Three Days

hey all,

This Friday is the Emperor's Birthday, which is a national public holiday in Japan, and that means that our winter vacation starts on Friday, or Thursday evening, if you want to think of it that way. So we only have Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday to "get through" before break starts.

And I do mean get through. The class I've been given to teach in the mornings can read OK, but their spelling, focus, listening ability, discipline and comprehension level is atrocious. They're around 3 years old, and I swear that two of them in particular are actively trying to piss me off. Just managing to fill the 4 hours of class time is something of a challenge, because their attention spans are so short and their vocabulary is so limited.

I finished the first book of The Mistborn Trillogy. Not bad, and actually good enough that I picked up the second book in the series.

Michi and I went shopping this Sunday and finally picked up a small rack to stack our bowls and plates on. Up to now, we'd been using half of the cardboard box that our vacuum came in, reinforced with some extra cardboard slats to keep the top from squeezing shut.

There's still Christmas shopping to do, unfortunately, and of course my daily regime of hot food to try to keep the cold at bay and of course video games.

Cheers,

Hot Stuff

hey all,

So last week I was laid up by some food poisoning or something else that gave me a 4 day stomach ache, tons of gas, diarrhea, and a slight fever. And now I'm going through something like my fourth or fifth cold of the season. As part of my concerted campaign to get rid of it, I eating hot oatmeal for breakfast, a hot lunch, a hot dinner of soup with hot tea, taking hot showers followed by hot baths, and sleeping with thermal pajamas under a fleece top and bottom. Oh, and I'm taking some cold medicine. My usual stuff this time, not that powdery rancid cinnamon crap that didn't help at all for my last cold.

I finished Neal Stephenson's Reamde and I've just started Brandon Sanderson's The Final Empire, the first book of his Mistborn Trillogy. Reamde was quite good, two major action sequences, plus the usual Stephensonion rants and random interesting stories and ideas thrown into an eclectic mix. The Final Empire is pretty good so far, but I'm not sure I like the way his characters talk or interact with each other sometimes. I mean, it is a high fantasy series in the spirit of JRR Tolkein, Tad Williams, Robert Jordon, or GRR Martin, but he has a bunch of thieves sitting around planning a mission by brainstorming problems and possible solutions on a chalkboard, like something out of Ocean's Eleven. Or there are parts where they're talking military strategy, but in his fantasy setting, the world has been ruled under one empire for over 1000 years, and most people should even be familiar with military thinking, let alone the kind of thinking that his characters espouse.

I also had to go into the city office and take care of some health insurance stuff, both personally and so I could turn in a few forms for work.

AM classes got all switched around last week, but I think the students and the teachers, including myself, have mostly adjusted.

That's all for now.

Cheers,

G4m3r

hey all,

Do any of you use Google's Chrome web browser? Michi has started using it, and I was tempted to give it a try, since I have a gmail account, blog through Blogger.com, and own an Android smartphone. My plan was to log on to this website, and type up this entry. BUT for some reason, Chrome wouldn't bring up the interface. I mean the program just hung there for a whole minute. Since when is a web browser designed by Google incompatible with a website owned by Google? That is like not being able to play a Blu-Ray disc (which was developed and backed mostly by Sony) on a Sony PlayStation 3. Anyway, I logged out and I don't think I'll be going back to Chrome any time soon.

I completed the penultimate assignment for my second curriculum design class last weekend, and got 29/30 on it. One of the questions I made was worded a little non-standardly, and I didn't include an answer key. I've got the last assignment due this weekend, and then I don't have another class until January 18th, which is a relief. The stress of trying to keep up with climbing, class, work, and yes, games, has been wearying. To top it all off, I seem to keep catching one bug or another every few days. Just after a week of taking medicine and when it finally seems to be getting better or even gone, I get hit with another bug which has me hacking, wheezing, and suffering with sinus headaches.

 The medicine I'm taking is this orange powder that you place on your tongue and down with big glasses of water. It tastes something like rancid cinnamon: sweet and fiery, and then with a sour and somehow cloying aftertaste.

I've been putting in a few hours each day to one game or another. Skyrim is still incredibly fun, and such a broad experience. The number of characters and their viewpoints, wants, and the quests they give you really draw you into the game and make it difficult to stop: you keep saying "Just after one more quest..." And I've already mentioned the crazy fact that you can mine ore, take it to a smelter and refine it, take the ingots to a blacksmith and forge your own weapons, then take them to a grindwheel and hone them, then take them to an enchanting table, and put a magical ability on them. Apparently for those interested, you can also marry 60 different characters in the game.
Dark Souls continues to be challenging, but I have defeated several other bosses since my last post, and I have leveled up about 10 times and greatly improved my weapons.
I completed Batman, but I started the NG+, which is gamer speak for New Game +. This is basically where you play the game from the beginning again, but all the experience and gadgets, etc stay with your character. The upshot is that the game becomes much more challenging: since you start the game with so much equipment and power, the game designers make the enemies tougher, there are more of them, and some of the aids of normal mode are taken away. For example, in NG+ there are no longer any flashing marks above enemies heads to signal that they are about to attack, you just have to watch them carefully to counterattack or get hit and take the damage. The main motivation for going through the NG+ is to collect the Riddler trophies, which unlock artwork, extra maps to practice fighting and stealthing on, and which also let you rescue hostages who are scattered throughout the city.

 I haven't neglected my reading, though. I finished T.H. White's Once and Future King, which I bought by accident while trying to buy it for my sister's B-Day. I also gave The Forever War a shot and greatly enjoyed that one. I'm currently reading Neal Stephenson's Reamde (that's how it's spelled, no typo there), and as usual I can't seem to put his books down.

Michi and I and my coworker went to a gym a little bit farther away than usual, and it was just a huge place. Not very long routes, but the sheer number and variety was impressive. But it takes over an hour to get there, and the train fare is pretty high, and INSERT ADDITIONAL EXCUSES HERE. Basically, it isn't very convenient and the quality of the routes seems to be a little higher at our usual place.

Cheers,

Games and Climbing

hey all,

I put in a little more time on Dark Souls, but the current area I'm trying to clear out is pretty vile. It is called Sen's Fortress. The guards are these big snake-headed dudes with giant scimitars and shields, and then there are these cobra-headed multi-armed guys that shoot lightning at you, and then there are the traps and narrow walkways with swinging axes. I've easily lost 10,000-20,000 xp trying to clear this place out, so I think I'm going to grind my character in the Darkroot Garden for a little bit. I was finally able to kill those troublesome black cats, so with them gone I can prey on some of the easier enemies and level up my stats and weapons and maybe my armor.

