trains are my new best friend

helloooooo,

let me first say i love you and i miss you.

of course i miss you and i love you but who wouldn't.

but furthermore i will admit to maybe getting a little homesick MAYBE or maybe its just a case of slight melancholy.

yesterday i turned on the tv for the second time since ive been here (the first time was because i was reading a book and it was scary so i turned on the tv to occupy my mind and sat in bed watching japanese commercials for a while... note commercials are ten times more entertaining in japan) and i have never been so happy to see harry potter in my life. an english speaking harry potter that is. also titanic was on in english but i chose harry potter wanting something a little less dramatic. im not sure which one it was actually i think it was called harry potter and the chamber of secrets cause thats where they were going and there was this ghost boy named tom riddle who was actually voldermort and he brainwashed ron's little sister ginny into opening the chamber of secrets through this diary but harry potter made everything better so it was ok. i'm not sure what number this one is and i was trying to remember if i read it cause i read up to number 4 or 5 or something but i couldnt remember cause what i remember of them is all mixed up together. anyways i was happy to watch it for a while anyways.

last last week week we had thursday off (march 20th) for the first day of spring (which is a national holiday as it should be being a very important day). on wednesday night i went with mamiko to the bar (the red spanky just accross from the school and the size of a shoebox) only intending to walk with her to keep her out of the rain because she forgot her umbrella and then i said i would come in for a second and then i stayed until 3am. it was good. i added a picture of the bartender,he's really funny and nice, and gets really nervous when he tries to speak english it's funny. and mamiko's boyfriend was there and a bunch of their friends so i got introduced to a bunch of people. mamiko chose drinking and taking an early bus to her meeting in the morning to going home sober so they stayed until around 1am i think and then i just hung around the bar drinking with some people they intorduced me to. one lady was a "teacher of nurses" and spoke some english so we talked and she was really nice.

i woke up to see the sunrise on thursday and here i admit to maybe feeling a little homesick or something of the sort. but then i decided to go to sannomiya and eat cake. im collecting cafes... where i can go and read a book and drink tea (i drink milky tea now) and eat cake or some such sugary confection. i wanted cheescake so that was my intention. i took the train to sannomiya. exploring makes everything better. exploring something new makes everything happy and good again. i walked to motomachi in kobe just beside sannomiya and found a road named Tor road. Kobe is at the foot of a big mountain more flat and sloping than tall. it reminded me a little bit of san francisco because of the hills there were some trollys (but they were on wheels and just for tourists i think). so although i only intended to walk for a little bit and see what was up there i walked all the way up to the base of the mountain where there were only a few houses. it was good, i think it a fancy part of kobe because there was a really fancy little brown brick hotel that wasnt very big but had gold lettering named kobe hotel and in front on it there were four men with fine black suits and crisp white shirts and smooth black umbrellas rolled tighly and clasped with gold buttons and they acted like they were very important business men and owned the world although i probably just imagined they did although im pretty sure that that one sitting in the fancy black taxi cab with the driver with the white gloves had a smug look on his face. there were lots of houses and further up the mountain they were quite fancy with cameras and such. and there was an international school, and fancy bakeries, and somewhere that claimed to be Kobe's new cultural centre and the perpetuator of the new Kobe brand which sounded pretty silly to me. it was a nice walk, i was pretty happy with it. there was a french or italian coffee shop that smelled really good but i was dirty and it looked pretty spiffy so i didnt go in but i definatly wnat to go back and add it to my collection. they seem to be completely smitten with the english and french here. i was walking around in the bottom of sutty and there were all these english and parisian style bakeries and sweets shops and in one all the girls were even wearing the french maid costumes or maybe english that are all black and white and frilly and everywhere the pastry shops and bakeries are always english or french... never japanese hmmmmm. and if you buy soft cookies they are always american country kitchen style. and you've heard about those cafes in tokyo that you can go to where the waitress is a like a french maid and is said to attend to you in all sorts of ways that a maid may be imagined to... its quite scandalous.

