j-pop-tastic

paid a visit to tower records this arvo and had a listen to a chick called MEG.

she's a singer-songwriter and fashion designer.

pretty freakin cool.

http://megweb.jp

why?

just wanna have a bit of a whinge.

so the teaching thing has been going great.. for the most part the kids are fab.

BUT today i had the biggest brat of a kid in my class. he didn't participate at all, yelled, screamed, threw things, jumped on tables, and was generally a big, fat pain in the ass for an entire hour. i tried moving him, i tried the silent treatment, i tried the death stare, i tried raising my voice and eventually i just gave up. that kid is a fruitcake. and as soon as he acts up all the other kids join in and then it's impossible to stop. ugh.

the other thing is my bike. i love my shitty third-hand bike, its amazing. but when i'm riding for 30 mins to and from work every day.. WHY does the wind ALWAYS work against me? i can't feel my legs and i reckon i average a speed of about half a kilometre.

that's all. rant over.

best game show in the world!

omg!

i am watching the funniest game show on tv!

it's a bunch of people playing really old school super mario (like the very first version ever made, that i played when i was 7). it's hilarious, i've been hooked for an hour!

i took some pics.. they had the dungeon, swimming and flying fish stages and everything!

just a regular day at the shops

at some point it becomes necessary to wash your clothes - and dry them. so i went to the mall the other day to buy a clothes horse. in australia, if you buy something that's too big for the store's largest plastic bag, you just deal with it and struggle to lug it round the shopping centre or to the car. this is not so in japan. they have little sticker handles that make life SO much easier for people like me who have no actual muscles in their arms.


shops in japan also play some interesting 'ambience' music. they're catchy little jingles that go something like 'seafood, seafood, seafood' (in japanese) - in the seafood section of the supermarket - and 'doo-doo-doo-IRASSHAIMASE!' (can i help you?) in my local chemist. the staff like to sing along too. nice.

mount bandai baby!

mt. bandai is the closest ski resort to my new hometown of koriyama. however, it's now spring and the ice has melted, so some friends and i decided to hike it! we only got halfway, but the view was pretty cool. even cooler was me finding a tarnished 500yen coin that made it through the entire snow season. bring on the good luck!

we also checked out the five lakes - which supposedly formed after the mountain exploded and deposited minerals that make each lake a different colour. this was the prettiest one:

our last stop was lake inawashiro, the most famous (and biggest!) lake in fukushima. the sunset was so gorgeous.

first stop.. iwaki

so my new place is in koriyama city, fukushima.

a few things have happened since i moved here. i've started teaching solo, experienced a 630am earth tremor (that shook the whole building), made some friends, and yesterday, i caught the bus out to iwaki.

iwaki is on the fukushima coast and is the closest beach to koriyama. it was a gorgeous day, t-shirt weather and all sunny. my friend TJ and i checked out the lighthouse on the peninsula and just chilled at the beach for the rest of the spring afternoon. nice.