Hiking.

Last Saturday, I went on a decent hike on Sado. I was nice, a little long, but pretty well worth it. Here are some pics. After the hike, I went to an onsen which is always great. Then to my friend's place to 20th century boys, part one. That was also good, can't wait to see the other two films.

FOOD!

Well, I realized I haven't posted in quite a while. I thought up this post yesterday while eating lunch at one of my schools. So I'm going to talk about some food I miss from back home, and some foods that I really enjoy here.
First off:
Spaghetti. Probably my favorite food. Of course the sauce has to be good, I had some spaghetti at a restaurant here, but it had a few things I dont want in mt spaghetti (hot dog, egg, etc.). The sauce was also lacking a bit.

Next:
Pizza. A very close second. There was a very good pizza place that we ate at a few times before I left. I fell in love with their pepperoni pizza. I can go for one of their pizzas anytime, especially lunch time at elementary school. Pizza in Japan really cant compare, there maybe be some good pizza places, but only in big cities. It seems like most pizzas here are made on water crackers with a drop of cheese, totally unsatisfying.



One of my favorite snacks for over 10 years; flaming hot cheetos. In Japan, I have had much trouble finding spicy food. It just doesn't seem to be popular. So my my family put a bag of these in a care package, they tasted extra special. I guess not eating them for about two months made them more flavorful.

Ok, so know you know the foods that I have missed the most, now I'll show you some of my local favorites.



Yakiniku. It's meat, what more can I say; also at most places you get to grill it yourself. Once you grill it, you can dip it in a sauce and its delicious. My favorite kind is beef of course, I am grilling some kind of meat at home at least once or twice a week.

Yakisoba. My love for spaghetti really helps me enjoy this dish, which is basically fried noodles with beef and cabbage and a few other things. Its fun to eat, but very easy to get a less than stellar helping. Most times, it is good enough though.

Well, there you have it, some of my favorite foods at the moment. I'll probably have some more food posts in the future, with some other things I like and don't like. See you next time.

School starts

Well, this past week was the beginning of classes. I was excited and nervous to see the students and actually have to speak in front of all of them. I visited two of my six schools and Just did an lesson introducing myself for all of them. The students were also encouraged to ask me questions, most of them were run of the mill questions about me. However, one kid asked "Where will you go on you honeymoon?" I really had no answer for this and just stood there for a bit, until the teacher diverted the question. I also visited an elementary school, which was an adventure. I woke up early, because this school is the farthest from me. Thinking I had to be there at 8:30, I left at 7:30 just in case I got lost. I did get lost, hardcore, ended up in the next town over. So, I went around asking how to get to the school, most people were just like "Go that way." Which kinda helped, because it led to a little elderly lady who gave me a 15 minute description of how to get there; most of which I couldn't understand. I was able to pick up a few landmarks and such, so it wasn't a total waste. Anyway, I get there about 9, and thought I was late and had missed a class, but the secretary was like, "You're an hour early." We both got a good laugh about me going to the wrong town. The school is really small, population wise; only 12 students. They all seemed excited to meet me, which was a relief, it made it easier to talk and play with them. After I was done with lessons there, the Vice Principal, showed me how to get back the proper way, I also saw the mistake I made that got me lost; so now I'll remember how to get there for sure. All in all, the first week went well, met a lot of students and teachers, and will meet more next week, when I visit some of my other schools. Today I took some pics around my apartment here, I also plan to go to the beach in Ogi with some of the others, so I should have some pics of that later. Tomorrow I'm going to be volunteering in the triathlon, passing out bananas to the runners, should be fun. I plan to take some pics of that as well. Well, I hope you enjoyed the post and until next time.

Some pics

Well, I finally got around to taking some pictures. These are from when I went to Aikawa beach last weekend. http://s680.photobucket.com/albums/vv164/eightbitplus/Aikawa%20Beach/
I took these on my phone, which has a better camera than my current digital cam 8mp > 4.1mp.
Im planning on getting a new sony 12.1mp soon. I also plan to take some pictures around my place, so stay on the lookout for those. Until next time.

Month One.

