almost closes.

Towards the end of the day, the sun finally peeks out through the rain clouds, and gives us a clear view of Sakurajima.

We visit the cave where Takamori Saigo hid after his defeat, and reflect on how bad of a movie "The Last Samurai" was for making Tom Cruise the protagonist. Saigo was clearly the man.

We drive up to the nearby mountains and enjoy the view of the city while eating some top-rate eclairs from the Castle Hotel.
The hotel maintains beautiful gardens, and has a small museum inside. Their workers are mostly young and attractive women. If you have a lot of money to burn, this is definitely the place to stay.

Next, we stop by the site where Saigo commited seppuku and pay our respects. After his suicide, a trusted liutenant took Saigo's head and buried it in a secret location, to uphold Saigo's honor and deny the enemy the trophy which they so greatly desired. To this day, no one knows where Saigo's head is hidden. I bet it's inside the caldera of Sakurajima.

We eat dinner at a local izakaya. The seafood, though limited, is pretty good, but no one dish stands out as exceptional. Since we have a drive ahead of us, we refrain from drinking. It feels weird not to drink in an izakaya, especially when you're on vacation.

It takes about an hour to get to Satsuma no Sato, our secluded ryokan in the mountains of Kagoshima.

To our surprise, our names are written in the Roman alphabet on the genkan board and one of the hostesses speaks really good English. It turns out that she was born and raised in Seattle, and moved back to Kagoshima a long time ago.

This ryokan had the honor of hosting one of the Emperors. It is exactly what I picture an old school ryokan to be, complete with a Japanese garden, a full set of samurai armor, and Japanese art skillfully displayed to complement the summer season. We enjoy a piping hot radon onsen, and then have a well deserved beer before hitting the sack.

Day 6- Kagoshima to Kumamoto
There's nothing like starting your day off in an onsen, and this proved to be no exception. After meditating, my father is ready to get on with the day.

We depart from Satsuma no Sato refreshed after a good night's sleep.

On the way, we stumble upon a lake inside of an extinct volcano. The town next to the lake obviously has a thing for dragons. The largest waterwheel in the world had a dragon on it, as does one of the bridges, among other things designed to lure in tourists.

Next, we jumped on the expressway to Kumamoto to the 57 and rode the Milk Road back to Ubuyama-mura. I finally get to take a picture of a sign that I never got around to taking while I was living there.

I visit all of the old schools that I used to teach at, and am happy to see all of the children again. They are so much bigger than I remember, and I enjoyed talking with former co-workers and students. Life has remained unchanged up here in my little mountain village.

We eat a lunch of yakiniku at Yama no Sato, where they have several types of tsukemono.

Unfortunately, the akaushi was not as good as it used to be. Cooking the beef atop a piece of volcanic rock is pretty cool, though.

We visit the springs at Ikeyama and Yamabuki, and then head leave Ubuyama for Yamaga via the Milk.

I was fortunate enough to be able to meet up with a lot of old friends. First, we stopped by the Otsuka's (Joe's host family) house and talked about the Kumamoto beef industry. Unfortunately, it's not doing as well as it was doing, but hopefully it will recover. The Otsuka family runs a cattle ranch, and produce beef that rivals that of Kobe, Saga, or just about any beef in Japan. Time is short, so we bid farewell, and head over to Aiko's house.

Jamie, Dave (sh*tf*ck), Emi, Chie, and Aiko are all waiting for us.

We enjoy some freshly harvested takenoko and drink a lot of beer and shochu, while reminiscing about the good times on JET. Those guys are still doing the program, and having a good time down there. Aiko's family is kind enough to let us spend the night, and we quickly fall asleep.

Day 7- Kikuchi to Kumamoto City to Aso
We eat a simple country-style breakfast of takenoko, tsukemono, and chasuke, and bid farewell to Aiko and her family.On our way to Kikuchi, we stop by Matt's old village and take another onsen in Kikuka town. It costs only 300 yen, a bargain! Continuing on to Kikuchi gorge, we hike in the rain yet again. Kikuchi gorge is just as beautiful as I remember, though it isn't quite the right weather to go for a swim.

After the hike, we meet Hieda-sensei, a friend of mine as well as the former art teacher in Ubuyama. He takes us to Kokutei, a famous ramenya in Kumamoto city and his favorite place to go for a bowl of noodles. The tonkotsu broth is fantastic even by Kumamoto standards

It is good to hear that he no longer has to travel 2 hours to visit his girlfriend. They now live right next to each other in the city, and have a lot more opportunities to see eachother. When he lived in Ubuyama, he could only visit 2 or 3 times a month! It seems like everyone who has worked in Ubuyama enjoyed working with the children, but they don't really miss some of the other things that come with working in such an isolated area.

We stay the night at the Starry Pension, owned by the Nakayama family. The starry skies of Aso and gentle chirp of the local crickets make for a very peaceful setting. We meet up with Kaori, Kikuko, and Sachika-chan, and enjoy a nice meal of steak followed by a private onsen with a view of the night sky.

Day 8- Kumamoto to Osaka
Nakayama obaasan once again prepares a delicious meal, and to our great surprise, she will not accept any money for staying over at their pension! Sadly, we have little time to spare, and bid a tear filled farewell.

We had planned to visit Kurokawa for a day of onsenning, but didn't have enough time. Instead we visit Daikanbo, and enjoy a soft-serve while looking down into the Aso caldera. The wind is strong, and cold, so we depart.

We have a traditional country style lunch of dagojiro (a miso-based soup with dumplings, pork, and vegetables), and takana meshi (takana fried rice) in a popular restaraunt filled with ornaments from all over Japan.

It is nice to have a lunch that is way too big to finish, and reminds me how country life is different from life in the city.

Even within the same country and prefecture, people have such different lifestyles from one another, and food has often been one thing that I can use to make comparisons. Farmers need a lot of energy to work in the field. I guess the same does not necessarily apply to the Calorie Mate and McDonalds fueled OLs and salarymen of the city.

Kikuko and Kaori bid us farewell, and we proceed to sample the many onsens at Aso Farmland. My favorites included the fujinohana onsen, and the inside onsen that glowed nuclear green under the blacklight. Yet another thing that I will miss about Kyushu when I get back to the States.

We drive back to the airport, return the car, and fly back to Osaka. This has been one helluva road trip!

Note: this entry is a work in progress...

Inside a book called "A Pocked Guide to China", there is an interesting comic that shows one how to differentiate between Japanese and other Orientals. As Angry Asian Man would say, "that's racist!".

I love wildlife photography, but I refuse to become a birder who totes around gigantic lenses and a tripod everywhere I go. I refuse to wear a Tamron backpack, or be part of a group of people shooting the same thing at the same time from a slightly different angle as the people next to me. So for bird photography, luck, creativity, and a bit of cropping will have to suffice.

This couple keep my Aunt, Uncle, and cousin up at night with their nocturnal shrieking sessions. I like nature, but I like my sleep even more. How many birds have gone extinct from keeping people awake at night? There have to be at least a few species who have been selected out of the gene pool in this way...

My sister said that I should climb the tree and try and retrieve an owl egg because it would make a good picture. I agreed, but suggested that my cousin should do it to let me take pictures of the action. There was a time when I could have gotten her to do it in exchange for the right amount of candy. Sadly, those days are past.

If the Dead Kennedys, Kraftwerk, and Devo all mated and had a Japanese love child band, it would probably look something like Denki Groove. The animation reminds me of early MTV commercials and Liquid Television remixed with Heisei Tanuki Gassen Ponpoko.

(via Pink Tentacle)

Bolsa Chica is a great place to watch the sun set into the West. The bright, golden glow of the fading light is something I never tire of, especially if I'm barbecuing with friends and family.

Walking along a channel, I followed a mysterious wake that seemed to defy the current. The murky water prevented a positive identification, but I would guess that the school of large fish that threw this wake were either carp or tilapia. They were too big to be the mullet native to this area.

There palm trees remind me of driving through Miyazaki with my father. I would have loved to have spent some time on those beautiful beaches. But today, I am looking forward to swimming in the Pacific Ocean off of Huntington Beach. It's been hot and humid lately, not unlike the summers I remember spending in Japan.

As I was feeding the cats, I noticed an animal looking down from our guava tree. This guy looks like he's taken some abuse in the face. Maybe he was trying to eat Yoda's food, and got clawed instead.

The opossum looks a lot like the killer rodents of unusual size that attacked the Man in Black in The Princess Bride, and makes a loud hissing noise if molested. I've never heard of them attacking, and used to catch them by the tail when I was a kid.

Another interesting thing about possums is that when they "play dead", they actually pass out from being overwhelmed by terror. I've never seen them do this though. The ones around here must be pretty used to encounters with humans and their pets.

This video reminds me of an episode of Jackass when Spike Jonze gets dressed up as an old man and goes all around messing with people.

Brian and Rebecca just got back from their honeymoon safari in Africa , and you can see the pictures they took here. With over 4000 pictures to edit, there will be more to come when they finally wake up and fight the jetlag.

Here is a picture taken on a recent driveway safari in Orange County:

Just got back from a two hour session of body surfing with Merin. The waves were decent today, and by the time we got out, at 6pm, the air and water temperature were perfect. Ball lightning blazed in the halo of clouds around our clear patch as the sun cast a magical glow as it set into the Pacific. I think I'll start going in the water more from now on.

There are so many sea otters off of the coast of Avila Beach that I can't remember exactly how many I saw. Anyone who doubts that otters are a keystone species need only go fishing up here to see first hand the relationship between otters and a healthy kelp forest, full of fish and other marine organisms. In order to get an understanding of just how rich a kelp forest is I went diving.

As you can see, a proliferation of kelp acts as a magnet for predators, a source of food, a nursery for juviniles, protective cover, and a home for many different creatures. By the way, this picture is actually from the main tank in Monterey Bay Aquarium, in case the way I posted this was misleading, heh. I have yet to dive this section of coastline.

My older sister, who volunteers at the aquarium, tells me the population of otters on the Pacific Coast is not doing too well right now, in general. A feline disease gets into sea water when people flush their kitty litter down the toilet instead of throwing it away, and otters contract this and die.

Another problem with otters is that they like to live where they grew up, so it is hard to reintroduce them into areas where they should do well. Otters that are dropped onto the Channel Islands have often swam all the way back across the channel, driven by their homing instinct to return to their points of origin to the frustruation of the marine biologist who worked so hard to put them there.

Here's a crop of a juvinile and an adult, chillin' by the kelp.

Snowy white islands look pretty, but tell a different tale when you're downwind. We were upwind, and even then the stench of guano was overpowering.

I miss really good Japanese food, the kind you can't get in the states. I miss the doteyaki and kushi katsu found in the seedier parts of Osaka, the fresh tsukuri, sushi, agemono, okonomi and monjayaki, dagojiru and butajiru, assorted nabe, goya champuru, yakiniku, kushiyaki, takoyaki, katsudon and katsukare, basashi, soba, udon, and the wild combinations found at tabehodai/nomihodai joints. But most of all, I miss the tonkotsu. Good ramen is hard to find over here, and good tonkotsu is all of unheard of.

Some of the recipes found at The Official Ramen Homepage are actually starting to make me a bit hungry. Here's my contributions to instant ramen recipes of the same vein:

Korean-American Style Instant Ramen

Ingredients
1 package of ramen
1/2 cup of the kimchee of your choice
2 hot dogs, chopped
1 egg, scrambled
korean beansprouts
korean seaweed
green onions

Directions
Cook the noodles for a few minutes while boiling some hot water for the broth in another vessel. Discard the nasty oily water. Add the hot dogs, kimchee, and egg to the new water, and then the noodles. Serve in a bowl and top with korean beansprouts, seaweed, and green onions. Serve with a tall glass of Jinro (for real men) or an ice cold bottle of Hite.

Instant Chow RaMen

Ingredients
1 package of ramen
chopped onion
chopped garlic
chopped red or yellow bell pepper
chopped mushrooms
sesame oil
oyster sauce
shoyu
salt and pepper.
chopped beef or chicken
oyster sauce
chicken broth (or use the soup base from the packet to keep it ghetto)
corn starch

Directions
Marinate the meat in shoyu and oyster sauce for a half an hour. Cook the noodles for a few minutes, discard the nasty oily water, and set aside. Stir fry all of the ingredients, then add a bit of chicken stock and corn starch to thicken. Add salt and pepper to taste. Fry the noodles in sesame oil until they crisp. Top the noodles with the finished sauce, and serve with a nice, cold Tsingtao.

Ah, the joys of low income cooking.
But they do nothing to ease my Tonkotsu Blues. This website kind of helps.

One day, after a long, hard couple of weeks in the office, Huw and I went to have a few pints at an English pub. Our contracts were almost up and we were ready to move with our lives. Adding salt to the earth, many of our co-workers were discontent to the point of staging their own little mutiny and making the working atmosphere uncomfortable to put it mildly.

It was between pints that we happened upon a poem, that was hung in front of the urinals. It read:

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream- and not make dreams your master,
If you can think- and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings- nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And- which is more- you'll be a Man, my son!

-Rudyard Kipling

It put everything in perspective. Work no longer seemed so stressful anymore, just another common chore not to be given any more thought than necessary to get the job done. The poem gave me a swift kick in the ass, yet again reminding me that I can always do better, or be more mindful of people, things, and events occuring around me.

It seems that time passed quickly after this night. Our contracts expired, the mutiny resolved itself, and we were off- Huw to travel across China, Mongolia, and Russia by planes, trains, and automobiles, and I on my Kyushu road trip. After that, it was time for us to return to our points of origin and slip into the lives waiting for us.

Recently, I have been lucky enough to be able to spend a lot of time in the great outdoors of California. This is a shot of a more placid section of the American River at dawn, right before the sun winked out below the horizon. I swear, I love the American countryside just as much as the undeveloped areas in Japan. The sweet, musky chapparal is as dry as the mossy forests are wet. As different as they are from each other, I feel equally at home in both of them.

Being outdoors is synonymous with having a bonfire. I'm no more of a pyromaniac than any other guy, but I really enjoy the process of building it, from gathering wood, making a nest of tinder under a teepee of twigs, branches, and logs, fanning a feeble flame into a full fledged blaze, and poking the logs to keep the fire going.

I enjoy reading survival books to see how others start their fires and then try the easier ones out. I've never tried to build or use a fire drill, but I have started a fire with flint and steel, a magnifying glass, and a nine volt battery along with some steel wool. Polishing the bottom concave part of a soda can looks cool, but a bit too labor intensive.

Once in a while, it's fun to cheat.Teller, of Penn and Teller, got his fire building badge from the boyscouts by cheating. He buried a can of Sterno just under the soil, and when it was time, he returned with his scout leader, threw a bunch of sticks haphazardly onto the spot, and started the fire right away. Puzzled and frustruated by the success of this seemingly impossible feat, the scout leader had no choice but to award Teller his badge.

I haven't resorted to Sterno, but recently I used laundry lint as tinder and it worked very well in starting our fire. Candles, wax mixed with sawdust, and accelerants (such as petroleum products or strong alcohol) are nice to have if you want to get the fire started quickly.

Ah, fire is cool. In the immortal words of Bevis, "Fire! Fire!"

When I cancelled our AOL service, it was a long and painful ordeal. The operator kept on asking me irrelevant questions, often the same ones over and over again. I had to state multiple times that I wanted to quit AOL, but only after 15 minutes of a steadfast unwillingness to reconsider staying with AOL did the representative finally get the cancellation process moving.

AOL is training their people to hassle people from dropping their services. Although I didn't have nearly as hard of a time as this guy, the conversation bears an eerie resemblance my own personal experience.

It's cool to see that the UFC, Pride, and K1 have gained such wide acceptance in the States. There was a time when UFC was struggling to do this, and when few others knew any but the most famous names in mixed martial arts.

But there is a downside to the popularity of MMA. If you don't immediately watch the fights, there is a significant risk of having someone spoil them for you, as when a certain Mr. A. had to hint to the outcome last night:

A: Did you see Tito fight Shamrock?
B: No, we're going to download and watch it later.
A. Dude, it was over in a second!
B. You a-hole, why did you have to say anything?
A. It was kind of predictab...
B. Shut up!

If you are one of these people, keep the outcome to yourself until everyone who wants to see it gets a chance to!

This isn't a UFC fight, but you might enjoy it nonetheless. See how many references you can spot...

link

I sometimes enjoy going through the fridge when cleaning (as well as right before I'm leaving the house for an extended period and immediately proceeding yet another move from house to house) and mixing unlikely ingredients together. Sometimes it works brilliantly, resulting in an awesome combination. These recipes are almost always forgotton afterwards.

Other times it turns out interesting and edible. Occasionally, it is rendered inedible to the point where it induces a violent gag reflex. If you are feeling less daring than I, then I would highly recommend this resource. It would also be a good thing to use when you ask someone "what do you want to eat?" and they reply with "I'm OK with anything."

Then again, I would be inclined to be more creative with strange ingredients when faced with such ambivalence.

Here is a new track from their album, Game Theory, which drops on August 29th.

Two good articles on The Roots:
here and here

Snipshot lets you crop, resize, and rotate pictures (among other things) on your browser!

There have been times where I have felt betrayed, victimized, and wronged. Sometimes life is like that, and there is nothing to do but to move on because things are just so messed up. There's no use in getting angry for a prolonged period, though knowledge of this doesn't always help. Dwelling on these matters does no one any good and can make you a wretched person to be around.

If you can live through the euphoric ups and gut-wrenching downs of life, suffer harm from those close to you, and move on bearing no ill will towards anybody or anything then life will be a lot easier to deal with. Like a pent up river, break down the dam, release the pressure, and the balance will return.

When I am feeling down, the water has always been there to console me. After bad days at the office, nothing would melt away the stress like taking a walk next to the natural mountain springs that I lived next to. Just being near a mountain stream, roaring river, or the ever-changing sea invigorates me like nothing else.

This place is known as Kikuchi gorge. It is one of my favorite places in Kumamoto, and often I have come here with friends and family to suck in all that this intact forest (a rare thing in most of Japan) has to offer. Jumping off boulders into icy blue pools of water, riding down a sled made from the basalt that came from the explosion that formed the Aso caldera, eating picnics in the shade of an aincent cryptomeria tree on a hot day, driving the windy roads on a foggy night, and bringing Yoda the cat out for an adventure are all fond memories I have of this place.

I'm going rafting from tomorrow on the American River with my sisters and some friends. I'm looking forward to getting back into nature, and enjoying this wonderful California summer. And after that, I'll be teaching sailing in Newport for a while. Life is good.

I remember enjoying this on Japanese TV, which says something since I generally won't watch Japanese TV programs.

Fish are set out in a park with the objective of seeing how heavy of a fish one of the many feral cats can carry away. Cats are disqualified if they start eating the fish without carrying it away. It's kind of painful to watch now, since all of that fish is of superior quality and fresher than any of the stuff I can get here in the States. I guess I'll just have to catch my own.

How did I not hear about this? Awesome.

Think of some things that don't belong on pizza. It has been done in Japan. Now see if any of the ingredients that you picked match up with any of these ice cream flavors.

Paul Fusco gives an account of the legacy of Chernobyl through a narrated slideshow.

I guess that "cacahuate" means "peanut". Cool.

Last week, Kohei invited Chris and I to go fishing off of the coast of Avila for 3 days. The conditions are very different from Southern California, as the winds and waves make anything other than fishing in the morning prohibitive.

The place is an ecological gem off the coast of California, and the fishing is unrivaled in terms of size and number of rockfish that you can catch. A professor at UCSB told me of the phenomenal fishing to be found here when I was an undergrad, and I finally got to check it out for myself.

The first day, we used nothing other than Sabiki rigs, and used the smaller fish that we caught for bait with quick results. We released all of the other fish that we caught that day.

The second day, we caught 2 ling cod and over 30 rock fish between the three of us, off the coast of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. You aren't allowed to get within a mile of the facility, so with this in mind we fished its perimeter with great results. The lingcod and many of our larger rockfish were caught by yo-yo'ing blue and white candybar jigs off of the rocky bottom. The rest of the rockfish, and a Cabazon, were caught by using bait that was, itself, caught off of Sabiki rigs.

This is the first Ling Cod we got. It was too small, so we tossed it back.

Ling Cods look like giant mutsugoro, but taste much better!

This is Kohei's Ling, which required the use of a gaff to land. It was not so lucky as the first one, and made for a delicious dinner along with the other rockfish that we kept. It had a nasty chomp mark on its flank, likely left by a bigger one. This is one fish whose mouth you don't want to stick your fingers in.

This is Chris' ferocious trout from Lake Lopez, on a trip we took the following day. Sweet!

Kohei filleted these suckers in record time, and attracted a medium size crowd in the process. The de-filleted carcasses were quickly snatched up by rival flocks of gulls and pelicans, as well as a sea lion. They started out noisy as all heck, and by the end they were silent, each animal content with their abundance of good fortune. We ended up with well over 20 pounds of fillets!

A view down the mouths of the Ling and a Rock Cod. The rock cods seemed to be eating a lot of juvenile decorator crabs, judging from the stuff that they regurgitated onto the deck.

I also took a road trip with my sister and her boyfriend from North Chicago to Orange County in a QX4, loaded full of her stuff. More photos and stories will follow. Never before have I had such a ton of content on the backlog that needs posting. I hope that the pile keeps on growing. Is there such a thing as too much fun and finding the things around you too interesting?

This dude, along with others of his kind, resides at the Marine Center in the southeast of Oita prefecture. This was one of the many places that my dad and I visited on our hectic tour of Kyushu, which I will post more on in the near future.

After a lengthy period of consideration, I've decided to keep posting under the same blog name. Some changes to the site design will have to be made, and I have a ton of content to post.

Justin- nice job on the site overhaul. I don't miss the time consuming process of separating spam from real comments and trackback and using MT Blacklist in tandem with Movable Type several times a day. That was getting tedious.

Perched behind a cliff, I thought I was in a good position to get some good shots of waves pounding against the rocks. I was right, but a huge "sleeper wave" sucked the receeding water back, swelled up, and smashed into the cliff, flowing along the contour right at my camera!

My new shoes and pants got soaked, but thankfully my camera was not damaged. I walked away dripping and sandy with a smile on my face, quite aware of just how lucky I was.

I don't think I'll be trying that again anytime soon...

Here are two good articles that you should read:

This one talks about the largest attempted bank heist (in a Sumitomo Mitsui in London) and shady dealings in the growing economies of online games like World of Warcraft, putting everything into context with classic trickery used through out history.

The other one deals with RFID chips, and vulnerabilities inherent in their indiscriminant use. I have to say, I was a little suspicious about my parents' new keyless Prius (it uses a RFID chip in leiu of a mechanical key) and those suspicions have only grown after reading the article.

Wired has a pretty good gallery of Akibahara up here. Taro hit it spot on when he said that Akibake like to hang out at Yodobashi Camera (the one in the picture looks identical to the one in Umeda).

Everyone who goes through Incheon Airport probably has shot these signs already, but...