anyways after my tor road excursion i was much happier and i decided to walk around some more. so i walked in straight lines remembering not to get lost and keeping the station in mind and in motomachi i found chinatown!!!! it was magnificant there were looming red gates and yellow laterns and a festival sorts with a million little food stands and people doing chinese dances and a million people and i loved it. for some reason i found the existance of a chinatown in japan very comforting. i guess because i love chinatown in toronto and it made me feel like it was home and i think i miss the fact that in toronto there are lots of different people and here there are pretty much only japanese people. it wasnt very big, just a short road, but there were lots of stuff crammed into there and i ate everything that looked yummy not knowing what it was and not really caring. i ate dumplings with delicious things inside of an identity unknow, and yummy crispy spring rolls one with vegetables and lots of ginger and one with what i think is some kind of meat, and i ate these round flatish type dumplings with green vegetables that might have been green onions inside and i think pork. i was very happy... and satisfied. and the ramen looked really good but i wanted to save room for the cheesecake i was still intent of searching for. so after that i went to this cake shop that i had seen before and wanted to go to and had a pot of cafe au lait and strawberry cake layered with puffy pastry and custard and wipped cream... it was pretty special. i sat with my pot (it was crisp white china and in a cylindrical fluted shape although i much prefer the squat round pots that the tea comes in) and my nice white cup and saucer and drank my cups of cafe au lait and ate my cake slowly and read Alias Grace by Margret Atwood which i had brought with me in my suitcase... displacing much that some would consider more important but not me (i finished it today, there was a very strange twist of events that kept me up at night and now i am in the limborific waiting period that i have ordained necessary between books of a day because i dont want them to get mixed up in my head and i feel there needs to be proper time to process). after reading for a while i left and walked around the shops for a little while, went home, and got ready for another day at work.

last sunday (which would have been march 23rd) i decided to go to back to osaka by myself cause its always a more thorough wondering around by yourself and boys never let you do what you want. so i took the train (trains are my new best friend) to osaka... its about an hour from okubo and i always enjoy a train ride so it was good. i got to the train station and managed to find my way to the subway ok and get a ticket and make it back to yotubashi (which is only 4 stops from nishi-umeda the station by JR station) quite perfectly if i do say so myself and i recognized everything and it was all good. i wondered around the shops and walked around osaka for a good 7 hours and it was splendid. i was wondering back to yotubashi when i heard all these people yelling and there was a march going on with all these people holding signs and flags and stuff and a man gave me a flag and the were protesting china's occupation of tibet especially in light of recent events in Lhasa.it was pretty awsome. i was really happy and i walked along with them for a while (and i called david z and 3am your time and woke him up to tell him oops). i had dinner in this yellow painted vietnamese restaurant (maggie went to vietnam and she loved it and said it was her favorite place so i really want to go) and had a yummy plate of lots of little things including my favorite crunchy spring rolls and mango salad and a bowl of something that tasted like hot chocolate with some kind of strong alcohol in it. i set out to find my way back home around 7pm when it was already dark out. ok. we all know i have no sense of direction whatsoever. i only manage becasue i can remember what places look like and lots of little things that i can recognize and use to find my way back to places. but ive never been in osaka when its dark... well i was that one time when we went out but it was in a different part of osaka. and the streets off the main street where i was are very twisty and maze like. so i might have got a little bit lost. but its ok i remained calm wandered around for a while trying to find something i recognized failed and asked a nice man in a convenience store how to get back to nishi-umeda sation. he told me how to get back to yotubashi station and from there i was a-okay to get home. it was actually quite easy and i found my friend the wooden restaurant that was my marker. when i get to the station the ticket buying machines were different than the ones at JR and i couldn't figure it out but then i asked a lady and she was nice and she helped me and it was all good. so then i went home and saya (one of ayako's friends) called me and i had just missed her but i will go back.

last monday i went to fla with ayako and we learnt some new parts that i now have no recollection on and then we had lunch at a really good spanish restaurant where i had some very very yummy fish (it was some kind of white fish) on a bunch of green vegetables that might have been kale or broccalini or something like that and cherry tomatoes and these white vegetables which i think were root vegetables cause they had green tops and looked kind of like turnips. and before that they gave us this little antipesto salad thing laid out on a long white plate all pretty with ravioli and octopus and something else i can't remember that was very good. after that i went with ayako to buy some makeup she wanted at this place where that have a special machine to check the colour of your skin and the ratio of water to oil in your skin and stuff and then i went to buy an espresso machine for nami at starbucks (we gave it to her yesterday because it was her last day and she really liked it... it was made in italy i think its pretty spiffy). after that i met yuka at yet another starbucks where our language exchange turned into a psychology/philosophy lesson. yuka is writing her thesis and she wants to use some english books and translate them into japanese so we were reading this book together and it was all about this guys theory of the ego, soul, and spirit... or at least the part that we read, we only got through a few pages. it was pretty interesting stuff, i remember some of the stuff from other psych and philospohy classes, but its difficult language for an english spearker nevertheless an english as a second language speaker, so it was difficult to explain some of the words and concepts (although i will admit it was kind of fun trying) and i hope i got it right and didnt tell her the wrong thing. we talked for a while, went home on the train, i finished some props for classes and it was goodnight.

