Back in elementary school, do you remember the popularity of dolphins? Many girls would buy those cheap metallic dolphin charms leaping over some semi-precious stone, reading Island of the Blue Dolphin was huge, everyone watched Free Willy, Flipper, and anything else to do with the mammal – it was a craze that irritated the hell out me because flocks of gaggling girls would insist how cute the bottle-squished face of a dolphin was much more adorable than, let’s say, a baby. I guess you can say that I have nothing against dolphins, but the culture that surrounded it made me hate them.
Dolphin lovers are right up there on my list of people to avoid after people who believe the power of power stones and racists.
Now, I have more reason to hate dolphins. They make a terrible steak.
Obviously, I am not being elegant in this picture.
One of my new year’s resolutions this year — besides the usual fitness goals, Japanese study goals, and the money-saving goals – was to attempt regular updates on my blog and Youtube channel. Now that I am on spring vacation until the new school year starts, I will attempt again to make more regular posts. No promises.
Despite the tragedies up north, I am still enjoying the simple pleasures my area has to offer. I am very lucky to be living where I am. The only unfortunate circumstances I have to deal with are bread shortages (due to crazy hoarders) and scheduled blackouts — which was not really unfortunate because it was spent in a candle-lit room with Marc and we took pictures.*
*Not those kinds of pictures, you perverts. I was learning about “depth of field” and “apertures” and other words that makes me sound like I know camera-related things.
What was I writing about again? Oh right, simple pleasures like fire engine red strawberries.
A train ride to Nirayama and a 15 minute walk later, 1200Y will get you a small plastic tray with condensed milk and 30 minutes in a strawberry heaven greenhouse to eat as many strawberries as you can.
I spent my 30 minutes in a small humid, plastic wrapped greenhouse, walking along straight rows and rows and rows of fresh benihoppe strawberries, searching for a bigger strawberry than the previous one eaten, dodging squealing kids and their red stained hands, and eating a ridiculous amount of strawberries and almost dying when they told me that I could not get a refill on my condensed milk. I am convinced this is the reason to why Strawberry Shortcake is a little fatty.
I had breakfast (SERIOUSLY, WHAT WAS I THINKING??) so I only ate 47 strawberries. I think I could have eaten more. Well, watch me gorge and forgive me for the shaggy hair:
ALSO, donate to any charity that is currently preparing aid boxes to bring to the Tohoku area. ALSO ALSO, the University of Alberta, MY university, made this video to encourage Japan. I am pretty proud to be a University of Alberta alumni.
Yuka and I are trying to be cute. AAAaaand, I don't know if we succeeded.
and I am not talking about the Lady Gaga song, although I DO like dancing to it.
I had a rather stressful day. I spent my whole day at Shizuoka’s Immigration office, just waiting for my turn. Once it was my turn, getting my new visa took 5-10 minutes, but the wait to get there took about 3 hours. After that, I was too cheap to take the shinkansen so I found myself on the slow train home waiting at Fuji station to switch to another train.
Once there, I saw some heavily protected men in safety gear and hard hats. Oh right, this line also connects to Fujinomiya, city in devastation after the M6 earthquake that occurred 2 days prior. I took out my camera to take a picture of these stoic Japanese men, but they were gone in a flash.
However, I captured Dancing Train Man on film instead.
Here in Shizuoka we have braced ourselves for the dreaded aftershock earthquake that was estimated to occur sometime this week.
Tonight at 10:31pm, it happened. The epicenter is located in the eastern part of Shizuoka prefecture, measuring at a magnitude of 6.0. Although my cellphone earthquake watch feature tells me that it happened at Yamanashi prefecture, current news tells me that it happened in the Tobu region of Shizuoka, Fujinomiya City being the worst hit.
See Marc’s illustrative explanation of how location, location, location is everything: HERE.
Japan was just hit with a strong earthquake. Originally, it was reported that the epicenter was somewhere off-shore north of Hokkaido, but now more information tells us that it occurred in Sendai, measuring at about a Shindo 7.
I made this quick video showcasing some live feed off the news and the whirlpools being formed due to this natural disaster. Oh, and to tell people that I am ok. Izu measured at about a Shindo 2.
UPDATE March 11: Tokyo Tower is officially bent. UPDATE March 12: A phone line has collapsed in a mini road in my cute little town. The earthquake now measures at an 8.9.
UPDATE March 13: The earthquake is now measured to be a 9.
I mentioned in an earlier post that Yokohama is Japan’s and Asia’s largest Chinatown, not counting China itself. My friends and I spent the whole day exploring Chinatown and here is the travel montage of the whole day trip.
My video does not show it justice, but the sheer amount of panda paraphernalia is just phenomenal!
My bestest sent me a care package from Canada. Although I had wanted to publish the second half of the Yokohama trip and my experiences with dolphin meat, I felt compelled to share this to the world. Why? Let this simple equation illustrate:
Those are times when a kindred spirit is most needed because food therapy and shopping therapy can only do bad things to the waist line and credit line.
Packages from friends back home reminds me of the good times and provides some chicken soup for the soul. It reminds me to slow down and it allows me to focus on the most important things in life, like me. Because I am that loud, attention-needy creative type from elementary school that is rather fun to be around, but when left to our own devices manage to go a little more than off the deep end. Save me from the deep end and comment to feed my ego. Thank you in advance.
Enjoy the video. It’s also my very first video in HD! WOW! I solved the internet!
Kristine, the Mrs. Fields Cookie Dough Delights did not survive long enough to see a Japanese sunset when it arrived in the afternoon.
February 23 is Fuji Day in Japan. It’s an optional holiday, so some schools have the day off and some don’t. My school was open and decided to throw a school-wide haiku contest and drawing contest. They had to write about Fuji and draw about Fuji. Not surprising, some students used it as an opportunity to simply draw triangles with smiley faces with charcoal. Some were creative with cloud placements and drew phallic Mt. Fujis. I just stared at it — the mountain, not the phallic drawings.
Shizuoka apparently ruffled some feathers when it first proposed Fuji Day. Yes, it’s great to have a day to celebrate one of Japan’s most iconic symbols, but they chose the date because it’s very punny.
February 23 can be simply broken down to these numbers: 2 23
The kanji for the number two has two pronunciations: fu and ji.
The kanji for the number three is more known for this pronunciation: san.
Basically, the date February 23 spells out fuji-san which is how they call Mt. Fuji. Clever, eh?
I present to you Part One of the Yokohama Chinese New Year arc.
Yokohama is known for its Chinatown, basically making it THE Chinatown of Japan. What better way to celebrate Chinese New Year than to go to Yokohama, eat dimsum, and watch some local festivities? The following video is a snippet of the Dragon Dances and Lion Dances that was part of the Chinese New Year parade that happened in the middle of the street at 2pm.
I am a personal fan of the Lion Dance because these two man or three men acts are not only a colourful exhibition of glitter and costumes, the skill of its performers are shown by acrobatics and the realistic playfulness of the lions.
I did something which I never thought I would: I meta-blogged. I did a video blog about video blogging. Here is a quick summary of videos to come and why I have been on video blogging hiatus.