I asked the vendor "Does this ice cream taste good?". When he said "Yes, try some!", I politely declined. If the ice cream wasn't being sold at airport prices, I might have taken him up on it.

Cool. Maybe I'll try it next time.

You can view the set here.

From April 9th to April 16th, my father and I embarked on an eight day tour of Kyushu. We started out in Kumamoto, renting a car at the airport, and then traveled to Saga, Fukuoka, Oita, Miyazaki, Kagoshima, and then we returned to Kumamoto. Along the way, we ate many great meals, but ramen turned out to be the best documented type of food on this trip.

Shirogoma (white sesame) and kurogoma (black sesame) tantanmen are the specialties of one ramenya on the 8th floor of Tsuruya in downtown Kumamoto City. Tantanmen is usually a safe bet to order at any given ramenya in my experience, but these variations proved to be a quite different than the ones that I was used to (for an outstanding tantanmen, try the chain Shisen ramen in Osaka, which can be found in both Minami and Kita- they kick ass!).

The shirogoma tantanmen is much like a common red/white brothed tantanmen, except with less ra-yu (chili oil), and with almost half a cup of white goma sprinkled on top. A large handful of green onions are heaped into the broth for good measure. This tantanmen was good, but I think I prefer the kurogoma tantanmen.

The kurogoma tantanmen is so thick with garlic, black sesame seeds, and seasonings that upon first taste, I didn't think I could eat the whole bowl. My father described the taste accurately when he commented that "it tastes medicinal, and almost unpleasantly strong until you get used to it". It was strange to eat a ramen that started out with such a strong, almost disagreeable taste but got better and better with each bite. If you are trying to get over a cold or a hang over, this bowl of noodles might just do it for you.

The portions were huge, and it was a good place to start on our ramen tour.

Ajisen is one of the two main chains of ramen in Kyushu, the other being Kinryu (not the same as the chains in Kansai). Their ramen is consistently good, and the broth is a solid example of a classic tonkotsu broth. Kinryu, on the other hand, is hit or miss. I have eaten at good franchises and bad one. Of the two, Ajisen is the one you want to visit (It's the one with the cute Chinese girl mascot that kind of looks like Chun-li's baby sister).

Gofu is a Fukuoka based ramenya/yakinikuya. I highly recommend this chain. Their broth is very good, and their charsiu is roasted to perfection. Order the fried garlic as a condiment to make the broth even better!

Although not related to ramen, I thought I?d point out another great Fukuoka based chain called Ichiban dori. This yakitoriya is cheap and delicious. Both Ichibandori and Gofu have expanded North of Kyushu, but it is yet to be seen if they will make it to Kansai (Ichibandori has made it as far as Hiroshima, and Gofu has just gotten started in Shimonoseki). Note: the Ichibandori in Kyoto is not of the same chain, and although delicious, is not quite as good.

This is basically the same as the regular Gofu tonkotsu ramen, except the ingredients are prepared a little differently. The noodles are stir-fried with vegetables and cubed charsiu, kind of like sara champon, but even better in my opinion. My only issue with the sara ramen is that you can't get kaidama because there would be no broth left to put it into.

Kokutei is perhaps the most famous ramenya in Kumamoto, but despite living here for two years, this was my first visit. Hieda sensei led us to this gem, and it was packed full of customers with a line of people waiting to get in (out of the rain). The charsiu was decent, but the best part about this ramen was the broth. Rich and creamy, like a good tonkotsu should be, it was full of roasted garlic and required no additional seasonings at all. It was perfectly balanced.

I love eating ramen in Kyushu because it is ramen mecca. You can walk into a ramenya anywhere in Kyushu and be confident that the ramen isn't going to suck. There are many places that serve good ramen down in Kyushu, but we only had time to stop into a few of them. Perhaps one day I will return and make a complete evaluation of the ramen of Kyushu?

Some random thoughts about ramen:
*The stinkier the ramenya, the better the broth.
*Kaidama (a noodle refill) kicks ass, but is hard to find outside of Kyushu.
*Kaidama was not available at the tantanmen restaraunt or at ajisen, which was kind of disappointing.
*Broth conservation is something one must keep in mind when ordering kaidama is a possibility.
*At Gofu, they will reheat your broth (and add a bit more) if you order kaidama!
*My friend Matt once asked for kintama (testicles) instead of kaidama at a ramenya.
*Some people believe that translating "ramen" as "chinese noodle soup" makes it easier for foreigners to understand, when in fact just saying "ramen" would be less confusing in the first place.
*Is there ramen in China? If so do they just call it "noodle soup"?
*My top 5 toppings are charsiu, boiled egg, roasted garlic, bean sprouts, and green onions.
*If kaidama is available, then a side of rice or onigiri is unnecessary.
*"Fusion" ramen that mixes the theme from another country's culinary style or ingredients is usually not very good.
*The only good "ramen stadium" I have been to is in Canal City, Fukuoka. The one in Namba is disappointing.
*Bikkuriramen's ramen is not bad, actually.
*I have a friend who talked the manager of a Bikkuriramen into giving her a discount on a bowl of ramen (Bikkuriramen is a chain famous for selling ridiculously cheap ramen).
*Instant ramen mixed with hot dogs, kimchee, and eggs is a great combination!
*Ramen is great after a night of drinking, but seldom is satisfying as a stand-alone meal.

A Japanese skink in between the cracks of the foundation of the ruins of Usuki Castle (Oita Prefecture). Unlike most skinks in Japan, this one lacks the rainbow stripes against the black body. He was running away when I took his picture, but I guess he wasn't worried enough to pass up a meal.

As I still have a decent amount of material about Japan that I have yet to post, I plan on running this blog until I exhaust my reserves. After that, I haven't decided whether or not to maintain it as a static archive or to keep on posting. In any case, I have some time to mull this over before I make a decision.

Regarding the material: I need to prep the computer that I'm using before I can install Photoshop and work on my pictures and that may take some time. Once that's done I need to review the few hundred photos that I took during my last days in Kyushu. I'll should get started on this by some time tomorrow if all goes according to plan...

I'm in an internet cafe in an airport in Korea, and I feel disembodied. My keitai no longer works, my apartment is as clean as the day it was first constructed, and I have turned in my gaijin card. There is no changing my mind now. Leaving Japan feels like I'm leaving home. Going back to Southern California feels like I'm on my way to vacation to an old favorite destination.

I have had the time of my life in Japan since I arrived three and a half years ago. Meeting new friends and family while exploring the culture, language, cuisine, and areas of Japan has truly been a non-stop adventure. I know that I am truly fortunate to experience everything I have been able to over here.

So what now? I still haven't decided what to do when I go back, and I am thinking that I might want to teach at a University in Japan in the future. For now, the plans are to go get a big carne asada burrito and go get a tan at the beach.

Japan, this isn't a goodbye just yet...

link (via Gorilla Mask via Warm Milk Comics)

There's something to be said for small pictures taken with a cell phone. The first cameras on mobile phones were nothing more than toys, but I was able to get a lot out of my Mitsubishi D251 before it finally lost its picture taking capabilities. I actually preferred this model to its predecessor, the sleeker looking D253. The later model Mitsubishi took higher resolution pictures, but it lacks a removable memory stick and has no flash!

The following pictures are a chronicles of my time on the JET Program, when I was living in Ubuyama-mura (in Kumamoto prefecture). As you might be able to tell from this photostream, my life has been a non-stop procession of fun and adventure.

Today was the last day of work for some of us in the office, and to commemorate this occasion I am posting Huw's "Countries of the World" flashcards. The flashcards are appropriate for elementary school level students, however, the spoofs are obviously not meant for anything other than entertainment value.

If you are easily offended by inflated stereotypes about countries, then you might not want to waste of your time looking at these. However, if you have ever taught English in Japan and have an irreverent sense of humor, I think you might be able to appreciate these. Huw sincerely hopes that he has done everything that he could to offend everyone equally... Enjoy!

Question 1

What has the head of a monkey, the body of a tanuki, the legs of a tiger, and the tail of a snake?

Hint #1: Eating it is thought to cure the hiccups (I wonder what it tastes like and how it is prepared. I imagine it would make a decent miso-based nabe...).

Hint #2: Miyamoto Musashi supposedly killed one of these with a lance.
answer

Question 2

This mythical creature is native to mountain passes in Kumamoto. What is it?

Hint #1: They have a potato-like head (or a stone one), and a straw covered body.

Hint #2: Monks who stole oil are said to have been punished by being transformed into one of these.

answer

Question 3

This monster is a humanoid with blackish-green skin, luminescent eyes, and a pointed beard. It is rarely seen by man because it lives in an underwater kingdom.

Hint #1: Combine the kanji for "shark" and "person" to make this.

answer

Question 4

What is the Japanese Will 'o the Wisp?

Hint #1: A possible explanation for these phenomena is methane gas rising from the graves of decomposing corpses.

Hint #2: Combine the kanji for "ball" and "person".

answer

Question 5

What mythological creature resembles a snake, can speak to humans (but often lies), enjoys alcoholic beverages, can leap 1 meter, and has never been captured in spite of many reported sightings?

Hint #1: It appeared in Doraemon, where it was reported to be about 60cm in length.

Hint #2: The kanji for earth and child are used to write its name.

answer

In Umeda, demolition and construction are an ongoning process, like birth and death. Cranes stretch towards the skyline like a pod of brotosaurus on the plains of our primordial Earth. Come to think of it, the planes flying towards Osaka airport kind of look like archeopteri...

Taro bought me an assortment of energy drinks/vitamin elixers. I'm thinking of drinking them all in one go...

I used to think that mixing energy drinks and spirits would be a good idea, but this is not true. Though it often makes for nights charged full of fun and great stories, the events of a night involving this combination usually involve life-threatening situations or temporary loss of memory. The synergetic results are not a good idea under the best of circumstances.

Genki drinks by themselves can do wonders though. One time, I was sick with diarrhea and vomiting while riding the bus up to Hiroshima to go snowboarding with a bunch of friends. I woke up exhausted and deeply disappointed, questioning my ability to snowboard that day.

I crawled out of the bus and bought 3 genki drinks, downing them in quick succession, followed by a tuna mayo onigiri. Thanks to this combination I regained my strength and was able to board with no problem all day.

So what will I do with these genki drinks? I don't know just yet, but I plan on using them in a medicinal context. Sometimes not having interesting stories is a good thing.

Work finishes on Friday! Most people seem a bit more cheerful in the office now that the end is near, and this weekend should be a good time to celebrate this milestone with a party under the cherry blossoms. I may decide to go out even if it rains (a hanami party in the rain is truly underrated).

I've been in Japan for so long that I feel as comfortable over here as I did back at home. In spite of this, I've decided to return to Southern California. It will be nice to connect with old friends and relatives, and I am in dire need of a tan. The Japanese winter makes one pastier than a Canadian!

I wouldn't mind living in Japan, and in fact, it's still an option. However, if I were to do so, I wouldn't want to continue being an ALT. Should I choose this path, I would first get my masters and then teach at a university.

As far as I can tell, the eikaiwa market (along with contracts for ALTs in the public school system) is slowly but steadily declining in regards to the quality of services provided and salary and benefits offered. If you are on the JET program, you are doing much better comparatively than those who came before you. If you are teaching in Japan and planning on staying, I highly recommend applying for JET (best-case scenario) so you don't have to go through the hassle of working for a company (better-case scenario), a private or corporate eikaiwa company (worse-case scenario), or one of those notorious companies that have a high turnover rate of gaijin fresh off the plane (the worst-case scenario).

I'm planning on leaving on the 18th of April, but before that I will be taking a week long trip with my father around Kyushu. It will be nice to visit southern Japan again, the place that I consider my home away from home.

It will be nice to see everyone when I get back. See you soon!

These stickers are made by Japanese Tobacco (JT), who also runs a salt and tobacco museum up in Tokyo.

A few ads from a bygone era:

(from here)

I need a tripod!

At first, I thought that the diver and his spotter were performing some sort of perfomance art, and they kind of were. Amazingly, no one stopped to watch him except for me.

This guy also has to jump into tanks with giant Amazon catfish, sharks, and cichlids. It amuses me that the colorful ciclid tank likely poses the greatest risk to this diver (though it wouldn't be amusing if any harm actually did come to him).

Friend of mine just lit a cigarette on my stove, and he got too close to the flame. Hair still smoking, he asked "Oh, what happened?". Now it stinks like burnt ass in my mini kitchen.

(Original picture courtesy of Justin)

This is dedicated to a fun, 3 hour hike in the rain with Justin and Taro, followed by a night of kushikatsu, drinking, karaoke, and onsening in Nara.

Ponpoko pon no pon is the onomotopoetic Japanese expression of how tanuki move. When I saw one running, I was impressed by the accuracy of which ponpoko pon no pon captures their wobbly gait.

Known erroneously as a "badger" or "raccoon" and more accurately as a "raccoon-dog", Tanuki is the only word that fits this animal. The same goes for words like sushi, ramen (translated as Chinese noodle soup), tsukemono (Japanese pickles), miso (fermented soy bean paste), or samurai. The English translation takes something away from the native word by giving an unsatisfactory description.

Apparently, some people eat tanuki in the more rural areas. One of my brother?s friends from Tenri Daigaku described the meat as being gamy and tough. She said that a friend of her family came by the house and dropped off a parcel of meat, which they prepared in a miso-based broth. Miso, it was explained, is a good complementary base to use with gamy meat.

One of my friend?s grandfathers, who lives in Kita-Kyushu, is an avid huntsman. He regularly shoots tanuki but only keeps the fur. His daugher, my friend?s mother, makes the pelts into hats and other rustic clothing, which I like to think he wears on his hunting trips.

Recently I watched an excellent animation produced by Miyazaki Hayao called 平成狸合戦ぽんぽこ(Heisei Tanuki Gassen Ponpoko). At first glance I didn?t expect this anime to be anything that I would be interested in, but it actually deals with such serious issues as social, economic, and environmental problems, the chief one being urban sprawl in the Kanto region of Japan. I highly recommend this film to anyone who is interested in Japanese culture, folklore, or history, as it is bursting full of references to almost everything you can think of.

One thing that still alludes me about the tanuki is why udon with age on top is called tanuki udon, while putting this on top of soba makes it kitsune udon. Does anyone know anything about the history or lore dealing about these two popular meals?

It sucks to see pets being crammed together like this, warmed like chicken karaage under intense heat lamps.

Unfortunately, pet stores like this seem to be pretty successful. There are some humane society-like organizations, but they are not nearly as big or powerful as they are back in the states. Only in places like Ashiya have I ever seen pets up for adoption.

Walking down one of the many shotengai in Shinsaibashi, my brother points to a well-known pet store flanked by a pachinko parlor and a mom and pop store that?s been closed up for the night. ?That place got raided by the cops a few years ago. Thy got busted for keeping a tiger and other endangered animals in the back room.? he says. Yakuza like to keep such animals in their apartments to show off, supposedly.

The first thing you?re probably thinking when you look at these pictures is likely to be something like ?Look at the poor little furry animals! That?s so cruel!?

And I would agree with you. Puppies being abandoned in the wilderness or tortured for amusement, newborn kittens tossed into drainage systems during a rainstorm, toads being ripped apart by over-excited little boys, frogs getting blown up with firecrackers (some of these don't count as pets, but illustrate the sadistic pleasure that some people get from torturing or destroying animals in general). Pets are neglected and waste away. It?s normal to see these things over here, but that's only the most visible aspect of this subject.

But I would argue that most Japanese pets are treated like part of the family and are very well taken care of. It should be noted that many people that I know who take care of their pets properly either get them as part of a litter of a friend's pet, or rescue them from a dire situation.

For those owners that keep their pets in tiny enclosed areas, I would argue that many would not consider this cruel. Many people in the city live their lives under similar (but admittedly different) circumstances. If you lived your whole life in a tiny apartment and spent every working day in a cramped office, you might not see anything wrong with keeping your pet in a similar environment. Master and pet, sharing the gaman.

Surprisingly, I think that the dogs of the homeless people live the best lives of all pets in Japan on average. They look the happiest, and seem to be well taken care of. Most homeless rely on their dogs to guard their possessions and property. They are valued companions. They also enjoy a greater degree of freedom than pets owned by people with houses, as they often get to play and hang out with other whenever they like.

If you walk along the Yodogawa, you will see improvised tombstones, bearing names like Kuro and Chibi. These weren?t just dogs, they truly were part of the family.

I'm not writing about anything especially interesting or though provoking. This is simply about an average day in the office over here.

It?s one degree outside. That?s what the screen on the wall-mounted air conditioner reads, but it doesn?t feel that bad once I get in the shower. Letting it run for 5 minutes makes the steam gush out when the door is opened, and it blankets everything in my compact bathroom with a thick coat of mist.

Though I?ve been awake for 50 minutes and acclimated to the light in my apartment, the glare of this clear day pierces my optic nerve like needles when I step out. It?s bitter cold, and the wind whips up whitecaps as far as you can see down the Yodogawa. The wakeboarder isn?t out this morning, and all of the homeless are still tucked away in their blue plastic homes.

There?s something nice about taking the trains around Osaka at off-peak times. No one invades your personal space, and it?s even kind of cozy. People watching kills most of the time on the commute from Kita to Minami.

I notice something new everyday coming and going to work. It?s surprising how much changes from day to day and how many things have escaped my notice over the course of a year. There?s a new Family Mart being built across the street from what used to be the 7-eleven (but is now the i7 and Holdings) that I occasionally drop in to grab breakfast.

I?m amused to find myself excited about the prospect of being able to access a convenience store that?s 100 feet closer to work.

The ancient laptops stutter-hum like semi in the summer heat. I?m living in a world of floppy disks and Windows ME, grateful that these dinosaurs even have USB ports. Just yesterday, one of the hard drives died. We started out with seven laptops. We?re down to three now, as one by one they succumb to the ravages of time.

The cold, hard fluorescent lights that bathe everything in the office in a sickly tint are losing their grip. The spring sun is filtering in through the windows, and the cherry blossoms are preparing for another hanami. Just a little bit longer, and I?m out of here?

A wolf preying upon an obatallion.

The red circle is the sun goddess Amaterasu. It is the rising sun on the Japanese flag. It is Zen. It is an amazupai umeboshi. It is beautiful in its simplicity. Sadly, it is no longer used by Japan Airlines.

Back when airplane food truly sucked, when they still handed out packs of honey-roasted peanuts along with mini-decks of playing cards, and when I used to be able to sneak into first class with my sisters, JAL had the best logo of all of the airlines. Riding a plane with the tsuru mark made even the flight over to Japan seem exotic. It was a graceful metaphor for the Boeing which was carrying us to an exciting foreign land.

As I remember, JAL had some of the most beautiful and nice stewardesses that I can remember. They often turned a blind eye to us when we snuck up to the first class seats. Only once, when a grumpy old man protested to the stewardess were we (nicely) turned back to our seats.

Who made the decision to get rid of the tsuru, a symbol that conjures nostalgic images of Japan for a corporate logo? If I were the president of JAL, that dude would be so fired.

What can these mats really do make sure that avian influenza doesn't enter the country? I think they're there just to make everyone feel better, kind of like making people wait two hours to pass through security when you go to LAX makes us feel safer. Because they're special mats!

When you return overseas to work in Japan, why not have some fun with it or milk a little vacation? Pretend to sneeze, wipe your hand on your pants, and then shake hands with people when you arrive. Talk to them about how much you loved the local delicacy, pigeon sashimi, when you visited the country regions of any place tht has been in the news regarding avian flu outbreaks. Every so often, let out a muffled cough towards your victim and cover your mouth with a few gaps between your fingers (Note: if you do this, you run the risk of being labeled an a**hole, and you really shouldn't be doing this if you really are sick).

If you are on the JET program, this should be a sure-fire way to get you some extra "vacation" (they'll likely quarantine you for a week). It happened three years ago with the SARS outbreak, resulting in a Kumamoto-ken-wide quarantine of JETs who had traveled abroad during the heights of the scare. Everyone, except for me, that is. Even though I came back to Japan with a cold and a severe case of southeast asian microorganisms not agreeing with my digestive system. Actually, I was glad to get back to work, and quite thankful that they didn't make me go in to a lab to be tested by paranoid government workers. That would have sucked!

The gist of this advertisement is that Nova is going to raise their prices and ostensibly their level of service as well. We all know this is BS. I have met some pretty cool people that have worked at all of the main eikaiwa companies in Japan including Nova, but Nova seems to attract a lot of sub-par, loser gaijin while offering second-rate english conversation lessons. Nothing is very likely to change, except for a price hike.

This has to be one of the stupidest advertisements I have ever seen. Who should have to pay more for an already over-priced, inferior service? Unfortunately, it isn't common knowledge to Japanese people that Nova isn't one of the better franchises. Marketing does work, but will people really buy this?

To their credit though, Nova is a good for getting you a working visa in Japan, for generating unbelievably funny baka-gaijin stories in bulk, and sometimes for networking. Other than that, it is a company that regularly passes out packets of tissue paper for free at most of the places heavily used by pedestrians in Osaka.

Working with first year primary school students is a lot like being a sheet of tissue paper. The kids seem to enjoy wiping, throwing, spilling or somehow conveying dirt, food, saliva, beverages, and other stuff that would make a petri dish bloom with a thick fuzz ranging the full spectrum of the rainbow.

Today a few kids insisted on licking my sweater, tried to kancho me (swift and merciless revenge was exacted, and the little demon-spawn thought twice before approaching this gaijin with anything other than good intentions), and this one, well, he did something that took me off guard..

During lunch at shogakko, the children push their desks into groups of 4 and each day, they take turns at donning scrubs and masks and serving the school lunch. I am usually shown to a seat, and spend my time playing with them or talking to them about whatever they're interested in that particular moment.

This kid was asking me some questions when he started digging around his nose and pulled out a choice nugget. Fascinated, he decided to test its viscosity by repeatedly poking it against a chair and stretching it out. It was quite sticky and stretchy, like the cheese that strings off of a freshly baked pizza. After a minute, he decided to roll it around the table, as if kneading a lump of dough.

Then he caught me watching, and I could see the light bulb blink on behind his dark, evil eyes. There was never any doubt of what he planned to do, and we locked eyes like rival samurai in the midst of a battle. He extended his loaded finger, this loathsome bayonet of terror, and charged. As I caught his hand, I pulled out my keitai with my other one and switched on the camera.

"Wow, that's a great booger, do you mind if I take a picture?", I asked. His puny 6 year old brain was short-circuited by the sight of a camera and my question, much the same way a magician uses his props to draw attention away from what he doesn?t want people to see, and he forgot about his wicked deed, reprogrammed by the desire to be photographed. The other kids, of course, then screamed to have their pictures taken as well, and I obliged them, grateful to pay this price instead of having some little brat's booger smeared into my clothing.

So if you teach at elementary or nursery school, remember the camera on your cell phone. Properly used, you can easily change your fate by using it to misdirect the little bastards! Just remember to lock the keys on the phone just in case one of them manages to swipe it from you.

