Paul's Visit to Japan

Here's a sampling of the rest of Paul's visit to Japan.

Biking around Kamakura -- Paul loves the Japanese bikes ;)



The Daibutsu - Big Buddha - Kamakura


Eating yakiniku with Andrea and Joe - Fuji

Hiking at Lake Kawaguchi...while eating ice cream....

At the top of the Mountain at Lake Kawaguchi

Swan Paddleboats!! Lake Kawaguchi

Lake Tanuki - Fujinomiya

Shiraito Waterfalls - Fujinomiya

Giants vs. Dragons in Tokyo Dome

One of the first things we did when Paul was here was go to a Japanese baseball game -- here are some photos from the big event!

The big screen:

The stands:

The cheerleaders:

Beer kegs on their backs!! There's a way to sell beer to the salary men...and apparently foreigners too haha!

The crew - Joe and Andrea (and Jenny...sorry babe haha!)

Kari and Jenny

The boys - Kory and Paul

Giants win! Kelly's happy and Andrea's sad because she was cheering for the Dragons!

Giants Win!!

Ashley and Paul Take on Kyoto

Though three weeks late, here's an update on me and Paul's trip to Kyoto...might post a few more pics from the other places we went!

First, we went to Fushimi Inari. The shrine sits at the base of a mountain also named Inari, and includes trails up the mountain to many smaller shrines. Inari is the god of business, so each of the Torii (the orange gates) is donated by a Japanese business. The torii line the path up to the top of the mountain -- pretty cool!!

Next, we biked off to Kinkakuji, which is no small feat! It's allllllllllll the way on the other side of Kyoto, which we realized is too big of a city to bike across. Too bad for us, we still had to get our bikes back to the hostel on the other side of town after! Quite the workout! The name for the temple in English is The Golden Pavillion -- the top two floors are covered in pure gold leaf. The pond in front is called mirror pond...you sorta see the start of the reflection in the pond.

Next we were off to Ryuanji Temple -- Here's the zen garden. One of the most famous zen gardens in Japan!

After feeling all zen, we had to bike back to the hostel! Quite the trip! On day 2 to we went to Arashiyama Park to see the monkeys! Here we are posing in front of Kyoto with one of the monkeys!

And here I am feeding one...though he kept throwing the banana peels back at me! Kinda backwards, you had to feed the monkeys from inside the cage. Pretty crazy!



And here's Kyoto station with the reflection of Kyoto tower in it. What a good trip!

Six Weeks!

6 weeks until I come home for a visit!! I can't wait, though I know those six weeks are going to just fly by. I don't have a whole lot going on in the middle, I need to stay home and save up money!! I seriously went through a stage where I didn't go anywhere for months, and then all of a sudden was going going going every weekend! This month especially! So anyway, looking forward to seeing everyone, please drop me a line and let me know what you're doing in July!

I started back up with teaching again this week after midterm exams, things are good. It's still my usual slow schedule with only 1-2 classes a day, but it gives me something to look forward to (or dread and the love once I'm there, that's more my process). I have been using a lot more free time to read at work and at home as I'm coming across more and more interesting books. There are a lot of random books in my apartment...but lots that I'm not really interested in! So I've been doing lots of book trading with other ALTs, and it's been good.

Though I have been reading a lot which is good, I have not been studying Japanese. I decided I need to get a tutor for my second year, because then I will be forced a little more to study. I'm really one who needs someone to hold me accountable for things like that. And it's hard to be motivated to study when I make it through with the basics, especially at school and around my city without any problems. So...tutor it is for the second year so I don't leave Japan ashamed at how little Japanese I actually know! I don't expect to walk away an expert...but some basic conversation skills would be good.

This past weekend I went down to the Black Ship Festival in Shimoda -- It's where Commander Perry's ships forced the American's way into Japan...an interesting thing to celebrate. I drove down with a friend, so this was one of my farthest driving adventures. Adventurous it was on narrow, windy, and mountainous roads!! Left us feeling a little car sick as we were trying to get there before the fireworks began on Friday night! The fireworks were amazing, definitely worth the trip there. I realize I come from small town America where the fireworks are a bit lame, but these were the best I've ever seen. And on the Japan scale, they probably weren't necessarily that spectacular. But I enjoyed them. The rest of the festival was pretty low-key, but it was nice to hang out with the ladies and have a big slumber party for the weekend. Since we all sleep on the floor on futons, it really does have a slumber party feel!

