| Monday, July 26, 2004 |
| In one hour, men will come to our
apartment to shut off our gas and electricity. It has been one
amazing year in Yamagata. But, I really should go now and finish
cleaning the kitchen. |
| posted at 7:53 AM by Chris |
|
 |
| Wednesday, July 21, 2004 |
| Just five days left until we split
town, barreling south to the airport in Tokyo on a superexpress
shinkansen. I've been busy packing boxes and attending farewell
parties, but Angie and I took a few minutes to clean
out our keitai phones since they'll stop working forever
once the flight home gets airborne. |
| posted at 1:34 PM by Chris |
|
|
| Saturday, July 17, 2004 |
| Possibly the only footage from CBS's
Survivor that I found truly interesting was in the
last episode of the very first season: Rich Hatch had just won
a million dollars, and now the camera crews followed him around,
alone on the island. He sat on the beach and gazed calmly into
the ocean, pondering aloud his newfound fortune and its potential
to affect the rest of his life.
Only nine days remain until I leave Yamagata. And right on
schedule, everything about life in this city is on the brink
of repeating itself: The weather, the scenery, even the size
of the spiders hanging from telephone poles, are all lining
up to match what I saw the day I arrived here nearly one year
ago. Once again, I see bright red banners at the train station,
inviting me and everyone to come see the annual Hanagasa parade.
The seasons have come full circle, and it seems only fitting
that I will be leaving Japan on the exact same day I arrived
last year.
|
| posted at 9:19 PM by Chris |
|
|
| Monday, June 28, 2004 |
| Last week we braved the fog and
mist to find the beautiful crater lake Okama with Yukie and
Maki. It was one crazy time all right—bears, snakes, altitude
sickness, getting lost for days on end, finally clawing our
way back through the rocks and woods, fighting off hunger and
cold winds—but unfortunately, my camera stopped working
right after the nice pretty touristy part of the trip, so here
you go, sorry about that. |
| posted at 4:03 PM by Chris |
|
|
| Wednesday, May 26, 2004 |
| My crazy brother Josh, when faced
with the choice of A) spending a week in the
rough-and-tumble lands of eerie rural Japan, or B)
anything else, chose A) in a heartbeat. So
we of course treated him to the sights, sounds, and yes, smells
of Yamagata during his visit to see us. Pictures
are just now beginning to stream in. |
| posted at 4:48 PM by Angie |
|
|
| Wednesday, May 12, 2004 |
| Clever Japan stuck a whole bunch
of its national holidays together...and voila! The
result is something called Golden
Week, which we spent visiting friends near and far: Takeda-san's
parents took us on a hunt for hilltop wild vegetables, Yukie
and Makiko tricked us into scaling Mt. Haguro, and the Fukase
family took us to a great big local festival. For being a holiday,
we sure did get a lot of exercise this past week. |
| posted at 3:16 PM by Chris |
|
|
| Wednesday, April 28, 2004 |
| For my birthday last weekend, I
got an awesome present: a freak snowstorm out of nowhere, the
only snow all month long. We headed south through the snow with
the Fukase family, to the city of Yonezawa for the karate
championship. And afterward, they even took us out for a
traditional birthday feast at an ultra-spicy
Korean BBQ restaurant; my eyes filled up with tears even before
the food arrived at the table. |
| posted at 12:23 PM by Chris |
|
|
| Friday, April 16, 2004 |
| Could...could it be? Is that...sunshine
outside? Oh, frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! Winter seems to
have now blown away. Everyone in the
city is completely preoccupied with the sakura blossoms which
are out in full force this week and next. |
| posted at 2:49 PM by Chris |
|
|
| Wednesday, March 31, 2004 |
| Today sucked. I lost my bike key,
plus a bunch of people I work with every day at the Prefectural
Education Center vanished today in a
puff of smoke and sayonara. |
| posted at 7:15 PM by Angie |
| Update: I found my bike key. Yay! |
posted at 9:04 PM by Angie |
|
|
| Monday, March 15, 2004 |
| Amy came all the way from Florida
just to visit li'l ol' us! Okay...and to see Japan as well,
I suppose. Our plan to run her ragged all over the country is
off to a great start: After introducing her to Angie's co-workers
in Tendo City, we all braved the mountainous perils of the holy
temple complex at Yamadera. |
| posted at 7:28 PM by Chris |
|
|
| Monday, March 1, 2004 |
| During what can only be described
as a serious bout of seasonal affectation disorder, Chris and
I put our longing for sunshine to good use and came up with
a shiny new web site
detailing last summer's lazy trip through Europe. |
| posted at 9:08 PM by Angie |
|
|
| Wednesday, February 18, 2004 |
| Our quest to collect as many snow
festival trips as possible is nearing its completion. With last
week's snow lantern festival
in Yonezawa and this weekend's upcoming trip to Mt. Zao, I shall
safely be able to say that I do not ever want to see snow again. |
| posted at 4:44 PM by Chris |
|
|
| Thursday, February 12, 2004 |
| Brr-r-r! Angie and I are back from
our cold northern trek to Hokkaido, where we (along with quite
a few other foreigner English teachers) explored
the city of Sapporo as part of its annual snow festival.
|
| posted at 1:55 PM by Chris |
|
|
| Friday, January 30, 2004 |
| So after six months in Japan, I
figured it was high time to add Japanese language support to
this web site, now available from the top right corner of this
page. But what I'm really excited about is the site's
new Engrish filter (an English approximation of what this site
looks like to Japanese people who read the auto-generated translation).The
pages might take a few moments longer to load, but it's worth
the wait. For
example... |
| posted at 12:13 AM by Chris |
|
|
| Monday, January 12, 2004 |
| We are back from a weekend trip
to the snowy mountainous
perils of Gassan, to which we were once again fortunate
enough to be invited by Fuji-sensei and his family. The scenery
certainly had changed since our last trip there in October.
