I went out last night to search for fireflies. The ladies at English Tea (a Saturday English lesson I do) told me that on warm (and humid) days during this season they come out around the rivers, specifically near the river my Mizusawa Elementary. So I headed out there with my trusty camera to see if I could find them. Sure enough around 7:30pm as the sunlight was almost completely gone I started to see little green lights hovering around and pulsing in the grass. By 8:00 o'clock there were tons of them all around. It was really quite a beautiful sight. I had never seen fireflies in real life, so it was quite interesting. These particular kind had a green light that pulsed about every 3 seconds, but apparently there are many different types and you can tell the breed by the length and color of their pulsing. I tried to take some pictures, but their lights are small and dim and it was pitch black so they didn't turn out great. However, I put a few of the better ones on the June gallery.

Today I had Karate, and my legs are so tired. Today I sparred against a middle-school aged girl who is a Brown belt (much higher than me). It is tough sparring against the kids, 'cause I don't want to hit them too hard, but if you don't try to use full speed it doesn't become practice. So it takes a lot of control... It's tough. Anyway, at one point I was supposed to block her punches and she was way too frickin' fast for me. Plus, she is short, so her lower punches tended to go towards my family jewels which makes it even more important to block... Anyway... that isn't really the point of this story. Every day her father is there watching her. It looks like he did karate when he was younger, because he often tells her things and I have seen him do some slow motions before like he was doing forms. Well, when I was sparring with his daughter I noticed that she didn't seem to have a happy look on her face. Like, I thought maybe she didn't want to spar with me. Maybe she was hoping for a better opponent... But then I thought, I wonder if she even wants to do karate... There is another younger girl, that I think might be her younger sister, and sometimes I have wondered if she has interest in Karate because she doesn't seem to try hard. Granted, she is a very young kid still, but she often takes bathroom breaks and doesn't seem to like doing forms. She did ask the teacher one time if we could do sparring, so maybe she just likes that aspect and not the forms...

Anyway, again I digress... I wondered if this older girl maybe didn't really like karate and just did it because her father really loved it when he was young and wanted his children to be good at it like him. After all, he is there every week watching for all two and a half hours of practice. He must be pretty interested in it... I felt bad for the girl. Maybe she is just doing this to earn the recognition from her father. Maybe she just wants her father to be proud of her and this is the only way she can receive that praise from him... Like Charlie (LOST) seeking his mom's approval.

We finished sparring. She kicked my butt and then the sensei sparred with her for a little bit. I heard a noise come from her father's direction. He had taken out his cell phone and was recording a video (or maybe it was just a picture). This particular sensei is the head of the whole regional karate thing, so I guess it was pretty special maybe. When that was finished, I also sparred with him, but he went very easy on me and let me just practice my moves really.

Then when everything was finished for the day, I stumbled over to my towel and as they were leaving the father said to me "My Daughter." (in English) I looked up as he pointed to her. "強いでしょう。" (She's strong, huh?) I agreed. "Yes, she is. She's very fast." I told him. The big tough man had a huge big smile on his face. I could tell he was really proud of her. I looked at her and she wasn't smiling at all. ... I wonder how she feels.

More May pictures up too.

Dear Sumo,

It has been a long time since I wrote to you. I'm sorry for the delay. I have really been quite busy lately. It seems like almost every day I have something planned. Last Friday I had my second house party here at my home. It was a "Taco Party" in which I made American-style homemade tacos from ingredients I picked up at Costco for a few of my favorite guests from town here. They all enjoyed the tacos very much.

Last Sunday I spent they day at a Yo-Yo Practice Meetup. It was basically me and a bunch of people standing around for 6 hours "throwing". (ppppps "throwing" is the cool way of saying "playing with yo-yos"). The problem is all of those people are Japonaise so their are communication barriers. But luckily, yo-yoing is a pretty international language in itself, so they can teach me some tricks by simply showing me things that make me poop my pants in amazement. And poop my pants I did. Several times. Because these people are crazy. Seriously the best "throwers" I have ever met. Plus some of them own stores here in Japan and even make custom machined aluminum yo-yos. It is really a fun thing.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been doing Karate for a while now. I sort of half-passed my test that I took last month, so I moved up from a white belt to a yellow belt. Not the light-blue belt I was going for, but still considering how short of a time I have been practicing I am quite pleased to have gotten a yellow belt. Karate is still really hard and kills my legs, but I feel like perhaps I am getting more used to it, and I am really excited to start learning the more advanced forms.

There was a Yo-yo photography contest on One Drop Yo-yo's website a while back. I entered two of my best yo-yo pictures and didn't expect to win because of the stiff competition. But it turns out I was one of three winners! So I got a brand new Project 2 yo-yo, which arrived in the mail a week ago for free. PRetty awesome, huh? The coolest thing is that these haven't even been officially released yet! I am the first person to own a Project 2 in Japan, and one of the firsts in the world really. :) It's pretty awesome. Since January I have bought a lot of fancy new yo-yos... I might be developing an unhealthy habit... If you are interested in seeing some pictures of my collection, check out this link.