tomorrow steph is coming. arriving at 6:35pm at Osaka Kansai airport. i will take the train to sannomiya and a bus to the airport and pick her up and then we will come back and i will show her where i live now. im glad someone is coming from home. im excited to see her. i have to go back home and finish cleaning for her and set up her futon and make an extra key cause she's staying for a month. she is bring things in her suitcase for me from home. i think we are going to go to tokyo and disneyland. she bought a 7 day japanrail pass to explore. i think it will be good.

ok,

i love you,

see you later,

sam

Starting to settle in...

hello,

these are things i have done since last:

i have begun to take fla (hula dancing ie. hawaii) lessons every monday morning with ayako in sannomiya. so far i've had three lessons and its lots of fun i have moved up from feet to arms in coordination but i havnt got to the hips yet... its a lot. sometimes my toes get cold. i went with ayako one monday after class to a kilt shop (a material shop) and she's going to make me a hula skirt like they all have. its going to be yellow with white flowers. there are only a few people in my class. our teacher is really nice. she has long black hair. we are going to dance in a festival in kobe in may. i'm pretty excited... it's pretty cool.

i've been meeting yuka every monday to study japanese and help teach her english. i like teaching english to her. one monday we met in sannomiya after hula and she took me to the international centre and we went to the book store and bought textbooks. i got a beginners japanese textbook and its pretty cool and yuka got a textbook that helps you study for the TOEIC test cause she wants to take it later. yuka is pretty cool, she can speak english really well, she just has trouble sometimes with the right word and mixing up the order of sentances or the tenses. sometimes she asks me to explain really hard things that ive never really thought about before like what exactly would means. i like teaching her different words. i like remembering what all these different words mean and figuring out how to explain them to her. i really like some words. its lots of fun. i like teaching kenta too cause he is really good at english and i can explain different things... last week we talked about reincarnation which meant karma and buddhism which was pretty cool. kenta wants to come back as a cat cause they get to sleep all the time and he's always tired. he thinks he has pretty good so-so karma or at least he tries so maybe he will get to be a cat. i hope my karma is pretty good to but i'm not sure what i would like to be. once i also had him read part of the book i was reading (hunters and gatherers) and i think he liked it and he told the japanese teachers it was an interesting book. he understood the words but i think its hard to put them all together into a story when its your second language, but it was fun talking about it. all i ever want to do is talk about books im reading i get way to excited when i get the chance. also kenta is really funny when you ask him questions or when i ask him to ask me a question like with the word who and whenever i ask him why he says because he is japanese. i think he thinks japanese people are really boring and he said japan doesnt have anything special but i told him it does to me. kenta is my 17 year old student. when i asked him to tell me something i didnt know about him he said that when he was 6 he fell off the second story of his house and broke his head and had to get 7 stiches and everyone was really nice to him and i told him that i had stiches in my head too from when i was little. kenta's pretty awsome i like him lots.