My B-day present from my mom arrived: Skyrim. And my does it look big! For the previous game in the series (Oblivion), I happily put in over 120 hours and still didn't manage to finish it. There were just so many quests to do, so many areas to explore, etc. Reports are that Skyrim is easily over 300 hours long. And so far it plays really well. The graphics are a huge upgrade over Oblivion, the level up system is really awesome, the quests are well-written and the voice acting is good so far. The geography and level design is also a lot more interesting than either Oblivion or Fallout 3 (both games designed by the same company which made Skyrim.). The combat is a lot more fun than in Oblivion, but it is no match for Dark Souls in that department. But then, there is a lot more to do in Skyrim: you can mine metals, smith your weapons and armor, enchant your weapons and armor, gather ingredients and make potions, cook meals, pick locks, steal, buy and decorate houses, join different groups and complete quests for them, fight huge dragons and many other activities.

I also just watched a video about Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, and boy does that look fun too! Unfortunately, that game is also an RPG, which means that 40-100 hours of game play would not be out of the question. As I still haven't finished Batman, Battlefield 3, Dark Souls, and I've just started the gigantic Skyrim, I'm not sure if I'll have enough time to pick up the game when it comes out in February. I'll just have to see.

Michi and I went climbing with one of my teachers from work, and that was pretty fun too. Overall, its been a great weekend. I'm still climbing somewhere in the 5.10a-b range, so maybe a little more practice and I'll be able to pull off a few 5.10c's or d's.

I realized yesterday that what I was posting about earlier with Pascal's triangle and the binomial theorem was actually a power set: the set of sets you can make from a set, not strictly speaking a combinations problem.  Anyway...

Cheers,

Manspace

hey all,

I saw this on TED quite a few months ago, but I find it more interesting now that I have my own.

You see, when Michi gets home from work and we've done our catching up and chatting, and planning, we usually retreat to our own private spots. Hers is the kitchen/living room coffee/dining table, and mine is my bed room gamer's den. I've got my HD computer monitor hooked up to my PS3, my laptop for surfing the internet (ie, watching game reviews, finding walkthroughs, and advice for getting through tricky spots), and a nice place to set my snacks/dinner.

Cheers,

Well, Well

hey all,

I was able to solve that problem I had with my character being cursed. Like most problems in Dark Souls, it is solved by slightly changing your tactics, taking your time, and being careful. I successfully fought my way through all those pesky ghosts and made it to the healer. After that, I was able to clear out several bosses and some mini-bosses too.

But Dark Souls giveth, and it taketh away. Tonight I was trying to fight off the mini bosses of the Darkroot Garden area, some feral black cats the size of horses, and I died. At the time I had 30,000 xp on my character, so I had to fight my way back there in order to retrieve them. But I died on my way there, and so lost that 30,000 xp. I've put about 25 hours into the game now, so I'm maybe a quarter of the way through. That is, as long as I can keep from losing 30,000 hard earned souls every night.

And I'm still putting in time for Batman and Battlefield 3. It looks like I am most of the way complete with the main story of Batman, but I still have something like 3/4 of the optional quests and collector's items to pick up. Why try to get them? Because collecting them unlocks the "battle arena" maps where you can kill hour after hour trying to best your previous score or a friend's best score. I've ranked up my Battlefield 3 character a few more times by playing the multiplayer missions, and I have even suffered through more of the campaign.

Work has been work. Not great, not terrible. For the most part, even the new class has been kinda mundane. Not an eye opener, but not depressing either.

Cheers,

10,585

hey all,

See if you can figure out the post title before the end of this post.

Been busy posting on the new course's website. For this course, you are required to post on a certain number of other people's posts each week, in addition to answering the questions the prof. assigns. It is actually part of your grade of the class.

Work has been busy. My private lessons seem to be dropping like flies, but the ones that stay are doing well on the Eiken tests. The Eiken is a well-known Japanese English test. My morning class and my PM class are both improving little by little, and in general I can't complain about it too much.

I took a break from Dark Souls to enjoy Batman and Battlefield, but now I am dying too many times and too easily when I try to progress further. It seems like my playing has deteriorated and/or I'm trying to get into areas that are designed for characters that have higher stats than I do. The main thing that has got me frustrated is that my character has been cursed, which reduces his health by half. The only way to cure this is by buying an item from a particular merchant, or by visiting a healer in a particular area. By accident, before I was cursed I attacked the merchant, and now she won't sell me anything because she's angry. The only way to fix that is by collecting about 66,000 experience points (for comparison, most enemies drop around 50-200 xp, which means farming about 330 enemies at minimum, and at my current level, it takes about 6,000xp to level-up). And I spent a good hour or so trying to get to the healer, but I needed to fight through these ghosts which can take away a lot of your health easily, and which can hide in floors, walls, and ceilings. I can't remember how many times I died. The other thing is that these ghosts don't give you any xp.





If anyone is allergic to math, you have been warned to turn your eyes away. As part of my work on the biome packet, I thought it might be interesting to have graphs which would show each of the biomes compared to every other biome. The idea was that the graph below has too much information on it.

 

 And that graphs like the ones below would be more useful.

 

OK. So how many do I need? Take a few minutes and try to figure it out.

Done? Actually, I would need 63 total. This is basically a combinations problem. There will be six graphs which just show 1 biome by itself. That is the easy part: there are six biomes, so if you show one at a time, you need six graphs. OK. But what about two biomes together? It turns out that there are 15. How about three biomes? We need 20 different graphs to show these possibilities. For four biomes we need 15, for five biomes shown on the same graph at once we need 6 graphs, and of course only one graph to show all at once, like the one at the top. 6+15+20+15+6+1=63. 

For those of you who were or are math geeks, this should sound familiar. That's right! Pascal's triangle and/or Newton's binomial theorem. If we go down to the 7th row, we see it: 1 6 15 20 15 6 1. If we add these up we get 64. So what happened to the other one? How come we only need 63 graphs, not 64? Because the last graph is an empty graph: it contains none of the biomes.

If you are thinking that 10,585 has something to do with this, in fact you are wrong. 10,585 is the number of days in 29 years (not counting leap days, because they are annoying). Today is my birthday and I find myself wondering about my life. I'm in a steady relationship and it seems to be going relatively well.  But I have yet to be made a devout member of the church of Let's Have Babies! And although my job is pretty decent, I don't have too much job security and I'm basically taking training right now that will let me change jobs some time in the future. I still have a large amount of student debt from my MA, but I'm slowly whittling that down. I pay my rent on time, and for the most part I'm able to take care of my other bills etc without others reminding me about them. Yet in some ways I still feel like a child.

