Lots of pictures

Uploading 162 more pictures. Lots are from the museums. I may dump those into a separate album just to keep the size down. We'll see.

20 for the high today, 18 tomorrow. Wind chill is in the single digits. I now have a scarf and a big wool coat. Hopefully that will help. Busy Busy Busy. I'll post when I get a break (probably not until we get back hahah)

More snow on the ground today as well. Just a centimeter or two. Still, it's the first snow we've been in contact with, so it's neat.

Hooray for Korea

First pictures are up here http://picasaweb.google.com/heman8400/Korea

We've been to the old palace, the traditional market, and some of the shopping centers. We've spent about half our money, but we have about 90% of what we wanted to buy here. Andrea's gotten some clothes and some scarves, and a purse. Still looking for shoes though. Jeehyun's mom wants to take her to a nice store and buy her something, so she'll probably manage. I've gotten a set of 4 korean spoons and chopsticks, yes they're different. Spoons have very long handles and the chopsticks are flat, makes em hard to use. Real ones are silver but those cost 10x as much as the stainless steal ones. I'll let you guess which ones I bought. I got some matching celadon chopstick holders, as well as a very nice tea set. I bought a mug at starbucks covered in korean. Jeehyun mentioned she had to memorize it in school, but I'm not sure what it is at the moment. Andrea also got a miniture folding screen. Made of wood, like those giant screens people put up to divide a room, Randi has one and should know what I'm talking about. Its very small but very nice looking. We're going to go to at least 9-12 more places before we go, depending on how long we spend at each one. The subways here are very fast and are much cheaper than japan's trains. I'm not sure how they compare to the subways there, as I haven't taken any. We should be able to visit 2-3 places a day for the next 4 days. We'll see what happens. I wanted to visit the DMZ, but some of the tours are off limits to korean nationals (I would suspect it has something to do with the politcal implications of letting them into neutral locations that the north agreed not to let their citizens enter, but I can't find out for sure). We'll probably skip it though just because its expensive($50+ per person, depending on the tour) and really only interesting to me. We'll get to see some other cool things though, so it doesn't bother me. We're busy enjoying the food here, though we've only had one real korean meal. time for bed, we'll see what tomorrow brings!!!!

(SIDE NOTE: I found out 99.9% of sold celadon pottery is not real, but recreations using the originals as designs. They're made the same way, but the real ones cost thousands of dollars for even the smallest pieces. So they're "real," just not the originals.)

Merry Christmas (no X means its real, right?)

We made it to korea fine. The train ride to the airport was bad, had to be on the slow commuter trains during morning rush. We were packed tighter than sardines. When we got to our stop and started pulling our suitcases out of the crowd, Andrea was saying "excuse me" in japanese and the guy closest to her told her to "f-off" in english. Then proceeded to kick my bag (which actually freed it from the crowd, so I was grateful.) A great 2 hours. We had a reserved seat on the final train to the airport, so we got to sit in a nearly empty train and relax. Still, that was the worst first half of christmas day I've ever had.
We made it through customs and got food since we hadn't eaten breakfast that day. When I looked at the seat map I had printed out for our trip, I didn't see our seat number on it. 18H-J. Turns out since we bought them online and didn't have assigned seats yet, when we got to the airport they gave us the only two seats that were still together. Hooray for business class. We got a meal that economy didn't get, plus beer was free (though I didn't partake.) And talk about the leg room. I couldn't stretch out and touch the seat in front of me. Andrea was actually able to take a nap on a plane for the first time ever. Plus we got to sit on the upper level of the 747 we were on. Awesome flight.
Jeehyun picked us up at the airport and we had dinner with her parents. The restaurant we went to if right down the street from their apartment. Jeehyun's family knows the owner so we got some extra dishes that weren't on the special Christmas menu. Turns out the worst christmas ever could turn into the best one.
I'll never ride the train again during rush hour. At least not without a reserved seat.

Merry Xmas!

This will be my last post probably until after we're settled in korea. We're leaving monday morning for lyndsi's and we'll be in korea by 4 on tuesday. Hopefullywe'll have a smooth flight. We got our gifts for jeehyun's family today. We found a great tea shop that has about 20 varieties of Shizuoken green tea. I'll probably bring my brother there if he manages to make it next summer. We've gotten a few gifts sent to us, which is really nice of everyone. The random candies are the best, winter always has good candies. I doubt I'll post pictures until I get back, but if I manage to I'll make sure to put a post up here. If I don't manage to talk to anyone Merry Xmas and Happy New Year!!!

