Quiet Weekend ?

Today Rosie got me up early to go jogging / biking / hiking / taking photos at Yamane Park here in Niihama. we got some beautiful shots of the early Cherry Blossoms. Next week should be a beautiful time there. Many Japanese families spend the afternoon picnicking and celebrating the blooming of the cherry blossoms. I am quite looking forward to it. Here are some pics we got from the park today.

Tomorro we head to Matsuyama for a meeting. Our boss joined a EFL teachers group here in shikoku and is hosting a get together, to exchange ideas, and styles. Monday marks the start of a new Semester at the school, and hopefully we will get some good exchanges with other teachers.

I've decided to get rid of my Suse Install for now, as I only have a 10 Gb HDD in my laptop and it was taking 8 gig of that. I have changed to Ubuntu, adn it is now only using 3.5 Gb's and was a lot simpler to install and configure. I'm really liking this flavor of Linux. next step is to install the LinuxMCE for Ubuntu and see what fun that can be.

2 Months Later...

Yeah I know, I'm a slacker who hasn't updated in a really long time. Partially as I just moved to Niihama, and got set up here, partly because I just formatted my Windows XP laptop nad am now stably running openSuSE 10.2, woot woot, and partly because, meh, if you know me, then you know I was just too lazy to write anything.
I'll try to keep more posts coming now though. Rosie and I are planning our wedding, and our year here in Japan. We just bought a new Digital Piano for Rosie to keep her skills, and We've finished watching Bleach and we're almost finished with Stargate Atlantis. Two shows I am geekishly proud to say I have gotten Rosie into watching with me.
More to come. Stay tuned!
PS - this Kanji means 'enlightenment'

New Years, then Beppu!

Hello again to one an all,
And once again welcome to the continung voyages of Rosie and Jody in Japan.



After spending a quiet and relaxing Christmas and New years with Ghiselle, Jawnee, and there adorable lil 8 month old son Asher, and a good number of the many wonderful friends they have made here in Saijo over the years, we of course needed a vacation, so off we set for Beppu.





Here's are some Teaser photo's from the trip to keep you in suspense. More to come...









Thats all for now folks.

Time for Bleach!!!

Christmas in Japan

Hello friends and family and all of you who have stumbled onto this blog. I have once again been internet-less for an extended period with all of my travels and settling into my journey.
Two big updates. First Rosie and I got engaged. Second I have left my job at Language House. I am currently in Saijo with Rosie. We're just soaking on the season and Skyping with our families over the holidays. More to come in the near future.
Hope all are well and having a wonderful Christmas and New Year Season.
Your friendly neighborhood geek
Jody

Times is flying

Hello world.
It has been a few weeks since I have updated you as to my adventures. So here we go.
The past two weeks I have been living in a house with a new roommate. A local business owner named Norman White. He is a good friend of Jonathan and Ghiselle, and owned a Sandwich shop here in Tokushima. He recently sold the sandwich business "Big Brothers" to devote his time to his new Bar "Root Down".
Very fortunately for me, he was looking for new roommates and myself and another new teacher here were looking for a place to stay. I was not happy in the apartment we were put up in by our school when we arrived.

Here's a few pics of the house.



A peek inside a Japanese Household Kitchen



More of the outside of the House



The lil Orange Golf cart is what I have been driving lately. Geoff, one of the other teachers here dubbed it the orange Dragonfly. It fits. 660 cc's of pure evil. I love drivin this lil demon.



I also scored a Street Bike from one of the Norman's friends who was looking to get rid of it. Norman is as much of a Bike Geek as I am a computer Geek, so if he recommended I grab it, I was not going to refuse. Cost me 2500 Yen, which was just the price to replace the front tire. Norm's friend Hiro hooked me up with the tire, and Norm gave me some pedals. Hiro owns an awesome Bike Shop near the Tokushima Park, and he supplies a lot of big race teams with parts. Thanks Hiro, Norm. I'm ridin in style now!!

The Street Bike is mine, the Mountain bike behind it is Norm's Monster



Well that's about all I have to report for now. My ticket home was booked for November 14th, and no word on my Visa yet, so time is drawing close for my potential exodus from this wonderful and exciting country. But I have had some of the most incredible adventures here so far, and hopefully things will work out with my visa, and Rosie and I can experience some more really cool things before I have to go.

Peace and Love
Odious - Jay

Katakana - Phonetic characters for foreign words

After settling into my new surroundings it has become apparent that life will be much easier once I have settled down to learn how to read many of the road signs.
One of the symbol or character systems is called Katakana, and is mainly used to write foreign words, but can be found on almost every map. Definitely a help if you wish to take the transit system here.
Here are the characters in that system:

KATAKANA HYOU:



KATAKANA DAKUON:



KATAKANA YOUON:



For example, the name of my current city is Tokushima

So -> Breaking down the phonetics into one syllable representation we get

To - Ku - Shi - Ma

Which from the above charts we read as トクシマ

Yay now I can find my way home!! Well, many of the Express roads actually have English names for the cities. And I have learned that several main roads are numbered, so getting around has become easier. But this is a good idea to know so Katakana at least, to help read menus or warning signs, ingredients, prices etc.
For the time being I can pronounce the words by checking my Katakan cheat sheets, and eventually I hope I will have learned enough Japanese language to understand what they mean :P. For now I am just memorizing location names, and getting these characters memorized. The next step will be a similar character set known as Hiragana. Stay tuned for a progress report.

PS. My name in Katakana is roughly like this. Jody (or 'Jo Di') = ジョヂ

Pimp My Ride

Just a quick post today. This is my new ride.



I use it for work only. 660 CC Subaru Pleo. 0 - 60 in the time it takes to boot a 386.



But it's a efficient lil thing, and most people drive that speed anyway. The yellow plated cars are all 660 cc cars, and pay a lowe tax, and less expensive Expressway fees.



It's the way to go. But man I miss my Golf. Vrrm vrmm. I don't even mind the fact that it is Right hand drive, and you drive on the left side of the road.