Perhaps adding to the "problem" is that I've been teaching an essay called "The Quarterlife crisis" to my Eiken students. It is an essay about 20-somethings that find themselves kinda stuck in a rut after finishing college, either in dead end jobs, jobs they hate, in relationships that aren't working or are heading towards commitment that they're not sure they're ready for, etc. While I don't think that the above points apply to me 100%, I still have some feeling that I'm not really sure what I want to do "when I grow up."

Although Michi is 6 years my senior, it seems like she is facing the same problem right now. She is the most competent person at her company, yet they refuse to raise her salary or give her adequate vacation time or bonuses. Yet because her company is small, she doesn't feel she has the necessary skills to cut it at a larger company. And she worries that her English would be inadequate for getting by abroad. So what are our options? I don't really expect answers to be forthcoming, but I do find myself wondering and feeling a little uneasy.

Cheers,
Dave

Monkies!

hey all,

I just stumbled across this one on BBC. I only hope that all waiters are so helpful.

Anywho, we just had a few medium sized earthquakes last night, about 4.9, but Michi and I were in the middle of watching Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance, and the timing could have been better. It was really unsettling to think that we're on the 8th floor and if it were a major one, you end up wondering if the building would hold up.

My C/ID class has officially started, so I'm back on the discussion boards nitpicking unclear or confusing sections of the textbook, doing other things that endear me to the other students and the professor.

I'm going to try to get some errands done tomorrow, and to get some personal work done tonight so that I can get my game on with Bri tomorrow.

Cheers,

Teaching, Class, Games!

hey all,

I just realized that I've been at my current job for one year now. It doesn't seem like one year could have gone by already, but it has.

Work has been pretty stressful, but I think we're making some changes for the better. I'm going to try to design a reward scheme for good behavior/material mastery that will be game-like enough to motivate students to do well. For some students, it seems like I focused on punishing their bad behavior without motivating them to behave well (except in so far as not receiving punishment is a motivator). We started teaching my packet on biomes that I spent so much time on, and it seems to be going well so far.

I just got on to the new curriculum design course's website, and it focuses on assessment. So you "teach" something, and you want to see if your students actually learned it. So you ask them questions, have them take a test, write what they learned in their own words, connect it to something in their everyday lives, etc. These are all different ways of assessing your students. Of course, you can also assess your teaching, the presentation of the material, the sequence of teaching activities, etc. These are also part of assessment. Making sure that everything is coherent and congruent seems key.

Anyway, that stuff aside, I got my 3 games last weekend and it is safe to say that I'm a little crazy about games right now. I probably already put about 10-15 hours into Dark Souls. It is an amazing game, but I really hate this "spiritual successor" crap that everyone keeps bandying about in discussion and review of it. Dark Souls is supposed to be the "spiritual successor" to Demons Souls. Both games were developed by Japanese gaming company From Software.

Here are some key points about Demons Souls:

• hardcore difficulty
• "souls" harvested from monsters are used to level up, repair and improve weapons, buy items
• if you die, you lose all the souls in your possession, and to get them back, you must successfully fight your way back to where you died and touch your bloodstain
• precise combat
• weapons and armor degrade through use
• dark fantasy setting
• bosses must be defeated to open up new areas of play
• enemies regenerate after your death, or after resting at a key point
• online play is done via indirect summoning of human or NPC characters, or by invading other human players games
• other online interaction is indirect, done through ghostly images, leaving/reading/rating (un)helpful messages, etc

Each one of these is also true for Dark Souls. The graphics are better, the gameplay has been refined and honed, and improved (although I think they made the lock-on feature used during combat much stickier and more difficult to use), but a "spiritual successor" is supposed to make fundamental changes to the gameplay and story. OK, the "backstory" to Darks Souls is different from the backstory to Demons Souls, but let's not let that distract us from the fact that the gameplay structurally so similar that it feels more like a really good sequel, and not a "spiritual successor."

 I've also got Batman: Arkham City and Battlefield 3. The single player campaign for BF3 kinda sucks, but the online play is great. Batman is fun, but I've easily put 4-5 times as many hours into Dark Souls. Not to rag on either game, but the difficulty of Dark Souls actually makes it highly motivating. You feel like you've really done something after you defeat the flying gargoyles that trounced you the first 10 or 15 times.

In non-game related news, Michi and I went rock climbing last weekend, and I spent most of the day climbing 5.7-5.9's, which is about 3 or 4 grades below my normal max. I didn't want to push my finger too hard, and we'll be going again this weekend anyway. I did finally get up to 5.10a, but that is normally my starting/warm-up level and I go up from there. Oh well, it has been about 3 months.

Cheers,

Gameifying Education

hey all,

I probably posted a link to this early, but here it is again: I'd like to make education as engaging as it can be.

Cheers,

More Games, 18-to-28, Etc

hey all,

As usual, things have been busy. I just finished work on my final project for my curriculum design class: a design document showing course title, description, course goals, and module-level goals, plus a reflection on what design principles you've used in creating it. I've signed up for the second class in the certificate, so I've got about 10 days or so where nothing is due and I don't have to be reading and studying after work every night. Although, to be honest, I've got three books that deal with curriculum design directly or indirectly on my Andriod Kindle app, and I've got two more coming in the mail this week.

I've also got my vocabulary list set up for the next two weeks, and the schedule is more or less set, so I can spend my down time at work finishing the editing of the biomes packet. It was up to 60-70 pages at one point, but its page count is slowly dropping. I've been cutting out redundant information, adding some nice graphics and pictures, and also adding some comprehension questions: when you get down to it, for everything I cut, something usually gets put in.

Michi and I have been living together for about 2.5 months now. I don't think we've had any of the big dramas that we had during August and September. Dinners are still separate most weekdays, but we cook together on the weekends. Trip planning has become a lot easier, since we can search together every night after work if need be, and let each other know of changes in the plan quickly. I do most of the vacuuming, but I actually let her do most of the hotel booking. That's division of labor of you.

We picked up a "health meter," what used to be called a weight scale or just scale when I was a kid. Now these things can record information for four people, keep track of body weight since the last time you stepped on, and also calculate BMI, body fat percentage, muscle percentage, body age, and daily caloric intake. I've been hovering around 42% body muscle, about 12% fat, and apparently my body age is 18. Michi is pulling in at 28 years old, which is also a pretty impressive drop from her actual age.