Ever try taking pictures of random events?

The geminids peaked last night for us. I read that we could expect up to 120 meteors an hour. I had to settle for about 1 every 5 minutes but it was still cool. I tried to get a picture using a 2 second exposure (I know, "2 seconds"!!!!! it is the longest exposure I could get out of my digital camera) but failed miserably. You can watch the satelites moving if you tick through them fast enough. I managed to get a picture of mars though. I thought it was cool that you could actually see it in some real form. It was very bright last night. Just one more reason to stay up until 3 am.

I posted a bunch of new pictures. Gingerbread house, more of Fuji, and some of my stars.

For those who worry Jeehyun finally called us this weekend. Xmas is back on track.

Late edit:
It's come to my attention that almost no one reads this, or looks at the pictures I post(it happens every time I talk to my parents and they say, "It's been busy" or when Andrea's mom asks to see pictures of stuff). I'll be sending my family a cd of the pictures we have so far with their xmas box. If you would like a copy feel free to contact me or my parents. I have only a few cds, so I'm only making 1 original for people to get the pictures from. These are the original files, not the cut-down versions that google requires for space constraints. I'm not going to stop posting pictures or stories, since hopefully it will start getting read more often. That and I'm only going to send a cd once a year, so there's not going to be pictures for another year for the people who only want the cd!!!

Xmas is coming

My computer has been off for the last week. That would explain the lack of me being online. Lots of buying still to do (all of it actually). We still can't get a hold of jeehyun, so we might now be going to korea after all. We're still trying but she's avoiding every single call and email. We'll see. I'll post pictures tomorrow. Andrea built a gingerbread house. We've got some old pictures from China Town that lyndsi took while we were in yokohama. Laters.

Don't Ever Buy A Dell

Put the kids to bed early, joe's going on a rant (actually I kept it clean, because who knows who's kids might be reading!?!?!?)

I don't like to use this blog to rant about my beliefs. Yes I lean certain directions politically, but this is not the place to shout my ideas. This is about my adventure in Japan, but this time I have something so obnoxious that I can't help but share my experience.

Don't Ever Buy A Dell. First off, I got horrible customer support after they delayed my delivery no less than 4 times. The first time they told me it would be one week. Then it was another week. Then I just didn't care. I was already in Japan, without my computer toating around a "crappy" Acer computer. I hoped I would be rid of in a few short weeks and on my new, shiny, state-of-the-art (for laptops right at $1k anyways) dell. It was going to be blue, a favorite color of mine, so as to make me feel more attached to it. Like all things you become attached to, they are bound to cause pain a few times.

When it FINALLY got to japan almost 8 weeks after its supposed original arrival date (my dad did have it for 2 weeks installing a new OS and powerful CAD softwares) it started up beautifully. I uninstalled some of the junk still left by dell, and installed some of my own personal use softwares. Restarted. Wireless died. Wouldn't connect to my painfully paid for wifi. Even if it did, there was never an internet connection. And even if there was an internet connection, I couldn't actually use the internet. I did what people in my knowledge and situation do, find a driver(after 8 hours of doing everything else possible). I thought MAYBE dell's horrible software would help me do it just a tad faster than what google was capable of. Of course I was gravely mistaken. Dell gave me the driver options for all of the other wireless cards my computer could've come with, but not the one it did come with. I found it on my own, courtesy of google and intel. Everything went back to semi normal. Sometimes (such as today) it won't find my wireless network, I had to restart. It still won't connect to the internet on its own. It thinks my wifi is a "public" network and won't connect until I change it to "private."

Last week I did an update for windows. Killed my computer, almost. 95% memory usage? Check. No windows applications run, which could help me figure out what's wrong? Check. It turns out it was mostly because of Onecare, which seems to have had a problem updating or something in that line, because it broke. I never did get it to work right again, so I just uninstalled it, which was in itself a chore. Part of the problem was the fact that the McAfee software that I had uninstalled which dell had included on my computer because I was not given a choice to leave it off, had left behind some fun little friends. They were constanly trying to start up without their mother programs. That in combination with Onecare catastrophically failing nearly killed my computer.

