The Lighthearted Wanderer

So blog challenges seem to be pretty popular among my blog-friends, and so I've decided to do one as well--it's pretty simple but something I've wanted to do for a long time :) I've been thinking a lot lately about photography...I've self-dubbed myself as a paparrazi, and I pride myself many random photos that are surprising fun, candid, or just plain look pretty. But do I really have any basis for thinking that my accidental artsyness? So I'm going to do a photography/blog challenge. One a day, with a short description (which will be great also for prompting me to write about more random thoughts and happenings here in Japan)...I'm thinking that the pictures are going to come from everywhere, my phone, my camera, some edited, some not...who knows? So here we go! (Oh yeah, I'm going to cheat already and have a picture from November. I'm going to be travelling on December 28 so I figure I should have an extra one for that day. Btw, I'll be in ...

On Sunday, I was invited to my principal(kocho-sensei)'s house. He lives in Kita ward(northern part) of Kobe, so my supervisor picked me up from my apartment and drove me there. In addition to my supervisor and me, we were also joined by my supervisor's two sons (ages 6 and 10) and one of the other teachers from school.  We started off with a tea ceremony demonstration, after a couple rounds, they asked me to make some tea also...let's just say that I wasn't such an attentive student because I wasn't expecting to demonstrate for them. But since the boys were so fidgety and causing a bit of commotion the whole time, everyone was super laid back and no one was really serious at all. Even when I was starting to remember the order and the position of things, they kept stopping me at awkward points to take pictures of me with my phone. See that bowl I'm holding? Apparently it's over $400 (40,000yen)?!? Thank goodness I didn't know until I was...

From the loudest boy in class : "Hellow Everyone. I am going to tell you a little bit about myself. I think I am a thoughtful, kindness, smart person. My favorite subject in school is music, because I like "Onyanko Club" (?). My hobbies are paragrider, boxing, bird watching, and loving girls. Once, I had very many number of girl friend and three of them are very close relationship to me. I have always admired "Gushiken Yoko." I love his "panchi" (?) He resemble Daigo (another boy in class). When I was a first year student, I was in soccer club. But, my worst memory is that I was captured by (best friend in class). He was a very strong, stupid person. I was confounded. One of my favorite memories was that I was fishing for (best friend in class) who was drowned. My dream is to become a "Urutokaman Tiga" (again, ???) For this world is being destroying and human beings is under threat extinction. So I want to protect the world from m...

So in Japan, it's customary for the school to "welcome" new teachers with a cute little party ( enkai ) that has yummy food and usually all-you-can-drink alcohol. So here's the story of my enkai. In the beautiful Kobe Portopeia Hotel on Kobe's Port Island, 8 of the teachers from the English Dept. at one of my schools had a nice fancy dinner with me on the night of Friday, November 11. It was way more restaurant-y than what I imagined the place to be. For some reason I imagined Japanese izakaya sit-on-the-floor style type of place, but this was a hotel, and they had music and dancing! Appetizer: Nagasaki Roasted Chicken...why from Nagasaki, I don't really know!   Soup Course: Sauteed Squid, Soup-style (the teachers had a fun time pronouncing the word "sauteed")  Fish Course: Grilled Targetfish...it came with these fried leaves that were pretty cool because they were thin and crunch like veggie potato chips hehe Meat Course...

About a year ago, I was in a ridiculous time in my life...from Halloween 2010 until Thanksgiving vacation, my life was crazy with the amount of stuff that I had piled on to myself. GRE, Asian Alumni retreat, last Legends, Kamayan, and WiSE Athena Science Challenge...no wonder I was so excited after I ran away from campus for an 18 hour vacation haha. Last Friday, I was getting ready for work in a rush, but I stopped for a moment when I realized that I was wearing almost the exact same outfit that I wore in this photo. It couldn't help but make me smile remembering that just about a year ago, my girlies and I were wandering around campus looking for places to take pictures with the fall leaves =) Things like that, somehow make me feel that even though every year I could be in a different place, with different worries and different things occupying my life, that somehow there is some rhythm in all of this. That somehow it actually isn't as crazy and haphazard as it can feel s...