a few mondays ago i went with nami to the hot springs in tarumi. after fla i met nami at the tarumi station and we had lunch at this little restaurant that was really nice and kind of reminded me of toronto and we both and curry and they were really yummy. i had chicken curry and nami had beauty curry that had mangoes and banana in it and it was really good too and i had an almond latte and it was really yummy. after that we went to a shopping outlet and we went to this store called franc franc thats a cool household store and i got four dishtowels that are yellow, red, blue, and green (i use one in my baby o class for when we play peekaboo with stuffed animals and stuff, also we sing hickory dickory dock and my baby's name is maki and she always looks at me with a straight face with her big chubby cheeks just as though she is contemplating everything thats happening and shes not decided what to make of it yet cause shes still leveling it all out in her head except sometimes i can get her to crack a smile). also i bought a space foam pillow and checked cover for reading but i think its too hard. nami get an orange apron. after that we walked over to the hot springs that are in a big building next to a hotel. its really nice. first we put on these loose brown clothes and went into all these different sauna rooms. i remember once i went into a sauna when i was little and it was so hot i thought i couldnt breath so i was kind of scared but it was good. first we went into the middle room and laid down on the floor for a while and then we went into the cold room which is pretty cold but not freezing and then we went into the salt stones room that has all these little pink stones that you lie on and then we went into the coal room or something like that and it was a wooden room and it was really hot. nami sweat buckets but i didnt sweat very much because i never sweat very much. after that we took a rest for a while and then we went to the locker room and took off all our clothes. first we took showers with these little buckets and stools and washed our hair in mirrors with all the other women and then we went into the hot tubs with the jet things that were very strong and kind of itched my skin. after that we went outside. it was raining a little like misty sprinkles which was very nice becasue we were very hot and it was a good contrast. we layed down in this shallow pool of water that was just right and you could just sleep there forever, it was my favorite and i could read a book there for a long long time until i was really really wrinkly like a prune. and then we went into a pool that was really hot and then we sat on this little marble waterfall thing with a bench part and it was really nice with the rain and we talked for a while. nami is really cool, i like her a lot. and then we went into this other pool that was the carbon dioxide pool and it was really cool and fun because all these little bubbles come and stick to you and if you touch them they all float away and you can brush them off or you can crush them and they all pop against your skin that makes you laugh. i wrote my name on my thigh and nami drew a heart on her hand. that was my second favorite pool, it was really fun. it made me think of someone who once told me that little fish come to eat up all the little oxygen bubbles that collect on your legs when you are in the warm warm ocean. last we went to sit in these big copper pots with really hot water and it was just like being cooked in a pot of soup... i told nami that and she laughed. after the big copper pots we rested for a while and then went home, it was a really good day.

a few saturdays ago a boy named hideki (who is the same boy who took me to osaka) went with me to osaka after work to go to a place named club karma to see boys noize and go dancing. i met him after work at kobe station and we drove in his car to osaka which took awhile and we went to the club around 11pm. it was really small and underground and it was really cool and i liked it. there werent that many people to begin with but by the end there were lots and lots of people. before boys noize there were two other japanese djs i think. there was a boy with a blue bowl cut and big sunglasses. we danced it was lots of fun. i got lost a few times but hideki found me and we went home i think around 3. i fell asleep in the car. hideki dropped me off at home around 5:30am and i went back to sleep.

a saturday or two ago i went to another of ayako's friends soccer games but before hideki met me in okubo and we went to a restaurant where his friend works. it's called a tepan restaurant which is one that has those flat grills in the table where you cook your food. i think i ate raw chicken but you can do that here and it was pretty good. we also had this pancake thing with egg and cabbage and bacon and it was ok and vegetables and meat and stuff... it was pretty good. we drove to the soccer game and i watched with ayako and hideki dropped me off at home after and i fell asleep just as quick as a wink.

on the day that i went to the kilt shop with ayako i went to this place called patisserie tooth tooth that i had seen before in sannomiya after ayako had met up with her friend. its a parisian style patisserie and its really pretty. the bottom floor is a little store where you can buy all sorts of beautifully baked patisseries and chocolates and upstairs is a little restaurant with big windows where you can look at the poeple walking around outside. i sat and drank hot chocolate in a fluted white china cup on a white china saucer with a tiny ring of little white buttons and a little silver teasppon on the side. on a square plate i ate a white white snowman made of ice cream with chocolate for his eyes and he stood on a bed of gingerbread snowflakes beside a pile of swept up poached pear and blueberry jelly and nice warm custard. it was magnificant. i read lolita (valdimir nabokov)... it was the part about rita and how he found the letter from lolita. the stairs to the bathroom were lined with pictures of paris in gold and dark brown wooden frames.

one sunday ago i met nami and jon and her friend from osaka named Taka in sannomiya and we played pool in a dingy little place upstairs. it was really smoky because you can smoke everywhere here. i was on Taka's team and we were solids and i get two balls in... i believe they were the blue and maroon balls, i was pretty proud of myself (i believe i raised the cue over my head and jumped). i only got the white ball in once. i think we won, it was pretty cool. i really like jon, he was really funny and at first i was kindof nervous about playing pool cause im pretty bad and new people and these things make me nervous and he was really nice and teased me and i felt ok. after that we went to have indian food at this little restaurnat called ch something and we all had samosas and curry and it was soooo yummy! i didnt think i was going to have curry for a year so i was very happy. i had cauliflower and potato curry spice level no. 2 with butter nan and it was quite sensational to say the least and Taka had fish curry no.1 which i didnt try and jon had spinach and cheese curry which was very good no. 1 and nami had something i cant remember with vegetables that was very good. everyone was sweating sooo much it was sooo funny and the said i was a trooper cause i didnt bat a lash. it was pretty funny. after that we were soooo full and i went home on the train.

