Mai in Wonderland

Alex's brother Zach just spent the week with us. He took that long as flight from America and I'm not quiet sure we gave him what he was wanting. Our first couple days we took him drinking, to karaoke, out to eat, shopping in a medium size city, and shopping in a big city. I think he enjoyed pretty much everything except for the shopping. I found that out by kind of overhearing a telephone conversation with his wife. He said that there were too many people and stuff like that. I hope that was the only time he didn't have fun.

In addition to that stuff we took him to an Ainu Culture/History museum and to a craft shop that the owner makes all the crafts. Around here Ainu craftsman are famous for woodworking. Our friend at Tsutomu (the shop name) makes amazing art work, he specializes in touristy owls, foxes, and horses but he makes some amazingly detailed stuff other than that. He made a dragon fly with a design on the wings. I think one of us took a picture. If I find it I'll post it but take my word for it, amazing. I think Zach really dug that. I know I did.

We went to one of Alex's schools too. At first I did not want to go because I took the day off, I didn't want to go to school. Haha. But I went for the benefit of the group instead of the individual. I actually had fun and school lunch was pretty good too. (I normally work at only high schools where there is no school lunch)

The last full day of Zach's trip I took him on a walk through the mountain paths of Biratori. There is a path that takes you up to an observation point. It has awesome "Beware of Bear" signs and everything. We also went to Yoshitsune Shine and it's treasure museum. I had a good time and I think he did too.

Alex is pretty bummed to see him go but I'm glad Zach came. I think it was probably good for both of them.

In other news...I'm studying for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test Level 2 (Level 1 is the hardest). I'm so sick of studying but the test is next Sunday. I'm not excited. I hope I pass though. That would be a miracle. It's so hard.

 I just finished watching the movie I Am Legend because I was so impressed with the book. I'll say that the movie was ok. And it was well worth watching just for the scene where Will Smith is working out without a shirt. But other than that the book was way better. I know that's the case most of the time. I also understand why Hollywood changes books in order to make them interesting to audiences. There is just no way that Hollywood could make a movie set in a post-apocolyptic future that is in the 1970s (like the book) and because it has to be set in our near future there was a need for a "science-upgrade." Also all the introspection that Robert Neville does and faces in the book would be a little hard to deal with, without a lot of internal dialog and let's face that gets old too. So that said, why the hell did they totally change the end? And make the movie mostly unrecognizable to the portion of the audience who has actually read the book. Here are the similarities 1. Robert  2. Zombies 3. Dog  4. Girl 5. In the past Robert had a wife and a child. Other than those five things it's not the same at all. How Robert interacts with number 2-5 is totally different too. I think it's just sad that Hollywood thought it necessary to change it so much.

My rating: 5/5

Summary: 
One of the most influential vampire novels of the 20th century, I Am Legend regularly appears on the "10 Best" lists of numerous critical studies of the horror genre. As Richard Matheson's third novel, it was first marketed as science fiction (for although written in 1954, the story takes place in a future 1976). A terrible plague has decimated the world, and those who were unfortunate enough to survive have been transformed into blood-thirsty creatures of the night. Except, that is, for Robert Neville...

My review: I was absolutely amazed by this story. The amount of depth and thought that was put into a mere 170 pages is remarkable. Richard Matheson truly understood human nature when he wrote this book. He knew just how much a human could take before a normal mind with emotions, feelings, and sympathy would change into an emotionless, faithless, hopeless entity. 

The story is one of hope vs. hopelessness. It broke my heart and made me think in a new way. I recommend it for everyone. 

So here is I've been doing...

Japanese Novel I'm reading:

Alice in Heart Country

The novel I'm reading in English:


And the PS2 game I'm playing while my precious PS3 is getting fixed:

Dawn of Mana.

I like all three for the most part. The one I like least is Un Lun Dun. It's just really...scattered. But I'm going to keep on trucking. I love the Alice novel it just takes a long time to read it. And I just started Dawn of Mana today. It's pretty fun. It plays like Kingdom Hearts.

 but I love Alex in the video!

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=58204226

I've officially been alive for a quarter of a century. Cool, right?

Friday night, me, Alex and Parker went to some new soba place for Victoria's going away party. I gave her a little goodie bag with some stationary stuff in it. AFterwards, Parker came over and he and Alex played HALO while I worked on grading papers. (I brought home a big stack of papers to grade)

Saturday was my birthday party. It was a lot of fun. Madison, Parker, and Kaori came over. We made tako-yaki and Alex made bean dip. We all played wii. It was fun. Actually Alex didn't play because he was the host and took care of all the food. He was really great. Afterwards we went to karaoke. We stayed there two hours.

