Lazy Days

Summer is nice. I can hang around he house and do pretty much nothing. Or play games. I've been doing a lot of that.

Been to the beach a few times. I really want to go surfing soon.

Went to the fair. Saw Weird Al in concert. Fourth row seats. It was great. I took a bunch of blurry, poorly exposed pictures with my cell phone. If anyone wants to see I will share.
Went to the fair again, did rides. lots of spinning around. Whee! Saw a clown/acrobat show, too. Aga-Boom. They were good. Had the same seats as for Weird Al.

I've been playing DS games a lot. It's occupying a lot of my time.

Recently...

Apparently, I don't post enough any more. What can I say? I've been relaxing since I came back to America.


Been playing a lot of different DS games, since I got a flash cartridge. It's handy.



Earlier this week, Crystal learned that someone had gotten an advanced copy of Harry Potter 7 onto the internet, and made me go find it for her. Didn't take long. Apparently, someone got a copy of the book early and decided it would be a good use of their time to take pictures of every page. Whatever floats your boat, I guess... Anyway, thanks to that we've already been reading the book. Right now she's on chapter 18, and I'm on 10. I took a break the last couple days.


A few days ago, I found a random bottle of maple syrup in my room, and decided to play with it. I've been putting maple syrup in my drinks. Juices, sodas (as I'm writing, it's maple 7up) and it's working out quite well for me. I think maple syrup is good for more than just waffles. ;) Really, though, what kind of person finds a random bottle of maple syrup while looking through their bedroom? PRobably just me, I suppose...



Yesterday, I decided the weather was nice, so I went out in the back yard and laid down in the grass, and took a nap in the sun for a while. That was nice. I watched the birds a bit.



Eventually, I'll stop being a lazy git and go through my pictures form japan. At that time, I'll be able to remember trips and stories, and will upload some pictures here and tell more about my trip.

im home!

landed a little before 11 yesterday. left the airport around 1. ate mexican food. went to sleep around 4 and woke up at 11 pm. now its 5pm and i've been up the whole time. yay jetlag! yay dry climate!
moustache grew big.

Hindenburger

Rob sent me this.

Tachibana Yama 橘山

A couple of days ago, Marlon and Kevin hiked with me up a mountain up the road from our dorm.
I`d been wanting to do it for a while, and I was prepared and extecting to climb stright up the hillside through the brush and trees, forging a way as we went. Fortunately, it didn`t come to that.
There was a trail.
We left about 3:30pm ad arrived home very near 8:00.
On the way up, we took a lot of pictures, saw huge spiders (No, bigger... think bigger than that too.) These buggers were easily four inches across. Without the legs. They were black and yellow striped.
We saw mushrooms and gnarly trees, and huge butterflies. the bugs in japan seem like they`re from a hundred million years ago. huge! the spiders, for one. giant black butterflies. flies three times normal size. foot long earthworms (we thought it was a snake!).
In Japan, people must stay very fit from their good diets and excercise (stairs everywhere). We passed about three old Japanese dudes who were on the way down from the summit. They seemed to be doing fine, and us three dudes in the prime of our lives were having a hard time in places. It was crazy.
As we neared the top, more light began to come through, and we could sense that we had almost reached the goal. at the last turn in the path, the way ahead was blindigly bright, and as we emerged from the jungle, the top of the mountain was clear-cut and grassy, with a ring of trees around the back. Ahead, all of Fukuoka lay spread out before us, and through the haze was the sea of Japan. It was amazing. Unfortunately, pictures of the scene didn't really work because of the haze, but we were able to pick out the college, and off to the side our little home of Kenshuso Dorm a couple blocks away.
At the summit was another old Japanese dude and his dog. It`s name was Sakura, and I don`t remember the guy`s name. But we talked with him for a little while and he took pictures of us. They`ll be around somewhere. Look for them from Kevin.
We had a notion to stick around and watch the sun set form the peak, but decided going down the hill in the dark would be a bad idea.
We headed down by a different path, and this one was even more wild.
This was where we saw the king of the earthworms (I named him Jeffrey) as well as walked into some nasty spider webs. Marlon caught one full across the face and when we looked, there was another huge spider sitting up a little higher. Fortunately it wasn't on him - we would have had to draw straws to pick it off. This one was a couple inches long, and had decided to build it`s web full across the path, hoping to catch some really big prey, I guess. Kevin took pictures of Marlon freaking out and the spider itself.
At one point, when we were beginning to wonder if maybe we`d gotten entirely lost, and if everything had given way to jungle (we went through about 5 different kinds of jungle on the mountain), we came across a little shrine set to the side of the path. Japan is funny that way. Even in the middle of nowhere, on a mountain overtaken by jungle, you can find things like this. Japan is fun.
It was on the way back to the path that we found Jeffrey, King of the Earth Worms. I guess I stepped on it, because Marlon saw it waving around like an injured snake in the leaves. I looked too, and thought it was a snake. I was going to try and pick it up with my walking stick when I got a closer look and realized it was a worm. Amazing! It was longer than my hand, which is quite large indeed, and fat and firm. We took pictures.
On the way down more, the mosquitos really started attacking, and we weren't having quite as much fun.
When we finally emerged from the jungle at the base, we found ourselves right at a buddhist shrine/temple thing. There was nobody around, just a couple of cats, but we looked and stayed there for a bit to film some things. From there, there was a real, paved road back home.
The trip took nearly 5 hours. It was about a 3-mile hike (probably closer to 3.5) and had an elevation change of 1000 feet.
It was a lot of fun.

