Hotel The Ellcy Matsuyama

... br>The bus took about one hour and took us on a long and windy road through beautiful green valleys up to a small settlement in the mountains where we caught the rope-way ( cable-car ) to the most common start point for the grueling hike to the peak. Some people do hike all the way from the base, but it is apparently, very difficult and quite dangerous, takes over two hours and ascends 600m up poorly kept trails. Considering everyone was nearly dying by the time we got ...

This weekend saw quite an impressive ( though sometimes annoying ) Autumn Festival here in Hojo.<br><br>The festival basically consists of many many Hojo residence, getting together and building these strange portable shrines and carrying them around town banging on bells and drums as loud as they can all day and all night, dressed in traditional Japanese clothing and getting really really drunk. All culminating in a spectacular event of throwing ...

... so that I can regularly update you with some photos and information!<br><br>I will try and backlog later, adding in Tokyo photos, and some other events.<br><br>For now, just a quick glimpse into life in Hojo!<br><br>(More photos to come....more of our apartment (after I finally bought some curtains), my school, etc!)<br>

When leaving Edmonton, I decided it was finally time to retire my 15 year old norco bush pilot. I left it unlocked in the bike rack at my apartment the day I moved out and hopefully by now someone is getting deteriorated black rubber handle grip all over their hands and cursing at the stuck pedal. Or maybe they have already gotten sick of it and thrown it in the river valley.<br><br>Anyway, in Japan everyone rides bikes. Go to any train ...

... began.<br><br>At first I thought a guy in each boat would be fishing, but instead how it works is, there are lines of boats on either side of the river and the guy fishing is on another boat and he sails up the middle of the boats so they all get a good view.<br><br>So how it works is, the guy stands at the front of the boat, beside a giant flaming lantern thing and has 5 Cormorants, one tied to each finger. The light of the torch ( assisted of course by some massive spot ...

... very large moth / cricket things, that make a tremendous amount of noise!<br>-New cars: there are no old cars in Japan, everyone drives new cars.<br>-Car elevators: there are these crazy car elevators where they store cars here. I will see if I can get a picture.<br>-Toilet-sink: our toilet has a sink on top of it! When you flush the toilet it starts running and that is the water that fills up the tank to flush again the next time. Very clever, because then you can ...

This isn't anything exciting, but I finally got my pictures up on my personal website. Uploading pictures to this site can be slow and painful. So I got my own domain thenickboy.com The only thing on it is photos, and I'll be trying to figure out how to put them into these entries. In case you didn't know, I got a new camera. It's a Rebel ...

... 2nd "MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS joke here], and the baths would be right there. Well, not quite that simple. We were quite confused, and didn't know which way to go when we got off the street-car, but luckily while we were looking at a big tourist map we saw our pals from the Trumpet Section, Tomoki and Shim. They we kind enough to allow us to follow them to the baths, and even helped us buy tickets and directed us where to go inside the ...

... elephant, and hippopotamus (another word they love) were all "too big," but when we got to squid there was a pause, so I gave them "too squishy." (My explanation of what "squishy" meant was apparently quite comical, as they all exploded in delighted laughter - I think it might have been the sound effects.) I also related "squishy" back to the word "squid," which I had recently introduced with the other sea animals for our new unit. Unlike most of the animals, which at ...

Things have been moving well. I've been super busy with teaching my classes and doing a little more work on the apartment. Ashleigh and I have worked ******* buying and arranging things into a logical order to finally have some settled point. My mother referred to it as a "love nest." Which I guess it is.. for some reason that sounds dirty. whatever. Anyways, our love nest is finally complete. We've bought a desk, a printer, a laundry drying rack, knick-knacks, had ...