Yesterday was also good. We ate Mos Burger for brunch. And Alex made super awesome parmesean chicken, bread with camembert cheese and a salad for dinner. It was so good! We played HALO for a long time too.

In other non-main event news: Madison is goign to give me an Ed Hardy bag. How badass is that? Also my playstation 3 (that I got not too long ago) stopped working. At first the disk wouldn't eject. Then we did a force eject. The disk came out but it wouldn't accept another disk. We're sending it off to get it fixed. I won't have it for like 2 weeks. 

The guy came and picked it up early. And Alex had just gotten out of the shower. He heard someone knock and peaked through the house door (not the outside door) to see if someone was at the door. The guy opened the door and got a shot of Alex's naked leg. haha.

Today I talked to grandma for like an hour when I woke up. That was really nice.  

In other non-birthday news: I gave up on "The Monster of Florence" it's just not my kind of book. Maybe if it wasn't a true story...

I did start reading "The Night Dance" by Suzanne Weyne. It's good so far. I had no idea that it had anything to do with king arthur when I bought it. That's a pleasant surprise. 

I've been super busy  lately. Since October started I've only  slept in my own bed 2 nights...lot's of traveling. I worked in Biratori a lot so at least I got to spend time with Alex. 

Here in Shizunai we've had an outbreak of the new flu...everyone has been really afraid. At my home school all of the second years were kept from school so they wouldn't pass it along to anyone else. That's like 200 some kids.

I've read some good books recently. I'm up to 54 books for the year. I finished "Extras" by Scott Westerfeld. That's the companion book to the trilogy "Uglies." I liked all of those books. Alex and I use the lingo from it all the time :D

I also read the third Sookie Stackhouse novel "Club Dead" it's currently my favorite of the series. I'm going to read the others soon. 

My most recent book is "The Devouring" by Simon Holt. I read it for the Halloween season. It wasn't the best book I've ever read but it was fairly entertaining with potential for the rest of the series. I was really creeped out at some points. 

So if you need a book to read check one of them out. 

Alex's mama sent this to me.

Saturday I went on a trip to visit my friends Madison and Emily in Erimo. Madison is the ALT for Erimo. I had never been to Erimo before this. Before this trip the only thing I ever thought about Erimo was "it's far away" now I think "man, it's beautiful."

I took the train part way there then Madison picked me and Emily up in Urakawa and drove us the rest of the way. When we got there Madison first showed us her place then took us to the wind museum at the Cape of Erimo.

Here is some Erimo info: It's usually super windy, seals live on the rocks out there (or at least hang out there), around 30 years ago Erimo was a desert because they cut down all the trees near the beach and because it's so windy there was nothing to hold the top soil down so everything blew away, they also are big in harvesting konbu - a type of kelp.

The wind museum was pretty bad ass. We saw the seals from some telescopes they have set up from an observation point and we went in this wind turbine that's going 25m per second or something. It was really cool. I knocked into a little kid though...woops. He didn't seem to care.

Thursday and Friday I walked around with our Canadian exchange student, Vicki. We had a good time. I showed her all the places I thought was necessary to see if you are going to live in Shizunai for a short time. I thought I'd post a couple of the really good pics of Shizunai that I took. This first one is the best. It's our ocean view.  The rest of the pics are under the cut. I'm going to do one more post for my trip to Erimo on Saturday.

I haven't been blogging much lately so here is a quick recap:

1. Alex passed JLPT 1 kyuu (That is the most difficult level there is for the Japanese Language Proficency Test)
2. Me and Parker, we did not pass JLPT 2 kyuu (the test directly below 1 kyuu but they are worlds apart - 1 kyuu is like the big shabang of JLPT tests)
3. Me and Alex celebrated our 2nd year anniversary
4. I went to Costco for the first time in my life...very interesting...and very big amounts of stuff
5. I read "Eterna:l by Cynthia Leitch Smith. It's really good and really entertaining.
6. I started reading the unabridged "Count of Monte Cristo" is amazing and I'm only 200 pages into a 1200 some odd page book.

Haha. I took a picture of this but it's kinda hard to tell in the photo so I drew a line around it.

So, what do you think?

Look at what Zeppy made me. :D

In other news, last weekend I went to Hobetsu-cho. It's a tiny, rural town near Biratori. The only thing it's got going on for it is the dinosaur museum and outoor replica museum. Back in the seventies the town found some fossils for an ancient whale, sea turtle, some half squid - half snail looking tihngs, and best yet a loch ness monster looking thing only smaller. I can't remember the scientific name right now....




