Synopsis

Here are a bunch of random pictures from the past few months. I warn you they are in no particular chronological order. The crappier pictures were taken with my cell phone camera because my regular camera's batteries always seem to die.

Part of the Aso Fire Festival. They made two big "Fire" kanji on the
sides of the mountain. It's pretty hard to tell from this picture how
absolutely massive the big kanji actually is. After the sun went down,
there was a good old-fashioned fireworks show.

Picture from the lift at the Ashikita Roller Luge Park. It's located about

an hour by car from my house, and on the side of a mountain facing the Ariake
Sea. The view was amazing and luging was fun too. There were three tracks
and it was satisfyingly dangerous. In the summer they also have Zorbs.

Here's the view from the Roller Luge lift of the Ariake Sea. The mountains in the
distance are in Amakusa.

The Family eating Korean Barbecue in Kyoto.

This and the following few pictures perfectly illustrate the madness
that is the Dress Up Game.

Some of my tough and cool 9th grade boys that just graduated. I'll miss them,
they were quite an interesting bunch.

One of my English teachers, Mr. Susami, and his kids. Rie is the youngest,
sitting on Mr. Susami's shoulders, and she's very cute. Seishin is the middle child,
standing in front. He's pretty crazy and loves Pokemon. Yuka is the oldest,
and she's very smart. They're a very fun group.

Seishin and Rie in action.

A group of especially talkative 6th graders from Kawachi Elementary School.
I had never heard so much Kumamoto-ben. It was quite a fun school though.

One of the fifth graders at one of the elementary schools I went to. This elementary school
had about 40 kids spread throughout 6 grades. There were 8 fifth graders.

7th Graders playing a grade-wide game of Karuta. One of the teachers
reads the first half of a classic Japanese poem, and the students have
to slap the card with the correct second half of the poem.

Nightmare In Korea

So here's a story I finally feel is worth writing up. It's been a while since I've added a real working update to this blog, so here goes:

Quite a long time ago I was invited to participate with the Izumi JHS teachers in the prefecture-wide junior high school faculty soccer tournament to be held on March 4th. About a week and a half ago, I was informed that the Izumi Minami JHS teachers would be going to Pusan, Korea for a two day/one night trip from March 4th to March 5th. I regretfully canceled my plans with Izumi and quickly signed up for the Korea trip because I really wanted to go to Korea and I hadn't had the chance to hang out with any of the Izumi Minami teachers outside of school. So everything was in order, we were scheduled to do a quick tour/fast ferry/well-known, posh hotel package and it sounded pretty fun although I didn't really know the specifics of what we were doing. I was just hoping to have a fun night out with the teachers, eating, drinking and maybe doing karaoke.

So the plan was that I'd meet up with a few of the teachers at the school, we'd pile in one of the teacher's vans, then drive up to Fukuoka Port. After a quick stop back at my apartment bc I forgot my passport, we were on our way. The trip up was uneventful and the weather looked nice as we arrived at the Fukuoka International Ferry Port. Our plans were to take the quick , 3 hour hydrofoil 'Beetle' ferry that morning, then take it back to Fukuoka the following evening. After checking in and getting our tickets, the problems started. We found out that the weather for the following day was going to be less than stellar, and that there would be a pretty good chance that the Beetle would not be running at all that day. We had a couple other options for getting back at that point, either we could take an overnight boat back that night or possibly be able to book a flight back to Fukuoka, so we figured it might be ok. If, on the off chance the boats were canceled, we had a couple other means of returning. Also, if we canceled our trip right then and there or didn't use the Beetle to return, we'd lose some of our money, so someone said to hell with it, and we hopped on the Beetle.

