Hotel Jal City Matsuyama

... up just stopping after a point and heading back. Needless to say it was quite an amazing experience to stand on the sharp jagged edge of such a massive peak and look out over Shikoku. From there you could see the inland see in 2 directions and see several towns lying in around the bays. You could see back to the Joju and the tiny point we climbed the first chains to get to. I am glad Jess lent me her camera, because I unfortunately forgot mine. I will let her handle ...

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>

... and there is a massive parking lot overflowing with bikes. So, I decided I had to buy one and a couple of days ago I finally did! It's called "Tea Cup." It's a beautiful cream and brown beauty and I love her. So today I took a nice shot of her and road around snapping a few ( very few ) pictures of the neighborhood.<br><br>I plan to take more, but the thing is, when you are just a tourist somewhere it is a lot different than living there ...

... The Japanese don't mess around. We got there. We left.<br><br>When Etta was arranging everything, we had the option of getting the tour avec Bento or sans Bento, Jess and I both opted for avec, since it was going to include fish that were caught using the same technique that we were going to be watching. We were a little skeptical of the 2500 Yen price tag ( a little more than 25 dollars ) but once we saw them in the boat waiting for us, we soon realized we should have ...

... at night and was on the last leg of the trip to Hojo. Right on time at 12:33 at night I rolled into Hojo station, caught a cab and was at Jess's apartment. I really should've walked, but I didn't realize it was so close. How close was it? It was so close that the meter didn't even change from the starting rate of 550 yen.<br><br>It took a lot of knocking and ringing to get Jess up, but man was she surprised to see me! Yes, for those of you who don't know, I had told ...

... roads; God help them. Uchiko is an emerging tourist site, mostly Japanese at the moment but a few Germans in the mix. Incidentally, unlike the Aussie who don't really seem to obsess about itineraries and details, the Germans like clockwork hit every site, exhaustively. Uchiko is known for its vegetable wax and candle business which made the town rich in the past century. In the town there's still one shop that makes ...

... measures your basic Japanese understanding. The Japanese officials love make tests for everything. Some of my students have told me that they needed to take tests to get into their jobs - usually something about common sense. This sort of makes sense, but at the same time, if you're desperate for someone to flip burgers at McDonalds, you'll take whoever comes in.. Oh wait, McDonalds is a very well-respected job here. (You should see their recruitment posters ...

Ashleigh and Rachel were walking home from work and they found a kamikirimushi (Asian Longhorned Beetle). I'll admit, I'm a little squeamish around bugs, so I was a little taken aback. Ashleigh, however, used to work at the SB Natural History Museum, so she's all cool with anything that crawls, squirms or slithers. Being the creeped-out guy I was, I went to Wikipedia to find more information about these things ...

... of things/making them efficient + why I'm always taking off my shoes + my belief in the acceptance of squatting in public when waiting + a tendency to really like small cute things + my ability to sleep on floors + a strange affinity for pastel colored plastic objects + why I tend to like strange (what others call bad) music + a tendency to feel like i need to continually struggle to stand out + a strong sense of Do-It-Yourself + my ability to negotiate ...