Christmas Pictures are here!

Preliminary photos are up:

Christmas 2008
Tokyo Disney

I also added stuff to the fuji album. There are no captions yet! I also haven't weeded out many of the bad photos. I'll get to it in a few days or so hopefully. I have videos of various things.I will try and edit them and get them up probably after andrea goes back to work. As always if you want full size versions of the pictures, please let me or my parents know which ones, I will be happy to email them of have a disc made.

Happy Holidays!

Lost in Tokyo

We've been in Tokyo, more specifically Shinagawa, for a day now and we're having a great time. Lots of wandering around and sight seeing. We have the nicest hotel ever, and a bed big enough to fit an entire family. It even as a balconey that we can walk out onto to view the city.

We went to an aqaurium yesterday, and got to see a dolphin show. I have seen dolphins in a long time, so it was pretty fun. There were some giant fish and sharks there, and a ray of some kind that was way bigger than an I had ever seen. We got to dip our hands in a tank with fish that eat your dead skin, which was really freaky. It felt like little pulsations, not painful but still weird(though Andrea claims that it hurt.)

We ate at a really nice cafe for lunch and Andrea insisted that we go to Outback for dinner since it is right across the street. There's a TGI Fridays right near us too, though we've been to one twice since being in Japan, so I'm not particularly excited about that.

Today, we're off to the Yasukuni shrine, Akihabara, and Shinjuku (with maybe some shopping if we have time.) We're hoping to go by the Tokyo Tower to see the Christmas tree there and maybe a zoo tomorrow before spending the next two days at Disney. We managed to get tickets reserved for Disney, but supposedly if you don't have tickets already for this week they won't let you in, because it's too busy. We shall see.

I have lots of pictures but I haven't uploaded anything yet. Maybe tomorrow?

New pictures

http://picasaweb.google.com/heman8400/FujiYear2
http://picasaweb.google.com/heman8400/TripToIzuFalls2TheWaterfallIng#
http://picasaweb.google.com/heman8400/Halloween2ThePumpkinIng#

adding -ing to the end of words makes them sequel style movie titles!

Double Rainbows in Fuji

Not a great picture, but we didn't have a great view. The mountain was still covered in clouds, you can see this mornings snow covered picture in the Fuji 2 album.

Happy Halloween!

No, I'm not dead II

I'm still here. I just haven't done anything exciting.

Andrea went to an onsen last weekend with a bunch of the other girls from our area. It had tea and wine baths, among a large variety of other features. She would have taken picutres, but you have to go to those things naked. I got to stay home, as this was a girls only day/night.

Politics are getting crazy, make sure you vote. If you don't, you don't get to complain about what happens.

There are some pictures floating in our cameras from the last few weeks, maybe in the next few weeks we'll get to upload them.

Lots o Updates.

I added some pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/heman8400/LakeHiking

http://picasaweb.google.com/heman8400/FujiYear2

http://picasaweb.google.com/heman8400/ClimbingTheBeast2TheSickening

And that video of the storm I promised a long time ago:

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=LmTIGXhEGuA

It's sort of lame until the last 20 seconds or so, but I didn't feel like editing it. You can hear really loud thunder throughout it though.

There is a bunch of stuff from while my family was here, but I don't know if/when I'll get around to that.

Me and my friends

Andrea and I are waiting in line with 2000 of our closest friends for a Do As Ifinity concert. Good thing we showed up 3 hours early.

Baking eludes me...

I tried to make cookies yesterday. They were far from perfect. We have guests coming over, but I'll update tomorrow with how they turned out.

Fast times at Yoshi High

Trying to get back into the swing of things. It hasn't really gone that well haha. We have some friends coming over this weekend, but of course our apartment still is in disarray since we haven't really completely unpacked and put everything away. I'm working on getting all the laundry caught up and getting all of Andrea's new clothes put away. She had too much for the drawers before she bought a bunch of new outfits, and now I have no idea what to do with it all. I'll figure it out.

Alison and Gina are talking about visiting us in the spring some time. It would be a nice mid-year break to see friends and family before we move back to the 'states. (Plus we'd be able to send some of our stuff back early, ie: winter clothes >.>) I don't know what we'd do with them, since we don't have gobs of money but I'm sure Andrea will have some vacation to take so we'll manage to go somewhere I'm sure. We'll see how that develops.

There's a former typhoon, as in it's now a tropical storm, named Sinlaku headed our direction. I'm not sure what direction it is taking yet, though the tracks on it have it going straight over us. It has been so erratic lately that I just can't be sure of the forecasts. Even if it does hit us, it's nothing more than a windy thunderstorm at this point. Even being over open water for 3 days hasn't given it any strength. I don't suspect it will do more than rattle the windows a little.

Back in the USS...A?