The Beetle ride was pleasant and quick, and bc it was a hydrofoil, it wasn't really affected by the waves and made for a nice smooth ride. We arrived in Pusan around 1:00 and met up with our tour guide. While waiting for the rest of our tour members to show up, a couple somewhat shady looking individuals saddled up to us and offered their services to exchange yen into Korean wan. I had no idea what a decent exchange rate was and they only spoke Japanese so I opted out/had no idea what was going on. Unfortunately, I guess that was how I was supposed to exchange money as we quickly loaded onto the tour bus before I could exchange any money. We were quickly whisked away to the famous International Market and got off the bus to a light rain and worsening weather. The tour lady, complete with Japanese tour lady flag, led us to some random, unmarked building and herded us inside. We found ourselves in a fairly small store filled with 'high-quality' fake goods. Louis Vuitton bags, Gucci glasses, mugs with that nerd from Winter Sonata, etc, it was all there, and the tour lady said we were to meet back inside the store in 45 minutes and then promptly disappeared into a back room. Even I in my bewildered state realized we were being had and that the tour lady was getting paid to bring people to this random store, but no one really got angry. So we looked around in the store for a bit, and, not having eaten anything for a while, asked if there were any restaurants nearby. The staff said no, so we loitered in the store a bit longer and then I set out with one of my other English teachers, Mr. Naraki. We walked for about 2 minutes and found a couple restaurants and realized we had been blatantly lied to. However, only having 15 mins or so until we were supposed to meet up again in the store, we couldn't get anything to eat. So we strolled for a couple minutes in the real International Market, then made our way back to the pitiful little imitation good store.

Next, we walked from the store down to the waterfront and walked through a couple pretty crazy fish markets. We made a quick photo op stop on the waterfront and took a couple somewhat wet pictures together, then walked through a couple more fish markets then got back on the bus.

While on the bus, it was decided that our situation was getting kind of down to the wire and that we should figure out what we were going to do that night and the following day. The Beetle evidently has a deadline at 4PM where they say if the boats will be running the next day, and they had said the waves would be too high and that there would be no boats running the following day and probably wouldn't be anything the day after. The tour lady also said that there wasn't room for 12 people on any of the flights going back to Fukuoka, so we would have to take a boat back. We decided to take the overnight boat 'New Camellia' back that night. The New Camellia is quite an enormous boat with cabins, a restaurant, karaoke, a public bath and a couple other amenities, so we booked a 12 person cabin and paid the extra 10,000 yen (about 85 bucks) to get our tickets. Our trip originally had been to arrive in Pusan early Sunday, take a tour, have a good dinner, go out, then spend the night at a very nice hotel, then have most of Monday to do other things, then take a later ferry back that evening. Now, we would have to be back on a boat at 7 on Sunday for a 10 hour overnight trip back to Fukuoka at an extra 85 dollars. We were all pretty sad but figured we'd have a good dinner, get on the boat, then maybe do some karaoke and have a nice pleasant sleep.

After getting our tickets, we got back on the bus for the dinner included in the tour. From what I could understand, the tour guide was playing up the restaurant, making it seem like it was an all-you-can-eat-and-drink affair with really good authentic Korean barbecue and lots of beer where we could forget our misfortune and have a good meal. So once again we pulled up to an unmarked building and were herded into a restaurant whose only other guests were hapless tour members. We sat down ready to kampai (cheers! in japanese) and filled up our glasses with some strange beer called OB, which was the palest beer I've ever seen. So we kampaied, and drank our first glass. The beer had no flavor and was quite a let down. Sigh. Another pleasantry snatched out from under my nose. Oh well, anyway, next came the food, which was some halfway decent kimchee, fairly low quality beef, lettuce and no rice. I really wanted rice and was pretty sure it was a necessary component of Korean barbecue, but it was nowhere to be found. So we ate a little bit, and it was OK but tasted a lot better bc we were all very hungry. Next they brought out a plate of something that was wiggling. Upon closer inspection, it was raw octopus that had been killed fairly recently and was still moving. I tried it, it was kind of gross, but at least I can say I've had moving sushi. By this time, the wait staff seemed to be getting reluctant to bring out new bottles of beer, and we got the impression it wasn't so much an all-you-can-eat as an all-we'll-bring-you-before-you-have-to-get-on-your-boat. So we ate what they gave us and then the tour lady popped out to tell us we had to hurry back to the port to catch our boat. So we loaded back on the bus.

