saturday good times with pics

Went to Oma for a tuna festival



did a little sight-seeing



saw wild monkeys



then, karaoke with alcohol



in other news, this is "Chris in Japan"'s 100th post.

The Road

I just read this book:



I recommend it.

spontaneous adventure

Late last week I discovered that I had no classes this week through thursday, so I suddenly decided I'd like to take a trip somewhere in Japan. Satoko had to go to Tokyo on Wednesday for work, so she came along too.

Here is the entire set of photos I've made public on Flickr.

First, we visited her family's hometown in Aichi, near Nagoya. We went to a museum, visited friends, ate good food, and played with some dogs.

This is me finally making peace with the family dog, Chibi:



Here is a pic of me with the family:



On Wednesday we returned to Tokyo Disneyland. Originally we planned to go to its sister resort, Tokyo DisneySea, but after hearing Satoko's friend rave about the Halloween theme, we decided to go to Land and save Sea for another day. It was fairly cool. The Haunted Mansion had been redone with a Nightmare Before Christmas theme. Mostly I was happy to go to a lot of the rides that we had been to busy to go to the last time we went to disneyland.

i went to nagano and stuff

I went to Nagano for the third time to play in the eastern japan ALT soccer tournament. We played four 30 minute games the first day. We only won one, which didnt qualify us to move on but put us in the loser's tournament the next day ("loser's tournament" wasn't the official name, but it's the only one I remember anyone calling it). We won one of two games that day and could have gone on to play a third (which would have determined if we got third or fourth place in the loser's tournament), but we decided to pack up and leave in order to get home at a decent hour, which turned out to be about 2:00 am (we drove).

It was a fun trip, though. We didn't take the playing too seriously. I got to know some new ALTs. We partied Saturday night (well, only a little bit for me. I crashed early. I guess I'm getting old.) Unfortunately, there were many injuries involving hurt knees, toes, faces, and backs. It wasn't pretty, but I think everybody is doing okay..

here is the one and only photo of me doing something of interest on the soccer field (I am 55):



and to update my progress from previous post, I'm still working away at the novel. Re-reading everything for the first time and editing is an intense experience. I go through phases of being extremely happy with the story and wondering what the hell I was thinking in places. It's a fun process though, and to my delight I find it much easier to focus for long periods of time when editing as opposed to writing on a blank page.