Yesterday we had our Regional Meeting for ALTs, so it was nice to get out of a day of school and spend some time with the other teachers in my area, even though the content of the meeting was a little dry. Still pretty informational, and we talked about textbooks and I'm in the process of picking out next year's book! I kinda want to stick with the one I've got, it's so much better than last years! But there are a few that are similar and I'm hoping they get whichever one I recommend, since I plan all the lessons!

Hope all is going well at home. See you in 6 weeks!

Finally!!

Alright, so here comes the stream of updates that you probably dread reading all at one time, sorry!!!!

Things are going well here. The school year is in full swing, in fact it's midterm test time, so just getting into the meat of the semester. Which means my first year students will soon lose their eagerness to learn once they realize that high school tests are much harder than junior high and that they have to spend every last minute they have studying. Ahhhhh Japan. I shouldn't be pessamistic, but it's probably true. For the time being, classes are going well. I have a little break this week from teaching classes, which has been filled with correcting essays instead. Makes for some interesting reading, however after awhile it gets super redundant. Highlights: my students think I'm 30 years old, one of my students has an obsession with dictionaries, and many girls want to be perfect wives, which is why they are in the "homemaking" club/cooking club/home ec club. I have another stack of second year essays, but for my sanity, I am putting them off until at least Friday!

My adult conversation class is just getting going. We have had three classes now, and I'm enjoying the mix of old and new students. I'm trying improve on the class from last session, and so far I think I've been successful.

I got sick last Tuesday, and today I think I am really on the road to full recovery. I still have a bit of a cough, but overall, everything else is feeling pretty good. But basically that means I have done nothing but sleep, eat and read for most of the last week! I did decide to try to run my 10K race on Sunday despite being sick, but it didn't go so well considering I could barely breathe just walking. I ended up walking about half of it, but I guess I finished :) and got my "free" t-shirt and certificate for finishing. And there were plenty of people who walked it, so I guess I shouldn't feel too bad. I still feel like I want to run another race in June to redeem myself. Sucks after training awhile and knowing you can run that far...and then still having to walk half cuz you're sick. I have a few random ideas of races in the future, but they are sorta far off dreams, so maybe I shall share them later :)

So that is the rundown on my general life these days. Miss you all!!!!

A Non-Update

Sorry I suck at updating lately. Have been trying to spend less time on the computer, and I had my first visitor a few weeks ago!!! Busy with traveling and playing tour guide. Will update on my adventures with Paul soon. Hope all is well at home!!!!!!

Purikura

Hey all! We had a girls day this weekend and took some super cute purikura, so I thought I would share a few of my favorites!!! Will update this week with a real update :D

Osaka

My most recent adventure (which I suppose is now about a month ago, oops, sorry for the late update!) was off to Osaka with a friend I hadn't seen in a long time! I had kept in touch with my roommate from Tokyo orientation for months, but didn't see her for a long time! So we decided to meet up in Osaka since neither of us had been there before. Osaka is one of the larger cities in Japan, but at first glance, doesn't really have a lot of exciting things besides your regular big city places. So, since I live so close to Tokyo, often I opt for going there rather than Osaka which is about twice as far away! It was a good opportunity to see a new place, and we discovered quite a few fun things!

Day One:

We visited Osaka Kaiyukan Aquarium in the morning, apparently not early enough to avoid the big crowds! There were lots of kids running around and we had to push our way through the crowds to get up to some of the tanks. It's kinda cool, you start by going up to the 7th floor by escalator and then you spiral down around the tanks that are so deep you can see the sea animals at different levels of the "ocean". The aquarium is one of the biggest public aquariums in the world and they had a whale shark, hammerhead sharks, tons of stingrays and manta rays, dolphins, octopuses, oversized crab things, and so much more, that honestly, I don't know that much about :) But still really fun to see! Above is me and Danielle posing with the whale shark - they take one professional picture and one with your camera, and they had the professional one on display when we went to go pick it up - we were famous foreigners that morning haha!

Next, we ventured off to Osaka Castle. The castle was originally built in the late 1500s, but has since been reconstructed several times due to fires and such...and I would assume just general falling apart, because 400 years is a long time! We walked around the grounds and I caught my first glimpses of cherry blossoms.


There is a park with about 400 cherry trees, but most of them weren't blooming yet. There were about 10 of them blooming though, and each of those trees had a group of people enjoying Hanami parties. Here's me stopping to smell the sakura :)


Also, inside the castle you could try on warrior costumes from way back when, and some random Japanese guy saw that I was going to do it, so he waited for me to get my armor on so he could take a picture with me. Fun times :)


After the castle, we headed off to Tsutenkaku Tower. It apparently used to be the tallest building in Osaka or something amazing, but it's appeal has faded through the years. It was still kinda fun and we went up into the top to get some good night city views.


