You gotta be kidding me...

Man this country is crazy sometimes. Ever since I was a kid, I used to eat watermellons in the summertime. They were so damn cheap, they used to leave them in a big bin outside the grocery store and people would just grab one without thinking as they were shopping. We would even jack them from the bins sometimes, after the store was closed!

Not in Japan! Check out this watermelon:



6000 Yen is about $52 bucks, US. $50 bucks for a watermelon, are you on crack!? (and it's not even that big!!)

Awaji Soccer Tournament, redux.

A few weeks ago, my soccer club played in the Spring Awaji Island soccer tournament. The "A" team took 2nd, and my team (The "B" team) came in dead last, we didn't even score a goal the whole time. We were having such a good time though, it could have mattered less. As an added bonus, we got to watch some really awesome soccer!

AC Hyogo, a bunch of classy fellows.

The backdrop was great - mountains to one side, ocean on the other. Nice green grass fields, a rarity in Japan (for some reason they salt down most of the fields, so that no grass grows. Weird, huh?)

Man it was so hot! Here's Alex (from England) giving our team a pep talk at halftime. The gal in the middle is Pumla, from South Africa. She plays for the girl's team, who took first for the girl's tournament, and her man Curtis plays on my team. (71 - Haight and Noriega, what's up).

On the second day of the tournament, we showed up and the junior kids from Awaji were having a tournament too. Turns out, a bunch of them were Micah's students, they got a big kick out of seeing him. Cute, huh.

The Awaji Soccer Grounds were originally made for the England team to play on in the last World Cup, so they pictures of the British players all over the place. Markane, Taku, me, and Beckham.

Another cool thing was that this time, we had student teachers at my school, who were teaching for 3 weeks. Taku (guy in middle, above picture) is one of the English student teachers, and really loves soccer, so I invited him to play on our team. It was cool because I got to hang out with him outside of work. His family actually owns an awesome Teppanyaki restaurant in Tatsuno, which we've eaten at a couple of times already.

I had a great time playing soccer. Even though I'm still learning the game, I've got to hang out with a lot of cool people and have a load of fun!

Habatan Train

So my prefecture, Hyogo, is going to be the host of the 2006 All Japan Sports Festival (each town in the prefecture will host a major sporting competition with teams coming from all over Japan. Cool, huh?).

Anyway, to gear up for this big event (it's a big deal), about two years ago the precture created a mascot, named "Habatan." Habatan is this cute yellow thing, which is actually supposed to be a phoenix (because Kobe was almost destroyed in the Hanshin Earthquake in 1995 - 7.2 on the Richter scale, and has had a miraculous and speedy recovery - being in Kobe, you couldn't even tell there was one of the alltime worst natural disasters there, 10 years ago).

Personally, I think Habatan looks more like a cross between a pee-snowman and a chicken, but that's just me. Regardless, he's damn cute!

So in the spirit of the games, Japan Railways has wrapped one of the local trains. The kids call it the "Habatan Train" and get all excited whenever they have a sighting. It pulled in when I was waiting for the train the other day, so I had to snap some pictures. Cool, huh!?

That's the official logo on the front of the train.

Habatan doing Judo. How cute!

How's the Weather?

My students are funny. I was teaching the 4th graders about the weather this week, my first time doing this lesson. I had cards and gestures made up for all kinds of 'typical' boring weather - cold, hot, rainy, snowy, etc. As soon as the lesson starts, one of the hyper kids says "Mai-KE-ru! What about typhoons, and toradoes, and thunderstorms?!" So I think, cool, I'm going to roll with it. I start drawing the disaster weather on the board, and teaching the gestures. They get a big kick out of it, and then I say "Hey kids, what's the worst weather?"

... and the hyper kid goes "GODZILLA!!"

which, of course, makes all the rest of the monkeys crack up. Funny huh?

Anyway, the rest of the conversation practice went like this:

Me: "Hello, Ryusuke"
R: "Ha-ro, Maikeru"
Me: "How's the weather yesterday?"
R: "It's thun-da-stormu."
Me: "How's the weather today?"
R: "It's to-nay-do."
Me: "How's the weather tomorrow?"
R: "IT'S GODZILLA!"

Man these kids crack me up. Only in Japan can Godzilla be a weather pattern.

Summer Days

Sweeeet! Summer is here! Lots of time for playing outside, not so much time for blogging... I did take the momma cherry for a spin through the neighborhood the other day to see what condition my condition was in...

Random Gate in the middle of a bunch of rice fields. Usually, these gates denote that you are entering a Shinto Shrine. Check out the farmers working the field!

Love summer.