Have you had a day...

Have you had a day where nothing comes to you? I wasted an entire day, but I will work extra hard tomorrow. Or maybe enough to get done what needs to be with maybe some time to do other things.
I am trying to pull multiple things together from anywhere, a couple days ago to next January through December. Hmm... Fun!

Hmmm...

Quite a good sight in the fridge:















Eggs if you couldn't see clearly. This is my fridge though not my eggs. These are about five months old, possibly.

Some pictures and comparisons

Here are a few pictures, the first from Japan and the rest from Wyoming.















This is a view from one of the temples we visited in Kyoto. A little bit hazy.















Mountains in Wyoming, the Snowies in June. Can see very far with only a little haze, it should be clearer except that our wonderful neighbor states are smogging up the air, but the wind carries it away quickly.



















A Bitterroot flower about the size of a thumb nail. Larger subspecies of this plant was an important food source for a few American Indian Tribes. This would be a very small root indeed.















Snow still in the trees off of the park (a large treeless area) in June. Sally, my parents' new golden retreiver loves to play in the snow.















Marsh marigolds.















Natural sculpture in the Medicin Bow Forest.















Tenegui (sp?) the bottom one from a long training weekend here in Laramie. The top one from Takarazuka Kendo-jo.

Long time no write

It's been nearly a month since Japan and most is well. I hope that I can go back, but now I should be focusing on more relevant problems such as my space grant. It is so easy to procrastinate in wonderful Laramie. The weather is nice and cool even compared to Japan a month earlier. But it's a tiny bit dry with the foresters for different agencies saying Wyoming and the rest of the west is about a month ahead of schedule for wildfires and extremely dry conditions.

I worked for a day on a construction site. They had me back-filling curb on a track, did that for about nine hours with small infrequent breaks on a very sunny day. I recovered from the soreness for the next week. The wierd thing was that I did some Kendo during that week and while doing Kendo I didn't hurt at all. Hmm... good I guess, although who knows how much longer my recovery took because of Kendo.

Speaking of Kendo I was able to go to a dojo in Takarazuka, Hyogo, Japan. Not the one I was looking for but still a very nice one and closer to the college. Yuko, my host sister, took me to the Takarazuka sports center and to the Kendo-jo inside. I was just going to sit and watch the class when the head sensei, Nakao-sensei, came up to me and handed me a shinai. Through Yuko he asked me to demonstrate some of what I knew. Great! Then everyone stopped in the calss to watch. Even better! So I did some basic targets, in street clothes, and kiri kaeshi. Then one of the other sensei worked with me for about an hour or so.

Afterwards I was invited to drink cold green tea with the sensei, three or four of whom were rokudan and several others godan(6th and 5th respectively), and a student who had just recieved the rank of ikkyu. Nakao-sensei told a few stories about some of the foreigners he had taught and how much they had improved over their stays, both in Kendo and speaking Japanese. One of his foreign students called mochi, pounded rice made into confections, Japanese chewing gum. They gave me a dojo tenagui (sp?) that was purple with the phrase Brotherhood through crossing swords, or something similar, in white kanji. I was invited to join them again on Wednesday to practice for an hour-and-a-half. I went on Wednesday and had a great time. I never found that other dojo, although the map said that I was very close.

I suggested the dojo that I visited to Beth, a girl in the Wyoming Kendo Club who is going to go study for a year at the college we visited for three weeks. She will definitely enjoy it I'm sure.

I will tell more stories later and throw up a few pictures.

Finished but not yet Recounted

I really didn't want to come back. Japan is so cool, I really just wanted to stay. I just have to figure out how to get back to Japan without breaking the bank. Janice said that anybody who wanted to could join the class without taking the class next year. In otherwords cheap stay without having to go to all the classes. But then again I think there is a better option, especially if I'm in Germany next year. Hmm... could be really quite interesting, and hopefully affordable. Lufthansa has direct flights from Fankfurt to Osaka for about 1300 dollars.

Lost and Loving It

Who says lost is bad? Not me but then I really wasn`t lost yesterday. Really I wasn`t. I knew where I was and how to get back, just not how to get where I wanted to get to. Asking a few questions of people who didn`t know english and then one who did but with no idea of where my destination lay. I walked around for about two or three hours without success and finally came back. Hopefully I might be able to find it on Saturday or next Tuesday, hmm... if I just knew alot more Japanese. I know directions and asking where something is but there are alot of ummmss and all sorts of akward pauses.

And writing this much later, all the interactions I had with shopkeepers were either in broken english or broken japanese. It helps that I learned to say (in broken japanese) kore wa hitatsu or futatsu or the counters such as ban and all the rest. If I write any more it will be tomorrow morning or Monday morning.

Rainy Day

I finished copying down the hirigana and katakana so I may be able to sound things out at least. It will not help me understand what I am saying, just a way to help facilitate meal ordering. Maybe by the end of the trip I will be able to recognize the kana on their own without the help of a notebook. The best classroom is the real world. I forget who said that.

Today is raining pretty hard from what I hear, I have not looked outside myself but it sounds like its raining pretty hard. Now do not jump all over my apostrophe grammar, I would have to hit too many keys to actually use it. Also today we are going to learn a little bit more about the way of tea and ikebana or flower arranging. I should hope that it will be a good day despite the rain.

Yesterday, after the welcome party we visited the music building and participated in a class that was taught in English and it was about music. It was very elementry for the music and not overly hard for the english and something that american schools would probably never fund.