Misadventures in Translation

No, I haven’t been killed by ninjas, been in a fight with Godzilla, or caught up in the middle of Yakuza gang war. I’ve just been very busy with school and living it up. It’s been almost a month since I’ve posted, so a lot has happened since then. So, I’ll briefly summarize it:

February 24th: Geekdom – My friends and I took a brief daytrip over to Tokyo. My friend was hoping to buy a cheap, used Macintosh in Akihabara. He ended up not buying one, but I ended buying a nice iPod video. Now, long train rides aren’t as boring. We also found a really nice jazz bar near the south exit of Shinjuku station called Four Roses. It takes its name from the Kentucky bourbon of the same. The owner was real cool and the atmosphere was really low key. The collection of jazz and spirits was excellent.

My other photos of Four Roses were crap, but I think this accurately captures the atmosphere.

March 2nd: Akeno Junior High Office Party – Another drinking party to alleviate all the stress of work. My drunken coworkers always teach me the most interesting cultural aspects of Japan such as where I can find the best prostitutes in Tokyo. My principal also told me that his daughter likes me a lot and that it would be okay to marry her because I’m a gentleman. She’s only 15. SCORE!

March 3rd: Here Fishy Fishy Fishy – After the drinking party, I ended up staying with my principal at a ryokan (a traditional Japanese hotel). I thought I would end up having a free day to catch up on things, but I ended up go fishing with him. You should never upstage the principal and I did good job of that. He caught four fish to my measly zero fish. That evening, I went to a fundraiser for a friend whose mother’s house burnt down and had a jolly good time.

Doryou Waterfall (Dragon’s Breath Waterfall)

Maybe it was still too cold to fish.

To see more pictures from fishing, click here.

March 4th: An Epic Day of Travel. After my morning run, I got a call from two of my friends. They had taken a train an hour and a half in the wrong direction. One of them needed to meet his parents at Narita Airport in Tokyo, but also needed to pick up things from his house in the middle of nowhere before meeting them. This resulted in an epic drive up, around, and under the mountains of Yamanashi to get my friend to his house and back to the nearest train station. Thanks to the power of metalcore music, we got him to the train in time.

March 9th: Freezing in Kiyosato – I picked up a friend from Uenohara at Anayama Station and then traveled up to my friend’s apartment in Kiyosato. Kiyosato is a village in the Northern part of Hokuto almost on the Nagano border. It’s up the mountain and so it is a fewer degrees colder than where I live even though I’m in the same town. We spent the evening watching movies and hanging out. We stayed the night so that we could wake up early and go to Nozawa Onsen in Nagano for snowboarding.

March 10th: Buttcrack of Dawn – We woke up at 5:30 to make our way to fabulous ski slopes up North. We grabbed a quick breakfast from the 7-11 and took the Chuo Expressway. A lot of snow had melted, but the top of the mountain had a nice blanket of snow. I spent most of the day helping improve my friends snowboarding skills before I abandoned her to recklessly race my friends down a red course.

Although Natalie wasn’t ready to wake up, but once I told her that there would be plenty of hot, single Japanese males she changed her tune.

Too bad I don’t have a photo of me doing my patented 360-tailgrab-faceplant.

 

 

The top of the restaurant says that “We Like It On Top!’ So do perverted Westerners.

 

What do you do when waiting for a friend at the bottom of the slope? Make horrible looking snow titties.

March 11th: Sonny Bono – Another full day of snowboarding. It snowed all night and day, so we had fresh powder for a great day of snowboarding. Since marked courses are boring, we took our adventures off into the words. Jumping off hillsides, boarding through valleys, and navigating wooded areas was awesome. These were my last runs of the season and I made the most of my time. In America, I’m going to have to try out the Rockies. I ended up getting home at around 10 o’clock and then going directly to bed.

The sign says, “Go this way to break your neck.”

I think we got a little lost.

Gareth and Shereena chilling on the mountainside.

To see all the snowboarding pictures, click here.

March 13th: Graduation – The 3rd years (equivalent to an American 9th graders) have reached the end of their compulsory education. The graduation ceremony is during the middle of the day and is full of formalities. I wish you could have seen the number of times the students had to practice standing up, sitting down, bowing, and walking in. There were a lot of speeches, singing, and crying. To give you an idea of the formality, when the principal gave a speech, he first bowed to the prestigious guests (superintendents, police chiefs, etc.), then walked up on stage and bowed to the Japanese and city flags, and then bowed to the crowd. When he finished speaking, he did this in reverse order. I think I may have thrown my back out of place with all the bowing. After the graduation, the students gathered in their homerooms one last time to take pictures together and sign each other’s yearbooks. Since Japan likes to make things complicated, the school year isn’t over. The 1st and 2nd year students still have classes until spring vacation starts on March 23rd.

 

Everything followed an exact plan. Many things were measured out, counted, and checked two or three times. A little excessive, but at least I didn’t have any responsibilities besides helping carry in the heavy graduation sign.

I’m glad this isn’t a big school or all this bowing would have made the ceremony last all day long.

I make this suit look good.

This girl is too short.

 

Check out those sweet kicks.

To see all the pictures from the graduation, click here.

March 13th: An Uninvited Quest – One of my former classmates is hoping to teach English in Japan. He has several interviews lined up, but needed a cheap place to stay. He is staying at my place until my spring break. I’m such a nice guy.

This weekend is yet another fun filled weekend. Saturday night is a pub quiz in Otsuki with a jaunt over into Tokyo. Sunday, I have an international dinner in my town. Sunday evening, I have dinner plans with my Japanese friends and my friend from college.

Next week is the week before spring break. It’s basically a very lazy week. My spring break is going to be quite awesome. I’ll be spending a week down in Kyushuu, Shikoku, and Hiroshima. On the 24th, my friend and I will take the night bus from Tokyo down to Fukuoka. The bus ride is 14 hours! We’ll stay in Fukuoka one night and then we’ll head to Mt. Aso, the world’s largest caldera. From there we’ll stay in the famous onsen town of Beppu. From there we’ll be taking a ferry over to Hiroshima. From Hiroshima, we’ll visit Itsukushima-jinja, and finally visit Shikoku. I’ve gone more places in Japan than most Japanese people have.

Now, for you moment of Japanese zen:

Evidently, I’ve been getting a lot of perverts to my sites after I made the post about Asuka Izumi. Why people are looking for “hot 13 year olds in thongs” or “hot 13 year olds nudes” completely blows my mind. So, to get a classier set of pervs coming to my site, I’ll post pictures of popular, busty Japanese models. The first one is good ole’ Aki Hoshino. I’ll just let the pictures and videos do the talking.

The following video is great. Nothing like watching three Japanese idols try to get candy out of a bowl of milk. Japanese television is fantastic.

If can’t see the video, click http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJDUL5v2Bx4

Cleavage zoom in? Check.

If you can’t see the video, click http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j4LN6ObdhE

This is a video of her on a Japanese variety show. It’s quite funny.

If you can’t see the video, click http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hdwq6sPzoA