a couple mondays ago after english/japanese teaching/learning at starbucks in sannomiya (there is a common meeting place called something that translates into women's tits cause there are big round pyramids) we went to a little bar where yuka's friends work. it was lots of fun. we ate yummy food and drank lots and talked and yuka's friends were really nice and tried to teach me how to use chopsticks properly (i was a pretty good student) and admonished me for not being able to use my rice cooker in a way that made me thing that they would like to take my under the arm and cook me a bowl full of rice. this monday we went to a korean restaurant and ate and drank and it was really really good after japanese. it was lots of fun. yuka is really cool to talk to. next time we are going to go see a movie i dont know the name of with audrey toutou in it, im excited. yuka teaches high school students and foreign university students high level japanese and she is writing her thesis on how to build a good relationship between the foregin student learning japanese as their second language and the teacher using different methods like the journal approach and shes going to study psychology so she can understand better.

this weekend i had everyone (ayako, chika, nami, and mamiko) over for dinner after work on saturday and we had fondue. first we had cheese with bread and vegetables and then we had chocolate with lots of yummy fruit. it was quite delicious. we had plum wine and mamiko brought white wine from kobe and red wine. it was a lot of fun and im really happy they came. my apartment is claner than it ever was before. mamiko said that in the summer everyone always goes to the beach on sundays and have bbqs and play in the water and stuff and she would invite me so im excited. on sunday i get my haircut at this place called mod's hair (apparently its very famous and there are ones in canada) and i practiced some of my japanese. everyone was really nice and spoke a little english. it was very luxurious with a very nice head and neck massage. i like my haircut she said its a bob ie. amalie. the woman who cut my hair was very nice. everyone stood around and waved goodbye when i left... im not sure if it is customary but it was very nice.

ok well goodbye im off to work.

Week Six

well hello,
how are you?
i am fine.
thank you for asking. hehehe...

hahaha ok ok i'm back for part two in which i will catch you all up, up until this very day that is march the 2nd 2008. the valentines are still unfinished, although a few more have been accomplished. hmmm (a tap on the nose one or two) where were we where were we... the weekend of february 17th and 18th (nothing too notable happened at work i dont think... oh! i got sick on i think thrusday or friday and it was not my finest day). on saturday night i went to this little bar called the red spanky with mamiko who is the manager at okubo amity.
i met her for drinks and we talked and the bartender was really cute cause he was really shy to speak english but he tried and he was really nice and it was a lot of fun. mamiko is really cool and i really like her and im really glad i work with her and im really lucky she is my manager. we stayed at the bar until it closed meaning until aboslutely everyone went home and then we packed it in. on sunday morning i woke up really early... i think i have seen the sun rise in okubo quite a few times since i here. once i had decided it was a decent enough hour to get up and about i went grocery shopping for the second time since i have been here (now 6 weeks). in okubo as far as i know we have vivre and suty which are large shopping malls that have a department store like layout and all the stores are arranged in an open concept. suty is really huge... there are several buildings that comprise the suty complex. on the top floor of vivre is a movie theatre with english and japanese films (my blueberry nights is coming out on the 22nd and im really really excited cause it looks exceptionally good and i kind of want to see evening has anyone seen it?) and on the bottom floor of both are huge grocery stores that have a bakery and fresh sushi rolls
and other yummy things and an ice cream shop and lots of other good things. the bakeries here are excpetional and ive been taking full advantage of them (i just ate this savory curry donut thing that was really good and what looked a little like an english muffin pocket with brie and ham in it they were very yummy). i spent along time wandering around suty and vivre and perusing (is that how you spell it?) until i decided to buy groceries at vivre. i will have you know that the fruit is very expensive i saw a mango for 10 dollars and strawberries for 15! and i bought what i thought were oranges because they were on sale and they turned out to be grapefruit yuck! i also bought what i thought was oatmeal but then i took it to work and it turned out to be just plain wheat that you're supposed to mix with rice but chika told me that there is oatmeal like the stuff for breakfast but it comes in boxes in the cereal isle (how do you spell isle? aile? i have no idea) there is no where near as much cereal here as there is in canada. also dried fruit and nuts are also very expensive which makes me sad and miss the bulk barn in fairview mall and i think there was one in the scarbrough town centre too. after careful deliberation i chose two freshly made sushi rolls and some freshly sliced pinapple and decided to go home for a picnic. (when i went shopping all the sales ladies and girls were really nice to me and tried to speak to me in english or just smiled and pointed and when you try something on you have to put a weird paper hat bag thing on your head). i think i got salmon with luttuce and japanese mayonaise and what could have been eel or some type of fish with a sweet teriyaki sauce and cucumber. so i went home and sat on my beautiful wooden floor took out my cutting board with the little fishy symbol on it and my super sharp sashimi knife and had a picnic on my floor that was very satisfying. it was lots of fun and i was very happy with me meal but i think picnics are more fun with two eating in bed is more fun alone.

