Godzilla-ville

These pictures are of a model of Kanazawa and the surrounding area. It shows the downtown region with the famous Kenrokuen park not far from the city center. These pictures also show the hilly areas of Utatsuyama north of the city. Unforunately, the students were not able to include Kanazawa Institute of Technology as that would have added another 40 feet or so to the model. It's a fantastic job that is elevation accurate through the use of foam contours.

Busy bloggin

Starting up multiple blogs made sense. I found that I needed something for my now-suspended podcast, this one about my time in Kanazawa, one for my computer and electronics trouble shooting, and yet another for my teaching. They're all distinct entities for totally different purposes, but it does get difficult juggling them at times.

Still suffering with Sudoku

Dad-folks got me interested in Sudoku a while ago, and then my friend Sheryl showed me a couple of tips in solving a few of the easier puzzles. So, I've been kinda addicted to them for a few months now, but I keep forgetting some of the more advanced techniques like the "X-Wings". This is a pretty good site for showing how to solve some of those more difficult puzzles. By the way, I'm still working on getting my average time on the "medium" puzzles down to a half hour.

Hobie

A visual update of our favorite little guy in San Diego.

The Instant Pet - almost

I brought back some SeaMonkeys for Hyujoo this summer. I had grown up reading about them in comic books when I was a kid. I even saw a South Park episode about SeaMonkeys recently.

We set up the water tank the previous day and these are shots of Hyunjoo pouring in the "secret mixture" of live instant eggs. Frankly, we didn't see anything instantly. Sure enough though, the next day, we saw six tiny white "commas" swimming around in the water. We're both pretty curious how big they'll get.

Touring around with exchange students from Singapore

We've had 12 students visiting from Singapore the last few days. They'll be here until the 19th. I was scheduled to join Juji-sensei to take them on a tour of downtown Kanazawa. It was their second trip downtown actually.

We took them to the Samurai district for a tour of a preserved estate. We arranged for a tea ceremony for the students so they could sample some of Kanazawa's green tea. Afterwards we went for lunch at the station with a shopping spree thrown in. Finally, we went to Omichou Fish Market to check out the area's most famous fish mongers.

It was really interesting to be a tourist again. I haven't seen Kanazawa through those eyes in a long time. It's strange though, I hardly feel like this is a home. It's more a solid retreat.

In the end the kids seemed like they had a great time, and I had fun with them. So it was a good day.