Today my disc drive up and disappeared on me. It was there one minute, and I watched it disappear the next(that reminds me, my keyboard breaks from time to time, this week it's the "X" button).

---3 hours later

I had to stop in the middle of ranting to pick up andrea from school. Instead of finishing I set my mind to work on my computer, which I easily fixed. Still annoying. I suppose I am calmer now, but I'm still going to post this, for the simple fact that if someone out there is on the edge of deciding whether or not they're "getting a dell," that they'll change their mind. Maybe dell will read this and offer to fix my computer or give me some sizable discount. I doubt it, they don't seem to care about their customers much anymore. Worth a shot though.

(If anyone had listened closely, while our friend Lyndsi was in town, who owns a mac, I actually yelled at my computer that I was going to go to kojima and buy one. It was an empty threat, but if the rest of this year goes as well as the last 4 months, who knows?)

I miss September

I was less busy then, I had more time to mess around. Oh well, I suppose I have to grow up at some point. I started working for my dad again. It's a very good thing, since we found out the costs of getting andrea's plane ticket home are about 3500, plus the cost of my ticket. We'll get reimbursed for hers, but still 6k up front? Not my idea of a good time. So that might affect our plans on whether or not to stay for another year, since we could delay that cost until we have more than enough saved up so we aren't scraping pennies when we get back. Andrea's starting to lean towards 2 years, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed, she goes back and forth a lot.

Thanksgiving was this last weekend. Ours was boring. Chicken, mashed potatoes, rolls, gelatin gravy. Not really my idea of an ideal turkey day, but $80 turkeys prevent me from getting any closer. Lyndsi came out to stay with us. It was fun to have some one here, takes the bite off an otherwise boring weekend. We went to the bbq place since we liked it so much. Wandered around our neighborhood of shops and parks. Watched some tv (booo ku lost, they still had an amazing season, just not a flawless one). Andrea's family got a slingbox, which lets us control and watch the tivo they have in the basement. The quality is kinda bad from time to time, but that's Cox's fault for not having good internet. Either way it will be nice to be able to watch some of the shows we can't get online anymore (a lot of websites don't let people outside the US watch their shows anymore).

We are going to get our re-entry permits on friday so we can go to korea, if we ever get a hold of Jeehyun. Trying to prep up for christmas. We have people from various gift exchanges, but we probably will be getting them something from the internet, since sending something from Japan would take up most of the value of the gift limits. Our families will be getting one last box of goodies before we go into hermit mode and start saving for our spring trips. Hokkaido in Feb. Somewhere for cherry blossoms in march. Maybe more if we decide to stay an extra year. We'll see what happens.

Aren't Computers Fun?

My computer is slowly struggling back to life. Last week I did a windows update and it suddenly when crazy. I guess some of the updates didn't install right or they had something bad in them, because it made my holiday weekend a nightmare. Hopefully later today I'll be able to get things running again and I should be able to post pictures. Until then.

Fake turkey day

Well we're going to do something for thanksgiving. We're just not sure what. Or on what day. Lyndsi is going to come out and stay with us for the weekend and we're going to do something thankgiving-like. Probably chicken since turkeys are about 70-80 bucks (you have to order them online, stores don't sell them. Supposedly they are cheaper at meat markets, but I haven't found one yet.) and we don't have an oven anyways. Mashed potatoes are easy to make, and we have a fantastic packet of turkey gravy from my mother. Yams would be possible, but I don't like them so I'm not making them. Pies are out of the question too, oven problems again. Bread is a strange thing here, but I should manage to find something close to a roll.

Meat? Check.
Potatoes? Check.
Gravy? Check.
Bread? Check.
Dessert? Hmmm, cheesecake from Mimi's perhaps?

We'll get by. I think the family will be the most missed part. At least for Andrea and Lyndsi. I've been over this but I don't get emotionally attached to people. This distance has been easier on me than Andrea for that reason. Its not that I don't care, I just manage to distance myself from my cares enough so it doesn't bog me down. Being a cook, food is actually harder to deal with. Simply because I can get close to what I want, just not close enough. Taco cheddar is easy to find, because it doesn't have to taste that good. Eating cheddar has been impossible.