So I’m back in Fuji after a last minute trip to the US. I kept it a secret mostly because I really didn’t have much time to tell anyone about it. I found out 30 hours before I took off. I packed up and grabbed a train early the next morning.

I managed to hang out with a large range of my friends while I was home, while eating a lot of food and driving far more than I should have. It would seem that being in Japan has caused me to become less inclined to eat fast food. Every time we ate something that was not very good for us, I felt sick. I suppose that’s a good thing.

My grandparents came down to visit, only because I was there. It was nice to see them, and the taffy they brought wasn’t bad either. I got to see my niece and nephews and watch some football. What else could you ask for? More time at home I guess.

For everybody’s benefit, I’m typing this while on the plane. I’ve finished Iron Man and am working on Indian Jones. Iron man is an awesome movie, but I doubt you’d find a guy who didn’t agree. Jones seems to be alright, but I remember hearing some complaints about it. My impression is that it is more like the old movies than any of the current ones. It’s a little campy, but I like it for just that reason. I don’t know about the main storyline, but for the campiness alone, it’s worth watching(I’m pretty sure he just said “libary” by the way) .

I still have about ten and a half hours to go, so I’ll probably settle in and watch this before watching some of the tv I missed, maybe taking a nap. I’m glad Delta has AC plugs in the front half of this plane.

Amazon.com lost a customer

Time for a short rant.

The kodak v570 that andrea has is a piece of junk, it cannot handle anything but the most delicate care. It broke within 6 months, and withing two months after I paid to have it fixed because Kodak says I voided the warranty. Needless to say I won't buy Kodak's anymore either. I have decide to replace this camera with a compact Canon.

I bought the camera and an extra battery from amazon.com, and had it sent to my parents' house so that Andrea could pick it up while she was in the US. Well I check on my order today, and it says that it won't be sent until the 27th and would be delivered between the 4th and the 10th. Well Andrea leaves on the first flight on the 5th. So obviously this isn't going to work. As it turns out, buried behind all their offers for free shipping and "get it tomorrow," there is some fine print which reads:
Please note that your order may take an additional 3 to 5 business days to ship out from our fulfillment center(s). Transit time for Super Saver Shipping orders is 5 to 9 business days after shipping.

Now they don't say this you buy something. Not once does it mention that in addition to the additional transit time, they sit on your order for an extra week. As far as I can tell this is for no other reason than to discourage using the free shipping option by making the experience painful for regular amazon.com users (which would be more likely to push them in the Prime service which you pay $80 a year to get free two day shipping). A big company like amazon.com isn't putting in that much effort that they choose to wait to fill my order because there are so many other orders that paid for next day. If they had stated right on the order page, next to the free shipping option, I would have though to myself "Self, we need that camera to get delivered before that," and I would have picked either standard or even 2nd day shipping.

Add to all this that amazon.com doesn't want to interact with their customers at all, that's how they save money, they have no easy way to get in contact with someone to ask about the problem. I did manage to find an email for returns, so I sent my email to them, even though I am not looking for a return at this point. After I sent that, I managed to find the fine details about the free shipping.

The whole thing is ridiculous and, needless to say, I won't be purchasing things from amazon.com anymore. If you are going to tell me up front I can pay extra to get it by tomorrow, why won't you tell me that if I don't pay for shipping it's going to take 3 weeks to get my stuff(15 business days = 3 weeks for mortals wanting their electronics)? I would've gladly paid for it, but by hiding the facts from me, I am just angry now.

I guess that was longer than short.

Leaving on a jet plane

Andrea is the air, approximately 5:40 away from Dallas. What's disturbing about the site that I used to track the flight, http://www.flytecomm.com/cgi-bin/trackflight , shows a land speed of just over 700 miles per hour and an altitude of .... 0. Now that is because the plane is out of FAA airspace so that little bit of info isn't being tracked, but it still freaked me out for a brief second.

She'll be back in 2 weeks, but I'm already bored. There isn't enough people to eat all the food I want to cook, so I can't just spend my time doing that. I only have 2 seasons of Good Eats to catch up on. I suppose I'll find a way to preoccupy myself, as there is plenty of cleaning to do, since that suffered so I could prepare for her departure. I might run out of laundry to do by the time she gets back.

Almost there

Well, the time has come. Two days from now Andrea will be in a plane, flying towards Dallas. She'll make it to Wichita eventually. She has every intention of hanging out, eating and shopping with as many people as she can. If she doesn't visit you, don't take offense, there's a lot to fit into two weeks.

I'm still trying to make sure everything is prepared for her trip. We still need to buy the train ticket for saturday morning, though we finally got paid today, so we have money again. We've been paying with change for the last week. I suspect we'll get to the train station tomorrow after Andrea returns from her English camp. We also will have to pack her carry-on suitcase as soon as we can, since she will be leaving less than 12 hours after she returns with her suitcase. We sent the main suitcases to the airport yesterday, since wandering through the airport and train stations with three suitcases is quite difficult for one person.

