Awaji Eight Annex Sumoto

just wanted to share my new favourite Japanese characters...

Mameshiba!!

http://dogatch.jp/mameshibaworld/video. html

they're pretty much a hybrid of a dog and a bean and they go around giving trivia.
videos are hilarious.

Jan 23, 1:41pm

So i passed out after i checked in and didn't manage to get to the harbourland... but woke up to japanese soap opera and with a phone call from my friend hoshi.

i've missed hoshi. he was a great partier in Toronto and still is. we had supper (where ihad the best tasting almond pudding and blueberry mojito) and t...

Jan 22, 4pm

I am now in Kobe and I can say I LOVE IT HERE! first thing:
- Sannomiya train station is the best smelling station ever. they cook belgian waffles on the main floor and the sweet sweet smell drifts up to the trains... i need to get one today for coffee break.

I am staying next to TOKYO HANDS.. which is one of th...

Nada Gogo stretches from the Nada and Higshi-Nada district (located in the southeast of Kobe city), towards Nishinomiya city in Hyogo prefecture. It is renowned for being the best sake (nihon-shu) brewing region since ancient times; particularly the Edo period (1603-1868) when about 80% of sake consumed in Edo (the former name of the Japanese ca...

It never ceases to amaze me the questions Japanese people ask me. My all-time favorite is, "Do you have McDonald's in America?" Some other good ones are: "Is this your first time using chopsticks?" "Do you have Japanese food in America?" "How many centimeters is your waist?" And equally priceless are their reactions to my answers, sheer disbelie...

Shige hired a car today to drive us the 50km or so to Kyoto. Kyoto was formerly the capital of Japan before the government shifted to Tokyo. Both 'Tokyo' and 'Kyoto' mean the same thing in Japanese: big city. Nowadays, Kyoto isn't all that large but back in the 13th century, it was a major metropolis. The remnants of those days, the temples, sh...

Upon arrival in Japan, we were treated to the words "Body Search" from the nice fellow at the Customs counter. We were led behind a protective screen, where a four-foot tall Japanese girl started to do my search. Oh well, I thought, I've got this girl who looks like she's barely 18 and not much more than half my height. I'm sure this won't be to...

I didn't actual do all that much today, but what I did do, I felt I did in depth (too much alliteration). Possibly the best part of the day was the fact that I spend the whole day speaking pretty much only Japanese. As of yet, I've not found any situations in witch I need to use any of the more complected sentence structures and grammar, and the...

We made no attempt at an early start today, getting up at 11.30 and doing a bit of web surfing. It was Easter Sunday, not that anyone in Japan celebrated it though. We left the place at 13.30 in the end and headed over to Osaka castle. Osaka castle was originally built in 1583 destroyed and rebuilt several times since then. The castle had large ...

This blog entry is a real strain on the memory banks since a) I never got to write anything in my diary for the day and b) I've put off writing anything for more than 2 months now. Hopefully the readers of this blog have either been extremely patient or have given up caring a long time ago. Dave and I got up nice and early for some stupid reason...