I did it! I uploaded ALL the pictures individually! So here is the blog post for them.
Skiing!
Yes, Asako and I hopped over to Nagano (you know, where the 1998 winter olympics were) and went skiing at a little ski hill there. She snowboards, I ski. Before that, I hadn't skiied for 4 years I think. However, I quickly releared everything... except (moagles, mogels?), which the mountain didn't have... Oh well. It tool 5-6 hours to get there from Chiba... LONG time. We took a bus. Long trip... However, the trip back was only 4-5 hours... which was still long. BUT it's fine. Not like it was boring. Always better when a friend is around than by yourself. No pictures, sorry. I didn't want my camera to get killed if I wiped out bad.
Tochigi pics!
Remember when I went to Yunishigawa Onsen? http://nipponcanadian.blogspot.com/2008/01/onsen.html. Well, pics are up for it now. 25 of them. Check em out here.
Birthday and Christmas pics, along with the LONG PROMISED pics of Asako's Family, or my homestay family for the first few months I was here. Check out the Chiba album again. :)
Ok, the day after skiing, one of our Japanese friends here had a go-away party (going to Canada) in Tokyo. We went on to a boat for dinner. Like, a boat in the style that you might see in movies about the Chinese or something... We made our own dinners, with the instructions of the staff on the boat. It was lots of fun. We also had 3 Aussies tag along with us. They were just visiting for a few weeks in Japan... And one of our Japanese friends (Miyako) invited them along (She works at the hotel that they were staying at). After that... which was 2 hours, we walked over to Ginza... to go do some karaoke! So now I've finally done Japanese karaoke (COMPLETELY different than anywhere else in the world btw). The Japanese have entire skyscrapers dedicated to karaoke. Very popular. Pics are in the Tokyo album.
I'm still looking for work, and now another place to live, as the contract for my current place finishes next month on the 15th. I have an interview with an English teaching company on the 4th of March though (30-50 bucks an hour, part time).
Just this recent weekend, on Saturday, Asako and her family and I drove down to the bottom of Chiba (remember Tateyama? My 26 or whatever km walk?) We drove along the coast the whole way. It was a nice day. Very windy though...
Anyways, there you guys go :) Pics for you to enjoy! Have fun :)
2008/02/25
2008/02/24
A quicky
I've been meaning to blog for a while... I have several things to blog about. However... Picasa (my photo album software) isn't being nice and not connecting to picasa web albums for me... Which means I can't upload my pictures to the internet. I have LOTS to upload :) This time with people in them! And since the images tell the story... no stories yet... Just letting you know I'm still here... Just waiting for things to work...
2008/02/10
Woken Up This Morning...
Ya, this morning... at 9:37 AM, I was awoken by a new thing...
An earthquake! Magnitude 2-3.
My first earthquake :).
At first, since I was like, sleeping... I thought I was shaking (like, my muscles were moving)... but I soon figured thats not right...
Now, mag 2-3 isn't much. But this is how it felt...
It felt like someone was at the end of my bed moving it back and forth lightly at a rate of maybe 2 shakes per second. Apparently, thats very fast. This earthquake actually originated waaay down off the south coast of Chiba... as a mag 5 earthquake. Glad I wasn't there :). For your info... that is over 100 kilometers away... and we could (and Tokyo too) still feel it easily :). It's AMAZING to think that over 200 kilometers north, south, west, and east of that quake, ALL the ground plus kilometers below the ground, plus ALL the water in the ocean there, is shaking and moving all at once. MANY MANY quadrillions of tonnes of stuff moving... it's kinda rediculous...
Also, to continue with the unnatural natural events of today :)... I could see Mt Fuji VERY VERY clearly from my house today... Thats like... 140 kilometers away... even more crazy, and I've never even seen this from TOKYO, is that you could see the stretch of land that shoots out from Japan south-east of Mt. Fuji. Those mountains are even further away... All this, and it was at Sundown :) I'm kinda annoyed I didn't look earlier in the day when I REALLY could have seen everything.
An earthquake! Magnitude 2-3.
My first earthquake :).
At first, since I was like, sleeping... I thought I was shaking (like, my muscles were moving)... but I soon figured thats not right...