Weather has been pleasent lately, though still randomly cloudy. I've only seen the mountain three times in the last two weeks. We have been getting thunderstorms more often recently. The only reason that is worth mentioning, is that I have heard more thunder in the last two months than the previous 11 months. Even the typhoon (hurricane for you westerners) that hit late last summer has zero thunder. It has been nice, however, as it reminds me of Kansas thunderstorms.

For those of you concerned about what I am doing while Andrea is gone, fear not, I have plenty of random recipes to try and chores to complete. I did check the ticket prices, just in case the last minute tickets were cheap and I would be able to go home for a reasonable price. $3500 isn't what I was hoping for. Andrea will just have to give everyone a hug for me.

No, I'm not dead

I've just been really busy with my family being here, and basically since they left I've been feeling really sick. I've got a a few hundred pictures to sort through so I can upload them. Maybe next week I'll feel better.

When will it end?

So, so busy. I can't wait for september. We get to clean the apartment for my parents tomorrow. Katherine leaves today. Some day next month maybe I'll get to celebrate the day I joined my better half. I might get around to posting the pictures from Tanabata next week while my family is out doing tourist-ing things.

Preparing for the beast!

4th of what?

I hope everyone back home had some good days off. They don't celebrate America's independance in Japan, I'm not sure why. They do however sell fireworks all summer long. While Lyndsi was here we managed to burn $4 worth of sparklers (which is probably 2-3x what you would get for $4 in the US.) Not exactly thrilling, but just about as lame as the rest of the holidays we've done in Japan.

Yesterday we went to Hiratsuka for the Tanabata festival. I don't know if I'm just not easy to impress, or if Andrea had talked it up too much, but it was very underwhelming. There were some neat looking "floats." I say floats, but they were just decorations mounted on poles all of the streets. There were some intersting food/animal/toy booths, but overall not really anything too exciting. I have a few pitcures I'll post, but Lyndsi took a bunch, and who knows when she'll have time to email them to me (she's moving back to the US in two weeks.) I alos have a video of some taiko drummers. I'll post that when I get some time.

5 days until Mt Fuji Round 2. I am not sure whether I am looking forward to it or not. Then round 3 two weeks after.

KU @ Tanabata

I guess I can't rotate this one, the downside to uploading stuff from my cell. They have a KU one every year.

Tanabata

This is a taiko drum concert presentation thing.

Woo thunderstorms and sky!!

So rain over night, nothing unusual. I woke up at 3 to the sound of torrential rain and almost constant thunder. I was a little annoyed that I lost 3 hours of sleep, but was plenty excited to get a real thunderstorm. This morning there was even a little blue sky. Mt Fuji was even peaking through the cloud cover. There's only a tiny little spot of snow left. I suppose I'll get to see it up close next week.

The more I clean this apartment, the more I realize how crappy it is. The wood panelled floor is falling apart, the paint is chipping off the walls and bathroom has mold stains from who knows how many years of neglect. I guess that's the problem with cheap housing like this. Oh well, I've seen worse at other people's places, so I'm glad it isn't.

Only the better half going home

Andrea will be going home alone in august. The price of the tickets went up 200 before I could buy it. I know people are going to be bummed not to see me, but there's not much I can do. Maybe there will be time when we move back to the US after next year.

Clouds and rain

I haven't seen the sun in weeks. Too bad.

We went to John's for this party. I ended up cooking for about half the time we were there because he had to pick people up at the train station and get more ingredients that he forgot. It was ok though, kept me away from some of the crazy drunk people. A bunch of them are leaving at the end of the month, so they decided to have one last hurrah. I fortunately didn't end up sloppy drunk like several of them. I only had about one beer. I suppose I can thank all the cooking for that.

Slowly getting things set for everyone to start visiting this weekend. Lyndsi then Katherine, then my family. After that the new JET arrives and then Andrea gets to go home for two weeks. Should be a fun time, busy, but fun.

The Joys of Line Drying and Rain

I put some towels out on Saturday. It is Wednesday, and they MIGHT finally dry out today. Clothes that have been drying since yesterday are still wet. It hasn't rained in two days. It's just so darn humid that the clothes can't let go of moisture. Oh well, I'll just dream of dryers for the next two months.

Late weekend

Andrea had to work this past Saturday, so our weekend didn't start until Sunday. We didn't do much, but Monday we decide to go back out to Gotemba and look for shoes for the mountain climbing ahead. I manage to spend $40 more on a pair of boot-shoes than on any pair of shoes in my history. Granted they were from Timberland, and they are very good, well made shoes, but I still had a personal struggle that delayed me buying shoes for about an hour. Andrea got a pair of snowboard-ish shoes. She needed something with a high ankle on it, as she rolled her ankle the last time we up and down. We also decided to pick up some imported corn chips for the dinner with the other Fuji-area JETs. Hopefully we will have some fun with everybody before they move back to their respective countries.