Well, I guess that is all for now. Sorry about my lack of writing. Thanks for keeping loyal to the site and checking it every day my friend.

Love your pal from the BGG,

-Jeff

Today I was bored at school again and having a hard time staying awake while trying to study Japanese between classes. The teacher who sits next to me asked if I had traveled to other countries besides Japan and proceeded to show me an interesting photo book of various families around the world. The book itself is fairly old. The photos appeared to be from about 15 years ago, and it was all written in Japanese but appeared to be a translation of an English book originally. It was really interesting to see the differences in people, architecture, food, etc. through the pictures and descriptions. Apparently the author went and stayed with all of these families in some 30 different countries around the world. There are various pictures from each visit, but each family got a large two page spread picture of them standing in front of their house with all their furniture and possessions arranged in front of the building so you can get a good idea of what the inside and outside of the house looks like.

The writing, in Japanese was a lot to read for each family, so I just decided to read the one on Japan. The article is quite interesting talking about a lot of the daily habits of the family and even though it is 15 years old I can see similarities to my experiences here. At one point it talks about how the father put the TV to shows that had English language tracks so that the writer might be able to understand and it made me think if I was in that position would I want my guest to be able to see shows from my culture, or see shows they are comfortable with that have their own language. That got me thinking about hosting my own homestay student. Maybe it is strange I hadn't thought about it at all until now, but I guess probably 'cause I don't have a family... but it made me think I would really love to host a foreigner when I do have a family. Let them visit and see our family, our home, our lifestyle. It made me think about Haru-chan and Shige-chan too, and how they went out of the way to host me and how at the time I had nothing I could give back to them. But Shige-chan didn't seem to mind and believed in the idea that what good he does for me I would somehow later pass on to someone else. Thinking about this makes me want even more to be a host family someday. Maybe even to several people. Especially if they are Japanese people since I can speak their language it would probably be pretty helpful for them... but I wouldn't want to ruin the immersion. ;) So maybe I would pretend I don't know! ... Come to think of it, what if Shige-chan and Haru-chan were just pretending. :p

Looking at the pictures of the various familes also makes me interested too travel more and see more different cultures... Hmm...

Well its May now in Japan and things are starting to get a little warm. I've been doing karate with the kids (I know, like Kramer) in Ichinomiya for a few months now, but when summer rolls around I think it's going to get pretty kitsui. Japan has a long holiday break at the beginning of May called Golden Week (or GW for short). Unfortunately I didn't do anything spectacularly eventful for this long holiday (a bit mottainai) but I did clean up my house and have Shinya and his friends come to visit. We played Othello, Uno, and the Aishiteru Game. It was pretty awesome. Thanks a lot you guys for coming all the way out here to visit me. :)

Tomorrow I go back to school, although two days will be a short week. But after that it will be almost nonstop full weeks until summer.

Next week is also my first karate belt test. So I better practice hard and work of building those leg muscles I never developed. I guess I should have listened to Khanh and Caroline more about working out those glutes. Check out my latest photos in May and April. Oh and those kids in the library is actually an indoor Easter Egg Hunt. We did it way after Easter, but it is really the feeling that counts.

Well, school has started and classes are finally starting to get rolling again. I'm starting to get used to the new teachers and I'm starting all over learning a whole new set of names for the 1st year students. Things are getting warm here, although on cloudy days it is still very cold. It was nice weather all week but rained really hard today.

I got a new car. It is a tiny "keijidousha" which means it has a smaller engine and costs less to license. It is a Mitsubishi "Minica". As the name implies it really is a mini car. But I like small things and although I can no longer fit my bike in the back, I really like this car too. It gets great gas mileage and even with the small engine it has more pick up than my old far van. Plus it is silver, my favorite. I was driving home today in it though and my hand brushed against the automatic transmission shifter. I could feel it vibrating and it reminded me of my baby back in the states. I remembered that feeling of the stick vibrating in my palm as the engine shook... What a great feeling... I miss driving a stick so much. Even though I like my new car a lot, I really miss my matsu-chan.

I bought a new yo-yo. It is a red YoYoFactory G5. This is my first yo-yo with hubstacks so I am having fun learning some new tricks as well as practicing some cool grinds. I'm still nowhere near as good as the people in all the videos, but I'm slowly getting better... Maybe someday I'll be pretty impressive. It's weird how I went from being able to do practically "every" yo-yo trick to being a beginner. But oh-well, it is cool to have new cool tricks to learn. :)

New pictures in the gallery: April Pictures