Now, mag 2-3 isn't much. But this is how it felt...
It felt like someone was at the end of my bed moving it back and forth lightly at a rate of maybe 2 shakes per second. Apparently, thats very fast. This earthquake actually originated waaay down off the south coast of Chiba... as a mag 5 earthquake. Glad I wasn't there :). For your info... that is over 100 kilometers away... and we could (and Tokyo too) still feel it easily :). It's AMAZING to think that over 200 kilometers north, south, west, and east of that quake, ALL the ground plus kilometers below the ground, plus ALL the water in the ocean there, is shaking and moving all at once. MANY MANY quadrillions of tonnes of stuff moving... it's kinda rediculous...
Also, to continue with the unnatural natural events of today :)... I could see Mt Fuji VERY VERY clearly from my house today... Thats like... 140 kilometers away... even more crazy, and I've never even seen this from TOKYO, is that you could see the stretch of land that shoots out from Japan south-east of Mt. Fuji. Those mountains are even further away... All this, and it was at Sundown :) I'm kinda annoyed I didn't look earlier in the day when I REALLY could have seen everything.
2008/02/04
Update on Life
Well, nothing interesting to comment on in terms of travel, but I thought I'd update the blog for the people that watch it :)
So, lately, I've been uh... not busy :) Looking for jobs, however, I've applied to ALL of them... When new ones come out, I apply to them too... so I'm just being patient and waiting to hear back from any of them. It's unfortunate, because Nova, Japan's used to be largest English teacher supplier went bottoms up the week that I arrived in Japan. This means there are litteraly about 5000 teachers looking for English teaching jobs right now :) They all have experience too... which makes it harder.
Therefore! I've also been applying to long-term, career focused computer jobs in programming (my thing) and the occational junior server administrator (my 2nd want to be thing). However, BY FAR most of them require fluency in Japanese and English, and I don't have fluency in Japanese yet :) (Sometimes I wonder about English too...)
しかし！ (shikashi: but!)
Today I was emailed about a job that I did not expect to get a call back from... Saora, looking for programmers and a couple other things, in the Linux department (PERFECT!). I have an interview with them waaaay over in Yokohama, 2 hours away from here.... on Wednesday (it's Monday night now) at 6 o clock. How nice :D
If I get a job like that... I would not be going back to Canada to live... (just visits) and Japan would be my new home for at LEAST a couple of years. But I don't mind :) I like Japan.
We (Chiba) also had snow!!! 5 inches of it!!! Maybe 8 inches fell... but it was melting at the same time as falling so it never looked like more than 5 inches. That happened yesterday... I have a picture... Which I'll upload soon... Look for it in the Chiba area. It should be there when you guys read this.
So, lately, I've been uh... not busy :) Looking for jobs, however, I've applied to ALL of them... When new ones come out, I apply to them too... so I'm just being patient and waiting to hear back from any of them. It's unfortunate, because Nova, Japan's used to be largest English teacher supplier went bottoms up the week that I arrived in Japan. This means there are litteraly about 5000 teachers looking for English teaching jobs right now :) They all have experience too... which makes it harder.
Therefore! I've also been applying to long-term, career focused computer jobs in programming (my thing) and the occational junior server administrator (my 2nd want to be thing). However, BY FAR most of them require fluency in Japanese and English, and I don't have fluency in Japanese yet :) (Sometimes I wonder about English too...)
しかし！ (shikashi: but!)
Today I was emailed about a job that I did not expect to get a call back from... Saora, looking for programmers and a couple other things, in the Linux department (PERFECT!). I have an interview with them waaaay over in Yokohama, 2 hours away from here.... on Wednesday (it's Monday night now) at 6 o clock. How nice :D
If I get a job like that... I would not be going back to Canada to live... (just visits) and Japan would be my new home for at LEAST a couple of years. But I don't mind :) I like Japan.
We (Chiba) also had snow!!! 5 inches of it!!! Maybe 8 inches fell... but it was melting at the same time as falling so it never looked like more than 5 inches. That happened yesterday... I have a picture... Which I'll upload soon... Look for it in the Chiba area. It should be there when you guys read this.
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