What rainy season?

There is rain in the forecast, every day, for 9 days. I suppose that's the definition of it, and I don't mind walking without the sun baking in fantastic tshirt lines on my skin, but It's still a little annoying. I enjoy dry clothes, this is making it hard. Oh well.

Andrea has to work this weekend AGAIN, but she gets monday off, so it is not a much of a problem. Next weekend Lyndsi is coming to hang out with us one last time, and to go to a festival in Hiratsuka with us. The weekend after that we have a dinner party at John's with some of the Fuji-area JETs before a lot of them go back, something like 80% of this prefecture are leaving. Then comes Katherine and my 2nd trip up Mt. Fuji. The next week my family arrives and the week after that will be my 3rd time up the mountain. Yeah I'm doing it twice with a two week break. Am I crazy?

We'll have 3 weeks then until one or both of us come home. Of course in that time we have 2 dinners we have to go to, one for the school and one for the prefecture. Andrea's new co-worker will be moving in (though I don't know how that will work, it seems that he and his wife are bringing their dog and I know our apartment doesn't allow pets. I don't know if her apartment allows them, but even then, the quarantine rules are pretty harsh if I remember correctly) so we'll have to assist them with getting settled I'm sure, even if they don't live in this apartment building.

A webmaster-like note, I'm going to be changing the set up of my posts. The idea is to just have the first paragraph shown, and then have a link to the entire post. That way longer posts won't distract from the other posts on the page. Makes it easier to avoid things if you're looking for something specific. It should be obvious once it happens, hopefully it won't be too confusing.

Didn't feel a thing

Yes there was a large earthquake today. I was no where near it, about 400 miles away. Andrea was in Hiratsuka with Katherine today, which was closer to the earthquake, but still too far to cause any real shaking. This was the largest earthquake in Japan since we've been here, a medium 6 on the Japanese intensity scale. 7 is the highest, and would be near catastophic. Here's a map of the quake .

I'm officially a loser

I just bought 2 tshirts with Metal Gear Solid 4 artwork (if you can really call it art) at Uniqlo (sort of like the gap) tonight. They were released to go along with the launch of the game. I guess all that matters is that I like them. Maybe I'll post some pictures tomorrow. Tonight is for sleeping.

Where in the world is Joe?

I know, I know. I complain about people not realy reading this, then I disappear for 3 weeks. I'm sorry. I've been busy (I know, old excuse) working on getting things set up for my family/Katherine to come here. In addition to that, I've felt like crap this week. Sort of similar to coming down with the flu, with a little sore throat tossed in for fun. I'll post a few times this weekend, to catch up on my insanity.

In response to a post a few weeks ago, I mentioned that we wouldn't be seeing Mt. Fuji for a while. People got confused and thought I was moving or going on a long trip. In reality, I'm doing nothing exciting. It's becoming rainy season here. It's partly cloudy 90% of the time, and mostly cloudy 50% of that. Rarely we'll have a clear day, maybe once every other week. This being the case, Fuji will be covered by clouds from now until August. And that's the rest of the story.

Some people may also be confused about my short post about Fuji Safari Park (FSP) back in May. Well here is the explaination. FSP is almost like a zoo, except its a little more open so the animals can run around. You can take a bus and go on a "safari" through the zoo feeding and petting the animals along the way. More importantly, you get to hold baby cats. Tigers, lions, etc. This makes for adorable pictures. Unfortunately, FSP was ending holding baby cats for the season, as they were getting too large and becoming potentially dangerous. Last day was May 31st if I remember correctly. Because of all that, we decided to go the last week of May to try and get in on the baby holding action. We grabbed info off their website which said they had buses running ever 50 minutes from Mishima and from Gotemba. Yeah, nothing in Fuji, go figure.

We got to Mishima at 945, the bus left at 930. No problem right? We'll just take the next one in 50 minutes. No luck, the only other bus came at 1230. I wasn't going to wait 3 hours for the next bus. We decide to ride the train to Gotemba, which is about 30 minutes from Mishima. We missed the first train from Numazu, so we had to wait 15 minutes for the second one. When we got to Gotemba, guess what? Bus left 4 minutes before we got there. The next bus was coming at 230. Did I mention that they stop letting you hold the babies at 1230? I was immedietly angry that they website said they run buses all the time when they only run them twice at each station. Obviously we missed our opportunity to go. We decided to go to outlet mall again and wander around. Andrea bought some clothes. I stayed angry.

Oh well, maybe another time.

Stupid websites

The website for Fuji Safari Park said the buses ran every 50 min. Well we've spent the last 3 hours only to find that they only run twice a day. We managed to miss both of the buses at two different stations. No lion cub holding for us.