Another one of my preordered games will be coming out in two days. That means that my package should finally ship, although who knows when it will actually arrive.

We were planning on finally going rock climbing today, but Michi started to come down with a cold, probably the same cold that has laid me up the last week. On top of that, she wasn't paying too close attention while washing our 33-layer Damascus steel razor sharp chef's knife and sliced her little finger a little bit. She actually got pretty lucky, as the cut didn't seem to bad. Still, I recommended not climbing on it. Besides, I had lots of errands to run today.

Yesterday, I helped one of my very poor US friends move out of the apartment he shared with his on-again off-again ex-(for now)girlfriend. The only interesting thing about this is that I met him when I was living at the guesthouse in Omiya, and yes, he had just broken up with the same girlfriend and moved out of her place that time too. But yesterday we actually moved him into my former room. Yes, the exact same cramped, too small room that I spent a whole year in.

Cheers,

Anniversary 2, Desk, Games

hey all,

Our anniversary was actually October 3rd, but we decided to head out to a Hawaiian restaurant in Ginza tonight. The food was delicious, but they didn't let us use our coupon because we didn't show it to them when we first came in at the door, so I don't think we'll be heading back there again. Still, I found a dish that I really liked and that I'll be looking up how to make myself.

Yesterday, I got a package with all my DVD's from the US in it, plus other assorted goodies. And my computer desk also arrived. Without a proper chair to sit in, it is still a little inconvenient and uncomfortable, but it definitely beats the cardboard boxes. I've even got my PS3 set up and everything.

Aside from the anniversary and the packages, we watched Kurosawa's Sanjuro and Michi really loved that. I even got to catch up with Bri a little while playing Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Two of the games that I've pre-ordered, Dark Souls and Batman: Arkham City, have come out, and they've both gotten near perfect scores. I can't wait to play them, but I don't know how I'll fit in the time to do it.

I spent almost all day today making maps and editing a packet on biomes. Why make maps? Because most modern biome systems have about 14 different biomes, and I'm not going to teach 14 different biomes to 5 year olds. So I had to take the maps that where already made, re-group and re-color the areas so that there would be 6 different biomes, then go through again, create a different layer for each separately, then put them all together again. Why? That way, I have separate maps showing the extent of each biome, which if I want I can layer all together can create a world map where every piece of land is assigned to one of the six biomes I'm teaching. I did the same with a two variable graph based on a 1970's science report by Whittaker, which shows how each biome can be defined by yearly average rainfall and temperature: I've got separate layers showing each biome's distribution independently, which I can then composite together to create the original master upon which my layers were based. Why? Because showing all that information at once will spark info-overload. So I split it up, and all of it can be shown at the end, when it will be review for them.

My first curriculum design class is almost over, and all I've got left is the final project, and then about one week of free time before the next class begins. So far, the professor has had some positive remarks and comments about how I've been completing the (ungraded) exercises and practice activities, and of course I did get that perfect score on the first assignment. I've also been reading a few books on my Kindle about curriculum design and I think I might order one or two physical books on the subject, since they haven't been turned into ebooks yet.

I just finished my Dan Simmons marathon early this week. I read all four books of the Hyperion Cantos, and both Ilium/Olympos. If I can figure out how to get files from my computer onto my Android, I'll probably end up listening to The Iliad on my way to work.

That'll be it for now.

 Cheers,

Yamagata!

hey all,

We got to see a good amount of places, eat some delicious food, and didn't even get into any bad fights. Unfortunately, I'd beat. Check out the captions, because that's all I can write right now.

Pretty interesting building near Yamagata station.

The rebuilt remains of Ka(?) Castle.

The pond in front of our lodge for the first night.

A big Jizo a couple hours into our hike.

Me in front of the Okama, the volcanic crater lake of Mt. Zao.

The visible buildings of Yamadera (zoom in and look carefully)

The "Gate of Two Kings" near the top of Yamadera

Several shrines and temple buildings near the top.

The temple building that I saw on a poster at the train station, which made me want to come and visit Yamadera in the first place.

Me standing on a boulder next to Fujinohana Waterfall near Omoshiroyama Kougen.

Cheers,

Homework, Trips, and Tables

hey all,

It has been another killer busy week here. The usual drama at work, and the prep for classes, etc.

One of the games I've been dying to play, Dark Souls, came out and got a very fabulous 9.5/10 from Gamespot. Since I've recently received my pay, I was able to pre-order it together with Batman: Arkham City and Battlefield 3. Since I ordered them together, they probably won't arrive until the last game comes out on October 25, but by that time my first curriculum class should be over and I should have some time to enjoy my games.

Not only that, but we finally got around to ordering my computer table, which should be coming in a week.

I've also gotten back the score for my first homework assignment. I turned it in early, and asked the teacher for some feedback, and he said to trim it up. I resubmitted it, and I got 50/50 on it, so that's a really positive thing.

You might have guessed that there is yet another 3 day weekend this weekend, and Michi and I are so mental that we just can't help but take another trip. This time we're heading up to Yamagata, which is actually really close to where the tsunami hit and more than a little too close for comfort to the nuclear reactors that partially melted down.

Love to add more, but tomorrow's a another busy day.

Cheers,

Oze Trip, Homework, and Work

hey all,

I haven't had a chance to post about the last week until now, so here we go.

Last weekend was yet another 3 day weekend, but we had that typhoon on Wednesday, so everyone was kinda shattered/or fagged out (to use some British slang), so we decided to rest on Friday instead of beginning the trip right away.

The trip we'd planned was to visit Oze National Park for the second time and check out some waterfalls we didn't have a chance to see last time, and also to climb Shibutsu-san, a mountain about 2200m tall (that's about 1km shorter than Yarigadake, for those keeping track) which is on the 100 Famous Mountains of Japan list.

We made it up to Oze with no problems, even though we entered the park from the north this time instead of the southeast. The trouble began when we started hiking. Despite several days of rest after Yarigadake, both of us were walking slower than usual, and Michi also slipped and fell on the muddy trail several times, with some nice bruises to show for it. Additionally, everyone remember that typhoon I mentioned earlier? Well, it wasn't only Tokyo that got hit by it: the trails in Oze were mostly fine, but some of them were heavily erroded, blocked by fallen trees or tumbled down rocks, or just turned to pools of mud thanks to the rain.

It slowed us down so much that on the first day we decided to skip the first of the three waterfalls we'd planned on seeing. We made it to our lodge, which was right next to a section of rapids on a river and sported its own hinoki onsen, a spa where the tub is made out of Japanese cypress wood.

