bollocks to this...blogger thinks im japanese. all the buttons are now in nihongo. wouldnt be a problem if i could read the bloody language.

anyways, its been a while, not because i havent been doing anything, but because they either havent been photographed, been photographed by someone else, or where photographed by me and then lost when i stupidly lost my camera the other week because i was riding home at night playing air guitar and it fell out of my pocket without me noticing.

some things that have happened.....

-played golf with a female ex-pro who happens to be a student. her hubby who is a current pro and has won over $1 million U.S and has played with Jim Furyk and Davis Love III amongst others came with us and people were asking him for autographs! very strange. he also uttered 'sugoi' which means 'awesome' when I was hitting some practice balls. Oh how he was mistaken.

-the cherry blossoms have come and gone...they only bloom for a week so everyone gets a bit over-excited and has mass parties in parks under the trees. i had a weeks full of sakura (cherry blossoms) photos on my camera before i lost it. but, see below

-went to watch jef continue their home losing streak. notably, this time we went without and japanese and as we will milling around deciding where to sit before the game, one of the ringleaders of the jef 'kop' grabbed us and showed us right down the front behind the goals. We were like celebrities, everyone was greeting us when we came down and at halftime we were surrounded by curious japanese. the atmosphere was something else, the 'kop' sung for about 85 of the 90 minutes and by the end we had picked up some tunes. it wasnt that hard as most of the lyrics comprised of 'oh, ah, jef, chiba and ho.' my personal one was the ode to our goalkeeper. everytime the other team was attacking we sung 'save a goal. save a goal. okamoto!' insightful.
After jef lost again, we left in a flurry of high fives and mutterings of gaijin.

ok.....this is getting long. here are some pics from my recent holidays around rural japan.


nice castle in aizu. i took so many photos of the bloody thing and I didnt like any of them


sakura time! this is at the moat of the castle


sakura from the top of the castle. the blue mats are for the parties


more freakin sakura. this was an excuse to try out my new camera


this is at the castle. my guess is that were filming a japanese soap. there were a squillion film crew milling about. the geisha posed in front of the castle and then ran over to her rickshaw lover and they whispered sweet nothings to each other and then she got out her dainty umbrella and rickshawed away.


this is japans most honest train. just one carriage plugging along. i felt sorry for it


this is a train station in the middle of woop woop


no its not something from ripleys believe it or not. this is one of the stranger shrines ive visited. very cool spiral staircase



sake musueum at kitakata. kitakata is famous for its ramen with over 120 shops (for only 40,000 people). stupidly i had a brain explosion and ate ramen in a nearby town cause i thought i wouldnt have time.

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inside the sake musuem. i tried a couple of free samples and they were surprisingly nice. i think theres a massive difference between cheap and quality sake.


religious.