Goodbye messages

Oh and goodbye to Cassie, who left this morning. Words failed me at our last parting; you've been cool.

Vid:

Prodigously Panoramific

I upload them so you don't have to! What? I dunno. This is my life in a wide angle.

Okay, this and the next one aren't panoramas, but are in fact my graduation messages for my graduating kids last go around. All funny-looking kanji were done by my own blighted hand. This is why I came to Japan, so I could do these two specific graduation messages.

One reason why I take bike rides.

So I says to him, I says, "that's some handsome hay."

From Nagasaki's artificial Holland. Expensive town; you have to pay just to walk around it. Two more:


Tara, the sea, and the mountains.

Spring is starting

I finally got a working bike and rode up into the mountains to take in spring. Spring mountains always restore my love of Japan. Highlights included meeting the old woman, impressing some kids, and seeing the old man after a long time.
The old woman used to run a restaurant on the banks of the 蛍の里 (firefly village). Now she spends her time drawing and writing poetry about flowers. She talked briefly of her "darling". I told her she has a nice life, and I mean it. All the interior shots are from her home/restaurant.

Blue fields are breathing their jade to the sun....
And a moment that ought to have lasted forever
Has come and gone before I knew.

--李商隱 Li Shangyin

Local talent

I have a subscription to vids labeled Saga. Recently this guy's video popped up. Here are a couple of em.
I need to visit that castle, come to think of it...

タコス

Sleep does not come when I eat. But I made the mistake of eating tacos late. And when I eat tacos, I can't stop. I ate literally 12 tacos over the course of the night. Cause I couldn't sleep. Due to the tacos. Which I kept eating. Cause of the no sleep to stop me thing. Are you seeing the pattern?

So that didn't help too much when I had to give my presentation to 50 old people today. I talked about my home state of Wyoming, and somehow managed to make it look interesting (thanks, Yellowstone!). My bosses wanted me to speak Tara-ben the whole time, but it is hard enough to remember to use keigo, which we previously established I don't use. Cause of tacos--No! But yeah, lots of doubly finished sentences today, like, "雪がよくふるっ--ふります！”So local dialect was right out. I'm not sure how to mix it with keigo anyhow; there is a Saga-ben equivalent to the masu-form, but I've never heard it out loud.
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In my insomnia I turned to a pirated online version of the Space Farmer. Despite it's crappyness, not even this brought me sleep. I laughed during his first failed launch though. Not so much when he decided to risk everyone's lives by doing it again. And where did the money come from?! Bad movie.

Doraemon comes to Saga-ken

Significant to me because I live in Saga and nobody from TV has visited Saga since. You can hear the kids speaking Saga-ben

Everything

Lunatics

So I was offhandedly asked what the town's motto would be in English. In Japanese, it was something like 月の引力が強い町 (don't remember clearly, but I think that was it). In translation it would mean, "the effect of the moon on the tide is strong in this town." Literally, it is just "[the] moon's gravity [is] strong[ly effective on the tide in our] town".
So I said, "Uh... 'Tara: the moon's effect is strong here...' or something?"
It wasn't until later I realized they were making this translation into a t-shirt.
Not only have I contributed to the Engrish phenomenon, but the shirts will give everyone who reads it the impression that the residents of this town are lunatics (the entymology of lunatic is one who goes crazy as the moon becomes fuller).

Movement in a still image

Just a little experiment. Go here to see. The pic is from the mountains around here. The band is Japanese.

Strange circumstances led me to make blueberry curry

And it wasn't so bad.

蛍

A couple of friends came down to give me fresh baked crockets (sp?) and see the kitty. I had seen something previously in the evening that I thought they should see, so I had them hop in my car and we went about five minutes into the mountains.
Tara has a nice little park up there, with the word ホタル in its name. Which means it's a place for viewing fireflies.
The site of fireflies blinking in unison over a river in the valley between two mountains is quite magical. Like a strange fictional wonderland. Too bad the season will soon be over.