How would you like to open up the curtains and see this from the window of your love hotel? It would serve you right for being such a tight wad and picking that hotel in the first place! This was found, of course, in Juso.

Donald Duck enjoys a little something from McDonalds. Take a careful look at the fries. Another thing to consider: Who is proffering him the fries?

"All men are not equal in the eyes of law."
Sounds like something that Hammurabi would say.
These Disney characters are really starting to creep me out.

Beauty's face is missing and the Beast has gone invisible.

Dumbo wears as much makeup as some of my students and, sadly, this is hardly exaggeration.

Surprisingly, this place isn't in Juso.

This kid was playing dodgeball shirtless on a day that was cold enough to snow. He insisted that "hadaka power" gave him special powers. Ah, I'm going to miss the dodgeball.

(link)

Dude, Justin, I don't remember you mentioning this on your site.

And the design, you could have done better than a yellow-snowman. Or is it supposed to be dog poo?

This sticker expresses my exact sentiments towards tobacco smoke and inconsiderate smokers. Wanna smoke? Hey, that's your right, but keep it out of my face!

This is the view from the Umeda Sky Building, which overlooks all of Kita, as well as Yodogawa-ku. At a higher resolution, you can see the tents of the homeless that run along the sides of the Yodogawa.

Apparently, there is going to be a big, important rose festival and an event showcasing urban greenery (English link) in Osaka later this year. The city officials want to get rid of the homeless in Osakajo park and Utsubo park, where these events are to be held. In order to dismantle the 28 homes in the park and to evict their occupants, about 1,100 workers, security guards, and police were sent in to do the job. Understandably, the homeless and their supporters did not go willingly.

Osaka homeless resist police move (from the BBC, thanks Huw)

Here's an article of information about the evictions in specific, and the challenges faced by the Osaka homeless in general (if you only read one article in this post, read this one):
Urgent appeal from Homeless activists in Osaka, Japan
In this article, the Kamagasaki Patrol no Kai also gives the reader information about what is being done to protest the government.

I think it?s pretty fucking cold-blooded that the city authorities have decided to evict the homeless in the middle of this brutal winter. These are not people who can just pack up and move easily, even when it?s not freezing. I would feel pretty guilty about going to this rose show, knowing that part of the price of admission was paid by people who got kicked out of their homes!

This reminds me of an urban planning class I took at UCSB, when the professor showed us pictures of public benches in cities around America and asked what all of them had in common. ?They?re all designed so that homeless people can?t sleep on them. Next time you?re out and about, look at the designs of the places of the seats.?, he said.

And sure enough, they?re all over the place. Seats are slotted, molded, and partitioned so that you can?t lie across them and benches are curved in a convex contour so that if you were to lie them you would fall off. It?s the ultimate passive aggressive design and it?s invisible to everyone except for it?s targets.

Another article reports a case that may set precedence, for the homeless to be officially allowed to live in the public parks. The Osaka district court recently overruled the Osaka Kita Ward?s decision to reject one homeless man?s registration of his tent in a public park as his address of residence:

"I'm surprised and happy because I did not think I could win," Yamauchi said after hearing the verdict.

"If the ruling is finalized, I plan on applying for welfare," he said.

Yamauchi's lawyer said a person cannot exercise the right to vote or receive welfare, including pension and health insurance, without a residential registration, which means he cannot lead a decent life as a citizen.

I had no idea about the size of the homeless population in Japan, but the BBC article listed a figure of 25,000 people, with a third of them living in Osaka. Apparently, the poor economic performance over the last 15 years has spurred a growth in this demographic.

The homeless around my area maintain gardens, and live a much more sustainable lifestyle than you or I or any average person. The goal of using open green spaces is to create an environment where we can go to feel comfortable, to decompress after spending the majority of our day in a building, surrounded by glass, veneer, cement, bricks, concrete, and barriers that keep us separated from others in general. Urban planners like Frank Lloyd Wright used these areas to help bring nature into an environment that has been sterilized of it, as a place to allow people to enjoy the outdoors together in these commons.

The city officials are kicking out the very people who are living more at harmony with the landscape and urban environment than any other segment of the population. I wonder if they have ever though about where all the trash in the parks comes from, and what demographic abuses the commons the most. Can you guess where the bulk of the garbage next to the Yodogawa comes from?

It comes from people who visit it on the weekends, from upstream, from those damn teenagers and salarymen who eat their convenience store bought snacks and cigarettes and don?t bother looking for a trashcan, and from people who illegally dump their waste on park grounds in order to avoid paying a disposal fee.

It?s the homeless people, the ones who live in these commons, who pick up after the visitors after they go home. It?s the homeless people who ?Reduce, Recycle, and Reuse? other people?s refuse to make or maintain their shelters. Hell, the homeless even maintain extensive flower beds next to the Yodogawa, adding color to an otherwise unremarkable patches of land.

The best way to get a feeling for how remarkable a life that these people live is to go out and visit these places, and that?s just what Justin, Nam, and I did this weekend. We walked along the Yodogawa and checked out some of the tents up close:

(click on picture for a close-up of the sign, photo by J. Yoshida)
This is an awesome outdoor space that some homeless dude set up next to his tent. The sign says that anyone can use this area! It?s funny how we, the ones with money and property, post signs to drive people away. I might just throw a barbecue party here before I leave, no joke.

An example of inner city beautification, not paid for by Japanese tax dollars.

(photo by J. Yoshida)
The homeless make use of all available materials. They also seem to own their own boats!

These (private) gardens are meticulously maintained, and it looks like leeks, onions, lettuce, and other leafy vegetables will be on the menu this winter. This dude puts the UCSB Environmental Studies major hippie communes/cooperatives to shame! This is sustainability. Did I mention that they sell fishing bait here as well?

As I mentioned before, I will be posting more pictures on my Flickr page so check back once in a while for updates.

Also, I was wondering, is there any other way besides 家のない (ie no nai, or without a house) and安息の場を与えない (ansoku no jou no ataenai, or without a place to rest) to say ?homeless?? Was there a time when saying these words required more of an explanation if you used them in a conversation? Surely a loanword will come into use as the homeless population and issues dealing with them continue to grow. Or maybe not. After researching this topic more thoroughly, it looks like the same things happen and are breifly reported in the news year after year with nothing much changing. Homeless will likely stay "a person without a home" because no one wants to think about them, let alone deal with the problem.

Further Reading

Shannon Higgins tells the story of Japan's largest slum in The Kamagasaki Gallery

Oyama Shiro's book A MAN WITH NO TALENTS: Memoirs of a Tokyo Day Laborer

The Streets of Osaka as documented by subjectivite.net

An excellent BBC pictorial on Japan's homeless, with interviews

This article by the Cristian Science Monitor explores the link between ageism and the homeless in Japan

Artist Geoff Reed's Face The Street

Andreas Seibert's photos of the homeless in Osaka

Japan for Sustainability

The Aozora Foundation

I?ve been lucky to have been stationed at schools that have their own cooking facilities on school grounds, so everything has been freshly made. As a bonus, kyushoku is cheap (220 yen for a lunch at my current school), and seconds are often available for those who want more.

The task of serving school lunch is delegated to the students, who carefully portion out the food. At the end of the designated time that they are allotted to prepare lunch, a student reads off the menu so that every one can check to make sure that they have everything that's supposed to be there and also to let every one know just what it is that they will be eating.

On this day, I was talking to my students and ignoring the announcement when I heard ?blah blah blah?kujira?blah blah?, and took a second look at the sweet and sour ?pork?. I tasted it, and it was almost identical to the generic sweet and sour pork that you can get at any Chinese restaurant, except the meat wasn?t as fatty. Although delicious, this particular kyushoku made me agitated.

Why would you use whale meat to make a dish that tastes better with pork anyways? Whale meat is certainly more expensive than pork, and there must be other ways to prepare it so that you know you?re eating whale. It just seems like such a waste, even if you ignore the ethical implications of eating large marine mammals. The whalers went through a lot of trouble to file the paperwork to harvest the whale for ?scientific research purposes? and to harpoon the damn thing, so why did they make the whale taste like pork?

Another thing bothered me about the whale. I didn?t feel bad. At all. I chewed it, and though images of Greenpeace, mortally wounded whales floating on a patch of red brine, and other things passed through my mind, it didn?t make me disturbed in the least. All I could think was, ?Wow, this tastes like a lean cut of pork?.

I was curious to know where this whale was from and what type of whale it was. What species was it? Was it a toothed whale or a baleen whale? Where was it caught? How was it captured? The sad thing is that no one ever knows where the whale for our school lunches comes from. They know more about the beef, milk, and vegetables than the whale!

Friday night started out with a trip to go buy enough gyoza for 6 people, meaning 36 garlic stuffed pot stickers, and five tall cans of premium Japanese beer. Once in a while, Osho has a half-price sale on gyoza and people line up outside in a long queue, braving the elements to secure these much-coveted snacks.

I had seen the 105 yen (half price) for a six pack of gyoza advertisements since I've been in Juso, but this is the first time that I actually went out and bought some. Even with two people, it was difficult to make it through all of the gyoza but we managed.

Next week, there's another sale on Saturday so if you're around, please let's enjoy beer and gyoza party in Juso!

Mark has a nostalgic post about Kumamoto, along with a nice spread of pictures to illustrate what life on JET was like during our stay (and what it will probably be like for many years to come).

It got me thinking about what a great time I had down there. It's hard to organize the things that I've seen and done down there. This is the most clear and concise way that I could think of quickly cataloguing my experiences:

The Kumamoto Top 5s

Top 5 Hikes
1. Kuju during the winter and spring
2. Aso-san at night
3. Kikuchi gorge
4. Yamabuki suigen when the fireflies are out/ Yamabuki suigen with fresh snow
5. Daikanbo on the Milk Road

Top 5 near death experiences
1. Playing with mamushi
2. Mark getting guillotined by Deez Nuts
3. Driving the Milk late at night in thick fog
4. Driving without a blinker due to Dukes of Hazard entry gone wrong
5. Almost driving off a cliff in Ashikita with Deez Nuts

Top 5 parties
1. Jason's house on any given weekend during the first year
2. Hanami at Kumamoto Castle
3. Waterwheel
4. Any night after a hash
5. Hanami in Ubuyama

Top 5 excuses to get out of work
1. SARS
2. Tori influenza
3. Buying teaching materials
4. Going to a "meeting"
5. A byoukyu surplus

Top 5 perks of JET
1. Recontracting conference in Kobe
2. Mid-year conference in Kumamoto City
3. Free Japanese lessons
4. Loads of nenkyu, raikyu, and byoukyu
5. Meeting cool people from all over and making fun of NOVA people (haha, those guys suck!)

Top 5 foods
1. Tonkotsu ramen
2. Basashi
3. Masa's hamburgers
4. Iseebi sashimi
5. Karashi renkon

5 things I never ate in Kumamoto
1. Inoshishi
2. Kuma
3. Kiji
4. Koi zushi
5. Mamushi

Nastiest 5 drinks
1. Anything from the Sanctuary Bar
2. Flaming doctor peppers
3. Jack Daniels and Contac cold medicine
4. Cheap straight shochu
5. Old, warm happoshu

Top 5 surrounding prefectures and their best attraction
1. Fukuoka- Fukuoka city
2. Saga- Nanayama-mura
3. Miyazaki- The gorge
4. Kagoshima- hiking Kaimon-dake
5. Oita- the aincent Buddhas

Top 5 Onsen Spots
1. Kurokawa
2. Ashikita
3. Ubuyama
4. Kikuchi
5. Kumaden plaza's rooftop onsen

Top 5 menacing/disgusting animals
1. Mamushi
2. Mukade
3. Gejigeji
4. Ao mimizu
5. Roadkill (tanuki, itachi, dogs, cats, and snakes)

Top 5 animals that make you hungry just looking at them
1. Cows
2. Horses
3. Yellowtail
4. Pigs
5. Ayu

Top 5 matsuri
1. The Kagura festival
2. Hifurishinji- the fire swinging festival
3. Drunken horse festival in Kumamoto City
4. Yamaga Lantern festival
5. Kyokushi's beef festival

Top 5 flowers
1. Higothai
2. Nanohana
3. Fujinohana
4. Sakura
5. Ume

Top 5 places to go on a date
1. Picnic at Kikuchi Gorge
2. Party at Ashikita
3. Drive on the caldera
4. Hitting izakaya and hidden Japanese bars in Kumamoto City
5. Hashing

Top 5 things that happened while hashing
1. The hash organizer's hand getting cut due to leaning on a window and breaking through, resulting in a permanent "thumbs up" for several months afterwards, and still running the hash.
2. A shoe getting irretrievably buried in cow shit, and then running the rest of the hash barefoot.
3. Wading through cow shit-laden water in Kyokushi (notice a trend?), and then watching the faces of the workers at the onsen as a group of nasty gaijin bum rushed the facilities.
4. The showing of various body parts at religion, and punative drinks given as a result of mistreating the Chalice.
5. Austin cannonballing the hood of a random person's car as she was driving down a street next to the Shimatori.

In case you couldn't tell, I think that Kumamoto, and Kyushu in general, is one of the best places to live or visit in Japan. The big cities and famous attractions of Japan are cool as well, but there is a feeling of timelessness that I have only experienced in Kyushu, Kumamoto in particular. It's because things aren't as convenient, cutting edge, or fast-paced that life is more adventurous, intimate, and pure in the country side. I hope that Kyushu stays just the way it is, and I think that it just might.

"Upon hearing that he was played by Kiefer Sutherland, Jack Bauer killed Sutherland. Jack Bauer gets played by no man."

Who's more of a badass, Jack or Chuck?

I live in Juso, a place whose name can be written shorthand as 13. When I moved from Ubuyama, I wanted to live in a place that was the polar opposite of where I spent my first two years in Japan. I really couldn't have found a place that was so foreign to the Japan I had gotten to know intimately within the same country.

It is interesting to note that a good number of people, even those who live near Juso or who regularly transfer trains in the Hankyu hub, have never been out and about in this area that?s just across the river from Umeda. They have a mostly negative view of the place. Juso is associated with lewdness, strange or handicapped people, danger, and dirtiness. Make no mistake, these things do exist here, but it's pretty tame if you've been traveling anywhere outside of Japan.

It's strange to see how the seasons affect people around here. The crazy people and perverts seem to be warded off by the cold, so the girls who live in my apartment haven't come by and asked if they can chill in my apartment for a while because some strange man was following them home (this happened quite frequently during spring and summer).

It's strange to see how skirt lengths get shorter despite the freezing winds whipping through the street.

It's amusing to see the teenage guitarists and their fan girls hanging out under the tracks of the Juso eki, and drunken salarymen occasionally drop a few thousand yen to play a request.

It's cool to see how well the homeless are getting along without any help from the outside world.

It's annoying to see 10 cops standing on a side street with whistles in mouth and pens in hand, ambushing passing cars to ticket drivers.

It's nice to hear the high school band practice next to the Yodogawa as the sun sinks into the West.

It makes you realize just how cold it is when you see the plumes of smoke coming out of the vents of the restaurants, stalls, and off of grilling takoyaki in the morning and at night. Oh, and the snow makes it abundantly clear too.

It's cool to know that if you want to buy a specific type of egg from a specific type of chicken, quail, or even duck, there is a store at the end of the shotengai where you can probably find exactly what you?re looking for.

It's an especially good sign to see that many of the izakayas and eating establishments are regularly crowded with blue collar workers, enjoying their food and drink after work to the point where you aren't always guarenteed a seat. It's also a good sign that not many young people come to these restaraunts- they go to the fancier, more expensive ones in Umeda or Minami instead. They don?t know what they?re missing.

It's nice to exchange "Ohayogozaimasu", "Ittarashai", and "Ittekimasu" with the old lady who lives in the house next to my apartment every morning on my way to work.

It's gratifying to hear people say that they like Juso, after actually coming down here and spending some time and getting to know it. It isn't a touristy area, nor is it a really happening place to be, but it has a nice balance hidden below a scruffy, slightly notorious surface. It is surprisingly quiet at nighttime.

Sure, there are some unpleasant or provocative things about Juso, but at least it is advertised clearly out in the open. It's no more a corrupt or dirty place than the surrounding areas, it's just more honest.

This morning, I woke up refreshed, dusted the crusted snow off of my drying towel for my morning shower, and then skated in the slush to work feeling that today would be a good one for taking pictures. I didn't capture any of the snow before it melted, but saw some cool stuff after I got off of work.

It?s amazing to see snow, rain, or whatever form precipitation decides to take, fall as the sun is shining. Today, from across the Yodogawa, I could see the snow descending on Kita, sweeping across from Hep 5 to the Sky Building. This, I though, was better viewed from a distance in the warm sunshine.

The wild dogs were out again today, roving around in packs. This is a sign warning people about them. Other signs were equally disturbing: One made a plea to people not to abandon their dogs in Yodogawa park. It said ?Dogs are nice animals. Don?t buy pets if you can?t take care of them.?. I don?t think that these signs actually change anyone?s mind about what is right and wrong. It?s hard to convert an asshole into a good person, though I wish the same could be said for the reverse.

Here?s a flyer about dogs posted over one of my favorite signs:

The gist of it is (correct me if I?m wrong) that you shouldn?t be mean to the dogs or surprise them, or they might bite your ass. The dogs are doing their best to live here so be gentle towards them.

It is wrong how pets are dumped in the woods (or next to the Yodogawa for that matter) if their owners get bored of them. If you drive around the country roads of Japan for any length of time, you will see lots of puppy road kill, and if you walk around in the mountains you will probably have to fight the urge to take a whimpering pup home with you. People should have to prove themselves worthy before they are allowed to have kids or pets. And if they fuck up, they shouldn?t get a second chance. Having kids and pets is a privilege, not a right.

Under the JR bridge on the Shin-Osaka side of the Yodogawa, the pillars have eyes. I wish that these guys would tag more, instead of the delinquents who like to scribble on their territory much the same way that a dog raises its leg.

This graffiti is cool because it is dispensing some useful information: beware of religious charlatans (who hold their hand up to your head, and then claim that you?re cured, or something to that extent).

I prefer the country to the city, but living in Juso is actually pretty cool sometimes. Not only is it convenient to get to and a good place to find some cheap, authentic Kansai cuisine, but there are just so many interesting things to be seen around here.

This is the Akashi Bridge that connects Awaji-shima with Kobe, as seen from the Akashi side. It doesn't look like it in the picture, but the sky was pretty dark, and you could just barely make out the beach in the dim light.

I didn't have a tripod, so I rested it on a bench. Unfortunately, a stiff, cold wind was blowing, there was a lot of light from multiple sources polluting the area, and the shutter was open for too long (about 10 seconds or so) for this picture to come out as clearly as I would have liked it to have.

Well, I guess it's time to study up on night photography and hopefully I will have some better pictures to post shortly. I don't think I'll be returning to photograph the Akashi bridge because it's too far away. Justin, you're on this.

(Porcupine fish are abundant off of the Ryukyu Islands- this is one that I saw on a dive close to Zamami island)

*Fugu is delicious, but how many people had to die before a safe technique was developed to separate the poisonous bits from the delicious, slightly toxic but safe to eat parts?

*How many sushi chefs have died after eating the liver of a fugu because they erroneously believed that they had built up an immunity to the toxin, or were egged on during a drinking session by the rest of the kitchen staff?

*Does anyone eat its cousin, the porcupine fish? It would make sense that something that is even more of a pain in the ass to catch and prepare would be even more delicious.

*It?s going to be hard to convince the Japanese in particular that it is in their best interest to cut down on the rate of seafood consumption. Even if they concede that it is necessary need to do this to protect the long-term interests of everyone regarding the declining stocks of fish, there is going to be some serious reluctance to comply with what is necessary. If they actually do cut down, I don?t want to be there to witness the withdrawal symptoms of Japan.

*Even discounting the fact that uni is sea urchin gonads, it is still disgusting. Admit it, it looks and has the consistency a baby turd.

*If you go to any Japanese aquarium and listen to the people around you, you will almost certainly hear someone say "oishisou" (that looks delicious). I wonder if they feel the same way when they visit Sea World and watch the Shamu show...

*Korean nori kicks ass! So do the technologically advanced wrappers that keep nori separate from convenience store onigiri until right before you eat them. By the way, if you?re lucky, you can sometimes find spam musubi in Japanese convenience stores.

(Woodblock print by Hiroshige Ando)

*It's cool how the yellowtail has so many names in Japanese:

ao
buri
hiramasa
inada
fukuragikando
kanburi
kozokura
mejiro
tsubasu
wakanago
wakashi
warasa

*It has been my experience that a restaurant that sells high-quality maguro and hamachi sashimi will inevitably sell out of the hamachi first. Maguro is good, but not a good enough substitute when you are really craving hamachi.

*If people looked like what they eat, then Osaka station would resemble a massive kaiten sushi restaraunt.

*Which lobster variety makes the best ise ebi sashimi? The best stuff I've had so far was from the relatively warm waters of the Amakusa Islands in Kumamoto. However, fish tend to taste better from colder waters, and lobsters lose their firmness of flesh as they get older. So would a young Maine lobster be even more delicious than one from Amakusa? How does Okinawa's ise ebi compare?

*Ordering "tsukuri" sounds cooler than ordering "sashimi", but people in Tokyo won?t know what the hell you are talking about.

*I wonder if people who regularly eat the clams from the Yodogawa are suffering any reproductive problems.

*I have been told that a really good way to catch unagi is to put an ayu in a two liter bottle and place it in a river with the mouth facing upstream. Unagi, it was explained to me, find ayu irresistible and once they squeeze into the bottle and eat the fish, they are unable to get out again. This reminds me of how some monkeys are easily trapped. Rice is put inside a hollow coconut, and when the monkey grabs onto the rice, they can?t pull their fist out of the trap. If they would only let go of the rice, their hand wouldn?t be stuck, but apparently monkeys like rice that much.

*Japanese people get confused when told that the jinbeizame (whale shark) is a fish, and some of them think that dolphins are fish. This never fails to be amusing.

*If you go swimming off of the coasts of Kyushu, don't worry about the clear jelly fish so much. It's the ones with red stripes that hurt like a bitch!

*Mutsugoro (famous in Saga-ken) is hands down the worst tasting fish I have ever eaten. If you can taste mud (a mutsugoro is a mudskipper btw) through a thick layer of teriyaki sauce, there's probably not much that you can do to improve the flavor. The second and third most repugnant marine organisms I?ve tried in Japan would have to be hotaru ika (firefly squid) and fermented whale, respectively.

*I don't like eating small fish that are candied and hard. It feels wrong in more that one way (link to small dried fish).

*Squid kicks ass in so many different ways: calamari rings with spicy salt, battered and fried in tonkatsu, tempura, and fish and chips style batter, dried, dried and coated with honey, cut up as sashimi, or even fried up as a steak or sauteed with some vegetables. It also makes a very handy all-purpose saltwater bait.

*The sushi with crunchy, yellow roe is nasty. Try some next time!

