Monday, October 30, 2006

Move along little dawgie.

Well howdy doo? Things are good here. I'm feeling good, works been better lately. Things are good with hunbun. I am working on fixing the other thing.
Yesterday I went to a place called "yukigayotsuka" to see the area that I'm hoping to move to. I'm currently on a waiting list, with no real idea when the place will come available... but I went to check out the area anyway. It's not too bad, the place is about a min walk from the station, and a grand total of about 14 mins to work, it's a pretty decent place, the best part is that it's only one train line to work. I'll let ya know if anything happens!

Friday, October 27, 2006

Ham-mer Time!

I lied, one more post tonight, one more thing to talk about. CONGRATULATIONS NIPPON HAM FIGHTERS! Tonight, Nippon Ham won the Japan Series with a 4-1 win over the Chunichi Dragons at the Sapporo Dome in Hokkaido. The Fighters won the series 4 games to 1 to win their first Japan Series in 44 years, the second one in their history. The Fighters are from Sapporo, in Hokkaido (moved from Tokyo a couple of years back, because of the over-crowding of teams in the Tokyo area) and the Dragons are from Nagoya, in Aichi prefecture. I'm not really a fan of either team, but I would say that I probably dislike the Dragons more. This time I was pulling for the Fighters because of their center fielder, Tsuyoshi Shinjo, more commonly known simply as Shinjo. He proclaimed during the season that this would be his last year after, I believe, 14 years as a pro. He spent some time (I think 3-4 years) in the US, and before that was a member of my favorite team, the Hanshin Tigers. Anyway, congrats Nippon Ham, and congrats Shinjo! It was a good ride!

Thursday, October 26, 2006

i love elipses...

Well, hello reader, how are things? Things good? It's been awhile, I just haven't felt like writing anything lately. I did try to write something last night, but blogger was down, and I spent like an hour just trying to get into where I could post a new entry, so I just gave up and here I am today... oooh, there's the elipses again, love 'em! So, I googled "no airplay" again, and guess what, up to #15! wahooooo! Don't know why that matters, just interesting. So, last night, I busted out my cold weather clothes. As evidenced by this picture: well, that's gonna have to wait because blogger isn't being receptive to uploading photos. But the jist of it is that the seasons, they are a changing. It's getting colder, and it's nice, I love this time of year, but I've been down lately. I haven't been motivated to do really anything lately, work, shop, cook, clean, blog, whatever it is, I haven't been up for it. I'm not sure why, I guess the easy way out is to say it's because of the changing seasons, but I don't really believe that... elipses... I think it's mostly from stress, I guess that's an easy answer too, but I think it's probably a big part of it. Stress, of course at work, stress at home, and stress in my relationship. Let my clarify, first at work: it seems like the past couple weeks at work I have had an unbalanced number of difficult students. I can deal with them most of the time, but in smaller doses, not all of my lessons, everyday, it's difficult. Today was better, I actually had 2 classes with students I really like. yeah! So, next I'll skip to the relationship difficulties. Don't get me wrong, things are good, everytime we meet, we have fun, and it's great when we meet, the problem lies only in the chances we have to meet are few and far between. We met yesterday, we had fun as always. It's just that we are both busy. It seems that lately hunbun has been making a real effort to come see me, and meet me for dinner, or lunch, but I haven't done the same. I feel guilty about that, but on my days off I haven't wanted to do anything at all, I've been so tired... so... something. Sorry hunbun, I'll try harder. The last in the list is the problems at home. I haven't liked this place since I moved in, for many reasons, too far from the station, too old, too dirty, too loud, too exspensive and so on, but the worst part has been the roommates I've had here. I have to move out, I can't stand it anymore, and so today I put my name on a waiting list for a Sakura House apartment. Sakura House is a company that rents apartments, guesthouses, and dorms to forieners here in Japan. There's no idea when the apartment will become available, or how many people are already on the waiting list, but it's a cool looking apartment with a private kitchen in the room. The one drawback is that it has a shared bathroom/shower. I can live with that. It's located in a good place, close to several convinent stations, a little bit further from work than where I live now, but not too much. It's also closer to the station, now I have a 15-20 min walk (however, I use a bike) and the other place is about 8 mins to one station, or 12 to another, or 15 to a third, good location. Anyway, I think I've just about run out of stuff to talk about for today, anyway, enjoy, later...