Then I saw this morning another town in our prefecture has made the Mainichi news for the same thing. I was at the town last year; it had a longer trail but fewer fireflies at once when compared to Tara. If you go to Ogi, you have to go deep into the mountains to get a good view, or so I hear. But anyways, there is a photograph in the article, so check it out. I may try a night shot with my camera tonight and see what happens.
BTW, fireflies make for excellent dates ;)

Chillin at the gats

I look like anpanman [shot by]

DVD is not the acronym you assumed it to be

So I saw a DVD store sign in Tara on my way back up from Isahaya the other day. I thought to myself at the time, Oh, that could be more convenient that going all the way to the next town over for vids; I'll have to check it out.
Then I go there today. The videos were there, but there was something... off about them. After a few hours it hit me: those ladies aren't wearing clothes. And this flashlight... it's all strangely shaped, and it doesn't light up at all. Waitaminute, this must be one of those burlesque videotechs the dandies talk about!
So I guess I found the town's Olde Sex Shoppe. That was... interesting.
And I guess DVD stands for Deviant Video Distributor.
Yet it warms my heart, in a strange way, that even a super small town such as mine could have such a place.

My town and wikifying it (video)

So the state of wikipedia articles on places in Saga-ken is very sad. I finally decided to edit my town's entry, since I know a little bit, what with living here. Now the English page on wiki is longer than the Japanese wiki's. That's not really suprising; Japanese wikipedia is painfully dry. You can still be a good writer while having a neutral and academic point of view in English, but Japanese seems to lack that ability, if wiki is any indication.
So, is your town's wiki looking good? Get to work, be proud of where you live! When I started looking, I found tons of info (via sources like three giant books and diagrams of secret-Christian graves), especially about a guy I mentioned way back (Takeno Shintaro), the Gatalympics, and festivals. My next wiki projects: Saga-ben, Saga International Balloon Fiesta, and Hadake (naked!) Matsuris.
But can you help me with the page a bit? This is a community thing after all. Go look, and correct any mistake you see. I am a notrious misspeller. ;)

Also, how about this? Can you translate this bad boy into an understandable term (I got the romaji covered)?: 流れ灌頂

Finally:

Why is the white man taking our picture?

Morning Commute

Half the week I drive along a scenic highway, with sea on my left and mountains on my right, and the occassional land mass on my left as well, such as the abandonded hotel. Anyways, two things about my commute:
There is a man who jogs every morning. He wears shorts. And panty-hoes.
If I am late for work, I will be further delayed by a yellow plate*. Today's yellow plate decided to stop and turn on his blinker to indicate he would turn right. Then he pulled twenty feet ahead and stopped again. Then he decided his turn was in fact a kilometer down the road. The whole time he was slow, and the whole time I was yelling, "Common! What are you--The panty-hoes guy is going to beat me to work!"

*:Yellow plate: Smaller, cheaper, fuel-effecient cars. Also slower. They sport a yellow license plate.

Urban Exploration in Tara-cho

Night mare

(dreamlike, but this one actually happened)
I've been hungry lately. I don't know why, but I can't get enough sustenance. So I was wandering through town under dim starlight, looking for the next yakitoriya of the night or whatever. Then, out of the darkness... hoof beats.
What?
I looked to my left and, under a barely opened garage door, I spied a horse's muzzle.
What?
I uttered "heee?" lowly, in Japanese, a word of disbelief and bemusement. The horse seemed to want to come to the outside world.
Then I noticed the boots, complete with spurs. Someone was standing next to the horse. The boots kicked angrily at the horse. The muzzle disappeared. The scene was so weird, so dark, so quiet, and so unexpected, that I starred for another thirty seconds. The muzzle came down again, and pushed against the opening. The boots kicked again. The impatience in the kicks told me that their owner was not a nice person. Then the boots were joined by a knee, and hands dropping to the ground. I was walking briskly away, and never saw the face coming out to scowl at me, by the time it came into view under that door.
Who keeps a horse in a garage? In Tara? And aren't spurs for riding?
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Anyways, if you want a quick and engrossing mystery webcomic, I suggest Fleep . It will only take you 15 minutes.