*Japanese salmonids (this includes both trout and salmon) taste a hell of a lot better than the stuff from America. For example, you can stick a skewer through a live Japanese trout, put some salt on its writhing body, broil it over some coals, and come out with some awesome fish on a stick. You can't do this with trout back home and expect it to taste good. I wonder why this is.

*Of all the seaweeds, hijiki will supposedly make your hair the most beautiful.

*Do most people who claim to like hakarl (rotten and mouldy shark flesh) really enjoy it, or is it mostly a way to prove one's virility? Considering that it is traditionally washed down with a drink nicknamed "Black Death", I am leaning toward the latter explanation.

*Has anyone calculated the number of chirimen (tiny fish generally used as a condiment for rice) eaten in Japan in an average year? I am guessing that it?s around jucchopiki (ten trillion). How about for aji?

*What do Gharabaldis taste like?

*
(link)

*Ayu fishing seems cruel and inhumane, though it is a very clever way to catch a fish that would otherwise be very difficult to catch on rod and reel. Ayu don?t eat bait, but they are territorial fish, so if one ayu intrudes the territory of another, it will ram it. Japanese fishermen figured out that by attaching hooks to the body of a ?rival? they could use a live fish as a lure. In order to attach the rig, you must perform some pretty serious pierce work on the fish that you will use. If you do go fishing for ayu there is a right way to set up the rig. If you cover the eyes of the fish while you are attaching the tackle to its body, it will be in much better condition and stay viable as ?bait? for a long while. If you don?t do this, it may go into shock.

*What type of fish do they use to make kamaboko and chikuwa? I want to see percentages of each species of marine organisms.

*Bioaccumulation is a motherfuckingbitch.

(from M. Nagano's collection)

*I have never seen anyone eat a shako (a squilla, or more commonly known as the mighty mantis shrimp) at kaiten sushi except for Matt. We had to try it at least once, because we believe that you must try everything at a kaiten sushi restaurant at least once. Before I came to Japan, I had no idea that people ate these ferocious beasts

A Japanese law enforcement officer takes a whiz facing the a busy street (invisible from this angle) next to the Yodogawa river. The steady line of traffic that passed by shortly after I snapped this photo must have been able to see him, as he failed to conceal himself behind the taller shrub to his right. Maybe he was just a cosplay urination exhibitionist.

Fun fact: it is socially acceptable to whip it out and take a leak almost anywhere on the streets of Japan, especially if you are an old man.

The only way to prevent this is to put little torii (the red Shinto gate) up in places where you don't want people to piss. Pissing on a torii, as my brother explained, is like pissing on God.

These things apparently work pretty well. Juso, famous for snack bars, colorful non-chain izakayas with an authentic Kansai atmosphere (rivaled only by Shinsekai in my humble opinion), and negiyaki (a type of okonomiyaki, which on a side note I refuse to call a Japanese pizza- who came up with that anyway!) as well as drunk people making their way home from these establishment. The fact that this particular wall does not smell like urine is a testament to the power of the mini torii to ward off those who would otherwise urinate in this area.

Update: Mark has some related pictures up at the Champon Adventures. Thanks dude!

It's been a bit warmer around Osaka lately, and like this semi I've been able to shed down a layer and enjoy the crisp air. Hopefully Spring will come early this year. It's a sad and beautiful thing, to know that this year may well be my last opportunity to enjoy Hanami in Japan. It's a shame that there aren't any cherry trees around the Yodogawa though.

Heh, it's only January and I'm already thinking about drinking under the gentle rain of cherry blossoms...

Update (Jan. 19th, 3:33 PM): Never mind, it's snowing again...

I take these pictures because I truly respect the resourcefulness that these homeless people possess. Using scavenged materials and simple blue tarps, the Yodogawa homeless population has built a community next to the river. By doing so, they have secured themselves one of the best views available in Osaka

The homeless of the Yodogawa don't bother anyone- I have never heard of anyone being molested or even bothered for spare change. Often they hang out, have a couple of drinks, and barbecue. At other times you can see them tending gardens, fishing, practicing their golf, clamming (yes, people do eat clams from the river!), or walking their dogs.

Their dogs are dangerous, though. There are wild packs that roam the banks, and it is best to be wary if you are walking around this area. It is best not to venture out around this area alone, especially at night time, and certainly if you are a female.

Anyhow, for the duration of my stay, I will be posting pictures of these amazing homes as I take them. As I don't want to upset anyone, I'll only be able to take a few at a time or risk being obvious.

Honestly, these homes are amazing- the homeless have accumulated or fabricated everything that they need (refrigerators made out of coolers, outdoor kitchens, and furniture among many other things), and maintain a relatively comfortable life. You can check here for periodic updates.

Most of the tags that people throw up around the city are ugly and uninspired, but if you look hard enough and explore the less frequented areas you can find some really good stuff. I'll be posting pictures of the better works here, so check back once in a while if you're interested.

I never noticed it before, but the Sky Building is really just a huge tori.

Last year, Huw and I went on a hike through the mountains of Kobe, starting from Ashiyagawa and ending in Shukugawa. Along the way, we saw many signs with wild boars on them, but saw no real wildlife to speak of, only other hikers. This sign stands right in front of the Hankyu train station, warning the people of Ashiya about the dangers of wild boars that sometimes come down from the hills to get run over by BMWs and Mercedes Benzes. If you're going to get run over, Ashiya is definitely the place to do it!

The little kid yells "Dame!" at her dad as he gets attacked as a result of feeding the boar. Ah, this brings back so many colorful childhood memories, notably the one where my dad chased after a female black bear and her cubs in order to snap a picture. I'm just disappointed that he didn't get the picture...

Signs warning hikers against feeding or playing with the boars were more common than one might expect. Personally, if I saw a boar I wouldn't want any part of it after watching Old Yeller but I guess not that many people have seen what happens when you screw with a boar. You either get gored and end up being shot by your best friend, or you kill the boar, eat it, put its head on a stick and worship it as the God of the island. And then you kill Piggy and use his glasses to make fire.

This is a bit late/early depending on how you look at it, but I wanted to say that I'm really happy for you guys. It seems as if you two have been married for over a decade already to me, so it's fitting after waiting so long that you should get married with such a massive undertaking. Hopefully there will be many more pictures to post later.

This is a really strange legacy to leave behind, a malignant tumor that won't die.

A big green 0 was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes this morning. Within 10 minutes I was to the door. Snow blasted my face, and I ran through the blizzard, taking the time to snap a few pictures on my cell phone:

Osho, in Higashi Juso, is starting to accumulate a mantle of snow.

A shot of Juso Eki between the Eastern Mr. Donut and the entrance to Hankyu railway station

The train tracks and the area around the Yodogawa quickly accumulated a layer of snow. I wonder how the insulation of the residences of the homeless population, who live in the shanty town along the length of the Yodogawa river, compares to the average Japanese apartment.

I usually ride on the first car from track number 6 on my way to Osaka. This morning was the first time I remember being able to hear the conductor talking on his radio. Though muffled through the barrier that separates the cockpit from the cabin, I was able to make out the words ?concerned?, ?dangerous?, and ?please check?. A maintenance crew quickly entered the locomotive, as the passengers disembarked.

I?m glad nothing went wrong. Riding in the first car is the most dangerous place in a train to be in case of an accident. After the train crash on the JR line in Amagasaki, I remember reading in The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Travel that if you know that a crash is imminent, it is a good idea to get to the rear of the train. Most of the casualties in Amagasaki were riding in the first two cars. Well, I didn?t start running to the back of the train when I heard the conductor?s concerned exchange on the radio. It would have been impossible to maneuver my way through, as all of the cars were packed like sardine tins.

I remember watching his stand up two Christmases ago, and hurting from laughing so hard. For whatever reason, it's too bad that he didn't finish the 3rd season. Whether it has any truth to it or not, this is worth reading.

I've been using this game in my classes since I first started teaching English close to three years ago. Over time, I have modded it into its present version.

Typhoon is a great game to use when you want to review materials from previous lessons, but the traditional way of writing points up on the board and covering them up with individual sheets of paper is time consuming and laborious.

I first got around this problem by making my own deck of customized Typhoon cards with point values and special cards, which worked really well. However, I have come up with a way that anyone can play this game with a standard deck of playing cards.

First, divide the class into 3 or more teams. Any student may raise their hand after you ask a question, but a different student must answer every time. The fastest team to raise their hands gets to answer the question. I usually allow the team to help each other if they don?t know the answer.

If a student gives a correct answer, they pick a card from the deck. Here are the values for the cards:

Point Cards:
*Cards 2-10 are worth their number in points
*Aces ? Diamonds, Clubs, and Hearts are worth 30 points. The Spade is worth 100.

Typhoon Cards:
*Jacks ? They reduce the points of the teams who draws it to 0
*Queens ? If a team draws a Queen, they choose a team and that team?s points are reduced to zero. A team can pick themselves as the target (as teams can accrue negative points).
*Kings ? This card is Armageddon. All points are reduced to zero.
*Joker ? After the Joker comes into play, all point values from this point for everybody become negative points. For example, after the Joker is pulled, the 10 card would subtract 10 points from the total points of the team who draws it.

If the second Joker is drawn, scoring returns to normal.

I used to put the cards up on the board as a grid, and had vocabulary words set up on the x and y axis so that the students would have to use that week?s vocabulary in order to get in some extra practice:

("x" denotes a card, face down. In the case of a deck of 54 cards, I would probably set up the board in a 6 x 9 grid.)

But for the sake of speed, I now just shuffle the deck and let the students pick one out. The team with the most points at the end wins.

This game can be used repeatedly with the same class. The key is to not over use it, and to keep the durations shorter, rather than longer, otherwise they may tire of it prematurely.

This is a pretty cool trick using a plant leaf as a photographic medium.

When I was three, I touched the barbecue even though I was told it was hot and it would hurt. This is the first incident in which I can remember thinking about linguistics, for the pain seared the memory into my young mind. Barbecue, I reasoned, is a compound word made up of "Barbie" and the letter Q (to check out the etymology of the word barbecue, click here).

For some inexplicable reason, perhaps related to my fascination with the thing that was cooking our dinner, I desired to touch the side of the barbecue, and so I burned my finger and learned my lesson. This is not the first time that I got burnt, and it certainly wasn't to be the last.

A few contusions on my elbows and a small chunk missing out of the base of my back are part of the price I paid for wiping out, while foolishly tearing down the debris covered road to Minoo Falls. I was going too fast and rapidly approaching a sharp, blind corner, and then I ate it while attempting to break. Apparently, I tumbled violently enough to fling my glasses 20 feet away from where I hit the ground.

Luckily, God looks after fools like me, so I have been let off with just a few contusions and abrasions to show. I am sad to say that my Timberland backpack got a bit ripped up as I skidded across the pavement, but its sacrifice literally saved my ass from being torn into hamburger.

So from now on, there will be no more tearing down hills unless they are first deemed to be safe to myself and to others. I can't rightly say why I did it in the first place, especially after hearing about what happened to a student at my high school.

Apparently, last week one of the ichinensei was riding in the rain and lost control, hitting a wall with such force that he died of the injuries. I don't want to ever put anyone through the pain that his family must be feeling right now.

I finally found an easy way to get rid of auto-formatting in Word (and I would have saved myself much frustration had I taken the time to look up an answer before). I hate how Word automatically changes things automatically, like adding indentations, bullets, capitalizing letters, and makes other adjustments when I'm trying to get the lay out looking exactly as I want it to. Sometimes it makes the change exactly how I want for a split second before making another automatic change, as if it were mocking me. Well, I have found the hammer with which to smite this cunning foe down with:

All you have to do is to select the part of the document that you want to work on and then hit "Ctrl + Shift + n" and it will get rid of all of the nonsense. It's so simple, but it is going to save me a lot of wasted time because, even if you turn off auto-formatting, Word sometimes will auto-format anyways. Now when that happens, I can strip the document down to no formatting in seconds.

The feeling that I got when I discovered "Ctrl + Shift + n" reminds me of the time that I found out the reason that my typing in the middle of a body of text was eating the other letters in front of it was the result of the insert function being switched on. Prior to learning about how ?insert? worked, I had to type any corrections on another document and paste them into the body of the text.

Yet despite how much I think I know about Word, I still find it a tedious process to get the layout of some pages just the way I want it to look.

When I lived deep in the country side I longed to live in the big city. Now that I'm here, I can't wait to get back out into nature. Isolation is a good thing in the right dose, as is being around people. This is not to say that I want to live in suburbia. The best situation would be to live in the country within a reasonable commute to civilization. Pretty much anything other than Ubuyama, I can hack.

I think the ideal set up would be to have a house in Hokkaido, one in Okinawa, and one in Nara so that I could alternate between being able to hike, eat good food, ski, fish, and snowboard with the changing of the seasons. If I ever get really rich and end up living over here, that's what I'm going to do.

This ridiculous diagram is part of the revisied lesson plan project that I am working on in the office. At least I'm getting pretty good at using Word and Excel as a result...

Teaching Janken in elementary school makes for a good lesson, but I that the Japanese version sounds so much better than "Ro sham bo" or "Rock, paper, scissors...". Watching it played in Japan can be really entertaining because it sometimes takes on tones similar to those of a Wild West showdown or the fierce swashbuckling of pirate-folk. Especially when the stakes are high.

Janken settles everything neatly and quickly, with authority. Who gets to ride shotgun? Who has to pay for the next round of drinks? Who gets the priviledge of sitting next to the English teacher during lunch? Should we go soak in an onsen or grab some food and beverages? Who has to eat the big chunk of wasabi as punishment for losing? Any decision made by Janken is solid as stone. And unlike an arbitrated decision or ther verdict delivered by a court, it is very rare to see the loser really complain about the fairness of the decision, let alone contesting it.

This simple game has a very colorful anthropological and linguistic history behind it, spanning over years long gone, and weaving itself into the fabric of cultures around the world. It is interesting to note that the symbols used vary widely from place to place, and within the same region depending upon the social context. In Japan there are several versions including a variant of Janken played with the face (a good old fashioned drinking game), and one specific to Osaka.

Janken should be used more often to mitigate problems and disagreements between individuals and groups of people. With the responsible usage of Janken, imagine how much faster problem mitigation would become should our world leaders, political groups, and more adults in general used it to settle our differences.

It certainly works in the context of public schools and between friends and peers. But you'll always find someone who, once they lose, demands that Janken is always played two out of three. This is almost always the person who will change the rules to back when they win the first round. Unless otherwise stipulated, one round of Janken determines who wins and who loses. Period.

Don Quixote is my favorite chain store in Japan. Where else can you buy party sized snacks bigger than they sell in American supermarkets, Louis Vuitton bags, electrical appliances, cosplay outfits, children's toys, whale curry, and adult goods all under the same roof? If only Wal-Mart was as cool as this...

I always happen to find great things at "the Donkey Store", and yesterday was no exception:

How can I best describe this product... um... moist hole in a can. They didn't have an opened one, so I really don't know what this can contains exactly. Is it edible, and if so, what flavour is it? Does it have a heating catalyst or do you have to heat it up some other way? These and other questions need to be addressed.

Luckily...

"Kumamoto Joe" Debiec doesn't mind if it's a little past its expiration date. For the bargain price of 399 yen, he went crazy and bought a crate full (stocking stuffers, he claimed). His evaluation on this product should be forthcoming shortly- stay tuned...

Autumn leaves in Osaka.

Take any 3 digit number, and make it's palindrome (by reading it backwards), and add them both together.

ex. 893 + 398

Take the sum of the 3 digit number and its palindrome and repeat the process.

1291 + 1921

Take that sum and repeat the process and... it's a palindrome number:

3212 + 2123 = 5335

Yeah, I know it's really geeky, like something that you would run home and tell your parents about after learning it from your third grade teacher, but admit it- you were kind of impressed, weren't you? I swear, at this rate, I'm going to be attending Star Trek conventions in my rainbow suspenders by the end of the week...

Yes, it's another day in the office working on the dreaded Ashiya curriculum, which means that my brain needs to be exercised lest it die from atrophy. A co-worker brought in some slime and started to play with it, which got me thinking about colloids, gels, polymers, and the properties of substances that exhibit behavioral characteristics of both solids and liquids.

Rheopectic - Rheopecty is the property of some non-newtonian fluids to show a time dependant change in viscosity; the longer the fluid undergoes shear, the higher its viscosity. Rheopectic fluids are a rare type of fluids, in which shaking for a time causes solidification. A common house-hold example is corn flour (also known as corn starch) mixed with water.

Thixotropic -Thixotropy is the property of some non-newtonian pseudoplastic fluids to show a time-dependent change in viscosity; the longer the fluid undergoes shear, the lower its viscosity. However, this is not a universal definition; the term is sometimes applied to pseudoplastic fluids without a viscosity/time component.

Many gels and colloids are thixotropic materials, exhibiting a stable form at rest but becoming fluid when agitated. Some clays are also thixotropic, with their behavior of great importance to structural engineering in earthquake zones. Clayey ground can practically liquefy under the shaking of a tremor, greatly increasing the effect on buildings.

The classic example of a thixotropic fluid is ketchup, where waiting for it to pour can be more effective than pounding on the bottom of the bottle. Thixotropic compounds are important paint additives, allowing a thick, smooth application that doesn't run.

Sometimes it's fun to learn words that, if used out in public, will brand you as a pretentious geek. If you do use them out of their limited context with any seriousness, then you are probably a tool.

This meter is my good luck charm, located some place that no one will ever discover, frozen for the rest of time showing almost all eights.

This is an actual toy set that is currently for sale at Toys R Us in Japan. Can you picture some little kid asking for this? Mommy, when I grow up I want to work at McDonalds!

All jokes aside, working at Mickey D's doesn't have the same stigma attached to it over here as id does back home. The workers do their jobs with pride and efficiency, and the clerks that I have talked genuinely seem to like their jobs.

Another indicator that things are way different over here: I haven't even heard any stories about disgruntled employees spitting in (or mixing various bodily fluids in) the food or beverages. So maybe Japanese McDonalds is better than the McDonalds in the States after all.

Today, when I was teaching "Let It Be" to my high schoolers, I asked a teacher to translate the phrase "let it be" into Japanese. He then said the phrase in katakana English and waited for me to proceed with the lesson. I looked at him in bewilderment and said "No, in Japanese please", to which he replied "hakuna matata!". I lost the struggle to maintain composure, unsuccessfully trying to contain frustruated laughter as I asked him again. He answered "se la vie". Smack! Not that I was being melodramatic, it was a parasympathetic response that caused my hand to slap my forehead with such force. And that's pretty much how that lesson went for that particular class.

I was eating kyushoku with the kids at my elementary school, when they asked me why I spike my hair. I told them "God told me to", and for some reason, the kid on the right stood up on a chair and acted out dying on the cross. "I'm Jesus Christ!" he said as the other kids laughed. It was so offensive, that I couldn't contain my laughter. As I was laughing, the words "Blashpemer! You're going straight to hell!" jumped into my head. Ah, I love teaching at elementary school.

The incident reminds me of the story about the Japanese department store in Tokyo that displayed a smiling crucified Santa during Chrismas. Its disappointing when you can't confirm a good story like this.

It turns out that we are the first school in Osaka to have spotted the South-American red-backed black widow! Yay!

After everyone disembarked from the Halloween Weekend Loop Line Party, the JR crowd control staff gathered around this guy who was out cold on the platform and did... well they really didn't do much of anything. They tried shaking him awake and prodded him like a piece of cold mutton, but then gave up and took a few minutes to ponder as a group the following questions:

Why the hell did I get chosen to work on this stinking weekend? Why the hell did all of those stupid foreigners choose to get together and act so stupidly on the train? Did they really think that dressing up in costumes, scaring the natives, drinking in public, switching cars in a mad dash whenever arriving at a new station and just acting like fools in general made for a good time? Should I be more concerned about that warm liquid that soaked through my pants when I was pressed up against that big flabby gaijin man dressed in the nursery school boy outfit (he's in the background of the picture, BTW)?

Apparently, the answer to the second to last question is yes because they come back year after year. It was amusing to see, but it wasn't really any different from a typical weekend in Isla Vista back at UCSB, except for being in Japan on a train. If you want to see Japanese have a mix of apathetic resignation, utter fear, morbid curiosity, or acquired distaste of groups of gaijin in general, then all you need to do is to attend this annual anti-matsuri and you will see. Or you will drink too much and hear from your friends (and other random people that you bump into) about how much of an ass you made of yourself (again, it's the same as any given night in IV).

We didn't stay long enough to see what became of the non-costumed dude on the ground (maybe he was just an unrelated bystander who happened to pass out on the platform), but I bet he was pretty confused when he woke up to the sight of ten JR employees looking down at him. And if he was lucid, perhaps he noticed that the looks on their faces were more of contempt and irritation rather than genuine concern.

Today, as I moved aside to offer the old lady behind me the last seat on the train I was shocked to recieve a two-handed full-body thrust push that spun me around. I couldn't help smiling at the sheer rudeness as she defiantly glared into my eyes!

I must point out that there are many more nice old people there are on the train who are greatful whenever you give up your seat, but it's the cantankerous old hags and old sloppy drunk dudes that are the most memorable. Too bad nice people don't tend to stick in one's memory the way nasty ones do. Still though, I can't help but laugh at the mean grannies on the train...

It causes siblings to try to best their brothers and sisters, it causes classes and schools to forget social heirarchy for a bit and come together to defeat their rival teams, and it was the catalyst that spurred on many brilliant minds and philanthropists to make privatized space travel a reality.

X-Prize founder Peter Diamandis kicked off the PopTech conference here with a lofty goal on Thursday: "Our mission is to bring about radical breakthroughs," he said in his opening-day address.

But I wonder if the public's imagination can be captivated by the final frontier on Earth as it was by Burt Rutan's Spaceship 1's triumph. Space travel and colonization are fascinating, but there is so much that is yet to be discovered on Earth that we could be focusing on in the mean time. Alternative energy sources, undiscovered life forms, and how the many different systems of the Earth work together are just some of the stuff we could better understand if there was more interest, funding, and research put into the marine sciences.

The article mentions the discovery of a deep-sea microbe that eats methane and farts out elemental hydrogen. Now, if only we could capture cow burps, have the bacteria convert them, and use the hydrogen to power our cars, we could reduce bovine greenhouse gas emissions and tap into a previously unimagined source of energy! Dude, that prize is so mine!

The lovable blenny defends his mighty kingdom against any diver foolish enough to invade his territory, until you get too close at which time he zips back into the safety of a small hole

As I review these pictures from my dives in Okinawa they awaken a hunger for spam, a thirst for good awamori, and a strong urge go to the beach and jump into the sapphire waters that lap the shores of the Ryukyu islands.

And the fish! They were so colorful and delicious that I found myself doing something at Churami Aquarium that I have always poked fun at Japanese tourists for doing whenever they visit any aquarium.

After picking out fresh fish at the market and having the restaurants, situated one floor above, turn it all into a delicious meal, I couldn't help but stare through the 6 inch thick plexiglass and think of a feast. I remember thinking, "Damn, that mahi mahi would go excellent with a big frosty glass of Orion beer!".