The next day we hiked across the park to the exit/entrance on the southwest side, the same exit we'd used when we left Oze the first time last year. We got to see the other two waterfalls we'd planned on, but ended up quitting Shibutsusan before we started it. We were both tired, and we both wanted to go home as early as we could. We'll probably come back with her mom and dad next year.

In other news, I've been going over the readings, posting stuff on the discussion boards, etc, etc for my class. It is challenging to fit in the time to read everything, respond to it, reflect on it, post something about it, and keep up with my daily schedule of work, planning for trips, and helping Michi with her homework.

I've spent most of today typing up three short essay responses to the first homework assignment, which is worth half the grade for the class.

Cheers,

Yarigadake Trip

Day 1
Just arrived at the first night's lodging. Until last night, the plan was to camp the first night, but stay in a mountain lodge the second night. But it seems that a patch of bad weather has hit a day or two earlier than the forecasts had originally predicted.

It rained on and off on the way here, which included riding three different trains and a bus before our hike actually began. We had to get up around 6, get on the first train around 7 and we still didn't arrive at Kamikochi until 1PM.

The hike for the first day was planned at 3.5 hours, but even with the rain, we made it in 2.5 hours. The route we're taking is really a two day route, but making it in that time means starting the first day of hiking around 7 or 8 AM, instead of 1PM.

Our room is pretty similar to the one Bri and I had when we stayed in Kyoto: bunk beds, with 6 or so people per room.

Tomorrow, the climbing starts to get steep. Today we covered a lot of horizontal distance, but from here on it will be more vetical.

Day 2
Didn't get too much sleep. One of our roommates was a snorer and another was a teeth grinder. We probably went to bed around 8:30, got up around 4AM, and were on the trail before sunrise. At this point, the trail was still easy going: mostly gentle inclines or flat patches winding next to a stream and through a forest.

After 2 hours, the sun has been up for an hour and the trail finally gets steep. We have 4 and a half more hours left.

The next four and a half hours are a steep ascent to about 2800m above sea level. That is where our lodge for the night is. Michi is exhausted by the time we get there, but I still have enough energy to make it to the peak another 300m above us. Last 50m or so of ascent is accomplished by fixed ladders, chains, and spikes driven into the spear thrust of rock that gives Yarigadake its name (yari mean "spear" in Japanese, and dake is one of their words for peak or mountain).

The view is spectacular. I can see Mt. Fuji in the far distance, and I can see down into the valley that we have just spent the last two days hiking through to get here. There is still snow in a few patches, but most of the immediately visible valley is a mess of tumbled down rocks and boulders from pea sized to UPS delivery truck size, with smatterings of grass sticking through here and there. I'm up above the treeline, and it truly seems like the mountain range surrounding me lives up to its name of the Japanese Northern Alps. The steepness of the mountains, their height, the placement of the treeline, everything jogs my memories of my 10 day stay in Switzerland back in the summer 2004.

The climb down to our lodge plays havoc with my knees, and I collapse onto the futon for a few hours of rest before dinner at 5.

Day 3
We get up at 4 again, hike up a different ridge in total darkness, lighting our ways through the rocks, along the path, and away from the 100, 200, and sometimes seemingly 1000 meter drops with headlamps. The sun rises at a little after 5, and we haven't made it to the peak yet. We get there just after the sun has popped over the horizon.

We both expect to find the top crowded with hikers wanting a glimpse of the sunrise from 3180m, but find only a few other people insane enough to have risked a twisted ankle, broken bones, or death to see that sight.

We hike back to the lodge, and begin our long trek back: 21km from the lodge back to the bus station. This is the beginning of around 8 hours of descent that will bring us down to about 1450m meters above sea level. It starts to rain again about 40 minutes from the stop, and we find that there has been a minor mudslide that morning which has belayed the buses. Apparently the mudslide was not bad enough to block the road and trap us there, like the one in the same area earlier this year that left 900 people stranded. But we are delayed and do not return to Tokyo until around 10PM.

Cheers,

46km, Typhoon, and Earthquake

hey all,

Today has been pretty eventful. A typhoon has hit Japan, bringing monstrous gusts of wind around 111mph (you should see the piles of broken, discarded umbrellas), hellacious rain, and delayed trains. We ended the classes 45 minutes early, since there were pieces of corrugated steel roofing flying off one of the neighboring buildings, ready to decapitate our waiting students or teachers.

The trains from our station were stopped, so three of us took a bus over to Yokohama station, and proceeded to kill a couple hours until a train that could take me to my station showed up. I finally got home 3 hours later than normal, even though I left work 45 minutes early.

Upon arriving at the new apartment, I was greeted with a magnitude 5.3 earthquake. I'm sure there will be a volcano eruption or maybe a nice asteroid crash or something. Maybe a nuclear dis...Oh wait, we already had one of those.

I'd love to write about the Yarigadake trip. The arguments, the amazing sites we saw, the drama of trying to get back to Tokyo, the exhaustion of hiking 46 kilometers over the course of 3 days (the final day itself was 23km), our night/early morning hike in order to see sunrise from the peak, etc. I had planned on writing about the trip today, but the typhoon has put a damper on that plan.

So far, I've taken care of my credit card bill, my student debts, and taken a look at my curriculum course again which should be starting in 2 days. I'm going to eat a bit, shower, brush my teeth, and collapse.

Enjoy the picture. Details to follow.

Cheers,

New Place Tour

Planning and Spaghetti Western

hey all,

This weekend was spent mostly planning, and running errands. Vacuuming the rooms, cleaning the bathroom, doing laundry, etc.

We also rented Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and A Fistful of Dollars. For dinner while watching A Fistful of Dollars, we decided to make some black bean burgers like I used to make at the co-op during my last years as an undergrad.

We've got the Yarigadake trip mostly planned out, but the Oze trip still needs a little more work.

We noticed a few weeks ago that Michi's caste iron skillet had quite a lot of rust on it, and I've finally got around to seasoning the sucker. Steel wooled the rust off, got the first coat of lard baked on tonight.  I plan on doing two or three more tomorrow.

 Just to make sure I don't pull an Aron Ralston, Michi and I will be heading to Yarigadake this weekend. It is a pretty famous mountain, on the 100 Mountains of Japan list, and it also happens to be a little dangerous. Shouldn't be a problem, but just to be on the safe side...