Shinto stuff (media dump)

The shinto festivals have been everywhere this weekend. Today, the oni-mask boys were drumming it up in front of the fish mongers' place. They finished by marching inside, no doubt to bring prosperity. As they stopped and ocha and juice was offered to them by the wife of the monger, I realized that the scene was an interesting reflection of Christmas carols.
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Sitting under a waterfall is called Misogi(禊). It's quite a rush. I wanna do it around here.
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I went to the giant shrine in Kashima (Yutoku I believe?) yesterday. As I was exploring around, I found an old path, littered with fallen trees to suggest it wasn't the way to go. Being tall, I equiped myself with a branch to swing back and forth to preemptively knock spider webs out of the way. But I was stuborn as usual, so I didn't turn back until the warthogs. I was pretty suprised when I saw them. Most wild animals leave long before you get there, but I somehow got an entire family of warthogs in view. Knowing how dangerous they can be I did the only thing I could: I started to wip my spider web branch back and forth as fast as I could, making a swishing sound. It payed off, perhaps because as I suspect, animals instinctively are afraid of that sound. Or it may only be domestic animals that fear the sound and I only got lucky. In any case, I am not gored and here to tell the tale. And the 山が生きている.

Many pictures after you expand the post.






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These should have been posted last photodump







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A couple more movies:


This one is from the Kind of Thailand's birthday in Bangkok:

Tv and my acting dreams

Today I was ambushed by the local TV woman on the street. I don't know what she was up to, but suddenly she was upon me with questions about where I was going and what I had bought at the supermarket (she put the camera right into my bags to look after I gave permission). A year ago, my Japanese would have failed me in such an unprepared situation. But I was cool this year.
But as if that was not enough, I was schedualed to film a commercial at 3 anyways with the same woman for a language class I am teaching. We convinced the man also being shot that his candid camera moment should be included, but he was being rather Japanese about the whole thing one way, when we needed him to be Japanese in the self-depreciating way.
So yeah, I'm on TV too much.
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Cue my dream life yet again having continuity. Tonight, I sadly realized I was not ever part of the Dave Chappell show. Yet while dreaming, I had a running career for a long time over several dreams as a very minor actor in on the show. These continuous dreams are starting to stack up; I'm creating a nocturnal alter-ego. Soon, I may start to not distinguish my dream reality from the real reality. So if you see me acting stranger than usual, don't worry. Chances are I'm not taking reality seriously, and that's okay; it's all maya anyways.

The mystery of the Tara crab men

So this is one of my photodumps, but I have a creepy mystery for you too. A couple weeks back, me and the girlfriend were driving through the dark, coming back from the equivilent of Tara-town's own Joe's Crab Shack, when we spotted a guy. Now the odd thing about this guy was, well, he was lowering himself into the space between the road and a bridge/walkway. His back was to us, and as we watched he dissapeared to an unknown fate below! We both went, "こわい!" (scary) at the time, but we rationalized that it only looked like he was jumping into a casm and possibly commiting suicide. Also the news around town didn't mention any suicides. But I wasn't sure, so I went back in the daylight. The photo clearly shows that there are no stairs nor a ladder, and the straight drop is like 20 to 30 feet. So even if he had, say, a boat waiting below, it would be a risky drop to say the least.
That is, if he was human. But what if he's not? What if he is fact a member of a secret race of crab men? Think about it. Tara is full of crabs. Crabs have exoskeletons, therefore they can fall great heights. So I think the only rational explanation is that he was a crab man dropping back into his normal habitat. He probably came out to feed on the flesh of humans.
Crab man gonna getcha.

So anyways, there are more photos after the jump to an expanded post.




Face-hands amuse the Japanese to no limit.




This guy liked photographing his cute son.



Meg Ryan's uh... unique smile was a landmark we used to coordinate meetings in Kobe.


Tricks with sticks at a Takeo show. You'll have to zoom this one.


Family shrine deep in the mountains. I sure suprised the family by showing up.


Aforementioned walls of happiness.




View of Kobe.


Inside a 4 star hotel.