Back to Japan

Japan the 2nd time around is completely different. My last trip was in February and while the snow in northern Japan was beautiful, most of the country was fairly grey. Now in April it is like a totally different country. The Cherry Blossom trees (sakura) are in full bloom along several other brightly colored flowers. Right now we're based in a district named Omiya which is greater Tokyo about an hour north of downtown. Omiya literally means 'Big Temple'. This morning I just finished a quick jog to the park for the 'Big Temple' . It was amazing. The were hundreds of cherry blossom trees around a lake and nearly 100 elderly Japanese people doing their morning calisthenics at about 6:30AM. They finished just as I was running past and they all started shouting 'Good Morning!' to each other and me. I'm sure they were wondering who the heck the tall lanky Caucasian was running through their park.

At the start of the park is a very large temple. I'll go out tomorrow morning and get some photos.

Anyway, here are some photos of the area around our hotel:

Sakura tree:


Typical Japanese Shopping street:


Palace Hotel Omiya. Omiya has a network of elevated sidewalks so the people can avoid traffic when walking(running) to work or shopping. You can see one in this picture by our hotel.


Sakura Blossom:


I almost forgot about the earthquake! Last night we were in the seventh floor of this restaurant building (the sign that says 7F) at a Shochu Style Restaurant. Shochu is a distilled liquor that can be made from potatoes, rice, sugarcane and basically anything else. Its very smooth. This restaurant had about 400 different types and served various appetizers as well. We each had about three different glasses of shochu and fried whole fish, yakitori, squid, pork cutlets, and fried cartilage from pig ears.

At 7:02PM Japan time there was a 5.0 Magnitude Earthquake. Since we were on the seventh floor we probably shook about 5" in each direction. It was pretty exciting!


I'll get some more pictures up later but I have to go get some breakfast at Macudonudsu (McD's) before work.

Bowling = Awesome

I should have been studying Japanese but I figured I'd post a few pics from our evening at the luxurious Gainesville Bowling Center Thursday night. Its quite the place if you want to enjoy $10 unlimited bowling and $1.50 Corndogs. That's right - $1.50 Corndogs!!!

The evening was part of our Operation English Improvement. We take some of the new Japanese guys at work and throw them into normal situations to work on their English skills. The other event is English-Only lunch where they have to eat a Jalepeno slice for every word spoken in Japanese. Apparently the Japanese really don't like Jalapenos so I think they prefered the bowling night.

Anyway here are some pics and please check out the final shot of the score at the end that I think shows the true skill level of some of the players.


Some of the guys worked on their bowling vocabulary but Mr. Tachiro went right to his pick-up chicks vocublary -




And explaining how he broke his belt?





Koiso after one of his only open frames.






"Who is this Japanese Guy that is taking all these pictures of me?"




Nice gutter ball dance Katie.




Yosh after a strike:



Who was the groom?

This is a picture of the final score (This photo has not been altered in any manner or fashion. Its a fact - some people have bowling skills and some don't. Ann Marie - if you get at least a 10 next time we'll let you play with the people that can really bowl).