The warm twang of the sanshin and the crashing surf are beckoning to me, inviting me back with promises of kicking back on the beach with a drink in hand and a full belly after a long day spent in the water. I hope I can make it back to those beautiful islands some day, the sooner the better.

Yo, pictures are up from the Capoeira West 2005 Batizado:

Justin's post and pictures

Michelle's pictures

The batizado brought together groups from all over to Japan, allowing the participants to play against players using a variety of styles and techniques. It was fascinating to see the game being played by such high level players, to observe how the balances between trickery, speed, flexibility, acrobatics, and strength affect the mood and pacing of the game.

The coolest thing about this martial art is that if you look at the faces of the participants, almost everyone is wearing a smile and is having a good time. Though sometimes it is appropriate to strike another player and to inflict injury, mostly the participants do not play to hurt each other, and rather just demonstrate moves rather than carry a potentially dangerous kick or sweep to completion.

I?ve been told that you have to be careful when you play with students from other schools, but I?ve only heard and read about ruthlessness in the roda second-hand. From what I've seen in Japan, capoeira does not tend to attract the same meatheads, the guys who are out there to prove their manliness by exerting dominance on every one, that other martial arts do.

I often hear people say that capoeira is not effective as a martial art. Then why haven't we seen people use it in Pride, UFC, or K1? Well, in these venues, other martial arts have an edge. For pit fight situations like these muay thai, jiu-jitsu, shoot fighting, etc... give a fighter the edge. I would also argue that, like Aikido, it takes a lot of time and practice before one can use it to fight proficiently in contrast to the relatively little training it takes someone learning jiu-jitsu before that training can be effectively applied in a real fight situation. But mostly, choosing to engage in such a fight goes against the philosophy of capoeira, which preaches cunning and trickery over brute strength.

Luring an opponent into attacking and then springing a trap when they least expect it is how the capoerista would choose to engage an enemy. For example, he might feign a retreat or a fall to the ground, and then instantly spring back and ambush the attacker with a powerful kick. And if he is at a disadvantage or starts losing the fight, then running away is a completely acceptable option. This is no Cobra Kai approach to life.

Mestre Bimba was once asked "What would you do if someone pointed a gun to your chest?" to which he replied "Then I would die, my son.". There is no conventional sense of "honor" in this martial art, which was built from the practical knowledge of those who needed to protect themselves and fight outnumbered and outgunned, against all odds. Survival and learning to thrive amid the hardships of life are the values inherent in capoeira.

In Brazil, capoeiristas are known to fight holding razorblades in their hands and between their toes. The lateral shift of the jinga, the use of cartwheels and acrobatics, and the dazzling movements on the ground look a lot more dangerous if you can picture how these graceful movements could be used to slice and dice an unwary opponent. It?s interesting to note that members of the older generation are viewed both as lawless thugs and as protectors against the government and police. Many of them kept the nightsticks of police that they had defeated in street fights as trophies, and one famous capoeirista actually went into police headquarters and returned his sizable collection to them as a taunt (In case you were interested, these accounts were taken from Capoeira: A Brazillian Art Form by Bira Almeida and The Little Capoeira Book by Nestor Capoeira). Now that?s bad ass.

Same sign?

Last week, I started teaching at a shogakko in Ashiya, the Beverly Hills of Osaka. It was a breath of fresh air, and once again my motivation has been jumpstarted after 6 months of losing momentum.

A few weekends ago I went to scope out the neighborhood, and spent a whole Saturday skating around town. Benzs, BMWs, Peugeots, Porsches, and other luxury cars make up the majority of the traffic in this area, and it seems like most of the residents here have never seen a skateboarder riding on their streets. The houses are nice and large, there are plenty of well-groomed trees and pathways (makes for good riding), and everything looks either new or well taken care of. In any case, you can tell that the people who live here have some serious wealth.

I took a ride down to the beach, and was surrounded by things that I really wanted to do but couldn't. A group of kayakers kept pace with me along the shore as I skated towards some sailboats in the distance who were having a regatta. As I passed over a bridge, I paused to watch five separate groups of wakeboarders, who were taking turns riding and jumping down a wide open canal.

Ah, it was so frustrating to see all of these people doing all of these things that I have wanted for so long to do and not being able to join them! I know that I'm lucky to have been able to do even do these sports in the past. But because of my desire to do these things will almost certainly be unfulfilled, I think I'll stay away from the beach at Ashiya from now on. Now I can better relate to those who have not, it has made me more thankful for all that I have.

The kids that I'm teaching in Ashiya are being raised in an environment so different from my that of my high school. To generalize, most of them have the support that they need from their parents and teachers, come from affluent families, and are adequately challenged by their classes. After teaching only the 4th grader classes for just one day, it is abundantly clear that these elementary school students are better at speaking English, and in many cases reading and writing, than my current high school students. When they grow up, these kids are destined to attend high-level high schools, and are much more likely to set their goals higher and to succeed.

It is sad to think that if my high school students had the same support and education as my elementary school students, they would be so much better off than they are now. Most of them are going straight into work instead of trade school or college, after they graduate in December (this is strange because most students in Japan graduate in April- another sign that I?m at an unusually low-level school). The function of my high school has been to keep them off the streets until they graduate, and to help place them into jobs when they finish school.

I truly like my high school students outside of class. I can see that that most of them are bound to live lives full of challenges that they are ignorant of and ill-equipped to handle. At the elementary school, I can and will make a small difference with my students for the limited time I have with them. At the high school, I will continue to do what I can, but the best thing I can do for them is to reach out to the few students who want to learn, and to talk with the others and share in their good times.

I have had a few small victories in my high school classes. Although they are a lot less disciplined and respectful than what I was used to, the kids generally find my lessons to be interesting, even if I think otherwise. They still read manga, text on their phones, constantly talk to each other, and sleep, but sometimes I can get almost everyone to pay attention to an activity or game. I am convinced that I could make a difference if I had my own class, but teaching at this school as a full-timer would likely burn me out like most of the other students who teach here.

The problem kid's stack of manga reminds me of forts that I used to make out of sofa cushions.

I am also proud to say that the one ?problem? kid that I was warned "could become violent" and advised to let sleep in class actually pays attention, asks for my help on our assignments, and participates in my lessons. None of the other teachers can believe it, but he's actually one of my better students. It just goes to show you that there is a way to get through to almost anyone, even the ones that are given up on by everyone else. What he really needs is to be challenged more in class, because he is clearly a smart kid, but that is not the way of the Japanese educational system. Clearly, the system has failed in his case.

I am thankful that I have been able to teach at schools ranging from one side of the spectrum to the other (regarding funding, quality of teachers, resources, etc...). It has given me a perspective on the educational system in Japan that few others have been able to experience. It is easy to see how a teacher who taught in only one or a few other learning environments (for example someone who has only taught in rural, high level, a technical, a remedial, special education, nursery, or the different ranges of trade schools, colleges, etc.) might gain a skewed perspective of the system and make sweeping, case-specific generalizations about the Japanese educational system.

So what are some things that can be done to fix the system in Japan? First of all, people who work for the Ministry of Education should be required to visit a wide spectrum of schools and participate in lessons on a regular and frequent basis, to witness the effects that their decisions and policies have on the students, teachers, and staff first-hand. There are too many decisions being made without listening to or considering the input from the trenches. Problems could be much more quickly, efficiently, and effectively spotted and mitigated if the administrators were grounded a little more in reality rather than basing their decisions solely on second-hand information and administrative theory and speculation.

Next, the goal of students ranging from kindergarten to junior high should mainly be to master conversation with a little bit of reading, writing, and grammar to supplement the curriculum. If learning is made into an interesting subject, then students will start doing better at it. Expecting junior high school students to focus on grammar and non-spoken English is unrealistic (not to mention boring) and has its roots in the Ministry of Education's old way of thinking. One might think that the head honchos would question why they can?t speak English even though many of them had studied it over several years, and try to make changes to the system as not to repeat the same mistake with the subsequent generations of students at stake, but it just doesn?t seem like they do.

I am also of the opinion that the entrance tests for high schools are not appropriate for junior high school students. The tests put too much stress, even more stress that high school students in the U.S. are subjected to from taking the SATs, on these young children. On the other side, I have heard that the entrance exams for the universities and colleges that high school students take are relatively easy (in general).

Entrance into higher education is more heavily weighted by the high school that one attends than how one performs on the aptitude tests, or on one?s grades, in comparison to western schools. Why is this? Shouldn?t the tests given to older students have a little more riding on the stake of one?s future than the ones given to 14 and 15 year olds? All I know is that I would have never had a chance to go to a U.C. school if the fate of my educational future had been determined by my performance in junior high school.

Putting too much pressure on any living thing will stunt its growth, and I do think that the high school entrance exams have a net detrimental effect on Japanese students (I think that this would be a fascinating topic to do some serious research on). It is so sad to see how much the kids stress out right before the tests. They should be able to enjoy their childhood when they?re still so young instead of carrying an adult-sized burden.

The last big thing I would change in the system is to introduce an emphasis on learning individual, critical, and creative thinking. The perceived need for this change probably stems from the values that I was raised with in America, but it seems that the majority of my students can not or do not want to think for themselves. They prefer to make decisions and think about things as a collective, but wouldn?t it be better if the students could both function well on their own, and as part of a team(I do believe that students in the U.S. would benefit from learning how to work and play together a little bit more and be a little less self-centered in their ways of thinking and acting, but that?s another issue)?

Should this change come into effect, it would greatly cut down on the amount of time that people in this country spend on meetings and consulting with others before actually getting things done. Do meetings really need to be had to decide on when to have other meetings? Again, perhaps this is an ethnocentric goal, but I think it would be a good thing for everyone to be able to express their own opinions at times other than a drinking party.

It looks like Mark is finally making his way back home, after traveling around southeast Asia for about two months. Check out his pictures (dude, it took you long enough to post them!) and read all about his odyssey at his blog. Well done Mark, and good luck back in the States.

I'm not sure how I stumbled upon this (I think I was doing a search on Kyushu), but it was a good short story. I really like short stories, like the ones by by Hemmingway (like the Nick Adams series), Louis L'Amour, Phillip K. Dick, William Gibson, or those by Roald Dahl. It's amazing how much you can make with so few words.

Lately, short stories are just about the only newly released literature that I can read. I can usually get through a magazine, or peruse a few chapters of a book before my legs start to get tired from hovering around the English section. If only Kinokuniya would put chairs in their store in Umeda, then I would be able to read as much as I like.

The one new book that I actually own and am still working on is America (the book). It is seriously the best book to have over here because whenever I crack it open at school, it looks like I'm doing work. All of the teachers assume that it's a textbook and that I'm using it for a lesson! Ah, sometimes living in a country where few people are good at or interested in English has its benefits.

On a side note, I'm finding that trying to study Japanese by reading novels is not a very good or easy way to stay motivated. The literary form of Japanese is much different than colloquial Japanese, but I guess it's the same with English and other languages.

I think most Japanese feel the same way, because they seem to prefer to ingest their words accompanied by pictures. I enjoy reading comics sometimes (right now I'm reading Preacher by Garth Ennis- thanks Huw), but usually I would rather read a book and let my mind generate everything inside of my head than let a comic construct a world for me. Unless I'm tired of reading, of course.

You should read Bruce Sterling's post on (a book about) the possible misuse of RFID chips. If you've been keeping up with RFID news, the new version of the American passport is slated to have one of these chips imbedded into it, and there has allegedly been little thought given to security issues that will arise from their use (like identity theft and data mining). Don't know what I'm talking about? You should find out.

This is going to be an awesome event! If you can make it to Namba on the October 16th (Sunday), come and join us. It's going to be in Minatomachi by the river next to the radio station. If you want more information or directions to the place, let me know.

Sadistic he is, that guy...

It is only because my parent took us on trips up to Mammoth, along the California coast, and to places such as Yosemite and Kern County, that I grew up in the outdoors, among majestic evergreens and splashing about in streams and rivers. Southern California used to have a rich watershed that supported steelhead and Grizzlies, but long ago they were dammed off, paved over, and methodically eliminated, or changed to the point where they were unrecognizable from their previous natural state.

The only river near our house in Orange County is the Santa Ana river, which is not really a river at all any more. It's just a huge concrete drainage conduit that channels runoff, prevents the ground from absorbing water, and efficiently flushes it out into the Pacific Ocean (why are we doing this when we have a limited fresh water supply?). The only fish you'll find in there are the occasional goldfish or mosquito fish, along with some crayfish that subsist off of the decomposing crud that stinks up the pools. It is amusing to see the occasional kayaker in there when it starts flowing, but not so cool when kids fall in and drown in the straight, powerful current.

Japan is a land of mountains and rivers. Sure, the Japanese still like to dam up their rivers and streams for no good reason (while the general practice in the US has become that of removing dams and restoring watersheds to their former state because society has finally recognized the value of a healthy watershed), but there are so many rivers over here that some of them are yet to be ?modified to increase safety and efficiency? so they are still in pristine shape. To find such rivers, you must venture deep into the country and search out those hidden places that are unknown to or neglected by the average Ichiro.

Yamabuki suigen was my favorite place in Aso, because it was only 20 minutes away from my house, and no one went there except for me. After a hard day at work, I would often come here and walk through the primeval forest, sneaking up on frogs, toads, salamanders, voles foraging for food, wild songbirds, and even rabbits, deer and foxes. The water was so pure that I drank it without fear of giardia or other microbes. The water bubbled out of so many places in the forest, feeding the snaking river and creating countless islands of lush green in its swirling flow.

The best time to go was just after the sun started to fall from its peak in the sky, because the light would pierce the canopy as golden rays, breaking up the thick shadows. This is surely the religious experience that John Muir loved so much and fought so hard to protect. The forest was mine, because no one else knew about it, and if they did, they seldom, if ever, went there. I actually preferred to be alone here most times, rather than break the connection that I had with the forest.

Obviously, some people did come here on occasion, because I was always picking up trash on my hikes. It felt sacrilegious to let litter sit here, and I could not comprehend how anyone could do this. This is one thing that I hate about Japan. They should really know better than to litter- they have so little land over here that you would think that they would treat the little patches that they have with more respect. It kind of made me want to start my own Monkey Wrench Gang, and to start punishing the bastards who defiled these sacred grounds.

Ikeyama suigen is the spring that everyone visits in Ubuyama. It is a nice place, but this is the "lite" version of Nature- manicured and commoditized.

If you ever find yourself on the Yamanami Highway, passing through Ichinomiya and Ubuyama, I highly recommend dropping by Yamabuki suigen (spring). The other spring, Ikeyama suigen, is quite popular and famous (people always come with plastic jugs to bring water home with them), but Yamabuki is so much better. Even if you follow the signs to Yamabuki, you still might get lost, but that?s a good thing. It keeps some of the riff-raff out, and it makes for a challenge.

My favorite time to visit the spring is right after a snowstorm. I wish I had pictures to show you but, take my word for it, it is the most beautiful spot that I have found in Northern Aso. It looks too beautiful to be of this world.

I really enjoyed majoring in the Environmental Studies program at UCSB, but despite being well educated in environmental issues I find myself not living sustainably or making choices that really make a difference in the right way. It's just too big of a pain in the ass to do, and there is no benefit from thinking about it. To be ignorant of the extent to which man has and continues to abuse the commons of the world is to be free of a huge dead albatross around one's neck.

The choices I make are informed, but that doesn't really make them any better than the ones made by people who don't take such things into their consideration. Maybe that makes it worse, because I know the implications of my actions and I more often choose convenience or comfort over the right thing to do. But it is damned hard to live a life of environmental morality, and to live this way would be pretty unbalanced. I have never met anyone who hasn?t been part of the problem, just people who try to minimize the impacts of their actions.

Sure, I take the train or skate to work every day, and I refuse plastic bags or disposable chopsticks when ever it's possible, and I even pick up litter when I go hiking, but does this make a difference in the big picture? I would have to say no, having seen how people over here treat their natural areas as garbage bins/ashtrays. In the end, only I know the size of my ecological footprint.

It's quite agitating to witness countless people shed and discard the various layers of packaging from their food or drink immediately after leaving the convenience store. I think that the average time that a plastic bag from a 7-11 is actually used before it is discarded would be less than a minute.

In school, I have to use large volumes of paper in order to do my job effectively because there is only one way to effectively manage my students. They need to be given worksheets to do. As long as there are worksheets to keep them busy, the stress level for both teachers and students is kept to a minimum. It comforts them in a way that other teaching materials can and do not. It kind of works the same as switching on the TV as background stimuli. They concentrate on it but lapse into sub-consciousness, or at least that?s what it looks like to me.

But the price for keeping the students busy and contented is quite high. I use at least one sheet of B4 sized paper and sometimes two sheets of A4 per class. I teach 5 regular classes of 40 students per class, 3 elective classes of 20 students per class, as well as a special education class of 6 students. A4 paper(210x297mm) is roughly equivalent to a standard sheet of 8x11 (216x279mm) from the U.S., and B4(250x353mm) is about 1.4 times the size of a sheet of A4 (for more information than you probably ever need to know about the ISO 216 paper size system, check out this site).

This may not sound like a lot of paper but the four minutes of the pounding machine gun "clackclackclackclackclack", of the paper hitting the print tray terminus upon ejection from the risograph (a copying machine used to print out large quantities), that it takes to spit out 250 copies drives home just how much paper I use. That translates into an inch and a half thick, 5 pound pile of paper per week! I can't describe the amount of paper that is kept in stock in the copy room, other than to call it a fortified great wall of paper. It is disgusting how much paper we use here, but there is really no other way.

There is no recycling system set up either. It all goes into the burnable garbage bin with everything else. I think that the only way to reduce the consumption of paper on this scale is by:

1. replacing the need for paper with some other substitute (like computers or tablets)
2. changing the way lessons are taught (but this is Japan, the land of social and ideological immobility)
3. hiking up the cost of paper (and this doesn't necessarily have to be in terms of money)

I have already maximized the utility of worksheets in my classes by cramming as much material possible in every available space, and trying to stretch the material over as much class time as I can without sacrificing the quality of the lessons, so I am doing as much as is reasonably possible as far as I can think of.

I wish that paper was more expensive in order to cut down on waste, but I'm glad that I have enough paper to make as many copies as I need to make my job easier. I'm not going to lose any sleep over this, but it does bother me enough to write about. Let this be a warning to those who major in Environmental Studies. It is depressing when you know about the really ugly problems around us, and wanting to do something about it unless you set realistic goals. Individual choices and actions do have meaning, but most of the time they don?t mean as much as we would like them to.

Every so often, I stumble onto really cool things, places, or experiences when I least expect to. I thought that I'd seen everything of interest around Juso within walking distance, but tonight my wanderings led me to some excellent blues music. Mishark and I were out exploring the neighborhood when we came upon the Howlin' Bar in Tsukamoto. If Jake and Elwood Blues lived in Osaka, this is where you would find them.

As we approached the entrance, the unmistakable sound of a live show pulled us up the stairs and into the bar. I bought a glass of Yebisu, and sat down to watch the last part of the show. The band was awesome- there were two guys singing/playing the harmonica to a band that was obviously having a good time (as well as the audience). I don't know how else to describe the show other than to say that these guys rocked!

I talked with one of the guitarists after the show, and he said that the band was just a bunch of guys that got together for a jam session. They played so well together that I had just assumed that they were a band. Apparently, these guys have live shows at Howlin' about once a month, and it looks like a lot of other bands frequent the bar to put on live shows as well.

In any case, I have a new favorite bar in Yodogawa-ku. Check out the guitarist's blog (in Japanese) for a schedule of live performances around Kansai. If anyone's interested, there's going to be another show on October 29th (Saturday). I'm taking tonight as a message- It's not like I'm on a mission from God, but I know that it's time to start going out and exploring new places more frequently.

I'm going to take a break from posting for a while, but I'm not gone. If you need to reach me, I'll be here.

I hate using generic MS applications to create or edit images, but sometimes it can't be helped. Having to rely on MSPaint in order to make diagrams after being exposed to the capabilities of Illustrator is a "Flowers for Algenon" like experience. Then again, I'm not being asked to crank out stylized works of art, though that would be nice.

(A giant spider in Kyokushi, a place in Kumamoto known for smelling like manure all year round.)

For one interested in insects, reptiles, and other disgusting life forms, Japan is a great place to be. You can't even escape from nature even if go to the center of the city. I thought that centipedes and giant spiders wouldn't be able to make it outside of the country, but I was wrong.

The only bugs that I truly hate are cockroaches and mosquitoes. When I find a bug in my apartment, I usually try and put it back into the outside world, but cockroaches and mosquitoes face persecution.

Back when I lived in Aso, I had a huge furo (bath) that I never used, because it was too expensive to fill up. One day I saw a huge millipede crawl under a bucket in the tub, but then I forgot about it. The next week, when I was cleaning the tub, I found the body of the millipede under the bucket. I washed it down the drain.

The next month I started to find tiny millipedes crawling around the tub. What started as a few turned into hordes of millipedes all over the bathroom, some making it into the far reaches of my house. I think that I was being punished for letting the mother millipede die for no good reason, other than I didn't feel like dealing with it. I helped some of the baby millipedes outside, but any that I found in the tub got washed down the drain...

Update:
Kevin's comment on millipede reproduction led me to this site, where this excerpt was taken from:

Female millipedes make an underground nest into which they lay their eggs The nest is made by excreting soil they have eaten and using their anal folds to shape it as required. Either as a nest for a number of eggs or as a coating for individual eggs i.e. Glomeris balcanica. Female millipedes may lay as many a 2 000 eggs but a few hundred is more likely. There is great variation in the number laid within a species depending on the size and condition of the female. Some species such as Tachypodoiulus niger are iteroparous, i.e. they can lay more than one lot of eggs and may live for more than one year as mature adult. Other species such as Ophyiulus pilosus are semelparous, i.e. they lay one batch of eggs and then die.

Young millipedes hatch inside the nest and remain within it. They then rapidly, usually within 12 hours moult again into their first stadia (= instar). Polydesmus inconstans leaves the nest after this after this but other species remain in the nest for up to the first three stadia i.e. Pachybolus ligulatus. There are other variations on this theme for instance Orthomorpha (=Oxidus) gracilis remains inside the egg during its first stadium and does not hatch until after it has moulted to stadia 2. Stadia one millipedes have 3 pairs of legs on segments 2, 3 and 4 except in some Colobgnath species such as Polyzonium germanicum which has 4 pairs. However they gain legs rapidly with each moult the first young millipedes you see are normally already in possession of quite a few legs.

Temperate species tend to eat about 5X their weight in leaf litter between hatching and reaching maturity. They digest some of the plant material themselves, particularly any proteins and simple sugars. They also digest some of the micro-organisms that inhabit the surfaces of the material, particularly the fungi. Micro-organisms play a crucial role in the digestion of Millipedes by breaking down the cellulose that makes up the plant fibers into more smaller and easily digestible molecules like simple sugars. Many millipedes indulge in coprophagy, i.e. they eat their own faeces. Some species such as Apheloria montana will die if not allowed to feed on their own faeces, quite why is not fully understood.