Well, I have been in Japan for a month now today, I barely got internet yesterday so I am finally able to post again. I decided just to do a little recollection of the first month from what I can remember.
We flew out on Saturday, the 25th, at around 1 something via JAL, the flight was about 10 hours or so; a few hours shorter than my last trip to Japan, so I was happy about that. However, I couldn’t sleep at all during the flight. Also, the in flight entertainment was not as good as expected, there were many channels to watch, but unlike last time, the movies did not start when you switched to the station, you had to wait until it finished and started over. So, I only got to watch one movie and about the last quarter of another; the rest of the time was spent trying to sleep. The meals on the flight were not that bad. After the flight and airport/customs business it was onto the Keio Plaza hotel in Shinjuku, Tokyo. The first night, we had to go out and find dinner on our own. I met up with a few people I met before the flight, and went out to search for food in the city. Before we went to eat, we went to the Shinjuku watch tower; it gives a pretty good view of Tokyo. I took a few pics, which look terrible thanks to my lousy old camera. After that, we walked down some of the busy, brightly lit alleys to find some food and call it a night. We found a small noodle shop; the food was ok, maybe a 6/10, definitely left something to be desired. After the meal most of the group wanted to head back and rest since orientation started early the next morning; but one guy wanted to venture around since we would only be in Tokyo for a very short time. So, another guy and I joined him to go see the “not so fabulous Shinjuku”. We were joined by another guy outside of Lawsons who is also in the program. We walked around and went through Shinjuku station and came out the other end and thought we were somewhere else, it was loud, brighter and tons more people. Its kinda like when you see the cliché of a big city on TV. The further away from the station we walk, you could see the attitudes of the people change. A lot of people were out working like it was the middle of the day, despite the fact it was about 10 at night; trying to get you to go to their clubs and meet their “girls”. Once we got through that part, we were in quiet and quite dirty streets, most of the people there walked with their heads down, and you could see piles of trash bags sitting outside houses and apartments. The streets were barely lit, it was like this area of the city had fallen asleep and become disconnected. That walk through Shinjuku was definitely worthwhile. When the little adventure concluded, I returned to my room to rest for the big day ahead of me. The orientation itself was alright, it was two days starting the Monday after we arrived. I attended a few seminars and then spent a lot of my free time exploring Tokyo. Last time I went to Tokyo, the only place I really saw was Akihabara and the Narita airport. This time I saw Ebisu, Shinjuku, Akihabara and a few other places. I was really jetlagged most of the orientation, so it was fun but not super exciting, I just didn’t have the energy. However, I did make some good friends at the orientation, and I also learned a few things about teaching. That Wednesday morning, orientation was officially over and everyone headed to their placements. Getting to Niigata from Tokyo wasn’t very hard, we took the bullet train and that was only about an hour and a half at most. After Niigata station, I had another ride to get to my specific placement, the ferry. Once we arrived on the island we were greeted by other current JETs; then it was right into self introductions and paperwork. We went to a City office and met with a superintendent, then went to register at the city as aliens and so on. After that, I was picked up and headed out to my Board of Education and met with some of my coworkers. I also able to do a bit of grocery shopping since there is a small grocery store across from the office. Once I finished shopping, I was taken to my new home and got to drop off my luggage and get ready for a small welcome party with the other JETs.
Since then, I have been going to work Mon-Fri and there have been many Festivals going on all around the island. I hope to get my camera situation worked out and get some nice photos online for you all to see, as well as coherent and interesting posts.
Until next time.

Preparations!

Well, more preparations have been getting taken care of. Yesterday I got a new laptop (macbook baby) which will be my only computer until I get my pc shipped. Also did some clothes shopping for work clothes. When I got home yesterday, I had the JET handbook waiting for me in the mail.
Today I went out and got a pair of indoor shoes, and some dress shoes for when I have to wear a suit(which should not be too much). Other than that, I have been transferring stuff to my portable HD since my windows 7 beta will expire soon; so I have the windows 7 RC ready to install, just got to get few more things done so I don't have to wait until all the programs are reinstalled to get to work. Time is flying by a bit and departure is coming up quick, so I hope to have some more fun with family and friends, and get some work done so I wont have it following me. I'll keep you guys posted.

Small update

Hello everyone, just got a small update on a few things. I sent off the last of my paperwork to the JET desk this past week. I still have been studying and practicing, so I'm glad about that. Yesterday was pretty intense, I did a whole website, start to finish yesterday, I got it up live too.
http://pearlierealty.com is the site, it's not the greatest site ever, but I really feel my HTML and CSS are improving with the practice I have been doing. Once I get some serious layout and photoshop practice, I'll be making really sweet looking sites. But I am happy with the baby steps, it helps me stay focused than trying to practice three things at once and get burned out. I was actually all ready to start on the next subject in my study map, Javascript, but I decided to just wait till I got to Japan before I start on that. So, I'll just check out some CSS videos till I get setup there. I also got a letter from Niigata prefecture this past week, it was just a short letter about packing and that stuff, but I was glad to get something in the mail. Also, I should receive my JET handbook and JET life DVD in the mail this week. Other than that, I will be attened my family reunion in Florida the week before I depart for Japan. So, I'll be leaving that and going straight to LA; hopefully all that stuff goes through smoothly. Anyway, until next time.

A rural life for me.

I know I didn't give much info as to where I would be residing in Japan, besides that it is part of Niigata Prefecture. I decided to say a little more, I will be in a more rural setting; so no big cities or business districts. I also heard there are no trains in the area, only buses for public transportation, so I plan on leasing a car while I am there. One of my former Japanese professors recently told me that Niigata has a very strong dialect. I have done a little research on that, and found some reseources which I hope prove to be helpful. I will try to mix them in my normal Japanese study so that I will be able to decipher some of the dialect when spoken; and possibly impress some locals by using it myself. A few pluses that I thought about living in the rural area are, the possibility of running out in the open, that would be hard to do if there cars, trucks and people all over the place. Also, since it's not a big city, I'll have to speak Japanese more as a lot of the locals may not have the ability to speak or understand English. So hopefully that will improve my speaking and listening quickly.

