Okay, Last Post of the Day

This is some kind of record for this month, three posts in one day. I guess I am trying to make up for the lack of content I have been injecting into this thing over the past couple of weeks. This post is meant to be a general update on the state of things here.

First, it is snowing again. Actually, it has stopped for the moment but a few minutes ago, it was really coming down. I managed to keep warm in my apartment last night though, thanks to my new blanket. Right now, my heater is on there because I like coming home to a warm apartment. As long as I know I am only going to be an hour or two, I will generally do this. If I am going to class, usually I will not run it while I am away just because sometimes I am gone for the whole day and that is a waste of money to leave it running. My heater is called a Beaver and that always cracks me up too for some reason. I wonder if I can get a smaller space heater called a squirrel or chipmunk. Hehe, you said Beaver...hehe...hehe.

Anywho, other things of note. My apartment is finally getting cleaner and coming together a tad more. Next paycheck, I am going to buy a rug for the living room area and a couple other things. I need to get stuff to put on the walls too. Right now, I only have a poster of a map of Japan with a calendar and some subway maps on it. I have been thinking about getting a couple of the shots I have taken, blown up and framed. That would help the decoration situation. I like my apartment though and soon, I will post pics of it on here.

One of my schools is in a town called Wadayama and the Japanese teacher there has invited me to come over to her house for dinner and to meet her family in a couple of weeks. She was very happy when I said I would come because I guess the last guy that taught there before me said no. She also brought me lunch yesterday. Her mom and sister made onigiri and she brought me some. Onigiri is a rice ball that usually has something in the middle of it. The ones that I had were filled with a tasty seaweed and one has pickled plum on it. Pickled plums are very very good by the way. When I told her that I liked to cook, she perked up and when I asked if she liked chicken fetuccini alfredo, she said she had never had it. I told her I was going to have to make her dinner then and she said that would be cool. since I have an abundance of freetime, I think I am going to make the alfredo from scratch and maybe the pasta too. Another reason for making things from scratch is that alfredo is an import item here and is way expensive. I have only seen it here once and I think the jar was something like $8.00. Yeah, when stuff is expensive in Japan, it is crazy expensive.

Today, is the first day of my three day weekend so I am pretty much being worthless. Tomorrow, I am getting my bank account set up. Once in place, and full of money, I will be able to score a cell phone and internet connection. I tried to get a cell phone a couple of days ago and the place would not take an American American Express. They would only take credit cards issued in Japan. I already know the phone that I am going to get, it the phone that I am going to get, it is made by Sharp and is called the 903SH. The thing has a 3megapixel camera on it and will also do video conferencing with a second camera it has. It takes a mini-SD card and is also bluetooth compatible. In short, it rocks and is way cheap as cell phones go by American standards. It is only going to run me about $130. Unfortunately, it will not let me watch tv. I am not kidding when I say that, you can watch tv on some of the cell phones over here. Some of the phones here also have motion sensors on them so you can use your phone as a gun when playing some shooting games with other people or that the phone comes with. Think of laser tag with cell phones.

Holy crap, this van just drove by that was bright yellow and had a fin on it that was seriously four feet tall. It was also lowered and had a body kit on it. Ahh, Japan. I have pics of a similar van that I will post later. This country has some crazy cars.

Anywho, things are going well here and I am enjoying it. One of my schools is in a town that is considered to be one of the top three most beautiful places in the country. It has a natural land bridge that extends quite a ways out and when you put your head between your legs and look at it, it looks like it goes up to heaven. It is called Heaven`s Bridge or something like that due to this. When spring comes that place will look awesome, it is right on the Sea of Japan and has beaches everywhere. Teaching there will rock.

I am going to get going now, I have been in this place for the better part of four hours now and it is snowing again as I type this. As I said, the weather here has been snowy and cold. The sky looks like I could get a lot of snow tonight and the stuff falling now is sticking. When I began this post, that was not the case but the weather here is a tad crazy at the moment. Yeah, it is really starting to come down now. I will post more tomorrow maybe, I hope everyone that reads this is doing well and know that I do think of all of you quite a bit. As I have said earlier to many of you, if you want to come to visit, you will have a place to stay, this country is very very cool and I would love the company. Have a good evening!