Our second anniversary is coming up, and we've actually been living together for about a month now. That seems a little difficult to believe, honestly. I think Michi summed it up when she was talking to me about my North Face 32 tent that I bought for a trip with my brother and Bri in the fall of 2009. As it happened, Bri couldn't get the time off from work, and the trip never materialized. I never even used the tent in the US, nor shared it with my brother nor Bri. I had it shipped to me in Japan, where I used it a few times by myself on camping and rock climbing trips, and Michi and I have shared it on several occasions as well, and the odds are decent that if we have a kid, the three of us might be using that same tent that I had intended to use with my friend and brother. I can honestly say, that I never imagined when buying it that I might use it with my wife and potential baby.

I've been going through Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos series of SF books and I must say that I'm as impressed by them as I was by his Illium/Olympos series. I've got one more book and a half to get through before I can reach the conclusion. I'm not sure what I'll start reading after that, but it'll probably be something available on the Kindle.

Not too much else new here.

Cheers,

Body Check

hey all,

My morning and evening commutes are mirror images of each other. In the morning, thousands of passengers disembark from the train, and the platform rumbles and shakes with their footsteps. Only a few people get on, and I am one of them. Those getting on move to the left or right of the doors, lest we get pushed out of the way. Even if we wouldn't get crushed, it is typical Japanese manners to wait for the people getting off, then get on yourself.

At night, coming back from work, only a few people get off at my station, and hundreds await to get on the train. Instead of lining up like good boys and girls to the left and right of the door, they push their way on to the train without waiting for people to get off.

So I body check them. I swing my shoulders left and right into theirs, push my elbows out, and make it known that at my door at least, propriety will be observed, if not enforced.

Work has been really busy this week. I've made a couple more of those coloring maps, plus put the finishing touches on a chemistry quiz and a reading book quiz, and of course have printed out the schedule for the next week, and started planning in more detail the next coming weeks. And of course there are the regular classes to deal with.

For those of you worried, Michi is fine. The bumps turned out to be mosquito bites, but I've never seen an allergic reaction so intense or quick.

Cheers,

Good luck my #&*@

hey all,

Some of you might remember the incident some months ago where Michi and I visited the shrines for the Seven Lucky Gods and she lost a very expensive obi that she had just bought.

Well, as it happens there happen to be another seven shrines to these gods literally minutes from where we live. And our plan for today was to visit all of them, then go to a sports shop and pick up an ultalight two person backpacking tent for some upcoming trips.

But as luck would have it, no sooner had we visited the first four shrines when Michi started complaining about the backs of her thighs itching. Sure enough, there were some mosquito bite-like bumps there, but within 5 minutes they had swelled to welts bigger than 50¢ pieces. We canceled the rest of the walking tour, and she's at the hospital now to see what the problem is.

I've been making some worksheets and more coloring activities for my students in the meantime.

Cheers,

P.S. We've got a really cool Damascus-steel chef's knife now.

Internet!

hey all,

We finally got internet yesterday. At first, I couldn't figure out how to login to it, but we eventually figured out that a piece of mail containing our login info had either not arrived or had been accidentally thrown away. After Michi waited on the phone for 20 minutes or so, talked to a bunch of different customer service people, confirmed our information at least a dozen times, they finally gave us the username and password.

Both the wired and wireless seems to be working fine, and it is relatively fast.

The only other story of interest is that I caught some kind of cold that knocked me on my butt. I woke up yesterday with a pounding headache and a stuffy nose. I didn't think too much of it, and still went out shopping despite feeling really tired. I made some chili, and we got the internet hooked up, but by evening I was really pooped out.

Today, I woke up with the same headache and stuffy nose, and a slight fever, and stayed in bed until around 1PM.  I got some medicine from Michi and she even made me some chicken soup. I'm feeling a lot better, but despite staying in bed almost the whole day, I'm probably going to go to bed around 10:30PM or so.

Cheers,

Beet Red

hey all,

Not a whole lot new here. Michi had an infected tooth taken care of, but had a bad reaction to the antibiotic and has a bright red rash over most of her body. It seems to be getting better, but slowly.

Classes are going. Lots of stress and pressure, but they are still going pretty well. We`ve got another TV crew coming in in a few weeks, so the pressure is always on before that.

Still no internet, but supposedly it should be arriving this Saturday. In any case, I`m addicted to my Kindle app on my Android. I don`t know why I ever lugged all those books around in the first place. I wish they had more titles available, though.

The weather seems to be playing tricks on everyone. It will rain all day, cool down briefly, then become just as hot and even more unsufferably humid than before.

My fingers have still not recovered from their injury when I tried to flip that box over during moving myself in. Michi wants to go climbing, but I could barely hold the knife to cut some carrots the other night. I`ve got them taped up again, which seems to help.

Living together is...interesting. Tough some day, fun others, and just boring on others. Sometimes it is all three the same day.

Cheers,

Still Not Here

hey all,

So I`m typing this on Michi`s laptop. Below, you can find several posts that I typed up on my own computer and saved so I could  post them later.

We should be getting a LAN installed in the next two or three weeks, I hope.

The situation with the air conditioner seems to be as follows. The landlord knew about the air conditioner, as it seems that he used to live in this apartment and now lives next door. The problem is that the bedroom window faces the walkway that connects all the apartments together, and if they had installed a proper air conditioner, they would need to place the compressor on this walkway. This would make it hot and also might be a hazard during an emergency.

Of course, it is not as if Japan had all the sudden become an unbearably hot country during the last 20 years. The summers here have been hot for hundreds of years. So who ever designed the building was just retarded. We`re getting by with cooling the room down before going to sleep, then shuttung the air conditioner off. It means taking a second or third shower in the morning to wash all the sweat off, but it beats not being able to sleep at all.

The first week of living together has gone pretty well. We got into a fight about the air conditioner at first, but we seem to have worked past that for now. We`ve gone shopping for some home supplies a few times, but I think we`re going to go this weekend as well. Money is quite tight, for me at least, since I had to cover move in expenses, health insurance, a newly expensive phone bill, and taxes.

Classes are going. To be honest, I`m really stressed about them, but they seem to be going well.

Cheers

hey all,




Today marks one week in the new place. It also marks one week without internet, a microwave, a washing machine, and a refrigerator.



Work has been a trial.

August 9th

hey all,




So tonight marks night number 4 under the new roof. I've given up trying to sleep in the bed room. The first hour or so of having the air conditioner on is no problem. But after that, when it phases into active and passive modes it sounds live a lawn mower turning over. I've called the management about it, but they referred me to the realtor or the owner. Since I didn't have the owner's number, I called the realtor. I'm sure this is the kind of call they love getting.



