AKEMASHITA OMEDETO GOZAIMASU!!!

To all you wonderful people, happy new year!!! I am sure none of us can believe that yes, it is indeed already (almost) 2006 and that we are about to begin another cycle... but, lets kick it off in grand style, and wherever you may be in the world, whatever you may be doing, whoever you may be doing it with, remember to make TODAY the greatest day of all...

If you get a chance, find a 2006　horoscope online and read it, it will tell you about what the year has in store for you, just for kicks, try to live up to it...

I am writing this from Shibuya, and I wanted to share a bit of something with an individual who goes by the name of Ginza - man, standing at the Ginza 4-chome intersection made me think of you, and realized how great a time we will all have, Japan is a very lovable place...

Again, happy new year...all the best to you.
rdm

WOW

I have lived through many a snow storm in my life, but never has the term taken on a meaning at it has here. A couple of days ago (oh, last Sunday in fact, after my car broke down and I had to ride my bike :-)) it started snowing like mad and hasn't given up since. It has literally snowed non-stop for almost five days (ok, ok, there are brief intervals of cessation, but so brief that they are unnoticeable). So, so far, nothing out of the ordinary. But today it did happen. Its about three thirty in the afternoon, snowing buckets. I'm hanging out in the school hallway, chilling with the ni-nen and san-nen seis (elementary 2nd and 3rd graders), when all of a sudden, I see a bright flash. I'm like, what the, couldn't be...right. But sure enough, right after, a huge thunder strike, shook the damn windows in the building. And so began the first snow storm I'be been in. It has been snowing pretty heavily, and yet, regularly there has been thunder and lighting...its very strange. I don't know if it seems strange to anyone else, but I certainly cannot remember such a thing happening ever before...oh, well, just another day in Japan...

Everything is good. I fixed my car (it was a bad battery). Tomorrow, I have my bonenkai, which is the year-end-party (literally translated as "forget the year" party). My JHS teachers and I are going up to Wakura Onsen (which is a very famous hot springs resort just north of here), where we will indulge in extremely delicious Japanese food and drink (hehhehe) and enjoy an evening of comraderie and communal bathing. (Actually, I'm really excited about it because we'll be in an outdoor bath and it'll be snowing, which will also be a new experience for me). Ok, take care all, hope to have a longer posting soon...

Mama, privezi mne pozhaluista ALTOIDS. Iz Sam's Club, 8 ili 12 shtuk, Wintergreen. Ih zdes' net, a ya kak raz segodnya spomnil, chto po nim uzhasno soskuchilsya...spasibo...do skoroi vstrechi, cherez nedeliu...

RDM

Happy December

Hello all. This whole blog thing is fascinating for me. In the beginning, everything was so new, so heretofore unique that I felt a desire to write it down, to share, to clue others in. That's why posts were frequent, long, detail oriented. It was also a way for me to process all these experiences, by going through them again, writing, picking out the parts that most stuck out, etc. And, in the last couple of months, the frequency of blogging has decreased substantially...not because I haven't been doing anything, but precisely because it has all taken on an eerily familiar feeling to it. As the people around me keep asking, "Ano, nihonno seikatsu ni narimashita ka?" (Have you gotten used to life in Japan,) I can only say that I've grown accustomed to living here. Sure enough, there are still interesting moments when I'm nearly floored by the fact that I'm in Japan (for instance, just the other day, I kind of got lost in a daydream during class while the JTE was lecturing on a grammatical point, and when I came to again, I looked around and briefly couldn't figure out why all the kids were wearing these strange uniforms and were all of Asian descent. And, then, boom, JESUS, I'm on this island on the other side of the world. Its quite a good feeling actually.) But, overally, this feeling has subsided greatly and I go about my day to day as all of us do, because it has become quotidian. Before leaving I didn't necessarily think it would happen so quickly, but it has.

So that leaves the question of the blog. While certainly I want to still use it as a medium to express and narrate my new experiences, I want to also start using it as a forum for discussion and reflection upon experience, rather than simply story telling. Hopefully that will work out.

Not much to say at the moment. On Sunday, I played in the Ishikawa Prefectural Basketball Club Tournament with the Houdatsushimizu Team. (They didn't know what size I was, so they got the biggest damn uniform available (XXXL) so I looked like a clown in it, but nevertheless). I had to guard #17, this lanky S.O.B. who played really rough (which is something I certainly didn't expect) and even though I was the tallest guy on the court, it didn't help our team, and we were defeated by the Wajima team 96-77. A good effort though, and many of our best players were not there. (And, and it might come as a surprise to you folks, but I'm by far not the best player, and size, although it counts for something, doesn't count for much unless its paired with skillz, and on that particular note, I don't sing real well). So we lost, but there will be more games and more fun. Yesterday was the first bowling game of the Ishikawa ALT bowling tournament. My team won, whoohoo. I bowled the best game of my life (170), which was a nice experience.

Nothing much going on at the moment. Trying to plan some stuff for when my family comes to the far east, but I hate planning, so a lot of that will have to be "winged." A couple of weeks ago, went to Osaka, for a rave. We saw Underworld, Chris Cox, and a bunch of others. It was a great time, and lasted from like 9:30 well into the "better catch the first morning train home" time. To party like that with 10,000 Japanese rocks. The place it was at was packed with people, and by 5:00 am, the place looked like a post-Katrina refugee camp, with people passed out in every which way imaginable on every open space of ground, table, chair, rolled, tile, carpet, etc. Great dancing energy fun.

Ok, back to study the Japanese. I heard its snowing over there and is the coldest winter in 25 years. Is that true?