new photos

you can find my most recent expeditions here!
http://photobucket.com/albums/a74/carlybode/

what a prize

the other day tom and i were invited to a local festival by my host family.

It was held at my host sister's school, and the theme was O-Bon (like every other festival at the moment). So of course evry O-Bon festival needs dancing and we were both conned into taking part

Everyone dance the same dance around and around a huge tower which had taiko drummers sitting on top. And as you went around there were judges handing out pieces of cardboard on strings to hang around you neck to show that you have won a prize.

Both Tom and I got one of these signs. Probably being the only gaijin there made it pretty easy. We also got dragged up on stage by some old guy.

Finally the dance was over and we could go and exchange our signs for the prize. People told me that i had won a great prize and tom's was equivilant to an "encouragement" prize. When we got there, i was give 2 bottles of washing liquid and he got a roll of cling wrap and a roll of foil.

Very exciting prizes! Just what we needed around the apartment too :P

wonderful australian embassy

as a JET we have access to some cool stuff

i wrote to the australian embassy and they sent me one of their "Australia Experience" kits.

This is what you get in it
- School uniforms and hat, textbooks, lunchbox, school timetable, school photo
- Australian Animals
- Photo cards, readers (E&J), puppets
- Trees and Plants in Australia
- Photo panels, eucalyptus oil
- Aboriginal art sample, boomerang, reader on aboriginal art, flag
- Recipes
- CD and song book
- Kanga Cricket Set
- Australian currency set, maps, flag, Discovering Australia video and guide

and its all free. all you have to pay for is the postage to and from the embassy!

i can see that i will have lots of fun when i go and make my school visits later in the year.

i feel the earth move under my feet

Had a nice big earthquake here in japan today around midday. The building shook for ages and i felt like i could still feel my head shaking for at least another 5 mins.

Apparently the quake was a 6+ somewhere north of us in Miyagi Prefecture. It registered at around 4 here in Mito.

Nothing to be worried about though. Japan is designed to withstand these kinds of natural distasters these days. And i work in a brand new building with all the mod cons.

We dont have emergency rations in our office like i did when i worked in Tokyo though...

internet and phone

yey

i am finally getting my internet conneted on monday next week! i will be able to talk to you all on msn and skype from home after that.

and you will be able to call my at home too!!

discoveries

isnt life always much more fun when you run into the unexpected?

yesterday tom and i slept in till about midday after a huge day on saturday playing a bit of golf at the driving range, then taking part in the mito scavenger hunt, and then going to an all you can drink/eat escapade at the mito station beer garden.

so after we finally got out of bed and decided it was time to venture outside, it was already 3pm. we had grand plans to go to either the beach or the park for the whole day so we made do with our short afternoon

after swinging by starbucks for some free internet access (thank you to the open wireless connections of a random person who lives near starbucks) we walked down to the park.

mito has lots of parks. we discovered one amazing one in the scavenger hunt but it was a bit too far away for the amount of time we had left, so we went down to the park near the senba lake, which is equally as nice and big.

we set ourselves up on a rug and watched the crowds go past. in the distance we could see a festival cranking up (its festival season in japan at the moment) and it was interesting to watch it from afar.

then, all of a sudden, there was a huge boom! fireworks were going off left right and centre, to mark the opening of the festival. it was a huge shock becuase they were being set off from maybe only 20 metres away from us. we had seen some guy playing around with a box in the middle of the field earlier but it hadnt twigged until then.

so after all that excitement we thought we had better go check out this festival for ourselves. just as we arrived on the other side of the field, a taiko group started up. it turns out they are the famous "Mito-daiko" who i have been wanting to see ever since i got here. i was pretty excited and tom had never seen anything like this before in japan so it was very cool. they were very good and i think i will try and go to another of their concerts in the future.

and we found all of this by accident.

after that we walked to the 100 yen store, bought some bits and pieces, then tried to catch a bus home. eneded up on a bus that went the wrong way and had to walk home after all.

but it was a fun day.

photos photos photos

I have been a bit lazy getting my photos up.

You can find them here!
http://photobucket.com/albums/a74/carlybode/

New addition to the blogging community

Jade, an ALT who works in my building has started up her first ever website.

A very funny read.

A busy week

Hi all
Had a huge week last week.

