A Happy Place on Earth

Well, I turned 24 Monday. Satoko and I celebrated by taking the bullet train down to Tokyo for three nights and spending my big day at Tokyo Disneyland.

Saturday afternoon we explored Ueno Park, which features this statue of a man and his dog (it's famous).



Next we visited the Ueno Zoo, which resembled pretty much every other zoo I've visited. There was a panda but he was hiding because apparently too many people were taking flash photos. I did, however, see this elephant.



The night was spent playing the Settlers of Catan, and exciting German strategy game, with Satoko and her sister, Yuki. Yuki was kind enough to let us stay at her apartment for the weekend.

On Sunday Satoko and I had missions. She succeeded in hers, and I failed in mine. Hers was to buy an electronic dictionary for herself. Such dictionaries are extremely popular in Japan. About half of my students bring them to school every day. Satoko's can translate between English, Japanese, and Spanish. It apparently includes information worth a stack of 20 books.

My mission was to find mate (pronounced ma-tay), a tea-like drink loved by Argentineans, Paraguayans, and perhaps in a few other countries. On a positive note, I have some leads on where to order mate online.



Monday. Disneyland. Good times. Tokyo Disneyland is a lot like Anaheim Disneyland. In fact, they are practically identical. The signs are even in English. The day was long, fun, and cold. We hit up Space Mountain, Star Tours, It's a Small World, The Haunted Mansion, Splash Mountain, and Buzz Light-Year Astro-Blasters.

I bought Satoko a big pair of Mickey gloves.



She bought a big bucket of Winnie the Pooh honey flavored popcorn.



After a cold, overcast day, the sky cleared up the moment it turned dark. As it became even colder, we hit our last ride of the day, Splash Mountain.



Exhausted, we headed home monday. Now, when we left Mutsu the weather had been bright and warm. The snow was almost completely melted. I'll leave you with two images of what we returned to.

Nerd News

This news apparently isn't so recent, but I just found out. I've read differing rumors about the PLaystation 3. One says that it will have no region encoding. The other says that it will, but that it will have a new system where Japan and the US share the same region. Either way, I'll be happy.



Despite Living in the motherland of videogames, I've avoided getting a major console because it is such a pain with region encoding (I do have a nintendo DS which is region-free). Currently if I were to get a Japanese system, I could get the newest, zaniest games, but I would only be able to understand a portion of them with my limited language skills. If I brought over an american system then I have to get my games through the mail, and I have to miss out on all the uniquely Japanese games over here.

Anyway, I may now have a goal for something to do with my coin jar.

A Touch of Evil

I usually try to resist the temptation to put these random polls on my blog, but I'm starved for blog material right now so I took this test to see how evil I am. Turns out I'm only a little evil - way less evil than my fellow Shimokita ALT. (Due to these test results I realize I can't trust this guy)

You Are 26% Evil

A bit of evil lurks in your heart, but you hide it well. In some ways, you are the most dangerous kind of evil.

How Evil Are You?

And on a side note, that starved for material bit is a lie. really Ive just been lazy. I saw a movie, my school had its graduation, and this weekend is a soccer tournmanent and karate test. I just didn't feel like writing much about that stuff. Does that make me evil?