It has me really pissed off. Saturday night I barely slept, but there were other excuses for that. Sunday night and Monday I was able to put up with it until 2AM and 4AM respectively, but tonight I'm just going to sleep in the kitchen.



The thing that really has me going about it, aside from just not being able to sleep in my own bed room, is that on Friday night while waiting for Michi I started to read Dogs and Demons by Alex Karr. The author has spent the better part of 30 years in Japan, and as he sees it, he is tired of seeing a country he loves go down the drain. The title comes from a Chinese story about an emperor who asks a painter what is difficult to paint, and what is easy to paint. The painter says that dogs are difficult, but demons are easy. Why? Demons are fantastical, and you can get away with anything, while dogs are encountered everyday and thus people are less tolerant of strangeness. In terms of Japan, Karr sees Japanese companies and governmental agencies spending huge amounts of time, energy and money on pie in the sky projects, such as putting concrete embankments on all the major rivers for flood protection, while at the same time failing at such mundane things as burying telephone cables.



In my case, this means having a TV I don't want and don't necessarily need IN THE SHOWER, and having a toilet that will warm my bum if it is cold and spray water to clean me after using it, BUT having an air conditioner that is so loud that I can't sleep in my own bed room. Why and how is it possible for a supposedly technologically advanced country to fail at these things?



I can't complain about Japan the way that Karr does, which is to see the whole system as broken. I think some things work really well, for instance, payment of health insurance, taxes, rent, phone bills, and utility bills can usually be done at ANY convenience store. No need for stamps or envelopes, checks, etc. Just go to the nearest Seven Eleven with the money and you're done.



I still don't have internet, but hopefully that will change in the next few days.



As for school, we've been having the parents stay out of the rooms for our classes. So far, it has gone really well. The kids are motivated, and are trying hard. And it seems they spent a good amount of time over the break studying, because they can answer questions about the material and use pretty decent complete sentences to do so.



I guess tomorrow will be the real test, because we are starting new material for all of our subjects, and we will be learning new vocabulary, etc. My boss has informed me that almost all of the parents will be watching my class tomorrow when I teach them chemistry, and I'm a little nervous about that. The kids are doing well with the material, but it is always hit or miss whether the kids will show off or clam up when a bunch of people are watching.



I've only had one student show up for my PM class this whole week. The boss and I had discussed reducing the number of times we hold the class from 5 days a week to 2 or 3. This would ease the class load on the teachers, and also give more free time to the students. Compared to other schools, our students come more often, but it seems our test results are not as good. So clearly coming more often is not helping. We're planning on trying some different approaches to try and fix the issue, and of course, I could always use the extra class preparation time.



Cheers,

August 7th

hey all,




It is the evening of my second day of "living alone." I exaggerate, of course, but that is how it feels. Michi ended up working all day, fixing one of the mistakes of a new employee who has earned the dubious honor of being called "the stupid girl."



For myself, I didn't sleep to well last night. I was worrying about Michi and her brain attack, and then it was the first time I'd slept in this new apartment, so there was that as well. Lastly, the air conditioner turns itself off after getting to a certain temperature, and then loudly turns itself back on when it senses the temperature start to rise again. Maybe I'll be used to it this night and it won't dispurb me as much, but it seemed like I was waking up every ten or twenty minutes.



Today was spent cleaning the old room in Yokohama. I got on a train that somehow took about 1 hour to get to Yokohama station. By normal trains, from Shinagawa to Yokohama takes about 20 minutes. Anyway, I cleaned the old room, swept up all the dust and hair and places where something had spilled and I hadn't noticed.



On my way back, I bought a vacuum cleaner. It wasn't the cheapest model, but it wasn't one of those Dyson contraptions that cost as much as how cool they look, either. I also picked up a foam pillow from Muji, and I wanted to buy a chair as well, but I couldn't find one that suited me at Muji. I also wanted to speak to the apartment complex manager, but the little office on the first floor was empty all day, or at least every time I went by to check it.



After getting back to the new apartment, I started arranging my things for the second and definitely not the final time. The arrangement I've got now is a little better use of space than before, but the "final solution" will have to wait till Michi gets her stuff in. I've got all of my books and DVDs (here in Japan) on my particle board book shelf that I bought from Muji when I moved into the guesthouse in Tokyo last year. The thing is, I usually don't need that quick of access to most of my books. And I could really use one of the shelves to store my electronics, which I do need more frequent access to. And then I need to wait to buy a computer table until Michi and I can confirm that it won't take up too much space, etc.



I also got my tupperware, the pots from Michi, and my spices all arranged in the kitchen and picked up a sponge and some dish soap. For when the refrigerator finally arrives, I cut out some cardboard mats to put underneath it.



I've downloaded a train schedule app onto my smartphone, and looked up the train schedule for tomorrow. Tomorrow will be the first day of the semester at school, so I want to make sure that I get there on time and that everything goes well.



Cheers,

August 6th

hey all,




So I've just moved in to the new place. The water and electricity are on, but I don't know how to get the gas going and we need to make arrangements for internet.



Most of my stuff has been put away, but I'm exhausted. It was a mad dash to get everything ready this morning, and I didn't have time to clean my room. I think I will head back tomorrow to clean it.



I'm typing this up in OpenOffice Writer right now, but I really hope we can get the internet going.



Let me go back a bit. I picked up the key for the apartment yesterday night. Yesterday, I also visited the city office and got my foreign registration taken care of, my health insurance taken care off, and updated my address at my bank and for my phone service company. Plus, I did a little more packing, but clearly not enough.



This morning, there were still lots of things to pack, but nothing major. I think I might have torn something in my ring and pinky fingers trying to roll one of the boxes over to put some reinforcing tape on it. I've got my fingers taped up, but from my Training for Climbing it seems like it could take 2 to 10 weeks for the pain to go away. And after the pain goes away, you're supposed to stay off the finger for another 2 weeks.



In any case, I got all the items together just in time for the moving guy to show up, and it only took about 20 minutes to get everything loaded, including my bike. It took much longer to drive up to Shinagawa, but the mover/driver was a very friendly guy. We chatted most of the way up about my job and his job, and the earthquake and different foreigners' reactions to it.



We finally arrived, and we got everything into the room, and I proceeded to unpack everything. Right now, I've got my dress clothes and climbing gear more or less situated. When Michi arrived after her yoga lesson, she was horrified to see the mess I'd made. I had random pieces of paper strewn everywhere, the kitchen/living room was a mess, the bedroom was a mess. My climbing gear and most of my clothes were set up, but I've got so many mementos and souvenirs that every time I move it is getting harder to keep track of them and keep them organized.