We bought new electronic IC train passes but that hardly makes up for it. Maybe we'll go see Prince Caspian today instead.

Pic of Fuji. One of the last times we'll see it for a while.

We're going to try some phone posting today. I'm sure there will be times that it will be useful. I can send posts/photo's from my phone's email. It costs money of course, but what is the price of staying constantly connected to the rest of the world? Hmmm. Maybe it's not such a fantastic idea. Either way, the special emails are already in my phone, so if I ever want to the opportunity is there.

Busy times

Been a while sicne I last updated, sorry about that. I've been preoccupied with some stuff here. Setting up for various family members to start coming to the country among a few other things. I'll try to keep up.

We're having a "typhoon" today. 2nd of the season supposedly. I don't know when the first one was. The problem is they use "typhoon" for any tropical depression or hurricane. That's all these have been. Not full fledged big eye in the middle of the spinning clouds, but just a tropical storm. Lots of wind, some rain, maybe thunder if you are lucky. They need to add a new word sos they can differentiate the two main types of storms. There's no way to tell between a category 5 hurricane and a big thunderstorm. Another "lost in translation" moment.

I personally am excited for E3 this week. I'm expecting lots of announcements about some videogames that I like. I might even get to go to the Tokyo Game Show this fall. We'll see if that pans out.

Prices on airlines tickets went up this week, so it's looking less likely that I will come back. I told my mom, I could buy a PS3 (with half a dozen games) and the Nikon D80 (basically the only electronics I'll need for the next 5 years) for the same price as my plane ticket. Both of those things would last me years. A plane ticket will last me two weeks. We'll probably buy a ticket(s) in the next few weeks, so if the prices don't move, everyone will know by the middle of june.

Japan is a little backwards...

For those who didn't know, I brought my Wii that I bought earlier in the year, with me to Japan. At the time there was going to be no way for me to play japanese games on it, without getting and illegal modchip, so I didn't worry about it. Recently, two forms of software were released, both of which would allow me to play games from this country, without breaking the law. Andrea and I went to our local rental store today, only to discover that in Japan, renting games does not exist. Grocery stores and vending machines in the US do, but nothing in Japan. Blockbuster did at one point, so did Tsutaya, one of the biggest chains. Not anymore.

It's the same argument that game companies have in the US, that they don't make any money from rentals. Blockbuster doesn't pay them, they only make profit on the cost of the game when it is initially purchased. I guess that is why they don't do it here, because the game companies are refusing to allow it, and the rental companies just go along with it. Ridiculous. They rent DVD's and CD's everywhere, but not games.

For some awful reason, people here think that if you paid more for something, then is HAS to be better quality. In turn, all tv's are twice as much here as in the US. A 20 inch tube set will put you back $250, minimum. You can go to walmart and buy essentially the same thing for $80. 15inch LCD's cost $600+. For the land of great technology it is oppressively expensive. I know the dollar is weak right now, but it still is crazy that people pay that much for tv's. I'll deal with my 12 inch piece of junk, it'll never be worth it to me.

I love analysts

I was reading an article on how video publishers are watering down content by releasing sequels on a yearly basis, just to make money. Hmmm.....DUH!

Now this. 86% of a magnitude 7+ in 30 years huh? I'm going to predict an 80% chance of a tornado happening somewhere in South-Central Kansas this summer. Also a 75% chance that Lohan will end up back in rehab sometime in the next 2 years. I predict that OPEC will not see a problem with oil prices and make no effort to produce more oil in the next 6 months. 90% chance that MS will continue to serve XP to consumers simply because they don't want a backlash against Vista this year.

I should make a living doing this, easy money. Now back to your regularly scheduled blog~

Pictures of early morning drinking.

I went to the sake festival way back in march, remember? Well I finally got the pictures that Fiona had taken, so I put them up, here.

It would seem plans have changed for the next month as it seems we may be going to a party in hiratsuka next week, a baseball game in may, and phantom of the opera sometime before it leaves. The next month just got $600 more expensive.

Prices for airlines tickets hasn't changed in 3-4 weeks, so it's looking less likely that I'll be visiting KS in august. Who knows though, prices might nose dive if the seats aren't full in June.

News of the week.

1. Got paid late, normally it's in the morning of the 21st. Didn't show up until late in the afternoon. I have bills to pay!!!

2. Random dance festival at the central park. Old school, hip hop, and some kind of combination of the two. The traditional dances here start running together, they're all the same, even the music doesn't change much. Only the younger aged groups who incorporate some hip hop style and rock music really liven things up. Otherwise it tends to be boring. The actually hip hop dances were cool. The last group had a girl who went to Julliard in New York. They were the best by far.

3. I finally got my picture cd put together. The 4 copies I have will be going out soon. If you want one, let me know. I'll probably have someone in the US make a copy and send it to you, since shipping a CD from here is kind of expensive.