Last, but not least, we went on the Temposzan Harbor Village Ferris Wheel. It's 112.5 meters high and has a diameter of 100 meters, so really big! Above is me in the ferris wheel high above the city!

Day Two:

Since we had to get home on Sunday, there wasn't a whole lot of time for sightseeing. We started our day off at Spa World, a big building full of public baths. I do this pretty frequently as you know, but the kicker on this one was that it's got a European floor and and Asian themed floor, so the baths are quite impressive. This month the women's floor was the Europe, so there was a big mock Trevi fountain for Rome, and lots more for Spain, the Mediteranean, Greece, Finland, and Italy. You can see pictures of the different baths here.


After a relaxing morning, we were off to Tennoji Park, complete with Japanese style gardens, one of the things I love about Japan!

That concluded our Sunday, and I trekked it home by Shinkansen bullet train. I hope you enjoyed the picture tour recap. If you want to see more pictures, check them out here.

Happy Easter!

Hey all! As your Easter Sunday begins, mine is ending. I had a fabulous day, although it definitely didn't feel like Easter. I spent today with a few friends from my English conversation class. We had a "hanami" or "cherry blossom viewing" party at one of the temples in my city. I hadn't been there yet because it's a little bit in the countryside. The trip was well worth it though! Here are a few pictures from the day!

We sat under a bunch of cherry trees with petals falling from the trees. We had petals all over our blankets and even in our food! Not only did we have petals falling around us like snow, but we got to see the snow on top of Mt. Fuji too!! Fuji-san was playing hide and seek a bit during the day, but in the afternoon, it was all clear, as you can see here! Apparently this is a photo that all Japanese people want to take - with cherry blossoms and Mt. Fuji, two of the major symbols of Japan. The photo isn't anything to brag about, but it makes me happy just because I love Sakura and I love Fuji!

We were near Taiseki Temple, which had a bunch of paths to walk around, lots of buildings, and an amazing garden like the one above. Azusa and I walked around for a little while while I snapped photo after photo :) I need to go back there so I can spend more time walking around at a leisurely pace. Did I mention it was over 70 degrees today?! It got up to 70 every day in the last week, Spring has officially arrived!! The afternoon got a little breezy when the sun wasn't directly above, but it was still fabulous!

So many petals are falling off now that they are starting to form little piles from the wind blowing them around.

Here's the clan! Harumi, Masayuki, Azusa, Me and Yoshihiro, all from my adult converstion class that I teach on Tuesday nights. We hung out all day, had delicious food, played a little badminton and volleyball. It really was a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon. I have to admit it didn't feel like Easter...I remembered a few times throughout the day that it was a holiday back home...but it's different when I'm out and about and everyone else is sleeping!! So, while I am sleeping I guess, I hope you all have as good of a day as I had!! I love you and miss you lots!! Ash

Spring Beginnings

On Friday was my first Oral Communication class of the school year with the new first year students, and it went off brilliantly! The newly accepted students are feeling lucky to be at NishiKo and haven't quite been worn down with all the studying it seems. Last school year I struggled getting volunteers for anything, and in my first class I had almost too many volunteers! And they didn't seem too shy to speak in front of the class in English and actually do the activity in English. I'm sure it's a bit delusional, but I hope they continue to be so excited about my class! I sure it will fade a bit, but for the moment I'm just going to enjoy! And hope that the rest of the sections of the class are just as genki next week!

Today I went running at Lake Tanuki and there were tons of people out there sitting under the cherry blossoms. Lake Tanuki is always picturesque because of the lake and the trees, especially when the weather is nice and you can see Mt. Fuji, but it was especially nice today with the cherry blossoms and all the people enjoying the nice weather. It got up to 75 today, so the perfect day for enjoying time outside! It really was an enjoyable afternoon under the sun. On my drive up to the lake, there were quite a few cherry blossom petals blowing in the wind, it was almost like it was raining flower petals, it was really pretty. They sort of "glitter" the ground now in some places. I'll be sad to see them go. Tomorrow I will be going to enjoy another cherry blossom picnic, and that will probably be the last of the season.

It's hard to believe that it is Easter this weekend, time is just flying by! Before I know it, I'll be home to visit. I hope you all have a Happy Easter Sunday with your families. Love you and miss you, and wish I could be there to celebrate with you! And of course...eat the nice, big, juicy turkey and mashed potatoes (not complete without gravy of course)!