Particularly exciting were our first forays into cross-country
skiing, snowshoeing, and a magical adventure I like to call
"treasure hunt." |
| posted at 4:03 PM by Chris |
|
|
| Saturday, January 3, 2004 |
| Happy New Year! We spent our holiday break exploring South (and a very small
part of North) Korea, at the invitation of our longtime Korean friends Soon-ho and Ja-woo.
Soon-ho's shih-tzu just had puppies a month ago, that alone made the trip worth it. Plus we spent New Year's back in Japan, down in Tokyo and even further south
in the famous temple/shrine capital of Kamakura, Japan's capital back in the thirteenth century. |
| posted at 8:14 PM by Chris |
|
|
| Saturday, December 20, 2003 |
| Ho ho ho! Merry Almost Christmas! I gave Angie and Chris just
what they wanted this year: a snowstorm right outside their window. Their neighbors and friends
tried to warn them that yes, the snow was real
and not just a rumor, but those two kids from Florida refused to believe it. Ha ha ha - er,
I mean - ho ho ho! |
| posted at 11:20 AM by Santa |
|
|
| Sunday, November 16, 2003 |
| So in keeping with our site theme of
"quantity, not quality," here's another batch of pictures,
this time of my persimmon (kaki)-carving class I gave a while ago at Yamanobe High School.
Since pumpkins are a touch expensive in Japan, I opted for the cutesy
little kaki fruits instead. They're just like pumpkins but smaller and
tastier (the students spooned out the insides and ate them prior to
carving faces into them). |
| posted at 4:21 PM by Angie |
|
|
| Monday, October 27, 2003 |
| Over the weekend we were invited
by Aoyagi-sensei and her family to their house in Shinjo. We
also got to see Yamadera, a famous site of religious importance.
Also on the top-secret itinerary was a river boat cruise down
the beautiful Mogami River and glimpsing Edo-period history
(along with maiko dance performances) in the city of Sakata.
The pictures are hot
off the digital press, so grab them quick. |
| posted at 2:36 PM by Chris |
|
|
| Monday, October 20, 2003 |
| Every week brings less and less
spare time, maybe I should stop joining so many clubs and activities.
Two days ago we were invited to accompany Fuji-sensei, his wife,
daughter, and about 20 other junior high students and their
families for a hiking and
beechnut-picking field trip up on the south side of Mt.
Gassan, one of three famous mountains making up the Dewa Sanzan
region. |
| posted at 1:09 PM by Chris |
|
|
| Tuesday, October 7, 2003 |
| Last night around 9:00pm, I experienced my first earthquake.
I would have grabbed my camera and photographed the furniture doing its crazy little dance,
but I was too busy being horrified and listening to the walls and floors creak and shudder.
Apparently, tectonic plate theory is true after all.
|
| posted at 12:42 PM by Chris |
|
|
| Monday, September 29, 2003 |
| Last Thursday I got to be one of
four judges for a prefectural (kind of like a state) English
speech contest. The kids were amazing. Choosing a winner was
very difficult. Over the weekends, Chris and I went to the school
festival at Yamanobe Senior High, one of my two schools. It
was crazy, yo. Check out the pix. |
| posted at 8:14 PM by Angie |
| No, we didn't feel the earthquake.
We haven't felt one at all yet, though apparently they've been
going on all around us. Last weekend in Tokyo, there was a 5.5
quake out in Tokyo Bay. Not that we'd have known without my
mom sending me a message about it. Then an enormous 8.0
quake struck Hokkaido (where's that?) yesterday morning.
No sign of that one down here in good ol' Yamagata, either. |
| posted at 6:56 PM by Angie |
|
|
| Wednesday, September 24, 2003 |
| We headed to Tokyo
last weekend to spend a few days soaking in the sights of the
country's capital—little did we know we'd be literally
soaked thanks to Typhoon #15. Although it rained for half our
trip, we still enjoyed a night of kabuki theater, the final
day of Grand Championship sumo wrestling, and a day at sea .
. . DisneySea, that is! Here in Yamagata, today is the first
day I really needed to wear a jacket outside, br-r-r-rrr. |
| posted at 4:21 PM by Chris |
|
|
| Friday, September 12, 2003 |
| I got off my lazy butt and managed
to score a few jobs. I'm teaching several adults English at
an evening eikaiwa (conversation class), plus I will be singing
Itsy Bitsy Spider and playing harmonica for over 100 kindergarten
students starting in October as part of my new teaching duties
at Yamamoto Gakuen. Two days ago, Kent and I climbed to the
top of nearby Mt. Chitose just for kicks—I wish we'd brought
water bottles with us, though. |
| posted at 1:02 PM by Chris |
|
|
| Saturday, August 30, 2003 |
| I began teaching this week, with
a total of six classes over three days at Yamanobe Senior High
School. I found the last three days more tiring than any other
so far in Japan, with the possible exception of the first two
days of jetlag back in July. Hearing another language and struggling
to understand it for hours on end puts a strain on the brain.
Tomorrow night Chris and I are going out for dinner with our
two new Japanese friends, Tomoko and Mika. |
| posted at 10:51 PM by Angie |
| Whew! We've
been in Japan just a touch over a month now, and Chris and
I both agree that it is finally beginning to feel like we
live here. The miracle of the Internet has finally come to
#202 after a long, long wait. At the moment, the content on
this site is a touch on the skinny side, but that will change.
Check back once every two weeks if you can. We'll be updating
at least that often. |
| posted at 10:54PM by Angie |
|