After recovering from the cold i got from going hiking last weekend, i filled my week with heaps of things

Tuesday: went to watch my department play volleyball (and lose). then finally made it as far as the station to go exploring the lovely city of mito

wednesday: went to an art exhibition of a friend of one of the other JETs and then went to a language exchange class where you speak for japanese for 1 hour and then english for 1 hour.

thursday: dinner with my host family and then shopping at yamada denki

friday: moving day
spent the whole day moving into my new apartment. its pretty close to work, but a long 30 min walk from the station. but by bike its really easy. also went and applied for my alien card
in the evening it was off to the fireworks festival in town with anotehr JET and her boss and family.

saturady: more settling into my apartment and buying bits and pieces. still need to get a sofa, and a fan...
arvo was spent dancing in the festival with people from the international association and the bank. we danced for 4 hours to the same song over and over. if i ever hear it again i think i will go crazy. but the good thing was that every 15 mins they stoped for a few mins to drink beer and rest. some of the other JETs got very very pissed. after dancing till 9pm we went out to a japanese pub for dinner and more drinks and i walked the long 30 mins home.

sunday: the plan was to go to the beach, but the people i planned to go with had slept in and missed their train and the next one didnt come till 4pm. so that idea was out the window.
so i met up with a JET who works in teh same building as me and had some ramen for lunch and then hung out chatting for ages. then to startbucks for drinks with a few more JETs and then to a sushi train for dinner.

i got a phone call at about 6pm from tom, and he was like "i am at haneda now, ok if i come to mito tonight?". i wasnt expecting him till monday so i was a bit shocked. my apartment is still pretty empty so i only have one bed. it was pretty squishy. but i was so happy to see him.

The plan was to walk to the station and then get a taxi back with him. he had said his bus would get in at 9.45 so i was just about to get ready to leave and he called and said he was already in mito. good traffic apparently. i had some of the jets over for drinks so they hung around till he arrived and then they walked home.

monday: back at work. tom came and had lunch at the kencho and later i am off to go shopping to buy a new futon and a gas stove with my boss. maybe go out exploring with tom when i get home.

what's a hippo

Whats a hippo
A hippo's a hippo
I'm a hippo
You're a hippo
We're all hippo's
We are something special


Has anyone ever heard of the "Hippo Family Club"? Apparently it is a world wide thing.

I think it has got to be one of the strangest ways to learn a foreign language that i have ever seen

Instead of leaning one language at a time, they learn about 19!
And all they do is repeat after a tape. I have not really figured out if these people can speak any of these languages, or they just learn to copy the tape. At least they get good pronunciation. but they never really learn what the words mean.

The idea is to learn the languages like a baby would, naturally through listening and mimicing.

My host family is involved in this club and they took me along to 2 of their meetings and they play the hippo take over and over at home.

Good for them, but i dont get the point. why not try and master one language at a time, not get 19 of them all muddled up together.

And that little song at the start is getting to me...

formating problem

sorry, i still havent figured out why the formating of this page has gone all funny. it happend all of a sudden, so maybe it will go away all of a sudden too...

River trecking

On the weekend i was invited by some people in my office to go "River trecking". I didnt have much of an idea of what it was until i got there.

We all met up at 7.30am on saturday out the front of the prefectual office and pilled into about 4 cars. Then we drove for 2 hours to the northern part of Ibaraki.

When we got there the place was steaming. Not everyone had arrived so we had to wait a bit. So in the meantime we played a bit of frisbee in the parking lot.

Then it was time to go. We walked down lots of stairs beside a big pipe which was part of a hydro scheme. Then we climbed over a fence which said "no entry" in japanese (gaijins can get away with so much) and started down into the river.

This river was huge. Apparently it was part of the drinking water system which is probably why we were not supposed to be tehre. but noone seemd to care. Some guy came out of a building and yelled at us, but we ignored him.

To start with with swan in an waterfall and then started the climb up through the centre of the river towards the dam. We had to climb up and over many waterfalls, over huge rocks, through the middle of hude pools and around them.

I only had my runners to wear so one of the guys had made up some special woven rope things to tie to our feet to stop us from slipping. They actually worked for a while. but then they started to fall apart so the last few kms were pretty hard.

All in all we walked about 6 kms, which took us hours and hours cause walking 6 km in a river is like walking 30 km on land!

The beers waiting for us at the campsite were well deserved. SOme peole didnt do the trecking so they had set up all the dinner for us by the time we arrived.

We were staying at an "Auto Camp". I am not sure if the word Auto comes from automobile or automatic. We stayed in log cabins which were really cool.

We had a japanese bbq for dinner, which included lots of yaki niku and more beer. Someone had also brought lots of french wine and cheese to share. I felt bad i hadnt prepared anything but i had only found out about it the day before.

We all went to sleep pretty early cause the next day was more hiking.

Sunday's hike was supposed to be easier. No rivers, just a small mountain to climb to see the view. However, it turned a bit bad when it started to rain at the summit.

We were aabout 3 kms from the cars and saturated in cold rain from head to toe. Now i have a horrible cold which is no fun in the middle of summer

However, the whole weekend was fun and i think they do this kind of thing often. so i will get lots of chances to see different regions of ibaraki. Looking forward to it.