4. Golden week is coming up, but we're probably not going to do anything. It's a sat-tues(this year) when everyone in japan gets the days off basically. We'll probably stay home and keep low key, avoiding the crowds at the train station. Sometime in the next month we've got dinner with one of the english teachers at the school, and we'll spend the weekend in Tokyo soon. I'll finally get to go to the city that people from the rest of the world, think epitomizes all of Japan. The same way everyone thinks of the wizard of oz when you say 'Kansas.'

So I decided...

...I miss Kansas weather. It's windy and there's thunder. I've never been so excited to hear either. Almost never happens in Fuji. Maybe 3 times since we moved here. In 8 months I've heard thunder MAYBE 4 times. That is sad. It rains here all the time. It's just never good thunderstorm weather I guess. I'm not looking forward to rainy season here though. Rain for a month straight essentially. Cloudy for weeks at a time. From now until october.

On a plus I'm making cheesesteaks tomorrow!

New pictures

I add some more pictures to the Fuji album. A few from a Kansas day in Fuji, winds faster than the trains. One from yesterday near us. Nothing too exciting, but I wanted to let people know it's there.

Boredom

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFL4MjxiMl0

I made a video of KU's games against UNC and Memphis. I was bored this weekend haha.

Keep in mind, with all the videos I post, they're public. Youtube lets any idiot comment on a video if they have an account. If there is something offensive on there, I'll do my best to take it down. Just be warned, people are rude.

I want my 4 hours back

I was online with dell tech support all morning and part of the afternoon trying to get my wireless card to work. In the end the 2nd guy gave me the phone number to dell's japan support center, without solving my problem (he blamed it on my router the whole time. Which doesn't make sense if every other device I have works on the same network). "Is there anything else I can do for you?"

Give me back my 4 hours.

Pictures up, videos soon.

Pictures of the blossoms are up, and I'll be trying to post the videos soon.

Pictures here.

Video 1 here.

Video 2 here.

ROCK CHALK CHAMPIONS!!!

If you didn't watch, KU won. In overtime. In one of the great games I've ever seen. It was amazing to watch, and heartwrenching at the same time. I was sure they were out of chance when Collins was dribbling up court with 10 seconds left, but Chalmers always comes in when you need him most.

It's been an amazing year to be a fan in the Thimesch/Krauska household. Packers and Cowboys both did well in football, though they didn't get to the super bowl. KU won the Orange Bowl in january. Wisconsin and Marquette (both team I will always root for until they go against KU) both had good seasons. Oh and KU won the championship, did I mention that? (and finished the long story with Roy Williams, I hope never to hear about it again.

Andrea had me making 7 dozen cookies for her english club so they could show how much fun they have sometimes. They were trying to gain new members as well as showing off for the new, first years (yes first years, the school year here begins in April and ends in March.) I feel for school teachers, because we spent 50-60 bucks just trying to get everything for this (cookies weren't the only event). It can be rough, espcially this month, when you're running tight on a budget. If you want read about the cooking, check here.

We're planning on going to Hamamatsu way southwest of here for the kite festival in May. These are the kites that will kill you if you get hit because the lines are wires, not strings. Should be a good time.

Rock Chalk!!!

For all those that were under a rock, KU beat UNC. Happy to be a haven of KU spirit in a country so far removed from it all.

I would've posted more but I've been preoccupied with spring and computer issues. My laptops video card bit the dust for a day, a long 12 hour day. I hate trying to fix custom graphics cards with custom drivers. Just one more reason for everyone out there to avoid dell at all costs. Buy a mac, I hear they're shiny.

Cherry blossom season is upon us. I'm sure most of you saw the pictures of Washington DC with all the blossom trees they have there. It's much different actually being underneath them and smelling them from a distance. Very sweet, pretty too. There's about 6 different varieties in our area, though the ones that DC has are the most common. I'll post pictures tonight or tomorrow, maybe a video of the petals falling too.

We went to Hiratsuka over the weekend, hung out with Travis (from KU) and Willy-b(rapper friend) and his girlfriend. Good times. I ate some really spicy garlic pasta/soup. Made my eyes water, but I finished it. Also had a melon soda float. We managed to spend 3500 yen at the import store there as well (chips, cheese, brats, soups, spices). We probably spent more than we should have, but its cool, that's why we went.

This morning Andrea manage to get the NHK(tv government thing) guy off our back for the rest of the time we're here. They charge you like 25 bucks a month to you the tv service here, but we never use it. We're too busy watching US to watch the TWO channels we can actually get. Our friends get at least 5 or 6. That is why we told them our tv broke in january. We paid our due from december and they left. It's really ridiculous to pay for over the air broadcasting, imagine the FCC coming to your house because you use the basic tv that they offer and charging you $25 per tv(yes it's not per household, its per tv). Ridiculous.