When I first heard about the area I would be headed, I tried to find some info, like blogs, videos, pictures. It was a little difficult to find more than just general info. Due to that, one of my goals while living there is to take many pictures and put them online (photobucket), and to make videos of the area, events, nature, weather. I am not talking about videos where I would just stand there and talk about stuff, I mean some sweet videos with just the area and all that, and some cool visual effects and nice editing. However, I need to learn how to use some video editing software and learn some after effects to add flavor to the videos; so that wont be for a while, but I'll get on it as soon as I can, and as soon as I get a camera to shoot with. The pics should start flowing as soon as I get there, even though my camera is a little old, 4.0MP, the battery doesn't last like it used to; but it should get the job done until I can find a new one. Would be sweet to get it before departure, so it doesn't die on me in Tokyo.

Moved around and all that mess.

Well, I moved the blog and all that jazz, nothing big. The main point of this post is that I finally got my placement for JET. I will be in Niigata Prefecture. That is a picture of Niigata city to the left, not where I will be living, but that's the nearest big city to where I will be. I will be departing next month, and I got most of the paperwork stuff done. So pretty much it's just, study, get stuff I want to ship together, relax, and try to make some extra money if possible. That's pretty much it, nothing really changed exept the blog design, I changed it for a reason and hopefully, in a few short months you'll see why. Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed the post.

$642 like that.

Thank you Opera!

Opera, yeah, that internet browser that not very many people use; has done something magnificent for the web world. Opera Web Standards Curriculum is a free compilation of materials to teach web design/development with standards for beginners. I am taking part in this because I'm sure my knoweledge in this area is  lacking, and I am surely tired of operationg as a second tier web developer without a strong foundation to build on. When I was in University, I didn't directly study web materials aside from HTML. During the end of my college career i wanted to shift my focus to web and mobile deliverables, cell phone content, web content, flash games, etc. So, I started somewhat doing web design through trial and error, and generally just doing whatever to make it work, or at least look like it works. After working at my first web job after school, I realised I needed to get my act together and really learn about the web, developing for it, and its standards. After two months of that job i was already tired of the terrible unorganized websites I was updating. They were ugly and not standards compliant, the worse part was having to put articles nearly two years old on the site as if they were as important as the new articles. Content is important too, and if noone noticed the article wasn't up two years ago when it was new; it's probably not that important. Anyway, with my new free time I am glad to have access to this and hope to use it and learn from it to the fullest extent available. Once again, thank you Opera. p.s. I have your browser installed

Well Well Well

As of Monday, I have been laid off from my job. I'm not too sad about it, as I was expecting it, as well as the other web designer. So this week I have had a little more time to study Japanese as well as work on web stuff. Today I actually got info for our first site, so i get to start working on that, its a web site for a salon, I have never done one of those before, but it should be fun. Also today, it is confirmed my speedometer on my car is off by about 20 mph. I got another traffic violation from Arizona. About two weeks ago, I went to Arizona for the 20th Arizona Statewide Japanese contest, and on my way back to California, I was pulled over for going 95 in a 75, there is no way I would just go 20 over whilst knowing it. So that was a $280 ticket; then today, i got a thing in the mail that clocked me going 74 in a 55, I always keep an eye on the speedometer, so something isnt right, and both those violations were on the same day, there go another $184 for that. This couldn't happen at a better time, I have no steady job, trying to save money for JET, and bam im out $462 like that. That could have been a new digital camera and mp3 player, or a decent laptop to do work on the go with my partner. Those are things I also wanted to get before JET, but oh well, i still have some money left over, so I'm glad I was at least able to pay the fines, and hopefully I wont have any other expensive surprises.

Let's JETing!

Well, it has once again been a long time since my last post.

Anyway, I have been working as a web designer/developer for a few months now in Corona; the area is nice; the job, not so much. I make minimum wage, and working 40 hours a week is still not that much money when my expenses are considered(rent,bills, and trying to save for JET). Another thing is that I'm probrably going to be laid off tomorrow since the company is going under. So, the other web guy and I are going to try to do some freelance stuff; so hopefully that will help me net more money than what i was making at the company. I'll try to keep you guys posted on how that goes. The next thing I wanted to talk about was the JET program.It seems like an awesome program to go and help teach English in Japan, and the benefits are also good. I'm really excited to be accepted in the program, which is one of the reasons im back on my blog. I don't know where I will be placed yet, but it should be interesting in some way no matter where it is. I would talk about the process and interview but there are quite a few other blogs that were on that in a timely fashion.

For now, I see my blog as being one about Web Development, Digital art, and Japan once i get there. I still want to be active in web and stuff so I won't be all rusty and behind on standards as I already am now, so bloggin about it may help me stay active in that, hopefully. Anyway, thats about it for now, and welcome to the Re-Re opening of this blog.