after i was through with my picnic i went to akashi to meet yuka (my language exchange partner) and have my first japanese lesson. we met at a starbucks (there are lots its the primary coffee shop) right outside the station and practiced english conversation for an hour and then she tried to teach me some japanese for an hour. im not sure how successful it was... watashi wa samantha desu which mean my name is samantha watashi wa is I and desu is the to be verb... i think.

i know some words in japanese but i really have no idea how to put sentances together. the grammar and word order is sentances together. the grammar and word order is completely different. its all very confusing for me. and different. and i cant pronounce half the words correctly... im still saying most of my students names wrong although they are very sweet about it and just quietly correct me or ignore it...apparently you're not supposed to move your tongue when you speak like in english. in japanese there are no r or v sounds so when i was teaching my students the letter v i made them bite their bottem lip and blow.

yuka is a really nice girl. she is in her first year as a high school teacher and just finished making her first exams which sound really hard and shes an expert japanese teacher cause she taught maggie before me and jon before her. after we were done learning we packed up and i came home to take a shower and get ready for our midnight trip to the mountain.

around 11pm i headed out for sannomiya where i met ayako's friend chie who is a very nice girl and we headed over to the bus terminal where we met ayako and her boyfriend. after getting something to eat at lawson's for breakfast in the morning (i got a rice ball with chicken and mayonnaise- mayonnaise is everywhere) we mounted a bus to the mountain (i couldnt tell you where this mountain is or what it's called) with a bunch of kids going on a class trip. going to the mountain was a very surreal experience, surreal in that we left at one in the morning got on a bus with a bunch of kids with all their ski gear, i had no idea where we were going or what was happening when we just randomly stopped in various locations and at the end of the 2 hour ride the parked the bus outside a ski lodge and left us there.

so at like 3 in the morning they parked this bus in that parking lot and turned off the lights and i kept waiting for them to let us out and tell us where we were going to sleep but no they just left us there. we were just supposed to sleep in this big bus until it was time to get up and go snowboarding. it was very weird and of course i couldnt sleep and all i kept thinking was how bad it was for the environment to leave this bus running all night. at 6am they turned on the lights and told us it was time to get up and go. we drove 15 more minutes to the hill and then it was off to the slopes. given my lack of sleep and awkward position i didnt feel too bad as we got up and went to rent my equiptment and get all ready (although the next day my neck killed from sleeping on the bus i think).

i was fully outfitted in ayako's old gear except for a hat and scarf which i supplied and i rented boots and a board. ayako and chie are avid snowboarders while i am if anything a beginner. but i didnt fall down too much so it was ok. we snowboarded for a good long time until it was ok. we snowboarded for a good long time until it was time to get ready to hop on the bus at 5pm.

ayako and chie were really good and they helped me out and gave me some tips and snowboarded with me even though they could go much faster and we stopped and got curry and rice for lunch at the ski lodge on the hill. the boarding wasnt too bad but i had a lot of trouble getting on and off the chair lifts and by the end of the day the guy knew to stop it for me. it was just like canada.

the snow was really good and powdery and fluffy and stuff cause it had snowed all night and there was lots of it which was strange because we hadnt travelled too far and there was no snow in okubo. it was really pretty. it was a lot of fun, but by the end of it i was pretty sleepy and tired and happy to go home.

