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.

KTC Jr. High School Open Campus Day

This past February, I joined Phil in his workshop to make a couple of little robots. I had talked about how cool it would be to make a lesson plan based on these little critters and it looks like with the help of the engineers here at KTC I'll finally be able to do that. These pictures were taken from the very first lesson that designed on one of the bugs that Phil made for me. Furuya-sensei was so impressed with the bugs, that he redesigned them for a workshop used to recruit new students. I hope to adapt that lesson into a hands-on type English class this winter.

Fireworks along Uchinada Beach

Please click on an image to see a larger version.

Pig out!

While I was chillin' in "Bean Town" with my brother. A group of us headed over to a Dominican Republic-style birthday party for one of my brother's co-workers. She said that a D.R. birthday was all about the food, lots of drinking, and plenty of dancing. She also said that I was disrespecting by not staying to have some of this pig. I had to promise that I'd try to make one of her future birthdays, just to get back to Princeton on time.

The pig was something else. They prepared this pig for a whole day, the day before. She had to use her bathtub to wash it down and season the sucker. The firepit was started at 8:30 am and they had the pig on a "skewer" that was about an inch in diameter and featured a steering wheel for the ultimate driving control. By the way, this pig roast is an annual event. Damn!

Hikin' Mt. Hunger

Even though my stay in Vermont was so short, I was able to meet up with Adam and Katya to hike Hunger. It was a great day and we made it up in no time thanks to Katya in the lead. I really have missed the mountains of the NE.

Road to Hana

The road to Hana on the "far-side" of Maui is quite a journey. Alicia, Hyunjoo and I made the trek all the way around that side of the island in about nine hours of driving. We obviously had some swimming... but don't let that fool you. This road is so windy and narrow in parts that you'll be amazed that it's actually a "highway".

Like I said we did stop for some swimming in Wainapanapa State Park and at the Seven Sacred Pools area of the lower Haleakala State Park. It was a fantastic trip, perhaps the second time I've been all the way around. In the end, I'm sure we'd all recommend going out there.

Baby X

Phil just sent me the great news!

We now we have the cutest little baby boy to share with you all !

Born June 23 at 3:53 p.m.
Kanazawa, Japan
9 pounds !

After many hours of labor the baby did not move into the right position
so...J.J. had to have a C-Section... :-(

The surgery went off like clock work . J.J. and baby x (no name yet)
are
doing well.

I have attached some pictures for your viewing pleasure.

Sorry for the Mass E-Mail. But I have to get back to the clinic!

Phil& J.J.

The guys in Moab

Just a walk in the park

Haaah? Whaddda say?

I'm sure everyone has heard about the "audio-repeller" that was supposed to chase away teenagers... and how the kids rebelled by turning the sound into a ringtone only they can hear. Wicked smart. Well if not click here to read the article. I've finally found another site that host the sound files for what I believe is true 18MHz files. You can also find a cool site that lets you check your hearing based on a frequency scale. I can here the sound on the NPR site, but not the 18MHz files from the other site. Very cool.

HJ's new nails

...and she just loves them!

Around and about

Casey and I went for a quick ride downtown to run some errands. He's determined to get new pins for his guitar. I believe we were successful ordering some new rosewood pins for his beloved guitar. We even ran into four first year KTC students. On the way back, I spotted this cool heron-of-some-sort. We didn't see the festivities, but the Hyakuman Goku festival was this weekend. The TV footage looked exactly like last year's event. We'll most likely go again before we move from Japan, but we didn't miss much this year. Thankfully the weather held and it was a great weekend.

\(^o^)/

I used to be (-_-#) because I couldn't understand a lot of (^_^)'s. But I began to research (^_^)'s for my computer classes and realized that asian (^_^)'s are different than what I'm used to in the States. (-_-¤) Well, I found some websites that are very helpful interpreting the (@_@) of (^_^)'s that are out there. They can be very (o_O) if you don't know what they mean. I used to be (._.) whenever HJ would write me and I wouldn't know what she was (9_9) saying. So now I'm \m/>_<\m/ and having a (b~_^)b time with my new found understanding. Take care (n_n)

Cockaroach!

I dunno what Hyunjoo goes on about... me over-reacting. Look, when I see one of these critters... it's all out war in my opinion. They might be able to survive the next nuclear holocaust, but they ain't gettin' by me and my double-slinging termination techniques. I might just have found out my next calling... bug busters!

Chase and Cole Hikin'

The latest pix from Carter. I'm envious!