Here is a picture from the outdoor museum/park. It was cool but the problem was...the gigantic, dive-bombing bugs. I was squilling and jumping every which way. It was pretty embarassing and yet entertaining.


This is a picture from the museum. Those are the acutal fossils there in the background. Please note the children off to the right that are not looking at the fossils but at Alex. I still think it's amazing that all the sea creatures remains were found up in the mountains.


Here is the link for the photobucket album of Hobetsu-cho: http://s78.photobucket.com/albums/j111/harajuku_maikeru/Hobetsucho/

Today was the omikoshi festival. Omikoshi means portable shrine. Alex was one of the people who carried it. I just took pictures. No special duty but I had fun nontheless. I'm currently browning a little bit and I'm not too sunburned. Good day. I took pictures with Alex's camera so I have to wait until he shows me where is cord is before I can upload them. When I do I'll post the link.

 I'll leave it in link format cuz...well...it's skanky. Make sure you look at her leg: http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j111/harajuku_maikeru/puma1b.jpg

I just went on torrentz.com and one of the main search requests is "rape." That's disgusting. I'm sure people looking for torrents which include the word rape aren't looking for information to deal with a rape...fuckers.  

Yesterday I was in such a good mood that I didn't even know what to do with myself. Last night I downloaded "Louisiana Hot Sauce" by Sammay Kershaw from itunes. It's a country song that I heard on "True Blood" I started listening to it in the morning as I was getting ready to walk to work. It totally set my mood. I should listen to it every morning. 

Yesterday was a truely awesome day even though nothing really happened. It made me homesick as hell but it was ok. I dreamt about BBQs, lake visits and trouble making but all that will commence once me and Alex get back to the states...in another year.

I miss Sue so bad I can't see straight. I miss having rowdy fun with her too. Like at Sue's family's parties when I was young with Stevie and his band playing music and me and Sue being designated drivers.

In other news...I fed a duck with my hand today!! How cool is that!? It wasn't a tame duck either it's just one that likes me. Its the one that gets a little closer to each time I go to the park to feed them. 

Here is proof:

 

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DML2WUhn2M0

Well first thing is...one of our school's teachers passed away last Wednesday. He had a heart attack while driving which caused an accident. It's so sad. His name was Mr. Tanaka. He always changed the class schedule for me so I wouldn't have to work with a particular teacher that is a little tough to work with. He was a really lively man who liked to roll up his pant legs at work into shorts no matter what the weather or if he was wearing a suit or a track suit.

We found out before work actually started and the teachers had to keep it a secret from the students until 6th period. Everyone gathered in the gym and the principle told everyone. He was choked up while saying it which was really rough on me because I can't really handle hearing/seeing a grown man cry. Next was the quiet of the room then the crying from all the kids. I was really trying to compose my self and stay strong for the students and it's been one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. After the announcement in the gym everyone went outside to the faculty parking lot. We all lined up and a van with Mr. Tanaka's body drove through the parking lot so that all the students had one more chance to say goodbye. I thought it was kind of weird but I guess it's good too since the funeral will not be held in our town but in his hometown which is too far for the students to go to. His mother and father followed the van in their own car and they got out and bowed to everyone. Hanabusa-sensei, one of the P.E. teachers, was crying as he was talking and again I almost started crying for seeing a grown man cry.

I wasn't ready to morn for Tanaka-san. So I somehow managed not to cry until after work, after my hour long train until I was safely hidden away from eyes that tell me foreigners are too sensitive and I cried. Have you ever heard the saying that "Deaths Come in Threes"? Well Mr. Tanaka was my third death so hopefully I'll have a break.

In other funnier news...this is what my friend on Google while looking something up:

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j111/harajuku_maikeru/Picture4.png

This is a screencap from when she was looking something up. Google really needs to clean out their searches. I mean WTF.

Also I read a really interesting book. Actually I finihed it yesterday. It's called "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins.



It's really similar to Battle Royale (The movie - I haven't read the book but probably it too) but even so I thought it was amazing and everyone should read it.

Last but not least: 
I got to see baby ducks when we went and fed the ducks in Tomokomai. :D

I'm pretty bumbed out because the day before yesterday we said by to Weronika. She is an ALT living way up in Engaru (opposite side of the island). She only signed up for a one year contract so she will be returning to the states next Monday.

We went to Sapporo for only one day to see her. It was worth it. We helped her pick out some souviners for her family.  

wasn't born a woman!!!????



This is Haruna Ai. Can't tell she was ever a man can you? She is way hot and has a sultry voice. I'm so jealous.