Well, Mom & Dad have come and gone.  It was a lot of fun and a lot of work.  I think they had quite an experience, and they had to buy another bag just to pack all the presents people gave them.  They got to meet Kimiko's parents, and everyone seems to like each other.  That's a huge weight off everyone's shoulders.

Anyways, enjoy the pictures and feel free to let me know what you think.

Jer

We went to Oita this last weekend.  It's the prefecture to the Northeast of Kumamoto.  We definitely felt the earthquake, but it wasn't as bad as it was in Fukuoka.  We just felt some swaying for about 30 seconds.

This was definitely quite a trip.  See the pictures of USA, hell and heaven as well as Kimiko in a sari from India.  Oita is an interesting place.

I had planned to update this more often, but two things are keeping me from making more of an effort.  First, my computer seems to freeze up shortly after viewing my msn spaces page, which means I have to reboot after every update.  Just a pain.  Plus, for some odd reason, my page navigation will only come up in Japanese.  Every other Microsoft website from hotmail to msn comes up in English, my language is set to English, but spaces will ONLY come up in Japanese.  Grrrr.....and msn support didn't even understand my problem.

So, that's why I don't update often.

Take care,

Jer

Wow, I was being chastised and didn't even know it.  I am humbled before the power of Darin and his updating abilities.  My feeble blog cannot withstand the awesome force that is Darin's blog.

Now that I've placated Mr. Velin, I'll move on to my update.  I had planned to update this quite regularly, but laziness took hold (as it often does) and now it's been a few weeks since I did it.

Practices for the English play are going right along.  I think that the format should be redone.  I'm already running out of things to do with the elementary school kids, whereas the junior high kids will be down to the wire learning all their lines.  Not very good time management, but then the schedule isn't up to me.

It was getting warmer earlier in the week, but we're supposed to drop below zero again this weekend.  This will probably be it though, and soon I'll be wishing for low temperatures as I wilt in the Kumamoto summer.

Lastly, I thought I would add this picture of Kimiko and I from our visit to the Kyushu Puppy Kingdom.  Yes, it's quite a grand name with the literal translation.  Good times were had by all.  If I didn't live in an apartment, and if golden retrievers didn't cost upwards of $1500 here (yes, that much), I would definitely buy one!

That's all for now.

Well, it's Friday night and I'm here at home.  Ah yes, my exciting life here in Japan.  I went ahead and uploaded the pictures from our trip to Tsushima.  Tsushima is an island that, while technically part of Nagasaki prefecture, is way off the coast and only about 50 km from South Korea.  I would have taken pictures of the South Korean coast, but I couldn't get a decent shot.  Tsushima is known for a species of wild cat that is only found on the island...no pictures of those either save for the big statue at the wildlife sanctuary (they wouldn't let us take pictures of the one living there).

I hope you enjoy the new pictures.  I also added a few more to the Australia album that didn't get included in the first group.  Off to a party tomorrow night.  Two kids at Mifune Junior High won the national robot competition...pretty impressive for a tiny town of 18,000, so they have to have a party for Mr. Otsuka (the technology teacher).

That's all for now.  I'm sure I'll be updating soon.

The intense pressure of Darin creating a blog has forced me to create one of my own.  Actually I thought this would be a good place to let everyone look at pictures of my life here in Japan.  At any rate, we'll start here.  If I can, I'll just start writing in this on a regular basis, and it will save me from writing mass e-mails.

I uploaded two sets of pictures.  One is of the trip Kimiko and I took to Australia last August.  The other is of New Year's at her family's house.  No, I wasn't introduced as the boyfriend, but everyone seems to think her parents probably know anyways.  I did my part though, so we'll go from there.

I had a hard day at work today of sitting at my desk.  The only thing that made this day different from a normal day of sitting at my desk was that all three English teachers weren't there.  One had a business trip, one had a fever and the other needs to have an operation to remove a kidney, so she's just hurting really bad.  Unbelievable!  Yesterday I offered to take classes by myself, but apparently they didn't think that was a good idea.  Ah well, at least I studied some kanji.

That should be enough for my first entry here in the universe that is msn Spaces.  Have a good day.

Jer