We're finally going to make plans to hang out in tokyo sometime in May. Should be exciting. Look for those pictures, and maybe a video or two.

In the land of magical dreams....

We went to Tokyo disney this weekend.

First, everyone wears mickey ears there. Everyone. Old ladies, 1 yearolds, teenagers. All of them. Second, they probably have 50 different kinds of ears you can wear, from just about every theme or moive they have. I personally chose the Jack Sparrow ears. That's all I have to say on that.

It's basically the same as Disney in the US. A few different rides, fish on half the menu, churros everywhere for some reason, oh and 40,000 japanese teenagers. We went on a weekend though. some of the rides I think were more funny because they had japanese voices to them. Buzz Lightyear, check. Roger Rabbit, check. Piglet, check. Micky Mouse, big check. It's strange knowing the original voices and then hearing the japanese version, you can't prepare yourself for it.

Even though we were far too old for most of the rides we went on, that didn't stop us from having a good time. It got cold at night, but not so bad that we wanted to leave. The lines averaged maybe 90 minutes of wait time, even if they said more. Fast passes were a great help and we got to do just about all the rides we wanted. Though by the time we decided we could go on splash mountain it was going to be too cold to get wet. They girls even managed to get me to go on 2 roller coasters, so .... yeah for that.

One thing that was amazingly strange, the sponsership. Maybe Disney does this in the US and I don't remember, but it was in odd places. Pirates of the Carribean was sponsered by Kirin, a beverage company, but best know for its beer. The parades even had the final float dedicated to the sponser. It was odd, I've never seen a Disney-like parade that had a sponser float. Public parades for events or holidays, yes. It all just struck me as odd.

Pictures are up on the site http://picasaweb.google.com/heman8400/TokyoDisney take a gander if you desire.

Drinking on a Sunday Morning.

http://japaneats.blogspot.com/2008/03/nihonshu-in-morning.html

We went to a drinking festival yesterday. Met up with some friends of the friends of our friend. Yeah, that's right, it was still fun because everybody was drinking and having a good time. We all share the sake and the food, and it was fun to meet up with new people. Even if they were making fun of me for being a wife and not speaking japanese.


I've got a few pictures of the event, but our friend Fiona had a better camera and took most of the group shots, so I'm going to get them from her. Once I have that, and I figure out the location of the festival (we took 2, 45 min buses to get there, so I only have a general idea of where it was) I'll post them.

We're going to disney on monday, and spending the weekend in kurihama with lyndsi. Maybe we'll do some karaoke or go see the blossoms in tokyo. All I know is that I'm going to miss the first games of the NCAA tourney. KU got its number 1 seed by beating texas a few hours ago, but I couldn't watch that one either (3am here when it started). Wisconsin is in the same bracket, so if it comes down to those two I'm going to have to root for KU. Marquette is in the south bracket so I'll be able to root for them for a while.

So I hate the drink blog.

And I decided to change it. It will still exist as a placeholder for a few months, but I'll delete it after a little while. I'll start posting all kinds of recipes and commentary on the food here. Look forward to it!

http://japaneats.blogspot.com/

I miss insulation.

It's cold here. Not real cold, just low 30's. Wisconsin has had at or below zero with windchills below -20. The difference is that the US knows what insulation is. Andrea asked her teachers one day, because we found out that in Hokkaido, where it has similar weather to Wisconsin, they use insulation because of how cold it gets, her teachers responded it was because "Our houses are built for summer." What?! insulation is only good for winter you say? Explain why people use a thermos to keep their gatorade cold then. Freaking crazy people here, let me tell you. No matter, it's 38 in our kitchen right now, it'll heat up once the sun hits it, just in time for me to make dinner.

I've managed to figure out how to make a good variety of dishes that I didn't know how to make in the US. Or at least not the way I have to make them here. Meatballs for subs/pasta with homemade tomato sauce, cheese/meat ravioli, homemade macaroni and cheese, even crepes. I can also make lots of other simpler dishes based on white sauce because they sell cans of it in the store. It can essentially replace "cream of" soups in any recipe. Gratin sauce in a can works too. I'll have to figure out how to cook without it inthe US when we finally move back.

Speaking of, price for this are just so bad, they haven't moved in the last 3-4 weeks except for going up a few dollars. I need to get back with STA travel, because they might give us $1000 off at least andrea's ticket. They had basically the same prices as eeryone else as well. We'll wait a few more weeks before we decide what to do. Hopefully that will save us some dough. Plus we need to get some real times out of Andrea's school for the 8th of August so that we know what time we can leave. We can catch the last flight out of Tokyo at 530 and get back to wichita at 9pm so we have a whole extra day to crash from the jet lag.

Back to the grind, chores are calling.