we headed home on the bus and after another two hours arrived back in sannomiya. chie went home because she had work in the morning and was tired but i decided to wait with ayako with her boyfriend and we went to this burger place called mos burger. mos burger is a fast food chain in japan but its like a million times mos burger. mos burger is a fast food chain in japan but its like a million times nicer than any wendys of macdonalds and the burgers were really yummy.mine had a tomoto and this chilli stuff on it and it was really good. after a couple of hours her boyfriend come and gave me a lift it was really good. after a couple of hours her boyfriend come and gave me a lift to the train station and i got on my way home. the end.

the next day at work i was pretty sore most notably my neck and thighs...snowboarding is hard thigh work at least for me. the work week was ok i was sick off and on the whole week and have had a cold since so i havent been able to sleep very well because i cant sleep when i cant breath through my nose.

i decided that my warm-up for all my table classes (those are the ones for elementary aged children and above) would be jobs because we had this topic card with a bunch of different jobs on it. by the third class i had a routine in which first i went through all the jobs with them and then explained what a job was ie. my job was to be a teacher and their jobs were to be students and thats our work and then we thought of other jobs while i drew pictures and acted out things to help them out. we played charades (which im pretty sure they all thoroughly enjoyed even the shy ones) and i asked them what even the shy ones) and i asked them what their parents jobs were and then i asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up.

i explained to all of them that my mom was a nurse and i was a teacher and when i was little (10 years old) i wanted to be a marine biologist which is a scientist that studies animals under the sea (i drew a dolphin and showed them a picture of a mad scientist) and asked them what they wanted to be when they were 22! years old.

i got a cartoonist, a fisherman, a kindergarten teacher, a baseball player, a flourist, and a lot of a baseball player, a flourist, a video game designer, and a lot of i dont knows... they're only eight. they are pretty cute i must admit. i think it was a pretty good warm up and they seemed to enjoy it...i was pretty proud of myself.

on saturday last week i went with ayako to watch her friends soccer game, we went after work and we had beef bowls for dinner which is a bowl of rice and slices of beef from this apparently famous fast food beef bowl restaurant...ayako told me there is one in new york and it is really famous. the soccer game was somewhere in kobe at a place where they have a bunch of outdoor fields with big huge nets around them where the boys meet every week to have some fun. ayakos boyfriend couldnt come cause he had to work but chie was there with her boyfriend and a bunch the other people i had met at dinner and a lot of other boys.

we sat under this little tent and watched the boys played soccer. it was cute they were such little kids and when it started to snow they were all playing in the snow and had a big snowball fight and it was cute and everyone and the whole field was covered in pretty powdery snow and they were slipping all over the place it was funny. it was also very cold... my toes froze. we got home late.. i fell asleep in the car and chie and her boyfriend gave me a ride home.

on sunday i went to OSAKA!!! Osaka is cool no doubt. i mean its pretty awsome. i mean i was in awe. to begin at the beginning i went with a boy i only know as glasses (because he wears big thick glasses) that i met at the dinner with ayako and her friends. ayako asked him to take me because he knows osaka and she doesnt really like osaka cause its too busy for her. he is really nice and he speaks some english.

we met on sunday morning at i think around 11pm cause i was late oops (although i have been early by 15minutes at least for everything else cause thats how they do it here!) in sannomiya and then we took the train to osaka. its an hour train ride to osaka from sannomiya station so an hour and a half from okubo but i dont mind cause i like the train. haha hes really funny... on the train he got out his english dictionary which is a dictionary of all the beatles songs and all these phrases and some of them are pretty odd and he asked me what all these strange words meant and i tried to explain.

when we got to osaka we had to cross over from JR station to the subway where we took the subway to some stop i forget the name of.first we had lunch and i took pictures of all these pretty pictures painted on the walls. we had lunch at this pretty restaurant that reminded me of the ones in the distillary with the dark unfinished wood and the tall ceilings and the big farm beams.

for lunch i had something that sounds like chicken rice although i think that is incorrect because im pretty sure there is no chicken in it. it came in this really hot stone bowl and it was rice with this tomato paste stuff and on top of it with this tomato paste stuff and on top of it they cracked a raw egg that cokked when it touch the bowl. it was pretty good and i was really full. before that they brough us this trio of a little salad and potato salad and a little cup of soup it was really good and beautiful it made me quite delighted.