Perhaps the millipede went down the drain, laid its eggs, and then crawled up to die. Or perhaps the eggs hatched inside her body and ate her feces. Ah, it feels so good to share information with others!

I spotted this tag on the on-ramp in front of the main Juso Post Office. Although the tag is not especially ornate or eye catching, it's kind of special. Most of the graffiti has no artistic or meaningful relevance.

The great majority of the tags around Osaka that I have seen are just scribbles done (usually done with a paint pens) more for the sake of vandalization than creative self-expression. I have seen some amazing street art around Japan, but it tends to be kind of rare and hard to capture. I seem only to get brief glimpses of such work while riding in a car or train with my camera stowed away.

Yes, "Cruz" and "muertos" are misspelled, but this does nothing to diminish the sentiment carried by the words. I wonder if Cruz hung out with the people who run the Mexican restaurant near my apartment, and if one of the customers put it up in his honor.

The Takumi Avocado Burger belongs to the Takumi genus in the Mos Burger Kingdom. Its contents, shown on this page as a diagram, consist of a Takumi bun, avocado slices, Takumi special sauce, a Takumi hamburger patty, Takumi avocado sauce, onions, tomatoes, lettuce, and a side of wasabi.

Unlike the meatloaf-like consistency of a real Mos Burger, the Takumi patties taste like a real beef patty from back home. The ingredients are fresh and result in a delicious burger, but at 880 yen the Avocado Takumi is overpriced and small by American standards. Despite the steep price and relatively small size, I'm glad that I ordered the Takumi.

It's the little touches that make it worth ordering the Nippon no Burger Takumi Avocado Wasabi at least once. It comes with a card, signed by the cook who made it, and the name of the farmer who's produce is used in the production of this burger, along with an explanation about the ingredients and the process of making a Takumi (not pictured).

With all of the reverence of serious religious ritual, the attendant sets up the customer for a special dining experience that is most unusual in a fast food restaurant. Mos Burger silverware exclusive to the Takumi are laid out, next to the burger, atop an indigo paper napkin that feels as if it were made of velvet instead of paper. A small cup holds a portion of freshly grated wasabi, giving the burger an earthier, more lively taste. It almost feels like sacrilege to actually eat the Takumi burger, but that makes it even more delicious.

So, will I order this burger again? No, even taking into consideration the wonderful experience of eating a Takumi it's just too expensive, and I can make a better burger myself. What will the ingredients be when I finally get around to barbecuing again?

100 percent beef patty (optionally mixed with chorizo)
cheese, preferably cheddar or jack (not fake Japanese cheese)
bacon
avocado (optional)
lettuce (optional)
grilled onions
tomato (optional)
grilled pineapple slice (optional)
teriyaki and hot sauce or mayonnaise, ketchup, and mustard
egg (optional)

My burger will be served on a paper towel or plate, and will kick some major Takumi ass! The wasabi was interesting, but unnecessary. What the takumi needed was some teriyaki sauce instead. The Japanese can improve on many things- cars, electronics, toilets with special functions- but the burger will always be something that Americans do best...

Like a pair of Shisars to Okinawa, the guardian of Shirahama, Engetsu welcomes you upon arrival to the pristine beaches and bids farewell after a weekend of sand and surf. The snorkeling around this area is pretty good- better than Sumoto, but not quite as good as the Oita coastline in Kamae-machi.

If you ever are in Oita, I highly recommend visiting Kamae (here's a link to info Southern Oita). Not only are there some pretty cool cultural heritage sites, but the snorkeling and diving in front of the Marine Culture Center are awesome. They keep pens of yellowtails here (there is a successful aquaculture operation right out front), and you can swim among the escapees. I just wish I had brought a spear along, because they were schooling all around me.

The best thing about the Marine Culture Center is that you can swim with ocean Sunfish in their 100 M. salt water swimming pool during the spring. I didn't get to do this, but it sounds really cool. I don't remember the prices (and didn't pay because I went with my elementary school as a counselor on a school trip), but lodging is cheap. Also, you won't find any foreigners around here, as word hasn't gotten around yet (hopefully it stays that way).

Up here in Kansai, we don't have the luxury of being close to such wonderful beaches as Yonozu (in Oita), Ashikita and Amakusa (in Kumamoto), or the great spots along the Miyazaki and Kagoshima coast. There is Suma beach, but the water is the color of Oolong tea, and no one goes in it. The only reason people go to the local beach is to nampa.

As I said earlier, Shirahama is a nice beach, but it doesn't compare to the natural beaches of Kyushu. The sand is imported from Australia, so although nicely groomed, it isn't really natural, and it gets crowded at times. I like having a beach all to myself, but if you like nampa, this is the place.

Ironically, no one will go in the water before Umi no hi (Sea Day), so even if it is crowded, if you choose to go into the water you will have the ocean all to yourself. Why will no one go in the water before July 20th? I don't think even they know the reason themselves, but I am satisfied to know that, even if the sand is taken, the Sea is mine and mine alone before this day!

Getting really sick is not fun, but there is no diet that works better to help you lose weight and shed fat in a short period of time. During summer break, I did just that, but I am finally back in shape and almost 100 percent again. The hints of a six pack are starting to emerge in place of the pony keg from before. It's like I'm starting from scratch again with this body.

I've often thought about writing a book on my special diet method, but after considering the legal expenses that would be spent to pay off/dispose of/counter-litigate litigious opportunists, I have decided to post it for free, but take no responsibility if someone really does decide to follow my bad advice. Here it goes...

If you want to lose weight, forget those expensive, strict diets. Just get really sick, and watch the pounds just melt away. Your body will metabolize itself when you lose your appetite and stop eating, so you can save money on food too (although you will also lose strength and muscle in the process)! Just remember to have plenty of IV fluid handy, and you're set.

BTW, thanks to Justin and Nam for helping me to recover over the break. Had it not been for them, and more importantly the high calorie beer (it had been SO song since I had a porter), thai food, sandwiches,and piles of meat or meat products, I might have ended up looking like Ghandi.

This has to be my best shot of a dog, ever. He looks so dignified with his melon rind. He didn't eat it, just held it in his mouth. It just seemed to comfort much like the way a pipe soothes an old man.

You wouldn't expect to find lizards in the city, but the hordes of insects that descend on Japan provide an abundance of food for them. Geckos and skinks (some of them black with rainbow stripes) hide under the brush and litter, or cling to the walls next to the lights waiting to ambush their prey that are drawn irresistably into harm's way.

These lizards are cool, but what Japan needs are giant lizards that eat cockroaches. That would be awesome.

It's been a while since I've had a chance to go out into the country and photograph the things I like to photograph. I knew that my time in Kumamoto was special, but I really miss being able to jump in the car, explore a windy country road, and without fail, stumble upon something interesting. Kyushu is, without a doubt, the most interesting place that I?ve ever explored.

Living one stop away from Umeda is convenient, and certainly less lonely than living in a small village, but I can feel myself getting mentally and spiritually fatigued by the crowds, the concrete, and from being away from nature. One symptom of this fatigue has been my dependence on my keitai camera (but this is also due to the wretched state of my Casio) to snap shots. I find myself no longer taking an afternoon to explore the unknown because it's a chore to cram into a train. I have fallen into a routine that I don?t like, but now that I see it changes will be made.

It's time to start looking for the gems hidden among the coal, and explore Kansai during my time here. I'm setting out on a quest to peel away the ordinary to expose the extraordinary, little by little. I hope I can squeeze a little more out of my camera before it gives up the ghost.

When living in the country, doing ordinary things like shopping or eating out was a task, but now that I have those things I almost prefer not having them. Almost, but when I think about the 30 minute drive to the closest convenience store and the 2 hour drive to the city, not quite.

I took these pictures while strolling along the rice paddies in Ikaruga. Everyday weeds and wildflowers seemed so interesting after living among the highly stylized, contrived, industrial, man-made environment. Urban noise seems to really enhance one?s appreciation of nature, and just being outside helps to regain focus and clarity. It feels good just looking at these pictures.

...bulldozers are fun to jump off of, especially when executing the "victory cheer".

I used to devote many lessons to making giant diaramas with my preschool and kintergarden students, having them create their own little worlds. We made scrolling landscapes of the country, the world, the city, a farm, the ocean, and other environments. By making their own little animals and things to fill their worlds with, the kids easily remembered the English and retained it to a higher extent than methods using TPS or conventional repetitive memorization activities (which actually have a negative effect on the developing attitudes of the students towards learning English in general). They showed a surprisingly high level of sustained concentration and motivation, rare at such a young age, and took pride in their work.

I got this idea from studying the philosophy behind Reggio Emilia, and designed the infrastructure of my lesson plans to pursue the interests of the students in order to engage and challenge them in such a way to help them realize their maximum potential.

Yes, this picture is simple and easy, but the thought that went into its conception, development, and construction took time and ultimately the approach that I took paid off. It's a delicate balance. If you challenge the students too much, they will develop a negative attitude towards education that may only be apparent after a few years. Yet, at such a young age allowing children to investigate their interests and enticing them to think independently can set these little ones on the right path and give them a head start.

Teaching such young children is a greater responsibility than I had ever imagined, and it was only after I taught for three years in Japan that I was able to fully appreciate the education that I received growing up. Good teachers are arguably the most under-appreciated members in society. This is true for both the U.S. and Japan (to a somewhat lesser extent, but the situation over here is getting worse with time).

It's me, pondering the mysteries of the universe.

What would you think if your older brother told you about his dream? I'm still shaking my head in disbelief...

The water in a reservoir on Awajishima, where Justin and I usually go fishing, dropped by about 20 feet. Giant clams lay with their guts exposed, frozen gasping in death. Among the detritus exposed on the mudflats was this bleached deer skull (more skull pics here). Fittingly, we caught no fish on this day.

Kicking back on a weekend.

This week I will be going through pictures that I have taken over the last two years and posting a few. These may be the last "real" pictures that I post until I get a new camera, because my well-used Casio has taken such abuse over the two years that I have owned it that it is almost completely broken. Unlike the Man in Black there will be no Inigo Montoya or Fezzik to resurrect it from the clutches of death.

A garden in Kyoto.

For some reason, Rex has been running through my thoughts lately. I miss you, dude.

My "grand-successor", Ted Grudin, is keeping a blog in Ubuyama. I think that Ubuyama may be the best documented of any rural area in Kyushu, thanks to the progressive posts from this blog, Jane's, and Ted's. Cool. Keep up the posting, Ted...

It seems that the DFG is going to continue to cut back on stocking trout in the Sierras (here's the link). On top of this, trout are actually being removed from lakes to protect the threatened populations of yellow legged frogs.

I have fond memories of going fishing with our family, and coming home with a stringer full of trout. We caught so many rainbow trout that we frequently tossed them back. I remember being amazed that a farmed rainbow trout could be caught by using bubble gum as bait.

The new approach to balancing a healthy eco-system vs. the interests of anglers is a good change of policy, but I am glad that I was able to catch as many fish as I was able to (made up mostly of stocked trout). I look back at old pictures and just stare sometimes. How many jars of Potski's, garlic marshmallows, chartreuse Powerbait and containers of earthworms and nightcrawlers did we go through?

As I am writing this, I remember that I don't like the taste of trout and how laborious it is to pick out all of the bones, and the other issues that the catching of fish entails. For one, fishing was a good way of exploring the ethical implications and responsibilities inherent in taking an animal's life for sport. What ever we caught, we had to clean and eat- that was the rule.

Cleaning a still gasping trout was traumatic the first couple of times I did it. I learned to respect the fish that I caught, and only keep what I intended to eat from that point on. On that note, I think the last time that I ate a rainbow trout that I caught was when I was over 10 years ago. Like I said, it doesn't taste very good (unless it comes from cold water, or if it is coated in bread crumbs and fried in lemon butter if I remember correctly).

This fierce-looking arachnid is about the size of an eight year-old's hand. I'd love to see a face-off between a hand spider and a house centipede...

Just in case you happen to have a chunk of Nutria meat in the fridge and don't know what to do with it, here are some recipes from The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. I wonder if capybaras are good eating too...

Taro is headed to Uzbekistan tomorrow for two months. The CIA World Factbook states that "Current concerns include terrorism by Islamic militants, economic stagnation, and the curtailment of human rights and democratization.". Hmmm. Sounds kind of unpleasant and dangerous, but I hope he has a good time.

His mission amid the turmoil: to start up a tile exporting operation. Check out his blog to hear all about his experiences in this distant country. Stay safe, and see you in the Fall...

One more day in the office, and then it's vacation!

This hybridized spatula/fork (I guess it would still be a spork) was used to dispatch some okonomiyaki at a restaraunt in Umeda. The rounded tines proved utterly useless. This is a design that is unfit among sporks and spatulas, thus is destined be selected out of the gene pool. However, the existance of this freak utensil will be preserved here, as a random image in the footnotes of obscure culinary history.

Mark Fingerhut, the last of our group to stay on the JET Program, is leaving Japan. He'll be off for two months, vagabonding around SE Asia, and I expect he will have some interesting posts to come over at Champon Adventures. Mark, It's been a blast- hopefully we can meet up in the States sometime for a special edition hash...

The color schemes used in Japanese propaganda work really well to romanticise the image of war, in all venues. The men pushing artillery through the jungle (not pictured), the arctic soldier, and the pilot all look so cool depicted as monochrome prints with the color imposed like a wood block print.

In winter fatigues.

An aviator.

Herman proves that a black man can indeed ski (though I am yet to see this in person). Stay tuned in to The Gunn Nihon Chronicles to see if he can snowboard as well...

Who knew that Excel spreadsheets could be such fun? I've been waging a naval war against Huw for four days, and the score is now 2/2. Today will result in glorious victory for one of us, and crushing defeat for the other.

Is Battleship really that fun? It is when you play with special weapons. Here's a list of the ships in our armada and the firepower that they're packing:

Aircraft carrier- 2 airstrikes. An airstrike takes out 9 blocks in a solid 3x3 chunk.

Battleship- 2 shotguns. A shotgun blast takes out 9 squares in a spread pattern.

Destroyer- 2 depth charges. A depth charge covers a 6x6 chunk, and if it touches the submarine, the submarine's location is revealed.

Submarine- 2 torpedoes. A torpedo can be shot across the length (from right to left, or from left to right) of the grid, or vertically along a column (from top to bottom, or from the bottom to the top). The torpedo will continue across the grid until it hits something, otherwise it will continue to the end of the grid.

PT Boat- 1 teleport. A boat can be teleported anywhere on the grid that hasn't been fired upon previously.

The special weapons are only viable as long as the ships to which they belong are still afloat.

By the way, Battleship: Special Weapons is only played during break time in case you were wondering. During working hours, we are diligently working to produce the best quality lesson plans in the greater Kansai area.

This is a new game I'm going to test out next semester.

The bright lights, fast pace of life, and massive crowds of people make visiting Osaka like visiting a foreign country for anyone who has lived a year or two in rural Kyushu.

My successor on the JET Program left for her home in Canada yesterday, ending a chapter of my stay in Japan. This was a special moment for us because I was the first one to introduce her to life in Japan, and one of the last to see her off.

It was interesting finding out how my former students are all doing, and hearing about her experiences. I think that all of us who go to Ubuyama as ALTs come away with very similar perspectives and memories. It was strange to be able to talk to someone who understood exactly what I was talking about, and vice versa. Ubuyama can be a very testing, lonely place to live, but it is undoubtedly a great place because of the people, especially the children.

So in a few days, the new ALT will move into the apartment that has sheltered 4 previous JETs and start his tenure without someone to be there to show him the ropes, though he has been thoroughly briefed by Jane. The old Civic, still running like a champ, is patiently waiting to be driven by its 5th foreign owner, surely a new Kumamoto record. I miss that car and driving those mountain roads even more than I thought I was going to!

I hear the new guy is from California, and that he requested a small community. Sounds like he's going to fit in well. I hope he takes good care of the kids.

I think that the JET Program is working especially well for Ubuyama, because the JETs have a visible effect on the attitudes of the students towards foreign cultures and learning English, as well as interacting with the community. From what I have seen, the children in this mountain village have purer minds and better values ingrained in them than the children in the city. As a result, their high levels of motivation and curiosity make teaching there a lot easier than the students in the city who exhibit classical signs of over-stimulation and inadequate parenting in general.

Homodachi (n.)- two guys who are a little more than just tomodachi.

Open source beer!

Another link for today:
This is straight from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, except for slight fecal differences.

Spotted next to the Yodogawa river. What is the danger depicted on this sign? I don't know, but I don't think I'll be venturing into the water.

Whoever gave this quote is a pro:

Asked to comment on the document, a senior British official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said, "We do not discuss intelligence assessments."

Reading these words, I can almost see the look of utter disappointment on the reporter's face as he hears his informant tell him this after he agreed to keep the source anonymous. And then I see him thinking "Ah what the hell, I'll use it" even though it adds nothing to the article.

Quotes don't get much safer than that. Even if the source is revealed, who cares? On the reporter's side, no one would ever know if this quote was fabricated. If you think about it, this is really a great quote for everyone involved, except for those reading it.

This is part of what the students at my school study, when they're not sleeping, reading comics, applying make up (and it's not just the girls these days), drawing pornographic pictures, using their cell phones, or the various other extra-curricular activities that they pursue during class time. The students here work pretty hard outside at gardening and working the fields.

In the city, fresh and cheap are mutually exclusive qualities when one shops for produce. One of the benefits of working at this school is that I can buy fruits and vegetables at less than half of what they would cost in the supermarket. In addition, they also sell flowers, plants, and today they're selling kabutomushi (rhinocerous beetles). Not that I want to buy a beetle, even at a discounted price, but it's nice to know that the option is there.

A catfish the size of a Grizzly Bear (at 646 lbs.) that might set a new freshwater world record? I can't wait to fish the Mekong, and if I catch one of these it will not have to fear for its life. This fish ..."persists on plant matter and 'meditates' [in the deep, stony pools of the Mekong River]?somewhat like a Buddhist monk.", is endangered of going extinct, and it is reported to taste like any other wild catfish, in other words it tastes like mud.

Also in the article from National Geographic: dog-eating catfish- best catfish name ever (please, no Korean food jokes)! The walking catfish takes second and the electric catfish comes in at third.

This research negates the widely held view that the U.S. was justified in dropping the A-bombs during WWII in order to save the lives of American soldiers:

...in his new book, "Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan" (Harvard University Press), Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, presents a broader view that the New York Times has called "a brilliant and definitive study of American, Soviet, and Japanese records of the last weeks of the war." Examining in detail the deliberations of the Japanese leadership immersed in squabbling over how to end the war with the emperor system intact, Hasegawa claims the bombs were not the most decisive factor in Japan's decision to end the war. Only when the Soviets, jockeying with the United States for post-war influence in Asia, declared war and invaded Japanese-held Manchuria did the Japanese leadership capitulate to prevent falling under Soviet dominance.

I remember back in middle school and high school we used to debate whether the U.S. was justified in using the Bomb on Japan. During these debates, the final word would always be something like "It was justified because it saved the lives of countless U.S. soldiers". If the main reason for the Japanese surrendering was because of their fear of being dominated by the Russians, then this argument loses a lot of its validity.

Nonetheless, I have a suspicion that the textbooks won?t be revised to reflect this view any time soon, and if it does, it will get a small paragraph like the one that mentioned the internment of Japanese-American citizens after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Read the rest of the story here (via UCSB news).

The tag says "Ore wa West Coast. Kimi wa?", or "I'm West Coast. You are?". Hahahahaha! Pshhhh! Silly, confused wannabe rabbit, Osaka ain't the West Coast. Everyone knows that Kyushu is the real West Side!

I have heard that applying urine to a jellyfish sting is the recommended treatment, but today at the discovery channel website, I read the following:

If you are ever unfortunate enough to get stung by a jellyfish, you'll have some small consolation in knowing that there is no need to add insult to injury by asking someone to pee on you. Experts recommend carefully scraping off any tentacles that have adhered to the skin and treating the sting with vinegar, baking soda, ice packs, salt water, hot water or even meat tenderizer ? but definitely NOT urine.

Personally, I've always let the effects of the stings wear off with time. They can be pretty painful and itchy, but this usually passes pretty quickly. To be clear, though, I've never been stung by a Sea Wasp or Portugese Man-of-War, and I'd probably not be content to just tough it out in those situations.

If I remember correctly, the reason why urine is supposed to be an effective treatment is that it contains ammonia. In the list above, I don't see amonia at all which makes me wonder if the whole urine treatment is the result of someone spewing out a whole lot of BS, or the result of a really twisted practical joke.

From what I can tell, the nematocysts (stinging cells) are proteins, and the best way to neutralize them is with something that would bind with or destroy them without further aggravating the wound. Perhaps that is why ammonia is not recommended- because applying ammonia would have an adverse effect, offsetting any of the benefits.

It is easy to forget many of holidays that we celebrate in America when you are over seas. Holidays for the various presidents, Memorial Day, MLK Jr. Day, and even Easter and Thanksgiving have all passed unnoticed by me at one time or another. To be fair, it is really hard to get the necessary ingredients to make traditional holiday foods (Turkey, pumpkin pie mix, etc...) and if you do happen to get your hands on them, finding what you need to turn the ingredients into a proper feast (like an oven) can be an even larger pain in the ass. Mexican food has been made the de facto fare for all of the major holidays that I have celebrated with Justin (hey, pass me another Christmas taco, chingaaaado!).

One holiday that I have observed without fail since coming to Japan has been the 4th of July. I think all Americans should spend an extended time away from America so that they can truly appreciate how good we have it back home. It's easy to list off the areas in which other countries are better than America when you haven't experienced first hand the areas in which other countries are not. Eating cold fish and natto for breakfast would put most Americans in the right mood to appreciate the good things about our country, especially after having to eat it with some rude bastard blowing smoke in your face (it is the non-smokers who are generally put into the special areas over here, often not the other way around).

Although I can't celebrate the 4th properly (meaning going out to a bar with Matt, the Fingerhuts, Joe, etc... to go sing some true American karaoke), I think I'll go out by the Yodogawa river and shoot off some fireworks after I finish work, unless this miserable rain continues. In any case, I will be thinking about how much I really do appreciate being an American through out the day. Happy 4th of July.

I can't prove it, but I think there's a good chance that this is the same packaging that Kellogg's used when Episode IV first came out. Wait, no... There would have been a toy enclosed inside if that was the case. I forgot that all breakfast cereals used to include a special toy that we would fight to get when the box was first opened.

The unspoken rule was that all of the cereal from the previous box had to be finished before the new box was breached, so the strategy to prevent someone else from being the first was to leave more cereal than one person could consume in one sitting. Of course, the limits of gastronomical endurance were pushed to the threshold, and calculations of who could eat how much had to be adjusted and given further consideration. Add secret alliances, deception, and treaties to the mix, and you can see how complicated the simple activity of eating cereal could be.