We got the rooms better organized, and she called the gas guy to get that set up. Michi's mom bought me a futon and even sheets to go with it, which was really nice. Michi has some errands to do on Sunday, so she went back to her apartment. On the way back, she had a seizure. I had walked her to the station, and she made it home OK, but this is only the second one I've seen. She's been really busy and not getting enough sleep, which always seems to bring one on.
Tomorrow, I need to see if I can get a hold of the manager to get the world turned on (ahem, I mean the internet). For now, I'm by myself in my new apartment and I'm lonely and worried about Michi. Also tomorrow, I need to pick up a pillow, a chair, and go back to Yokohama to clean the place up.



Cheers,

Curriculum Planning and Kamikaze

hey all,

So our week of curriculum planning ends tomorrow. I think we got some stuff done. I wish I could say more than that, but I'm of kinda mixed opinions about the school right now.

This is our vacation time. We get 2 weeks off in summer, and two weeks off in winter, plus an additional week off at the end of April (for curriculum planning). That is it. Because we really needed more material and to get things organized, I asked the other teachers to come in and do planning and preparation. And we have in fact created some new materials, edited some old ones so that they better fit the levels of our current students, and planned class schedules out for the next several weeks.

But our boss has also taken up several hours each day with rants that I don't really understand. One day the rant will seem to conclude with X as our best option, and the next day's rant will conclude with Y as our best option (where X and Y are impossible to do at the same time). And half of the rants just don't seem to make sense. It seems like it has been several years since teachers have done the kind of preparation that we volunteered to do, and we have to put up with these rants? Along with complaints that our boss was tired of doing all the preparation work? The teachers have 4 solid hours of classes in the mornings, and then various private and groups lessons from 1:40 until 7PM. When are we supposed to do preparation? After 7PM at home? When we aren't being paid? At best the rants accomplish nothing, and at worst they are a waste of time, confusing, and serve to alienate and frustrate our teachers, myself included.

I'm a bit stressed out about the move, and the situation at work doesn't help. At the same time, I feel like I've created some cool things, like the image below. If you follow the directions, you will have colored in a map showing ancient Egyptian civilization, complete with Red and Mediterranean Seas and the Nile River.

I've got coloring maps like this for Minoan, Indus Valley, and Sumerian civilizations as well. Everyone was very impressed.

Still, my 5-year plan might be pushing it a little bit too far. That is, around 2015 changing jobs and/or careers. I guess it depends on how the next few years go here, what my financial situation is like, whether the teaching/preparing ratio changes for the better, and whether I can tolerate these rants. By this time next year, I should have completed the certificate for curriculum planning, and if I have time, I'd like to take up my Japanese study again. I've seen several translation job offerings recently, but each of them requires the JLPT level 1 or 2, and I've only got the level 3. If translation doesn't seem like a viable option, then it would probably be best not to waste the curriculum planning certificate, and go into that field.

If the situation at the school worsens, or at least doesn't improve between now and 2015, then I might decide to leave before then. Still, we'll see.

Tomorrow is our last day of planning and preparation. Friday I have to clean my room, do several loads of laundry, go to the city hall to tell them that another dangerous and not to be trusted foreigner will be moving in, head over to the bank and phone company and tell them about the move, and also go to the realtor for the contract signing and to pick up the key. Saturday will be the actual move.

Last item is the phrase kamikaze. Most of you will know it from the suicide bombers during WWII, but in fact the term comes from the attempted and unsuccessful Mongolian invasion of Japan back in the 1300's, when a freak storm destroyed most of the Mongolian fleet. The only reason I know that is because of playing RTS games like Shogun: Total War. In any case, I probably haven't mentioned that the temperature has been about 10-15 degrees C cooler than just a few weeks earlier. This is all thanks to the typhoons, which Michi has been referring to as kamikaze, the wind of god or the divine wind. Why? Because it has saved Japan's butt yet again. Only last year old and young people were dropping like flies in the hottest summer that Japan had seen in decades, and now that we have a power crunch, it has surely let us survive without turning the air conditioners on too high.

Cheers,

Last Weekend Before Moving

hey all,

We had a pretty relaxing weekend. We made some chili, and watched some "classics" on Japanese TV, including a really psychedelic one called The Girl on a Motorcycle, which stars one of Mick Jagger's flings.

Today we went rock climbing at Rocklands again. Michi did really well on the walls, climbing a bunch of simple routes with better and better form before moving on to some more challenging ones. I climbed a few simple ones, before trying my hand at some pretty difficult ones (for me at least: 5.10b/c's), and stayed at that level for most of the day.

I've had Lovely Day by Bill Withers stuck in my head since watching the movie 127 Hours again the other weekend.



It's such an amazing song, and the scene where it's used is just heart-wrenching. Something like the effect of the brainwashing that the protagonist of of A Clockwork Orange undergoes where he begins to associate torture, rape, and violence with his favorite piece of music, Beethoven's 9th Symphony.

Tomorrow, I return to work. Classes don't begin until the following week, but as I've probably said too many times: there has to be more planning and more order in what we teach, so that's what we'll be doing; planning and ordering.

There was a semi-large earthquake today around 4AM local Japan time, probably a 5 on the Richter scale. I was a little worried about my things back at my place, but when I got back today they were fine and nothing was broken or knocked over. I'm a little worried about the building that we're moving to, though. We'll be on the 8th floor, and it is not the newest building. It was probably built around 1979 or so. Younger than Michi but older than me. For the Japanese, this makes the building quite old, though.

Cheers,

Matsumoto Trip Pictures

hey all,

"Koe Nobori" or flying fish. I don't really understand the significance, but it is popular.

Looks like something from Naruto or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Some samurai frogs.

The main keep and third moat of Matsumoto Castle itself.

The entrance to the main enclosure, called the "Black Gate."

View of the keep from inside the enclosure. The rows of black stones mark where the residence of the lord used to be. They burned down (by accident, I think).

View from one of the windows

This was the "Last Stand" for the lord if the battle was going badly. On the fourth floor, it was wide open and there was a special room. Here, the lord would commit suicide. This is significant because "4" can also be pronounced the same as "death" in Japanese.

The small tower on the left is the "Moon Viewing" room. The idea is to look at the moon at night and get drunk. It is said that you can see three moons at once: one in the sky, one in the moat, and one in your sake cup.

The Japan Ukiyo-e Museum.

Cheers,