Nothing significant has happened since last night

but here`s a new post anyway.

Enjoy!

Daily Life, or - Look, I`m on T V!

Each morning around 7:30, Crystal comes and pokes me out of sleep, and I get dressed and we go for breakfast at the Clubhouse - one of the cafeterias on campus whereat two meals a day were paid for as part of the cost of our trip.
Usually, there`s a bit of free time and then the whole group will go off for our activity for today.
Today, we went to the KBC TV studio (They`re channel 9) and had a tour. It started off with getting to look around the set for their morning show, アサデス (Asa Desu - It`s Morning) and then watched them set up and film the first ten minutes ish live. That was pretty cool.
Then, it was upstairs to the control room. There were gianormous boards of switches and knobs and sliders. I could have had endless fun in there. But I decided to let things be.
Afterwards, it was into a radio studio. We got to fiddle around with things a little, and our guide told us about how the studio we were in (one of four?) was designed for live music, since it was big and had boom microphones. We walked from there into the control room (half the group at a time) of another radio studio and watched the radio people do their show for a little bit. Takahashi loved my hair. He was one of the radio guys*.
After that we walked through the newsroom - which was a lot like you see on TV shows expet not so busy - and then into another studio, where we had some fun taking pictures in front of the blue weather screen, which I`ll have even more fun with in photoshop at home.

*Incidentally, this isn`t the first time radio people liked my head. In Kagoshima, we saw DJ Pocky and DJ (some name in japanese that I couldn`t read) in their booth near a mall doing a live broadcast, and they loved me and talked about me on air.

afterwards, we wandered around Tenjin, a bit shopping area that we all have been spending a lot of time in. Kevin and I ran into a random film crew and decided to film them because it was funny. Turned out they were doing a segment for the very show we watched from the studio. The bit they were doing was for next week. We lost the rest of the group because of that, except Crystal who waited. Yay her.
Kevin split off and crystal I and a goat got some lunch. But the goat was being rude to people, so we ditched him, not wanting to be associated with someone so boorish. I had steamed meat buns and takoyaki and some sort of yummy-cooked hardboiled egg that they do here. Oishii! Delicious, if you don`t know.
Home again Home again Jiggity Jog.

The other meal we eat every day at school is dinner. The cooks names are Moto and Tomo. For the first couple weeks, I thought it was one dude who`s name I couldn`t remember properly, and another who`s name I didn`t know. They cook different things for us every day, and it`s always good. Lunches we are on our own for.
One day, we ate at Ichiraku Ramen, the same shop that the main character of a certain anime loves to go to. Turns out, the creator went to the college I`m here at now (Kyushu Sangyo University) and frequented that particular ramen shop. Nice!

Things have become kind of routine. I can tell my Japanese is improving. I`m already doing better at understanding people and making myself known, but I have a long way to go. I want to keep getting better.
With only a week and a half left, I`ll don`t think we`ll be able to do enough to satisfy me and want to go. I like it here.


...Incidentally, the title of this post was a lie. I wasn`t on TV.