Of course, someone always eventually called on the parents to make things "fair", or older siblings would just invoke "might vs. right". Perhaps it was the ugliness of humanity that surfaced due to competition over who had right to the toy that forced the cereal companies to stop including them in the packaging. Nah, on second thought I think they're just cheapskates.

The worst part of the transition to the no-toys-included state of cereal today is that they printed lame masks, coloring sheets, and activities on the back to try and compromise. I think that was even more disappointing than not having anything at all.

From the moment I first saw the video Clint Eastwood on MTV, I was hooked on the Gorillaz (here's a great interview from Wired). It was amazing to hear a band that didn't really exist play music that spiced and grafted genres, resulting in a Frankenstein-like album. The band was much more versatile than any other band could ever be, because they became whatever their creators wanted them to become without anyone's ego getting in the way. At the end of the day, they only exist as pictures and sounds.

The album has the same kind of magic that A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, a supercomputer from the book The Diamond Age that is designed to teach personalized independent thinking and uses actor-like technicians to watch over and educate their client, has.

The characters in both forms of media are fictional, but real people are lending their talents to flesh out the personalities that they portray in both cases (in static and real-time formats). It is ironic that these contrived characters and groups have a more profound effect on their audiences than their "real" equivalents.

So are the Gorillaz an anomoly, or will more virtual bands gradually start to take over?

It seems like a lot of people that I know are either getting engaged or married these days. On this coming weekend (Saturday, July 2nd, 2005), Brian and Rebecca will finally get hitched after being together for (correct me if I'm wrong) about six years.

These two met each other in a room in Anacapa. I think it might have been one of those nights where Brian and I lugged my mini TV and VCR deck all the way from San Nicholas, so that we could watch a movie and have a drink away from the freaks in our dorm (not to say that we weren't freaks, or that the people that we were hanging out with weren't either).

After the Doctor Pepper mixed with Jose Cuervo and the pizza ran out, I think we all noticed a subtle difference in the way Becky (as we called her back then) looked at Brian, and the way that he avoided making eye contact with her. I am not saying this to poke fun in any way, but it was truly a precious moment.

From the very beginning, their relationship already looked kind of like they were already married. They shared hobbies (I still can't wrap my head around how, exactly, Brian got Rebecca to get interested in the card game Magic: The Gathering...), helped eachother to study, and always worked things out in a fairly peaceful and balanced manner.

I am happy to say that their relationship is proceeding like I thought it would. Nothing seems to have changed too much from how things started with these two, and for that I am comforted. It is said that life changes after you get married, but this relationship might just be the exception to the rule.

Congratulations Brian and Rebecca. I wish I could be there in person to celebrate your wedding, but know that I will be celebrating here in my own special way. I still haven't decided whether to toast you over Long Island Iced Teas, Hurricaine Punch, or a nice warm can of Natty Ice...

There are some great photos and accounts of traveling around Amakusa (the islands off of Kumamoto) on Gumbies, maintained by Leanne and Rik Brezina. Amakusa is a beautiful place, and I wish that I had more time and a sea-kayak, so that I could better explore it like these two.

Being away from Kumamoto has made me realize what an awesome place it is. I appreciated living in Kumamoto, but I love the place even more now that I'm away. Don't get me wrong, Kansai is a great place too, but Kyushu would be the place where I would want to settle down and live out the rest of my days.

So those of you who are still in Kumamoto, remember to enjoy your time there. Outside of Kyushu, it is hard to find a good tonkotsu, well-prepared basashi, or a nice loaf of karashi renkon. Go out into Aso and enjoy hiking up the magestic mountains, or diving off of boulders and waterfalls in Kikuchi gorge.

Get out to the beach in Amakusa, or Ashikita, and get a tan- remember that the red jellyfish are the ones that hurt. Throw barbecues outside with your friends as much as you can, and bring enough fireworks and some extra.

Make sure that you explore all of those random roads that you always pass, but never seem to have the motivation to turn off and pursue. Just make sure you have enough juice in your keitai in case something goes wrong... It will make for a good story later on, I promise.

I did all of those things, and have no regrets- only fond memories of making the most of my time during the last days I spent in Kumamoto. I will return.

It was a special day in class when my first grade teacher brought a TV into class, and told us that we were going to watch something historical on this day. She pulled the knob, the picture on the tube sprung from a white point, boinging out first vertically and then horizontally, reverberating with a static crackle until the image of the Challenger came onto the screen.

The muffled countdown from Mission Control coupled with the image of Challenger's rockets belching out flame and steam were burned into my young mind. It seemed to take the rocket forever to finally break away from the ground, and it ascended slowly and gracefully, unlike the rockets I had seen in Bugs Bunny cartoons. And as the teacher began a class discussion on the significance of the Challenger mission, it blew up into a billion pieces like the Death Star. I don't remember anything after that.

That was a truly sad day, and I think it may have traumatized our teacher more than it did my class, for I don't think that we were old enough to truly comprehend the concept of death, or the significance of the multi-ethnic crew who were only just embarking on a truly special mission aboard the Challenger. Challenger, and other space programs of that time, sparked my imagination and got me interested into science and science fiction in general.

I remember reading books on how Mars was going to be transformed into another Earth, and to a five year-old, it seemed plausable that this was going to happen well before the year 2000. As time passed, the space program fell into the limelight. Most of the projects from the space program were not well publicized, government funding was at a low point, and the exciting space program became a vague memory.

But this has all started to change from relatively recently. A meteor from Mars was found to have microscopic structures bearing a strong resemblance to single cell organisms, reviving the debate as to whether Mars is, was, or will eventually be capable of supporting life. Probes have been sending back tantalizing images and information about Mars and the moons of Jupiter among other areas around our solar system. Scaled Composites won the race to space among private developers of space vehicles. Solar sails are being deployed by non-governmental agencies, more than a hand full of companies are developing plans to make space flight available to those who can afford to pay, and plans to get space hotels up and running by 2010 are being worked on.

It seems that the momentum for space exploration has regained its rightful place in the government's and the public's interest. This is a long-term goal, that will be a never-ending project. It is something that transcends all political boundaries, ethnic, and for that matter, all of the boundaries created by man and society. It cannot be comprehended by conventional scales of measurement that we are used to thinking with. Space exploration and colonization is a good metaphor for the road to the enlightenment.

And it's just cool to think about all of the cool methods of ultra-fast travel, BFGs, and other hi-tech stuff that is fiction right now will likely materialize sooner than we may expect.

This was a cool looking fish. It looked as if it had something to say.

For some reason, it reminds me of story about the magic fish who grants the old fisherman 3 wishes in exchange for tossing him back in to the sea.

Except that I know for a fact that this fish was delicious.

I wonder if they come in assorted flavors...

While the US struggles with the question "should we replace MTBE in our gas with ethanol?" Brazil is using it as fuel for their automobiles instead of an additive. Their cars run on Pinga!

It's not a question of whether we will convert to a hydrogen economy instead of a petroleum based one, but when. It will be great to see the day when petroleum, coal, and other fossil feuls become unnecessary for every day life.

It's strange to think about, but pretty much all the energy that we harness is essentially solar energy. Plants that took eons to change into petroleum and coal were fueled by the sun. The same thing applies to the corn and sugar cane from which ethanol is distilled. Wind (and hydroelectric, via evaporation and precipitation) is generated from the sun's energy. Geologic and nuclear are pretty much the only extra-solar sources of energy that we are tapping, and they really don't account for much.

This silkscreen painting is hung in the corridors, across from the teachers' office. "A world where the stronger prey upon the weaker.". In this setting, the words are true in so many ways.

The third year students will graduate this coming December. Most of them have no idea what they want to do, other than satisfy their immediate urges and act on impulses. They can get away with it for now, but many are going to be in for a big shock when they finish school and find that employers and co-workers aren't going to put up with their nonsense.

I was told that some students come to school for the sole purpose of getting into fights with other students. You can tell who the thugs are, but so far I haven't seen any violence. However, disrespect, laziness, and Attention Deficit Disorder are things I see in bulk here every day. You have to be a predator in this environment and assert yourself, or they'll eat you alive. Some of the teachers here didn't learn this, and you can see how it has shaped them into wraiths of their former selves.

This painting is the first thing I see when I climb the stairs each morning. As if on cue, the drum and bass from "Built for the Kill" loads in my head and gets me ready for the day. If I get cornered, I'm not going out like a Thompson's gazelle. I'll go hippo on their ass.

Walking into work today, I saw this and felt envious of the guy cleaning the windows. This is a janatorial job, but who cares if you get to swing around on a rope on a tall building in downtown Namba?

I'm sure that this job is not as romantic as it seems, but seeing him swing by my desk like Tarzan on a vine is urging me to jump out the window and rappel out of this office, so that I can escape into the urban jungle and enjoy this hot and humid Friday.

The quintessential Chink stereotype is so much more offensive over here than it is back in the States. This sign is overtly racist. It is strangely ironic that the Japanese image of Chinese is not too different from the ignorant, malignant image that non-Asian Americans developed of the Japanese right after Pearl Harbor was bombed.

It can be quite jolting to hear remarks and questions about race in Japan. Words that would lead to a fight or at least draw negative attention to the person who said them are considered O.K, and often are a source of amusement.

For example, a Japanese friend asked another friend from the UK "What part of Africa are you from?" merely because she was black. We kind of cringed, and she explained that she was from England, but everyone else who was present (aside from someone who has a good understanding of foreign cultures- he laughed because it was such a ridiculous situation) seemed to think that this was quite a reasonable question.

It's crazy to see the perceptions that Japanese society at large has developed about all things outside of Japan. Being politically correct isn't even an issue over here. Sambo, SAMBO, is still a popular character over here!

But foreigners are guilty of it too. They use racial slurs without realizing it and if you call them on it they are either unapologetic about it or pay lip service that they didn't know that what they're saying is offensive. How many times have I heard the term "Jap" being casually tossed around over here? Sometimes you have to talk like Chris Rock around those who don?t see why it is wrong to say ?Jap?, ?oriental?, or any other slur, and use ?whitey? and ?cracka? for people to get the point. This country just seems to bring out the racism in those who live here.

I have heard the argument that this is a strictly American point of view, but I don?t buy that crap. Just because others are doing something that they don?t think is wrong doesn?t make it right. I?m not going to equate being a Nazi with those who think it?s alright to use racial slurs, but I will go as far as to point out a correlation in this type of flawed logic.

If you think about it, a classroom is kind of like a laboratory and the students are each little subjects in a huge experiment. Each student has a different mixture of natural ability, motivation, learning disabilities, potential, etc. Many things can affect these variables to increase or decrease, whether it be through encouragement or discouragement, exercise or laxness, reward or punishment, or any number of other factors. It is the teachers who have the most control over these factors.

I am often told that my school is the worst of the low level schools, and that there are many schools like this school. Problems here are not unique to my situation. There is a great flaw in the master educational plan, and it is not being addressed.

One thing that is alarming to see is that there are no young teachers at this school. Apparently, this is a problem right now. Schools are filling up with older teachers, many of whom seem to share certain characteristics. They are generally:

*over 40, and more commonly belong to the older segment of the age spectrum

*have long ago lost their interest in teaching

*view the kids as ?hopeless? and give up on the class as a whole
don?t bother with discipline

*think that instilling character and morals into the students is important, but believe that they can?t do anything about it themselves

*resort to keeping the students busy instead of challenging them

*feel pressure to improve their class test scores, rather than creating engaging lesson plans

*do as little as possible in order to fulfill the requirements of the job

*are unsatisfied with the system, but feel that they are helpless to change it or make a real difference (which is accurate in many cases)

The young people that I do know who are teaching or are planning to become teachers are all struggling with the question ?Do I really want to become a teacher??. One friend has only been teaching since April, and he already wants to change careers as soon as possible. As a new teacher, he is delegated the menial tasks, and obligated to work long hours every day (a twelve hour shift is not unusual), forfeiting his weekends in order to oversee extra-curricular clubs or to coach the sports teams. School has become his life and understandably he wants time to relax, pursue his hobbies and interests, and just to get away from the school environment once in a while. He doesn?t even have time to go on dates anymore.

One of the assistant teachers in our school is clearly over-qualified for the position, but is yet to be given any responsibility. Despite having a teaching license, a better command of the English language than most JTEs (Japanese Teachers of English), and having taught here for 15 years, she runs copies for the teachers and has been given the informal job as a student counselor (a job which she has not been trained for, and that the teachers don?t want to do themselves). She wanted to become a teacher, but is having serious doubts after watching what has happened to the many teachers who have passed through this school in the past decade and a half. She thinks she might just keep on being an assistant teacher because they don?t have as much responsibility and the pay and benefits are pretty good.

Thinking about these issues has made me think about Governor Schwartzenegger?s intent to cut California?s budget by changing how teachers get pay raises and promotions. It sounds good in theory, for tenure to be awarded based on a meritocracy instead of seniority. I can still remember having my time wasted in class by tenured teachers who were just there for the paycheck, and feeling that something should be done about this. I have that same feeling when I think about some of the teachers that I work with that aren?t pulling their weight, although I should say that most of them are doing their best to meet the challenges of teaching.

I have long been interested in teaching, and although I still enjoy it I don?t think I will pursue it as a career as I had previously thought. The rewards of teaching are great and give me the feeling that I am making a tangible difference in the lives of my students. However, the externalities (unconventional costs) of teaching outweigh the benefits for me, personally. Here is a job that requires the utmost dedication to develop a group of impressionable, malleable kids into responsible and informed adults who can think independently and challenge themselves and others around them. What it comes down to is that I want my students to be better people after I teach them. If I can achieve this goal, then I will be content.

I think I would greater enjoy doing this on my spare time as a mentor or volunteer. After a day teaching at this school, I feel like I?ve been spread too thin and that I am not making a real impact on anyone?s life. I find myself compromising my goals and expectations past what I am comfortable with. One year in this school is fine, but if I were here for ten years I think might turn into the type of teacher that just shows up at work, counting the days until retirement.

Not for the faint of heart, the volcano is a very strong, very disgusting drink that Justin introduced me to at Bill's Bar, when I visited him six years ago in Nara. It is a Spirytus vodka (150 proof) concoction with peach schnapps and Baileys (correct me if I'm wrong, or better yet post the recipe in the comments). You light it on fire and blow it out, swish the unpleasantly warm mixture in your mouth, and down it in one go. I have to say for the record that I prefer taking shots Crown Royal, or even Bacardi 151, to having to deal with one of these.

It took me a while to admit this, even to myself, but I can not keep this drink down. Lets examine a few cases to illustrate my point:

Six years ago, I went out drinking with my cousin Sion (or is it Shawn now?) and Justin as I was getting over the flu. After drinking a volcano and a few more drinks, we drove up to Tenri Dam to go shoot off some fireworks. I was resting in the car when Nam came to check on me. "Are you OK?" she was asking as I replied, by puking all over her shoes. I think she's still traumatized.

Last year, I went out to Bill's bar with Justin and my cousin Tate where I snapped these pictures. Although Bill, Justin, and Tate didn't appear to savor the taste of the volcanoes, I was the only one who rushed to the bowl and projectile vomited some partially digested yakitori (which was delicious, I might add!).

Although I have on one or two occasions been able to keep a volcano down, there is strong evidence that illustrates a connection between me imbibing a volcano and me tossing the cookies. In my college days, I would have trained my body so that I could handle a volcano, and challenged any takers. I am thankful that I am no longer such a dumbass in this regard, and instead I concede defeat to this most evil of evil drinks.

Digging through the photo archive, I came across this picture of Justin and Nam, taken in front of the Akashi Bridge on Awaji Island on a beautiful day. I think it serves well as a tribute to these two who have been dating since I was in JHS, and who only recently got engaged in Thailand during Golden Week. It was about friggin' time already... Good luck and congratulations.

It would be cool to have access to one of these. Think of the possibilites in the classroom. Think of how the kids would be engaged in the lesson. Think of what you could achieve... Look kids, boobies! Seriously, I want one of these.

Ah, I always find strange things walking through the neighborhood of Juso. For those visiting Juso, the lively shotengai with its bustling mom and pop stores, or the abundance of strip clubs, snack bars, pr0n theatres, and assorted Soap Land affiliated businesses are the things that stick out and burn themselves into their synaptic impressions. But it is on the side streets, down the hidden alleyways that you'll find the truly unexpected and interesting things.

This is a picture of boards to which drying fish fins are affixed, and next to them (out of frame) was another board on which lengths of fish skin were stretched to dry.

The boards struck me as a rather macabre presentation of what I assume to be a food product. Somehow, this display of fish parts strikes me as a sort of trophy wall, and I imagine that the owner is quite proud of his collection and shows it off whenever he gets the opportunity to.

Monkey-related posts always make for interesting reading:

...Anyway suddenly her cell phone rings and I can tell by her tone and face that something not so good has happened. I was right, she hangs up and looks at me with the most serious of faces and says 'I have to go, mountain monkeys have attacked my parents country house.'...

Read the rest here on Jane's journal under the entry "The moral of the story is...." (as of right now, it's three posts down).

A real Kyushu danshi would say, there's no such thing as too much shochu. Well, Mark has written a post with a picture, that I didn't know existed up until today, that makes a powerful case against downing a bottle of shochu as fast as you can, especially if you are attending a night time hanami party in front of Kumamoto Castle.

With the sounds of 50 bumping from our ghetto blaster, I drank too much, too fast. The next thing I knew, I was persuaded to test my martial skills against the scantily clad natives. The shochu numbed my concerns, and I was cheared on until I felt victory was assured.

But my head swam as I was thrown to the ground. As hard as I tried, I was unable to beat the salarymen in front of Kumamoto Castle in sumo, and I walked away in disgrace with a limp and some blood on my khakis.

So know I know the rules, and should the opportunity present itself once again I will do better. First, I'm going to yank on the leopard print until it gets driven into the deepest of crevices with an Atomic wedgie.

If that doesn't work I'm going to kick him in the nuts, repeatedly. I have learned my lesson well. Next time its no mercy...

Over several whisky and waters and beers, my predecessor on the JET program in Ubuyama-mura, Mr. Harvey Haynes, had passed down the sacred lore of the pubic office sign. A sad look clouded his eyes when he told me that it had been fixed, for although he had never told anyone else in the village what it meant (he was one of the Chosen, who could wield the English language with ease, while others trembled in fear of its practice, and relied on him to deal with all English-related matters), one day it had been usurped and ousted by a sign reading ?Public Office?.

For the two years I was stationed in Ubuyama I searched for this sign, although I knew that it no longer existed. I told friends about it often, and although many had searched, no one could find it. My two years in Ubuyama passed, and I had given up on ever seeing it in this lifetime, other than through Harvey's words.

Imagine my surprise when Jane McMahon, my successor in Ubuyama (soon to be leaving for Canada), sent me this excellent picture. This awesome sign does exist, but like any legendary artifact worth preserving its location will be secret so that it will remain proudly standing on its home, helpfully pointing the way to the Ubuyama Village Pubic Office for those who are seeking it.

Sometimes the best way to say it is to wear it...

Then again, sometimes it's better to keep things private and seek help in a more discreet manner.

This dude must have gone to UCSB.

I'm troubled on how to best teach my classes, both for myself and for the students. Today, the teachers told me that it is not uncommon for my high schoolers to have trouble distinguishing Bs from Ds (both upper and lower case), and that they don't remember words. Some of them can only remember the order of the ABCs because they have never developed the ability to use letters like building blocks. Forget about pronunciation, they told me.

There is something seriously wrong with kids being forced to learn stuff that they have no interest in or use for. Even if I do bust my ass working on a great lesson, most of them will not appreciate it, because they will be sleeping or in their own little worlds.

It's really scary to think that I can't even use the same elementary school lessons in high school because they're too advanced, and the high schoolers are harder to control. I don't think anyone will be able to convince me that the education system in Japan is better than ours back in the U.S..

Their time and the educational funding would be better used teaching the kids what they need to know for life after high school. Classes in parenting and birth control, time and money management, and trade skills that they can use in the real world are what they really need. I can see that many of them are destined to go through much suffering, because they will not be adequately prepared for their futures (the seniors are graduating in December).

It's too depressing to think about the education program as a whole in Japan, pertaining to teaching English. After shogakko, the majority of the students will develop a distaste for English, and will be conditioned to lose their self-confidence. I shudder to think what will happen when standardized English lessons will be implemented across Japan in a few years. It could make things better, but the track record suggests otherwise.

I'm trying to come up with as many different games to play with the kids as possible so that I'm not stuck in the classroom with a room full of people that don't want to be there, and for the times when we must use the classroom, I am trying to plan unconventionally.

This week, I am going to teach the kids about streetball by using the And1 Mixtape and other DVDs. I'll try and give them a peek into basketball culture and about stories of hope and despair like those seen in "Hoop Dreams".

Today I took the students out to sketch and label some plants (a tree, flower, leaf, etc...), and they seemed to do pretty well.

Right now I'm planning a lesson themed "Your dream house". I'm going to print out a huge copy of Bongo's Dream House with Japanese written under the English labels, and let the kids take most of a class to draw and label their own. By the way, this page has a bunch of Groening's "Life in Hell" pages- they bring back so many memories.

Ultimately, I would like to do some of my classes using the pool, and teaching games that I used to play as a kid, but at the moment this is just a pie in the sky. I am the only ALT I know who has successfully persuaded a school (in my case a couple of schools) to allow me to teach sports lessons and to use the gym.

Unfortunately, desinging lessons like these leads to great expectations from the students and teachers alike. I can make some pretty good, unconventional lessons, but with limited resources, a great demand for lessons (3 separate lessons PER WEEK), and disinterested students, there is only so much I can do. There will come a time when my tank runs out, and all that will be left are worksheets.

So I am trying to space out these special lessons, but even so it is difficult.

This originally started as a joke, but I'm toying with the idea of one lesson devoted to "quiet time". I want to make a lesson on "meditation", with the goal of "achieving inner peace" and "enhancing concentration". The class will be quiet for the whole stretch, and maybe they'll get something out of it (a nice rest). If this lesson goes well, then I might implement "nap time" every class for 20 minutes, and ask if we can have juice and cookies for the students.

Oh, and dodgeball!!! Now that I think of it, regular class would be a great time to play this great sport. I think I'm going to allow head shots, purely for (my own personal) entertainment value.

I really enjoy reading the Daily Mainichi's WaiWai page. There is always an interesting story about some obscure segment of Japanese society to contemplate. Some of the stories here are just too strange and twisted to be contrived.

For example, It is easy to see why and how an immoral doctor would prey upon a man's ignorance about circumcision and penile health in order to take him for all he?s worth, but why the hell would adult men get circumcised if their health or religion doesn't require it?

If I had a friend who ran into this problem, I don't think I would be capable of sympathizing with him. Stupidity of that magnitude is a cry that one is not mentally fit enough to survive.

(These life jacket-wearing dogs will be walking the plank of holy matrimony on Saturday, they will! Yaaarrrrr!!)