Back at the port we waited around for an hour or so (damn you tour lady!) and then we boarded. The boat was quite large and I was looking forward to a nice, smooth ride back to Fukuoka bc I figured the boat would be big enough to cut through the whatever size waves we were going to meet. We went to our room to find out it was essentially the size of a quarter of a tennis court for 12 people. We were given a very thin futon, a blanket and a weird vinyl pillow the size and shape of a Saltines box. Each person had kind of a cubby to put their head in along the wall while everyone's feet pointed into the middle of the room. Even though we had to board the boat at 7, the boat didn't leave until 10:30 so we just sat in the port for a couple hours. Everyone sat in the room for the first hour or so, complaining about our ill luck over a couple beers and snacks, then most people decided to take a walk and see what the boat looked like. The boat was pretty big, it had 3 decks with maybe 40 rooms or so. It was during my boat exploration that I found out our room was across the hall from some absolutely ridiculously crazy old Korean ladies. These ladies had a big room to themselves and, I can only assume they were very drunk, found it very amusing to sit in a circle and yell at the top of their lungs. I saw a couple of them and they looked absolutely crazy. I think they were singing or something, but they didn't really follow any commonly accepted rhythms or musical scales, so I'm only guessing. They did this for at least a good 4 or 5 hours straight, until at least 1 in the morning. Thankfully the noises the ship was making drowned them out pretty well, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

So anyway, during my explorations, I happened upon one of the other English teachers, Ms. Tango, and sat down with her in the lounge and we talked for a good hour or so. This was the highlight of my trip, as I genuinely enjoyed the company and made the decision that I'm a big fan of Tango-sensei. We talked about all sorts of things and I had a good time. Finally, the clock struck 10:30 and the boat left the dock. The water was quite calm in the bay area, and I figured it would stay that way for the rest of the trip. We navigated the bay for a few minutes, and then it was immediately obvious when we hit the open ocean because the boat began to pitch and list in all sorts of directions. Tango-sensei noticed that my face immediately changed from bright and happy to pale and scared for my life. The realization that I'd have to put up with 10 hours of this crazy movement didn't take long to enter my head and make me sad. So I sat there for and then we decided we'd try to go to sleep. Walking back to the cabin was quite difficult as the boat would pitch about 20 feet at a time and I'm not used to walking in rapid oscillations between zero and double gravity. It would have been kind of funny had I not been so scared. So I went back to the room and got down to sleep, only to realize I wasn't particularly tired and that the movement of the ship and loud banging resonating from somewhere in the bowels of the ship weren't contributing to a sleep-conducive environment (the loud banging did drown out the crazy Korean old ladies though, which was good). So I got back up with a book and headed to the lobby which was closer to the middle of the ship where the ship movements weren't as great and attempted to read to get my mind off things. This didn't really work, so I soon got up for a walk. While walking, I passed a pair of unlucky boatmates carrying something that looked like barf bags. This triggered something in my head and I spent the next hour or so in the bathroom trying to throw up because it would make me feel better but also trying not to throw up because I don't like throwing up.

Luckily, all that time in the bathroom made me kind of tired so I headed back to the cabin in an attempt to get some sleep. Surprisingly the vinyl Saltines box was pretty comfortable but I was still too scared to sleep. It was then that I kind of had a semi-realization that I just had to get over being scared, stop caring about it and remember to breathe deeply. I calmed down a bit and was able to fall asleep in 10 minute intervals between the excessively loud banging of the ship. I think I finally fell asleep for good around 4am or so, just in time to get up at 6 when the ship arrived in Fukuoka.

So we arrived in Fukuoka, with everyone pretty exhausted and sad. We took a couple pictures showing our sad state and then piled back in the van. We stopped at a rest stop on the way where I had a delicious lunch. It was a ham, cheese and pizza sauce on white bread sandwich that had been breaded and deep fried. It was delicious and a highlight of the trip. Upon arriving back, I made the windy and cold bike ride back to my apartment from school in my shorts and slept for 5 hours.

High points of the trip, in order:
1. Talk with Tango-sensei
2. Rest stop sandwich
3. Octopus live sushi

I tried to think of a 4th positive thing, but I couldn't :-(.

This trip was so unfortunate and we all felt so pitiful that it was so funny that it wasn't funny anymore. Ok, now I have to do my homework and go to bed. Goodnight!