Back in Fuji

We got back on monday, I'm just a little slow. Lyndsi sent the pictures she took, so I posted those up yesterday. We got there at 8 am, we took a 6:30 flight >.< Had to leave the hotel near the airport at 5. It was a good trip though. There was about 12 inches of snow on the ground there. It never warms past 30 degrees and it snows at least a little just about every day, so it adds up. At least they didn't need to truck in snow for the festival this year. We actually were not there for the festival days, it started on tuesday. It was cheaper to go from sat-mon so that's what we did. We still got to see a bunch of the statues and ice figures. While it was colder, it was less windy there than in Korea, so we weren't as cold.

We stayed at the sheraton in sapporo and let me tell you, it was fantastic. They have free buffet breakfast almost every day. They have a bell-person bring you bags to your room before you check in, and they're all really polite. Many of them spoke english very well, so it wasn't a stuggle asking for information or checking in/out. Definitely stay there if you decide to visit sapporo. It's about 10 minutes from downtown by train and about 2 minutes from the train station.

Really really awesome trip. I ate my first ramen at a real ramen shop, and got to see real snow. The gyoza there were fantastic too (obviously not the frozen, poisoned ones from china). It was an odd experience, but at least I finally did it. Check out the pictures, the sculptures were cool.

Man, jet fuel is expensive...

Right now its looking to be about 4k for us to come back in august. That seems like a lot but Andrea really wants to try and make it back so I think we're going to shoot for it. We might be able to get at least a 1k off by actually going to the STA travel agency in japan, they give discounts to JETs. That would help a lot. Even with the higher prices in japan (3900 for both rather than 3700) and the extra costs on the credit card associated with international purchases, it would save us 500+. we'll probably look at it more seriously closer to the end of march when prices will get close to the bottom, and we'll have a better idea what we'll have to spend. On top of plane tickets, we'll have to spend 300ish on trains for both there and back, as well as money for sending out bags to and from the airport (because tokyo station = crappy with more than one bag). Potentially another 1k for a hotel room if we decide/can't get a place to stay while we're there. On top of all that, Andrea is going to want to shop, maybe I will too. That I would expect will set us back another 1k. So I'm expecting 6k to come home and visit. Obviously that should be a little high, but I'd rather plan for more and have extra money leftover, than not enough and haveing 4k sitting on my credit card for 6 months. We'll see what happens, if we decide we can't save the money or we can't make the days work, we won't do it. Its at least something to look forward to!

Woo, Time Flies...

I really didn't intend for three and a half weeks to go by without posting anything, but that's what happened. Andrea and I have been dealing with settling back in, figuring out what to do about staying or moving back, as well as looking at plane prices for a variety of trips we could take depending on what we decided to do.

We did decide we're probably staying put for the next year and a half. The downside of that is, we wanted to come back to Wichita for 10 days in August, but Andrea's school has 4 required days that they will not give vacation for, one is on the 8th the rest are from the 20th-22nd. That gives us a 10 day window of travelling time, but when you include 2 days of actually traveling plus a day for jet lag recovery, that gives us a solid 6 or 7 days to visit, and that seems worthless. We want to try and work something out, but we're just not sure when we could fit the time. School starts back up at the beginning of September for Andrea so we can't go then. My family is going to be in Japan until the 31st of August so we wouldn't be able to go then (although Andrea may be accompanying her 2nd year class to Australia for the first week of July, so traveling in July would be hard anyways.) Either way its hard to figure out what exactly to do. The cheapest prices for tickets to ICT was from the 6th until the 18th, so changing that will cause the price to jump 500 a person. We'll figure something out. Andrea was thinking maybe xmas, who knows.

Oh and I would like to mentiopn that for the first time in well over a decade, I ate and enjoyed fish. Yes, that's right, FISH. One was tuna I'm sure. The other was unknown. The third was crab, not a fish, but all seafood has tasted the same for the last 12? years. If you can imagine, for me, every piece of fish tasted like it was going bad. Everyone has had bad fish, knows that taste. I tasted that every time, until last night. The texture freaked me out a little, but I didn't gag. I even enjoyed the crab, so much so that I finished what Andrea did not. Maybe it was the beer, but it was pretty darn good. Hopefully this is the start of actually being able to eat fish. Of course then I read an article about how tuna is showing signs of high mercury. Great.

We're going to Sapporro next weekend for the start of the snow festival. Hopefully we'll get to see some neat stuff. It snowed for the first time in Fuji early last week. It even stuck to the ground for a few hours. There ought to be more when we get to Hokkaido. They make massive sculptures and mazes out of snow. Last year they had to truck it in, but it seems that it will be snowing the days before we get there, so they might not have to this year. I'm expecting to take a lot of pictures, so look for that the 2nd week of February.

Going Home

We leave in the morning, I just uploaded the last of our pictures. The total is almost 300 now, I'm sure I need to delete some, but I'll check that out on monday once I have time. Andrea has the rest of the week off (vacation) so I won't get a chance until then. I'll post again about the trip in a few days.