Thursday, October 12, 2006

back for the first time

No airplay is the place to be! I just thought I'd throw that in because when you google "no airplay" this site shows up at about #23 in the listings. It also pops up with a quote from probably my worst post, the "sometimes you feel like a nut" beauty. Anyway, by including the title of the blog in the post I might bump that off and replace it with this one... we'll see. I'll google it again after I finish this post.

Anyway, onto the fun and games!
Saturday night I headed up to Matsumoto city with hunbun to visit our friends who are living there. Matsumoto is located in Nagano prefecture which was the host of the 1998 Olympic winter games. While we were there we did some hanging out, we visited Matsumoto castle for a Soba festival.

We walked around, and ate some soba and other food. It was pretty cool, the last time I went to Matsumoto castle I couldn't visit it because it was under construction. I wasn't really planning to visit the castle, but since the soba festival was there we went to check it out, and it was pretty cool, glad we went. After the festival we went back to fu-chan's and had dinner and drinks with her, and her husband. It was pretty cool, really good food, and geat tequilla! I love tequilla! Fu-chan and I burned though a bottle (with hunbun and yu-chan chippin in a little, but I drank probably more than half myself) and partied on until they all passed out. I was the last one standing eventhough I put down quite a bit more than anyone else. It was a good evening.

The next day we said good by the the happy couple and tooled around Matsumoto, hunbun and I, for a bit. We had coffee, and did a little shopping, and then borded the train back to the mighty Tokyo.
It was a bit bitter sweet, well, bitter.




Back in Toyko hunbun and I hung out, had dinner, and went to bed. The next day, was... my b-day! Yeah! The big 27! congrats me! Hunbun and I slept in late, and had a nice breakfast, took a nap and then went out to Azabu-juban, an area in Tokyo that I saw on TV earlier in the day, and they had a bean shop that I thought looked interesting, so we went there and then just walked around. We saw a couple of cool shops in the area, of course hunbun wanted to stop at all of the bread shops. We went to the bean store and picked up some cool snacks (very tasty.) We also found a cool organic grocery store, not that I'm really into all of that, but it was pretty cool anyway. Later that night, for my b-day dinner we went to.... you guessed it! An An! But wait, not the regular An An, this time we went to one in Meguro, it was pretty much the same, delicious, and cheap! Wahoo! The next day, hunbun had to go to work, and that was the end of that. I spent the rest of the day doing laundry and watching movies and such, and today, back to work.... :(

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

untitled


Well, where to begin... I guess my last post was on friday (sat morning) and it was a doozie. Anyway, since then I've had some good times.I went bowling, and got to wear a bowling pin costume, and it was rad! I didn't do so hot, but it had been a long time, and had fun anyway.




On Tuesday myself and Jacky (code name) went to an exibit in Akasaka-mitsuke. First time I have ventured to that part of the city, and it was fairly cool. We went to see a French artist, named Henri Riviere's work.
Between 1888-1902 he created what he called "Les Trente-six Vues de la Tour Eiffel," or "36 views of the Eiffel Tower." It was an homage to Japanese artist Hokusai, who's "36 views of Mt. Fuji" is probably the most famous collection of Ukiyo-e (wood block prints) ever made. It was quite impressive the way he captured the feeling of the japanese style in a completely un-japanese setting. Really good stuff. Afterwards Jacky and I walked around and enjoyed the garden area outside the museum/hotel. Later in the evening I met up with some co-workers at the 200 yen bar again and enjoyed drinking and soccer until late in the evening, it's always a good time!


Next on the list was today. I hopped on a train to Chiba to see the grand master of the Ukiyo-e style, Utagawa Hiroshige. It was really a treat. I've been a big fan of his for a long time. It was a special treat, and well worth the hour trek out there. The showing had about 200 pieces of work from several different artists (around 100 of them were from hiroshige.) The show focued on the Tokaido, and Kisokaido areas. It was really good stuff. It was also the first time I've been out to chiba to do something besides visit the airport, so it was interesting to see things like the upside-down monorail.














Oh! I almost forgot! I finally tried the squid ink curry! Hunbun and I went to coco ichi and she ordered it and I tried it, and to be honest, it was actually pretty good, who knew!?! Here's a pic of it, and it's too bad, I think I'll have to wait till next summer to try it again, I think the end of September was the end of the run, but if I see it again, I might give it another shot!