after lunch i had tea and it was utterly perfect i was quite delighted. there was a perfect white china saucer and a perfectly round white white teacup and little lumps of raw brown and white sugar and a little jug of cream and a little cup of hot milk. i cannot tell you how my stomach bubbled and i grinned and how giddy i became when they brought it. it just seemed so nice.

at the restaurant they had all these flyers for clubs and shows and stuff and i stuffed them all into my bag on the way to the washroom.

after lunch we walked around this area where there were a lot of clothing store and i think its where the cool kids hang out and that is where we went to the bape store and i looked around for aaron. after that we went to this area that was another shopping area but it was a lot more colourful and everything was kind of closer together and more piled on each other and jumbled and there were lots of kids wearing colourful clothing and there was this little circle square and it was called american something or other.

and then we crossed a bridge and we went to this area called namba. namba is spectacular. it is everything you could imagine japan would be. all i did was look up with my eyes wide and my mouth gaped and my head tilted way back and more than once he had to pull me out of the way of a passing car. there were so many things and they were so big and tall and colourful it gives me chills just thinking about it. i cant describe it i took pictures. being there made me ecstatic, ecstatically happy. it was all bubbly glee. the boy just laughed at me cause i was so amazed and happy i think i skipped.

there was this really tall building with a running manon it that i think it something of a landmark and i stopped to take a picture every five seconds. we crossed a bridge over a river that chika told me the osakians every five seconds. we crossed a bridge over a river that chika told me the osakians jumped in when their baseball team won the big game but its really dirty so lots of them got sick. there was this other really big building and it had this gigantic picture of a smiling mans face on it. we went in and inside it is this recreation of old osaka and there are all these little stands and restaurants and this alleyway with all these fortune tellers and palm readers it was really cool and the elevator you took to get up was it was plastered in these colourful pictures of little asian men with long beards and wiskers on all sides and it was magnificant. when we got out of the elevator they took our picture and at the end glasses got it for me... its in sepia tones and there is a string of chinese laters with the longest word i have ever seen written backwards, its pretty cool.

in namba and the rest of osaka there are a million zillion takuyaki venders cause its really famous in osaka and people love it like our street meet. takuyaki are these little balls of fried dough with octopus in them and you make them on these special metal trays with all these little ball holders and the venders use these little sticks to turn them really quickly its cool. i tried takuyaki in okubo cause there was this truck outside the pachinko place and i wanted to try some street food but i didnt really like it cause its kinda gooey and the dough tastes kinda yucky and uncooked to me but i took the rest to work for lunch and everyone else really liked it.

oh! apparently as we were walking through namba there were a bunch of these men and they all bowed to me as i walked by in a line but i didnt even notice and they were yakuza! yakuza are the chinese mafia in japan i know becasue it was in my book out. im not sure why they would boy to me but glasses said so im sad i missed it.

after we left namba we walked through a big arcade and this area where they sell a lot of electornics. we went to a cafe. i had hot chocolate and a peice of cake that was all these really thin crepes with creme and yunny syrupy stuff sandwiched inbetween that was really good.

then we walked to namba station and headed back to JR so we could take the train back to sannomiya to meet ayako and their other friend whose name i dont know but who i identify as aerobics and who is really funny. we met them at macdonalds and walked over to motomachi (another part of kobe close to sannomiya...just the next stop over) to meet chie at the department store she works at... its a really fancy department store... all of them seem to be. motomachi seems more like the yorkville area or the financial district of toronto and it was pretty quite.

ayako drove us to the harbour and we decided on a place to eat. its really pretty and there is this big complex of restaurants to eat at. we wanted to go to this restaurant where you eat a lot of different food on sticks but it was too busy so we went to a brazilian restaurant that has a buffet and then they bring around this big sticks of roasted meat and shave you off a peice. it was really good and we got lots of pinapple.

after dinner we went to the carnival grounds across the street where they have a merry-go-round and a really really big ferris wheel and an arcade. in the arcade glasses won us some ice cream from this machine and it was really good... they were these weird little balls that were gooey rice paste stuff on the outside and ice cream inside. there was also this place that had all these sticker picture machines... we went in and took a bunch of funny pictures and we shared the stickers... it was fun... and we shared the stickers... it was fun... i'll show you a couple of the pictures that i have on my phone. and that was the end of the night. the end.
ok well i'm gonna stop there cause this place is gonna close in a few minutes,
but i can't believe i'm not done yet. almost.
ok i'll talk to you again soon
byeeee