12/24/08
Hamanasu Express, between Aomori and Sapporo

Yesterday I packed, visited my host family's hapyokai (performance day), helped my host dad change the tires on his car, and at about 7:30 took off to get on a night bus to Sendai. At Nagoya Station, I inadvertently tested the myth that you can leave your wallet sitting in the middle of a busy area in Japan, walk away, and come back to find it right where you left it. Myth confirmed, thank goodness. Phew.

The bus ride was 10 hours, and I had a middle seat (there were three lines of sleeper seats down the bus). The people with window seats preferred to draw the curtains and sleep instead of watching outside, so I didn't have much choice but to follow suit. Next bus I'm booking earlier.

This morning in Sendai, I bought a Hokkaido & Higashinihon Pass, a special pass that lets me ride on any non-express JR line in the region, plus a few other lines, like the one I'm on now. I caught the local Tohoku line to Ichinoseki, a wonderful old train meandering through the countryside. Nowadays it's been shorted by the Tohoku Shinkansen, sort of a route 66 deal. I was in the second car of the train, and about halfway I looked back and saw that I was now in the last car; a few cars had been dropped at a station because there were so few passengers.

I wandered around Ichinoseki for a bit, then caught the next train for Morioka, still part of the old Tohoku line. At Morioka, I took the Aoimori (sic) line to Hachinohe. While waiting for the next train there, I wandered through a nice little public exhibit of local industry.

From Hachinohe I got back on the Tohoku line to Aomori. I wandered around Aomori for a few hours, then got onto the train I'm on now. I need to sleep, we arrive pretty early.

12/22/08
Nakatani Apartment, Nagoya

I hadn't done much preparation for my trip to Tohoku this week, so I've spent all day doing that. I needed to go in to the Labo Center to mail something, so I printed out a bunch of stuff while I was there. I stopped at Osu for some last minute Christmas shopping.

I leave tomorrow, if everything goes as planned.

12/20/08
(no entry, AU IY program)



12/21/08
Nakatani Apartment, Nagoya

Yesterday I visited Osaka Castle and walked through the park. Got pooped on by a pigeon. Then I went to Itami Airport for the arrival program. The plane was delayed an hour. Then we stayed at a different "hostel" next to Shin-Osaka.

Today I escorted eight delegates to Gifu-Hashima, Nagoya, and Hanamizukidori. Now I'm back in Nagoya for the time being.

I'd love to elaborate on the IY program, it was very exciting, but I'm really wiped.

12/19/08
J-Hoppers Hostel, Osaka

Can't write much, I'm in a dorm and don't wanna keep the computer on too long.

I met up with Katie at lunchtime. We went to Tennoji and Osaka tower (forget what its name is), then to the famous Umeda Sky Building. Ate delicious ume spaghetti.

Met a couple from Holland and talked with them a while.

12/18/08
J-Hoppers Hostel, Osaka

I'm in Osaka! Much to my surprise, not everyone is staring blankly and rambling about sea slugs. They do stand on the wrong side of the escalator and cross the street without regard to the light, though.

The first thing I did (aside from getting lost in the Osaka rail system) was head to Osaka Den Den Town, the famous otaku shopping district. Even after I managed to get to the station, I wandered through at least two other districts before I got there (a gambling district and this huge fish market. They had live fugu for sale, swimming around in a little pool).

Den Den Town is a little like Akihabara, with less of an emphasis on bulk electronics. I found a Magic card shop called "Yellow Submarine," they had pretty extensive stock in both English and Japanese. I found a Tintin DVD brand new, on clearance, I got it for my host family.

Now I'm at this hostel, it's the same people I stayed with in Kyoto (they have three locations, the third is in Hiroshima). I'm sharing a dorm room with seven other people, though they're all still out as I type this (it's about eleven). I wandered down the street and found a supermarket and bought dinner. Guess I should be more careful buying dinner at a supermarket when I haven't eaten any lunch, these eyes are big. At least I'm not hungry anymore.

12/17/08
Nakatani Apartment, Nagoya

Today was my last scheduled office day and/or Labo Party for almost a month. There were like 50 people there (Kitatani tutor). it was plenty of fun, but I didn't get home until like ten.

I messed around with videos for a bit... there were some problems, youtube would truncate the video way down, so I had to put it into a different format and I tried Google video instead. After finally successfully uploading five videos, I now see that there is no userpage to link to. Google video sucks.

(Next best thing I can do is link to one video, and you can see "more from user." I'll probably reupload them somewhere else later, too.)

12/16/08
Nakatani Apartment, Nagoya

Tomorrow is my last office day for a couple weeks. I'm going to Osaka Thursday for a little bit of vacation, until Saturday for the Australian International Youth arrival program. Sunday I return to Nagoya, and the following week I have off.

I think I want to go to Tohoku. Maybe I'll even get myself all the way up to Hokkaido. It's the middle of winter so I'll pretty much have the whole place to myself, no other tourists. Should manage a White Christmas that way, too.

Thing about a trip like that is that it would not be so cheap, even by poor bus and hostels. Maybe I should try the Kintaro method, haha.

12/15/08
Nakatani Apartment, Nagoya

Mostly hung around the house today... caught up on sleep and caught up with my host family. Not that interesting.

12/14/08
Nakatani Apartment, Nagoya

I went to some kind of senior mate meeting this morning, then did my speech again at another orientation gathering. Then I came back to Nagoya.

Sunset was pretty.

12/13/08
Kawamura House, Kanazawa

Got up nice and early to get the train back to Kanazawa, and visited Sugihara Party. Then I went to Kurachi tutor's house and did two parties. Now I'm staying with a member of Kurachi's party, Haruhi.

My first host father Mitsuda Tokio sent me an email today saying that he read my site and saw that I'm in Kanazawa, and that he actually grew up here. Awesome!

12/12/08
Matsumura House, Nanto

I visited two separate kindergartens with Kokaji tutor, and then went to Matsumura party in the evening. For lunch Kokaji tutor took me to a really nice tofu restaurant, it was really good. Don't wanna know how much it cost though. Went out to dinner with Matsumura, Kokaji, and a few of Matsumura's Labo kids. One of them was named O, he was pretty cool. Matsumura's house is way out in Nanto, so it was like an hour drive home over some mountains.

12/11/08
Kokaji House, Kanazawa

Lots of fun today. I did two parties of about 50 kindergartners each with Iwamoto tutor in the morning, and two more with her in the afternoon. Then I took off to Toyama and visited Matsuki Party, and now I'm back in Kanazawa with Kokaji tutor.

I was in the office of the school with Iwamoto, and I looked over and saw a little basket full of Hikaro no Go erasers. They were one of the few HnG related objects I've found so far here (guess it's out of style or something), so I pointed them out. Turns out that one of the people working there is a bit of an anime aficionado, and he gave me one of the erasers. Then he helped me explain to Iwamoto how gravity and Gs and orbits work.

There was a bit of a rainstorm going on in the evening, it made some of the trains late.

We watched a late night show where some dudes tried to break the Guiness world record of most T-shirts worn at a time. The record was 224. They got up to 169 and couldn't go any further. Still entertaining.

zzz