Its cold today, upper 40's moving into the 50's. Its not actually cold, just cold for Fuji. Plus I don't have a car to get in for rides to the store, I have a bike. Gloves are a must, soon two layers of long-sleeved shirts will be too. Its colder in Wichita I noticed, but that doesn't mean it's less annoying here. Drying laundry in humid 40's? Terrible. It will get colder over the next few days. Andrea's going to force me to pull out the kerosene heater soon. Life goes on.

http://picasaweb.google.com/heman8400
I'm going to keep putting this link in here, just so people know it exists. Also if you comment, there's a place to enter your name. Please use it so I know whats going on ^_^

Busy days

http://picasaweb.google.com/heman8400/Fuji
I added 6(4 of fuji) new photos at the end. It was clear for the first time in almost 2 weeks, and I have found a perfect spot for picture taking of Fuji.

Things are still busy. We went out with Luke this weekend to this great little do-it-yourself grilling place. You get a little grill with hot charcoals and you order raw meats and vegetables. It was really really good. I got a few pictures of the grill on my phone and posted those in the same fuji folder. The one picture looks sort of white hot, but that's the fault of the phone. I was hot, just not that hot haha. On the way to that dinner, andrea had an accident with her bike. We were avoiding a group of people filling the sidewalk by riding in the street (this is normal). The curbs in japan are strange. The curbs for the most part are about 4 inches high, except where cars enter and exit (a business driveway for instance) and there it is about 2 inches. Obviously this makes for bumpy sidewalk bike riding, since there are no smooth ramps when the sidewalk starts and stops. Well we swerved out over a lowered section of curb about 30 feet long, and I came back over a spot that turned out to be only about 5 feet long. Andrea missed the short part and hit the high part. This threw her off the bike and onto the sidewalk. She is ok, but she has several bruises and a very scraped up knee (though its more of a rug burn-type wound, as the cloth didn't break). This has taught us to ride more slowly at night, since I had no idea how small that gap was, and she had no idea where I was leading her. She'll be back to normal by the weekend I'm sure. Turns out bandaids(esp big ones) are really expensive here though.

And that was our weekend. Packers won(farve hit 60k yards), KU won football and basketball, and dallas won. Good year to be a fan ^_^

Pictures

http://picasaweb.google.com/heman8400/Shizuoka
for the festival we went to.

http://picasaweb.google.com/heman8400/Halloween
for andrea's halloween party at school.

We ran into about 20 other JET's while in shizuoka, and I managed to not take a picture of/with any of them haha. The festival was kind of sad, but it was nice to get out and see more of japan (even if it was pretty close to home).

Andrea and sebastion(sp?) decorated a classroom for halloween and carved some pumpkins. The pumpkins were found in a distant grocery store that had full size ones. Most of the ones they had were the mini-decorative kind. Normally in the US you might seem them for 3-4 bucks near halloween so the stores can get rid of them, but not here, 10 bucks a piece. Just one of those things you can't find for cheap here. The students had fun it seems, about 20-30 of them showed up to watch them carve pumpkins after school. Some of them even helped scrape out the guts.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll finally get to the drink blog again. (I say it, but when tomorrow comes....who knows)

Well that was interesting

Those kids are crazy. They go nuts over everything. Saw me walk in, scream. Heard I was andrea's husband, scream. Hear the stories of how we met, dated, got married; scream, scream, scream. They laughed when they heard I did all the cooking. Even when I wasn't at the front of the room they were still just a loud group of people. They seem to get excited over little things. Oh well. Maybe they'll like andrea mroe now that they know more about us? That's always a good thing. Anyways. Chores and more piled up since I spent the morning at the school, I'll be back tomorrow.

Woo for football

KU is undefeated and number 4(also the only ranked school in basketball and football), and the packers have only lost one game. I'm having a good year ^_^

Andrea and I went to the "Super Bowl of Street-something" in Shizuoka city this past weekend. Basically it was a bunch of street performers and clowns. Really kind of lame. the Aerobatics people were kinda neat but everything else was pretty pathetic. We walked through a japanese garden, and did a little shopping. I'll post pictures later today/tomorrow if I can.

