中学開始！

Tomorrow will be my first day at Junior High School.
I'm not quite sure which school I should be going to.
I have no real plan as to what I'll be doing (as far as I'm aware, they'll just tell me what to do!)

I have yet to write anything about my trip to Okinawa, I will do sometime, in the meanwhile they say a picture speaks a thousand words... so enjoy the 135,000 words I've "written" on my Okinawa flickr set!

近況写真 - Yokohama

Next!

Random Travels in Yokohama/Chinatown
- Yokohama

A friend of mine had a mate over from the US whom he was showing around Japan, and because ofcourse I'm SO AWESOME he spent most of his time (nights out) with my fair self. One such event was a short trip to Yokohama, somewhere... not so far from Tokyo, in fact! God my geography on this country is rubbish.

Anyway!


Yea... the weather was shite...


Conveniently closed off gardens in between the old red-brick buildings.

Red bricks being something of a scarce sight in Japan. Can see 'em everwhere in England tho.


Some bottles of wine at a restaurant within the red buildings.
Marriage - beer next.
Sounds about right.


What I thought to be a cool drawing-in-dust, turned out to be a not so cool normal piece of art.


Our venture into Chinatown met us with a completely random festival. This shows how very uncultured I am, I have no idea what it was about, probably something everyone knows...

近況写真 - St. Patrick's Day 2008

Before I post a little on my time in Okinawa, I thought I'd go ahead and keep the chronological order going by posting some photos of stuff I've done recently. The reason being that it's been so long since I actually did these things to write anything even half-interesting about them, and I'd rather not ramble on (like I usually do).

First off!

St. Patrick's Day parade
- Harajuku



Omotesandou closed off the highstreet for Ireland's most famous festival. As far as the parade makes you aware, St. Patrick's day is about dressing up in green and drinking Guiness. Much like St. Paddy's in England, then!








Local gaijeans insane with delight at cheerleaders, ofcourse.


Elvis, as we all know, being one of the great Irish artists of all time.


The budget for the Jameson's float being far less than that of Guiness sporting one girl and a deflated float... Hmm...


Knights and Elves. This is how the great nation of Ireland was founded.

I took a video of the Knights in the last photo as they had a nicely choreographed(...) fight just in front of us.


That's it really for that, I took a whole load of others,
Take a look at my Flickr Set for the rest

目の色が

I've been sick this week leading me to cancel a "final" lesson FOR THE SECOND TIME. I had a bit of a cold which lowered my immune system, coupled with the fact I had some crab at an izakaya in Shibuya, I got fantastically sick and made sure the toilets at four of the stations on my way home got a face-to-face view of my dinner.

My point being, this one will be short, since I have my "re-scheduled" lesson tomorrow.


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My eyes are changing colour!!11one



From what I can recall both of my eyes have always been brown. Pretty dark at that. To my surprise on a date with my girlfriend the other day (not the same day as the one mentioned above) she commented on how she liked the fact that I had green eyes. I laughed it off as a joke but upon further inspection found she was right!

I'm hoping this is just some weird "cool" thing, I don't know if I should be worried about my eyes going bad and this being some sort of ominous sign or something. It's only in my right eye, the left is still brown.

Any comments?


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I am frequenting my local far too much.
Look at this picture.



See the photos stuck on the wall in the background?
I am in two of them.

Notice the smaller double-passport-size photo?
That's me.

...
I think I might aswell work there for nights... it's not like I get paid a whole lot at my current job..!


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Last, a random.



After drinking this, the bartender burst into flames and flew through the ceiling.

I beleive he is fighting crime somewhere in America.

一年記念

Happy 1st birthday to the Karamuucho blog!

I would have thought I'd be able to remember landing here in Japan... The airport, the train into Tokyo, meeting my aunt at Tokyo station... To be really honest it's all just a big blur now. A year into my life in Japan I realise now that when I came here the apprehension of moving country was far beyond what I had flimsily prepared myself for. Whilst life wasn't hard at all, I didn't realise that I was really worried about the future, and plunged myself into trying to live-life-right-now.

A year in, though, whilst perhaps not the best, I have a job, a number of great friends and I can finally say things are settled down.

One problem. My aunt has VERY kindly let me stay at her house (albeit at a price) for the entire year, at a premise that I would be going to university in this country. Unfortunately with my grades in England I don't see that happening all too quickly, atleast in this country. This leaves me with the option to move back to England and spend 3~4years in a university, before returning... which is not an option I'm going to take.

With that said my plan right now is to look into online courses. Whilst forgo-ing the "university life" it will still fulfill the actual objective of getting qualified in something, anything. Unfortunately doing an online course apparently doesn't count as "going to university" to my aunt so the big event of this year for myself will be moving house!

Apologies that I couldn't make the first post of the Karamuucho year more interesting fish-out-of-water Japan antics and less emotional garbage and brainstorming, but thank you to all those who read this blog, and welcome to all who have found it recently.

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Anyway!

March is around the corner, and besides my birthday it also marks the end of the Japanese school year. What this means is not only graduation ceremonies and oh, my birthday, but it also means the Spring holiday is coming!!1

Vague plans between friends and family are trips to Okinawa with my gaijinian buddies... Gunma to my grandmother's (AAGH!!)... Nagoya to see my brother. This is great because one of the big things that I wanted to do last year which I didn't was to see more of Japan. The problem with having a passport and therefor no actual time-limit to how long I can stay here is that I kept putting off travelling because I was "busy". Which was utter crap because I had the four-or-so months before I actually got off my arse and got a job.

Now with actually having "holidays" and being able to appreciate my free time, I feel this year will involve a little more travelling in Japan! I'm excited. Are you?

The 6th grade kids will be graduating in March, which means they will be doing all sorts of we're-not-going-to-be-here-much-longer events in the coming month. One of which being the "owakare" sports taikai. The farewell sports competition if you will, where, as the smart ones amongst you may have guessed, the graduating compete in sports.

I think all the schools I go to have this but not all on the days that I will be there. Luckily I was able to attend one such event planned right after my lessons had finished. After lunch I was ushered by a hundred or so students into the gym where the 5th grade would compete against the 6th grade kids at basketball (there was also football(soccer) outside). Unfortunately since my camera sucks and the sunlight reflecting against the polished gymfloor surface made all my pictures look like silhouettes...

After a number of games where the 6th grade repeatedly thrashed their younger, shorter, weaker opponents it was time for the Teachers VS 6th grade games. After repeated chants by the students of "Make the gaijin play! Make him play! Make him dance! Make him do tricks and bark like a dog!" I was told I will be competing 2 of the 6halves. In a shirt and jeans. Bare foot.

The girls would be competing against the female staff, the boys against the men. Only the best students (atleast from what was available...) would be playing... What surprised me was that I thought - as Japanese people sometimes tend to do - the adults would atleast go easy on the kids who will be graduating, never seeing them again, leaving them with the impression that they could do anything if they banded together and did their best. Imagine my surprise when the usually timid female staff went bitch-insane and slaughtered the girls 28-4!

The men's turn. It would be the principal, vice principal and two other male staff in three games with me in the last. The following is the first half of the first game.

The VP got tired straight off the bat, substituting minutes into the game and the end of the video... that guy is the principal... I went in his place, and proceeded to play the remaining 5 halves...

As you may imagine... I completely trashed them.


What? It was an elementary school height net, I couldn't help but dunk the crap out of it!

Teechars!!1

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Some more randoms!

Following the snow from the other day... HAH

I am God.

I am God 2.

School Lunch milk.

Look carefully at the top right.

Cock Soda.