Of the five of us who lived in that broken down Sabado Tarde apartment, drinking beer by the keg, chilling while grilling lunch and dinner over a Webber, and generally living a life of debauchery while going to UCSB, I wouldn't have imagined that you would be the last to leave Isla Vista. Nor would I think that you would be the one to be caught with his pants down by the I.V. foot patrol. Those guys can be such bastards!

I am glad, and also relieved, that things have worked out for you. It's probably a good thing that you veered from your original goal of becoming a doctor. Had you abstained from partying and taken that route, you very well might have ended up with a psycho girlfriend, working so much that you would have no chance of enjoying life. When I hear about how you are living back it makes me happy, and a bit envious. I see a young couple, full of hopes and dreams (I couldn't resist these cliches) ready to embark on a long, happy journey together:

5/13/05 - I realized last Wednesday, as we paid for the cake via cell phone in a car speeding towards an event in Montecito, that this is all definitely going to happen. I'm excited and a bit nervous - not that I'll forget my lines or my black socks or the rings or anything - just that feeling that my life will forever change towards something better. Something more complete, something richer than pizza and beer on a Friday evening. Something with children and hopes and dreams and futures and a certain amount of solidity that my bachelor life did not have.

I read these words, and all of a sudden, old and previously forgotten snippets of "The Wonder Years" mixed with "The Graduate" start to mix and play in my mind. I can hear the words as narrated by an older, nostalgic Kevin Arnold, with a Simon and Garfunkel song gently playing in the background. In this context, Pete would have to be Paul, Winnie could kind of be Ranya, and Wayne would be a composite of me, Steve, and Brian.

I think you're right in thinking that you're life is going to get better as a result of marrying Sarah. You wisely have taken the time to get to know each other, and are proceeding with confidence. I think that your life will change from being beer and pizza on a Friday night, to the deluxe pack that comes with wild bread, cinnamon bread, and a two liter bottle of Pepsi, along with a special barbecue delivery from Woody's, spent in front of a home theatre system. Enjoy this while you can, because it?s going to start getting expensive when you start having kids, and you're going to have to watch Disney movies over and over on your widescreen TV?

On Saturday, when you are getting married, along with friends and family, I will join in the celebration in my own humble way. I will raise my glass, filled with something other than Crown Royal and toast you, Sara, and to your future together as Mr. and Mrs. Dillingham (or is it to be Dempsey? ah, technicalities).

Have an awesome wedding(T-minus 1 day, 15 hours, and 57 minutes) and enjoy your long-anticipated honeymoon. Congratulations, and the best of luck!

Minke whale curry is on sale now in the bargain bins at Don Quixote for only 1,029 yen. Supplies are limited (only 2 cans left), so don't miss out on your chance to dine on stewed cetacean! Get it before they go extinct (nah, they're not endangered, but that doesn't make it right)!

This is one of the few foods I refuse to eat, not because it is prohibitively expensive, but because it sucks to support the harvest of rare plants and animals. On top of that, it just doesn't look like it would taste that good (certainly not worth the "discount" price of 1,029 yen).

Now check out this other whale meat product from Toretore Ichiba in Wakayama:

All that's missing for a proper breakfast is a side of scrambled loggerhead turtle eggs. I wonder if you are supposed to fry this stuff up like bacon, eat it raw, roast it, or stew it. In any case it sounds disgusting, not unlike tongue loaf.

When you gaze upon the mesmerizing beauty of Nachi waterfall, you can understand why this area is holy ground for Japan's animistic roots. At 133 meters tall, this is the mother of all waterfalls in Japan. I think that standing under the pounding streams of Nachi can probably dislocate one's ribs and joints, so even if it were possible to climb down under the waterfall I was content merely to observe the water in motion and to feel the cool mist on my face.

In terms of natural beauty, I would have to rank Wakayama at the top along with my favorites in Kyushu including the Aso area, Kagoshima (around Kaimon-dake), Saga (especially around Karatsu), Oita (the Kuju area and the coastline), Miyazaki (around the gorge and beaches), and of course Okinawa. Shirahama beach has crystal clear water, an onsen carved out of the coastal rocks where you can feel the sea spray of the waves as they crash, and a long stretch of white sand (although this, I am told, is imported from Australia).

It is also said that the mountains in Wakayama look like broccoli. This is because they are covered in a nice variation of foliage and trees and give the hilly landscape a bumpy, mottled appearance, as opposed to the landscape of the usual evergreen monoculture (of cedar) that has unfortunately replaced most of Japan's natural forests. The mix of deciduous, broad leafed trees, bamboo, pine trees, and other native plants is easy to look at.

Damn you Obi-wan, I can see your blue glow from behind that tree- come out from there!

"You must go to Dagobah to find the great Jedi master, Yoda." you said. All that's here on this cursed mud hole is a geriatric muppet who taunts me, making me carry him around on my back. Stop laughing, you dick.

You better have an idea on how to get my X-wing out of that bog, and I better not hear any of that "try using the force" crap! I should have never left Tatooine with you crackheads!

Currently I am living in a mansion in Osaka. It is probably around 200 square feet and includes a bathroom, kitchenette/dining cubicle, a tiny patio, and living room/bedroom. There are no butlers in my mansion, and the people who live in the mansions around me typically ride the train or bicycles, and work as English teachers. No a mansion in Japan is not the same thing as a mansion in the western world.

When I was first told that we were going to a pension, I had no idea what my Japanese friends were talking about. Unlike the pension plan, which is a pain in the ass, pensions are quite pleasant. I guess the pension would best be described as a family run hotel.

Of the pensions I have stayed at, the Starry Pension in Aso-machi (Kumamoto-ken) and Zion in Hakuba (Nagano-ken) are my favorites. The rooms have a nice, cozy feeling. As opposed to the hermetically-sealed and sterile vibe in regular hotels, the accommodations are clean but lend the feeling that you are home away from home.

At both of these pensions the food is first-class. Both places serve up European-style multi-course dinner sets and continental breakfasts. The meals are delicious and served in large proportions. They're a nice break if you've been subsisting on fish, rice, tsukemono, and other traditional Japanese foods. My favorite would have to be the bacon-wrapped filet mignon at Zion, and the lasagna-like tofu gratin at Starry.

The surrounding areas around these pensions are awesome if you enjoy getting out into nature. I think one of the best times to visit these mountainous regions is during the middle of summer, when your shoes fuse to the asphalt in the cities of Japan.

Starry is right at the base of Aso Mountain, and you can a number of activities from this central location such as hiking, golfing, paragliding, sight seeing, driving, or onsen hopping. They also have three family-style onsens that you can relax in- one of them offers a view of the starry skies above (the stars are amazingly clear in both Aso and Hakuba).

Zion is a terrific place, and has many of the same type of activities that the Aso area has to offer. Arguably, the best part about Hakuba is the skiing and snowboarding resorts. 47 is within 15 minutes by car, and you can walk to Happo.

I think the part that I enjoyed the most about staying at the pensions was interacting with the people who worked at these places, and talking with other people on vacation. It's always nice to sit around the hearth with a nice frosty beer and to chat when everyone is on vacation. The people who run these pensions enjoy providing good service to their guests, and the regulars develop a close relationship. Because of this, everything is much more relaxed and staying at a pension is a much more intimate experience than staying in a hotel.

This morning I had some extra time to burn before going into work, so I decided to walk around the neighborhood. I found this awesome shrine a block away, and made offerings to the giant head.

It felt as if I had entered the world of Big Trouble in Little China, but Egg was nowhere to be found. I did, however, feel that I could see things that no one else can see, and do things that no one else can do.

If you only glimpsed at the school grounds (not the facilities within the school building), you would be under the impression that this high school is a wonderful place. There are massive gardens, hot houses where flowers, fruit, and produce are cultivated, fields planted with a variety of crops, ponds, landscaping displays, fountains, copses of various trees, groves, hedges, flower beds, a ton of potted plants, and on an equally vast amount of land is where all of the tools and materials necessary to make and maintain these grounds are contained.

In the garden (which could really be called a park, because it isn't really that small), there is a large pond, complete with birds of all kinds, and other wildlife. Every lunch break at this school is spent outdoors, among the nature. It is during this time when I am truly able to relax, and achieve clarity of mind. It is here where I can coalesce my ideas into working lesson plans.

Outdoor lessons sound pretty good to me, but that's because I'm not out in the fields with a hoe, spreading manure around in the hot sun. However, watching the students working towards achieving something tangible- watching them work so hard at clipping hedges, cleaning their tools, using surveying equipment, and working in the fields is making me want to keep them busy in a similar way. I saw no cell phones out, no students applying make up, no one reading manga, and although they were chattering it didn't matter because they could do two things at one time.

For a low-level school, the surrounding school grounds are among the best I've seen at any type of school. It's just the facilities inside of the school building that suck.

My students are good kids, albeit not very good students, and they could have turned out much differently had they been raised in a better system and given more attention to their personal needs. They have been raised as part of the same kumi (group) for most of their life, and brought up in misguided social environment where the needs of the individual are neglected by the educational institution which instead grades and labels the groups much like eggs in the supermarket. In this school, any spark of interest that they may have had in all of their subjects has been mostly extinguished and coated with fire retardant. They have a belief that they can't accomplish even the simplest of tasks because that's the way it has been for many of them for most of their school lives. Many of them come from broken homes and have emotional problems and learning disabilities.

No, they are not purely victims of society. If they had studied harder, then they would have been able to go to a better high school. As a collective, they are the symptoms of a vicious social disease that has been festering for a long time, but is hidden with shame.

Enter the life of a modern low-level high school teacher. Many of them have been in this same school for years, and they face pressures different for those experienced by teachers back home. They are expected to help raise the students (parents are too busy for this, I am told), to motivate them in their studies and extracurricular activities, and most importantly to impose societal values upon them (on a side note, at this school the emphasis is to keep them off the streets and to shuttle them into low-level employment after they graduate).

Unlike chugakko and shogakko teachers in Kumamoto, the teachers in Osaka stay put for a long chunk of time. Teachers deal with this in different ways:

One of my teachers is a very cheerful person, but she suggested that I don't stress too much about class and just take it easy and concentrate on the good students- advice that I am trying to follow and adjust my teaching style to.

Another teacher gets stressed when she sees the students reading comics, sleeping, chatting, or texting on their phones. Since the first day, I have saved myself the stress by choosing the path of least resistance instead of being the bad cop.

The other teacher that I teach with tells me that he wants my lessons to be very interesting, but also has made it clear that he has no interest in suggesting lesson material or developing lessons with me. His hobbies are sleeping and watching TV. I have decided to just use him to translate my directions into Japanese when I can't manage it myself, and you can see the relief on his face.

I worry about the future of Japan. I look at this system, this vicious cycle that is spurning it's youth and turning them into a society that is trained to think the same as what's being said by people on TV, to always want the newest things that they see advertised in commercials, and that have either unattainable goals (roughly 50 percent of my students want to be a celebrity, professional athlete, or pro-racer) or set their goals very low with no hopes of improving their lot in life (to jobs that they are certain to get, but probably don't want to do). There is no "The Little Engine That Could" mindset over here. It's kind of like "1984" and "Animal Farm", and it may well be heading toward " Fahrenheit 451".

The population is shrinking over here, and the old generation and their values are being replaced by consecutively newer generations with different values. I look at the kids that I'm teaching today and I can just see a massive mess, steadily growing larger before my eyes.

I feel like I'm on a huge battleship that has an appearance of technological superiority with ample fire power and spiffy counter-measures, like tomahawk missiles, vulcan machine guns to shoot down any incoming missiles, and a nuclear-powered propulsion system. Unfortunately, the crew is turning a blind eye to the foundation upon which this technology sits. Under the waterline, the hull is being ignored and has rusted almost to the point of structural failure, being held together by duct tape and other improvised, haphazardly implemented maintenance operations. What will happen when the barnacles chew through the rust, and the hull starts to slowly give way to the sea? Will it make it back to port, and be repaired in a timely fashion, or will they just continue to slap pitch into the holes and pray for the best?

I have also met some really talented, interesting, and motivated people who think differently and have the drive to accomplish things. Their creativity, will to succeed, and happiness are truly inspiring, but they are merely the most visible segment of society over here. What I'm worried about is that the proportion of unmotivated youth that live a life devoted to instant gratification is getting bigger. This is going to make the big problems that Japanese society is facing even more difficult to deal with.

Ah, thinking on a macro-societal level can be so depressing. But screw it. You know what? It's nice weather out today, and I haven't even begun to explore around Northern Osaka. I'm going to finish my day here, go out in the sun, and enjoy all of the everyday wonders that I come across. And I will use those images to try and think of ways to help individual students think differently, develop their interests, and have fun.

I was planning on saving this lesson for a time when I would really need it, but since I had asked for special preparations, the footballs arrived and we were scheduled in to use the gym.

This lesson has been successful everywhere, with no exceptions. I have used it in elementary, junior high, and high schools with students ranging from gifted and rich to hopeless and poor. I wish I could teach football every day in English class.

The best part about the lesson is that girls get into football even more than the guys sometimes. When I taught some JHS students how to catch and throw the pigskin, the girls were always the first to claim the pigskin, and played all break long.

It's equally amusing to watch the ADD kids lob bullets at each other as they run full speed, looking over their shoulder. I can still hear the THUD of one boy's impact into the side of the gymnasium wall...

I haven't been able to post regularly for a while, but I will try and rectify the situation soon. The problem lies with my lack of internet access, which I will try and fix. Also, sites such as hotmail, gmail, and yahoo mail are blocked from work by SuperScout Web Filter- does anyone know any ways around this? Until I get things worked out, the best way to reach me is via my cosmicbuddha email account, or posting here. Gotta get back to work...

As usual, things are not going as expected. I was able to hold the attention of my smaller classes of 20 yesterday with a lesson about Bob Marley and Jamaican history, and I even got the students to sing along. I don't think I can do this the same way in a larger class, but I will give it a shot tomorrow.

Classes are very challenging to plan here. The teachers want me to make "interesting" lesson plans for kids that have a very low proficiency and an even lower level of interest in English. Their idea of fun are "worksheets that the kids can do by themselves" because "they don't listen and can't work in groups". They also have no set curriculum, which is good for creative license but drastically increases my workload, and the teachers have no time or interest to co-plan lessons. I'm going to try some games in the classes in which the kids seem to be paying attention, and I guess try and find a good set of worksheets to pass out when it is impossible to make myself heard. Any suggestions for pre-made materials that I can use?

As for the "worst class"- they seem to be a pretty cool class. Sure, the kids may not like English at all, but I seem to have connected with them pretty well. The "worst kids" are the ones who say hello and even kind of pay attention. It is going to be challenging to hold their interest, but at least I have the momentum to start with. Make no mistake- many of the kids in this class are reading comics or magazines, checking their mobile phones, drawing, sleeping, and talking, but they are relatively good kids. If I could have taught them from shogakko, I think these same kids would have turned out a lot different, as to their negative views toward English.

I think I found a way to make the time pass by more quickly. Every time I give the class a worksheet to fill out, I'm going to be playing music. Maybe I'll take five minutes each class to introduce an artist that they've never heard before, and teach them the genre, country, or any other interesting materials. If nothing else, the music will make the time go by more quickly.

So that's it. There will be no team teaching here, just my one man show. Hopefully I can step up to the challenge. At the end of the year, if the students show an interest in foreign cultures and people, and if they develop a wider interest in music because of what I play in class I will be content.

It looks like I'm going to have to adjust my teaching style to a lower level. Most of the kids are at a lower level than the elementary school students I taught, so that means that some of the activities that I already have made up are too advanced. That being said, the kids are not all psychotic as I had feared.

I got some advice from the cool jaded Japanese teacher today. She said that if I see students sleeping in class, just let them sleep. If they're reading manga, let them read manga. If that's the way that the teachers at my high school (who don't have huge burning ulcers) run their classes, then that's the way I will teach as well.

Maybe I'll just call it English class, but turn it into something different. With this group I think the emphasis on the lessons should be on cultural matters, and follow what the students are interested in, with English playing a secondary role.

Just out of curiosity, I asked that cool teacher "Why should I let the students sleep?". She said "They will start being rude, cause interuptions, and may become violent!". Kids these days need their sleep anyways. Hell, maybe I'll designate 30 minutes of each class for "Special English Nap/Study Time" and join in the fun.

Here are a few gems, picked out from a meeting with the English teachers at the high school where I will be teaching. Ah, where to start... How about:

"The kids here don't like English so much. They have a hard time paying attention in all of their subjects"

"I didn't want to be an English teacher. It just sort of happened"

"We have problems with violent students at this school"

"You should be gentle with the students"

"The last TNET (Temporary Native English Teacher, basically the same as a JET ALT, except with generally more experience and less pay) was very strict, but we think she was a good teacher. We want you to be different. Last year, she started to cry in the middle of a lesson, and had to leave the classroom"

"The kids here have ended up in this school, not because they are interested in agriculture or gardening, but because they have nowhere else to go"

"The food at the school cafeteria is horrible. We never eat it. Don't forget to bring a bento on Monday!

"There are many bad students at this school. Try to look at the faces of the students to find the good kids."

I feel as if I am about to embark on a perilous adventure like a character in the movie "Battle Royale", but I'm not worried. I'll do my best, but I know that it's going to be a challenge to reach through to these kids. Of course it would make me really happy if I could teach like the teachers in "Stand and Deliver", "Dangerous Minds", or "Renaissance Man". I'm going to set my goals low to match my expectations, starting with "I will not let the students make me cry and then run out of class". The hurdles are all lined up in front of me, and now it's time to run full speed ahead. To be continued...

Taro and Megumi took me out to Digmeout Cafe in Osaka, where they were, up until yesterday, exhibiting up and coming artists in Japan. Its a pretty cool place to check out anyways, and the food they serve looks really cool. If you can get your hands on a copy, I highly recommend their books. Perhaps the GR store on Sawtelle stocks them. You can check out the artists and their works here.

Taking off at midnight, we arrived in time to soak in the rotemburo in Ecoland onsen and watch the sun rise.

So much powder, but it's off limits! Sometimes rules are made to be broken. Riding on fresh powder doesn't even feel like the same sport.

The lights at Miasa Onsen evoke the natural beauty of hemp.

Stinkbugs are funny. Some people start acting like cartoon characters when they come across one of these. In Japan, I always find the reactions of the students and teachers to insects trapped in the classroom, whether it be a huge butterfly, an angry bee, or a stinkbug, utterly amusing. Who would think that something so small and harmless could be so captivating and capable of such distractive powers?

These boots have been with me on many an adventure, traveling along to the various resorts I've visited over 10 years. Mika gave them to me, along with a badass Nitro 162 "lizard" longboard, as a birthday present in 1995 when I was a sophmore in high school.

At first, I had to wear two to three pairs of thick, woolen socks because they were a little too big for my then still-growing feet. Now they conform to my feet as if they were crafted from precisely crafted neoprene. They've been used so hard that the rubber is starting to separate from the aincent leather, and the heel backing has worn down to just a millimeter thick. Everytime I use the boots, the binding presses on a sensitive pressure point on my right foot, but it becomes less painful over time.

I had the pleasure to hang out and ride along with a cousin of a friend, who just so happened to be one of the top 10 boarders in Japan (a real kicked back guy named Takeshi), and he gave me some good pointers. As we were discussing the nuances of old and new equipment, he remarked that Kemper had gone bust and that he wanted a pair of boots like mine. The boots they have nowadays are much easier to rachet tight, take less time to get on and off, and are prettier. Despite this, there's something special about durable equipment of any kind that has been lovingly taken care of and well used by its owner. What an awesome pair of boots, these Kempers of mine.

A common gripe among foreiners living in Japan is that Japanese people frequently say something along the lines of "Wow, you're pretty good at using chopsticks". While it can be annoying to hear the same thing over and over again, and even if these words are sometimes ring as a canned compliment, sometimes the words are just a simple observation spoken out loud.

The way that I was taught (with tiny training chopsticks when I was 5 years old) was to grasp both chopsticks between the middle and index fingers as one would hold a pencil, with the tip of the index and the knuckle of the middle finger manipulating movement. What people don't understand is that not all Japanese ever learned how to use chopsticks properly.

It's not as obvious because you don't see them yielding them in two hands like a pair of daggers, and they tend not to spear their food. Sometimes you can see younger people holding a pair like a pre-schooler first learns to grasp a crayon. They make it work, but all the same they do not qualify as being "good at using chopsticks".

I think that this widely spoken observation also stems from difficulties encountered by some Japanese while using western silverware. I can't express how confused I was when I first heard a long-time Japanese friend look me straight in the eye and said "Wow, you're good at using the knife and fork, huh?" with a straight expression on her face.

Sorry that the posts have been sparse lately. I am currently searching for suitable living accomodations in Osaka. The most interesting place so far was an apartment in Nippombashi where everyone in the building shared a shower on the roof, the floor felt as if it were about to give out from under me, and I would have gotten a "discount" because the Korean video store next door was "kind of loud at night".

When I get my own place worked out, I will be writing on a regular basis again. In the meantime, I'll try and find an apartment that comes with a shower.

This page is cool on so many levels. Not only is the culture of sneakers interesting to read about, but the song compilations for each cultural sphere is excellent. I will be looking for the film, by Femke Wolfing, on which this site is based.

I've visited many waterfalls and taken countless pictures of them, but this page is the definitive waterfall resource for Kyushu, as well as a wide swath of the rest of Japan. I never knew that there were over 110 (I know of some that are not listed) waterfalls in Kumamoto.

If you're tired of teaching songs by the Beatles and Carpenters to kids who want to learn what 50's really saying, then consult this dictionary. It's about time that Japanese students understand the music that they are listening to, instead of music that they're not interested in.

Football is kinda like sumo.

Knighting is a practice that involves dominance and calculated risk. Being knighted by QE would not be very frightening, but I wonder if there was a time being knighted was a frightening experience. I imagine that there have been times when kings have had to knight people who they didn't particularly like or want around. If there was a conspiracy between the king and his court, knighting could serve as the perfect venue for cold-blooded murder.

Right now I'm in Nagano with Taro, staying at the lodge where he used to work in seasons long ago. The snow is superior to any I have so far encountered in Japan, but this is not surprising.

Taro and his friends are good skiers, but something crazy happened yesterday. Tori-san, a very skilled skier, was busting some crazy tricks on skis that made everyone say "Ooh". I was watching him go off a jump, when he caught major air and his body tilted right so that it was unnaturally parallel with the ground. He landed so hard that he broke his carbon fiber pole in half, but luckily escaped with not broken bones or anything worse than pain when he laughs.

This reminds me of when I dislocated my rib after taking a spill in Mammoth. Luckily my father is a chiropractor so he popped that sucker back in, and I was back in action. I'll try not to do anything so dramatic this time, but we'll see.

By the way, if you're up this way I recommend a bar called 902- foosball and a large screen TV playing big air footage. It's a good thing that they don't show those vids in the cafeteria on the slopes, or I would probably be riding the sled down the mountain with the ski patrol.