I have to finish getting ready to go meet andrea's first year class, I just wanted to give a quick update.

Pictures

Added lots of pictures last week. I will add a few more tomorrow (18 hours from now, 4am cst). Have a few new ones of Fuji with snow from this weekend. It rained all day saturday so the peak has lots more snow than the week before. And this snow isn't melting right away ^_~

Working on the drink blog is hard. New drinks show up every week. I probably have a new beer once a week and that makes it hard to decide when to actually post. I suppose I'll just do it in sections Beer I, II, etc. Maybe I'll get around to it tomorrow.

If you post a comment make sure to leave your name, if you don't, I don't know who you are! Everyone can comment so feel free.

Slow news day

Been busy this week trying to get random things taken care of. Friday last week it rained here, giving us the first showfall on fuji. Of course it was gone withing 36 hours, but still neat to see. The weather this week has gone chilly, we had our first morning below 50. I know that doesn't sound bad, but for Fuji it is. People are saying how it might be a cold winter because of it. Crazy people.

Well we're getting closer and closer to getting the papers for signing up again. Just a few more weeks. Though I guess it's not a big deal because we don't have to turn them in for 4 more months. We have been talking about it quite a bit though. I think we're probably at about a 50/50 right now, where as before we were ab out 90/10 for going home in july. We obviously still haven't decided but we're considering the options and the future. I personally am leaning towards staying for another year. Andrea's worried about finding another job and the potential for the tokai earthquake to happen, if it doesn't during our first year. (For those who don't know the tokai earthquake is named after the region of japan we live in. It is a 100-140 year earthquake and we are currently at about 148 years. They expect it to be between a 7 and 9 on the richter scale. Widespread destruction, injuries and even death are going to be very much the headlines when this earthquake hits. They have a warning system that will give anywhere from a few seconds to up to a minute of warning before it hits. Hopefully that will be enough time to spare some lives.) I'm not too worried about it, but andrea is more cautious than me. We'll see what happens. If it does hit, you can bet we'll be home very soon after that, they don't keep hired JETs after natural disasters, plus you get a bonus (kind of like an insurance pay out).

I'll be putting up some new pictures on the album soon. More in the fuji album and probably a new one for andrea's trip to izu. http://picasaweb.google.com/heman8400

Edit: Pictures are up and ready for viewing.

Slow start

Got lots of things to do today, but not until all the shops open up. Need to buy a new dvd player, find Andrea a costume for halloween at the school and go to a house-warming party this evening.

I made french toast this morning with real cream. Probably a waste of money, but I had it from something else I made, so who cares. It tasted good, like real high quality french toast, nice and creamy with hot cinnamon and nutmeg. Delicious.

I made my first real post on the drink blog this morning. I'll be putting up a bunch of pictures later today if I get time, maybe tomorrow. Somehow I'm going to get some of my videos up on youtube or something similar. I'll make sure to post as things go on.

First post in a brave new world

This is my first try at a "real" blog, hopefully it will transition well. Andrea have been keeping busy with random get-togethers with our friends here, as well as wandering around town looking at all the expensive things we can't buy(like a dvd player for instance). Food has taken a new turn, as we've (I've) been making more real foods, less hamburgers and pizzas. We still can't really get into Japanese food so far. Simple things like yakitori(chicken skewers) and gyoza(chinese style dumplings) are fine, but they put fish in almost everything which in turn makes it taste just aweful. I really do try new things when I see them, but more often than not I just have the one bite and move on.

Andrea is going hiking with her school today. I think they were going around a lake at the base of Fuji-san. I wanted to go but it was a school event and they weren't too keen on the idea of me being there since I didn't know any of the students. Oh well. School has been going ok for Andrea, she's had some tough times with her co-worker, but she's getting through it. I guess the forms for resigning up are starting to go around the JETs, Andrea expects hers sometime next month. We have until Jan/Feb to decide what to do, so obviously we're still unsure yet. Andrea wants to go home and find a job and start settling down, but I'm still not sure that we should bail out on this adventure just yet. 3 more months to decide, so we'll keep talking about it.

Got a party to go to tomorrow, and laundry still to do before the rain storm moves in, so that's it for me for now. I'll try and update this blog more than the myspace ^_~