It's cold. I need a coat

Here are two stupid pics of me wearing two coats. Which do you like? (This is as good as I can possibly get with my cell phone without the memory card.)

New Job

I started a small part time job today. I'm teaching 5 beginning level students at their company north of Yokohama, about 20 minutes from my house, for an hour and forty-five minutes, twice a week. I was kind of nervous this time because I've never done a real business English class, and that's a long time to be teaching a single class. This time, a lot of time was taken by an orientation from the head of the company I'm working for, but I don't know how I'm going to fill that much time next time. The conference room that we're using has a projector, so I might be able to bring some movie clips of something for listening practice or something, but I'm not going to be ready for that for a while.

The students are two women and a man in their late 30's, one guy in his 40's, and a young guy probably in his late 20's. The oldest guy is the best, but they are all pretty low level. Of corse, all of the have "studied" English ever since junior high, but in Japan, that usually doesn't mean much. After studying that long, their listening and reading is okay, but speaking is not that great. Still, it's nice to be teaching adults that can at lease understand what I'm saying for a change.

This small job will end up making me ¥50,000 extra a month (about $500) which will be nice if I go on vacation early next year or decide to move. The bad thing is that I'm stuck doing it every monday and friday until the end of March, so I don't even get to take a long weekend until then.

No pictures from me

Ai has my memory card again, so no pictures from my cell phone. I should just give it to her and get another... I have a roll of B&W to develope, so if I get around to mixing up some chemicals, I can get that done this weekend. I don't remember what's on it though...

In the meantime, here's a nice site I found | sorryeverybody.com

Edit: Link fixed

Short Days

Since have been shortening so much over the last few weeks, when I get home, there isn't much daylight left. I'd been wanting to go riding for a while, but this weekend I bought some lights for my bike, so now I can feel safer at night. So when I got home from work today, instead of being tired and lazy, I hopped on my bike and went for a ride. I rode 50 km in 2 hours. That's a half century! (but a half metric century, which is 35 miles (huh? A century? Yea. It's a 100 mile or 100 km ride.)) The cool thing about 50km in 2 hours is that it's only 47km from my house to Tokyo station, and if I could ride the same distance by bike, it would take only twice the time as the train (and probably the same as by car.)

So now instead of "I'm tired" being the first thing on my mind, it is ranked 3rd, preceeded by "I'm hungry" and "I can't stand up" in first and second places.

Guess I'llbe staying here for a while...

Hmm. I don't really know what to say. I guess not enough people from Ohio read my link. That's too bad. I guess they wont be having a visit from me for a while. Neither will anyone else really.

Photo Album

I've also added a link in the section on the right to my new photo album. It's the Artsy Fartsy one with the B&W that I have taken in the last month, and well as some 35mm and Polaroid that I've taken with a heavily modified Chinese plastic camera.

The Facts on the Bush Administration

Just incase anyone has any doubts in the next few days about who to vote for, please read this. I will let the facts speak for themselves.

The Nation: 100 Facts and 1 Opinion

My Bike!!!

My wonderful mother got my bike sent to me really cheap through FedEx, so now I have a real bicycle. It was supposed to get here Wednesday, but it got delayed in customs a little bit, so it didn't end up getting here until Thursday night. The road that I live on, as I have probably mentioned, is really small. Down the street and around the corner, the road narrows into what looks like a walking path between the railroad tracks and a sandstone bluff. If you can fit your car through there, then you have to negotiate a 90 degree corner between two old houses, with concrete walls on either side. The final part up to my apartment building is half taken up by stairs, so you have to squeeze between them and a drainage ditch. I don't think the delivery truck made it past where it narrows past the railroad tracks because I heard a clanking sound coming up the street for a couple minutes before I had a knock on my door.

I got my bike put together pretty quick, but I had to walk it past the next station to a decent bike shop to get the tires inflated. Most regular bikes in Japan use this really weird type of valve that I really hate, and my bike uses European valves, so I didn't think any other shops would be able to do it. Plus I needed some other stuff.

Once I got air in my tires, I rode home and WOW!! I'd forgotten what it was like to ride that fast! I've gotten pretty good on my other bike at predicting the movements of Japanese pedestrians, who care even less that you're coming at them than US pedestrians. If I was driving a car going that fast, people wouldn't go out into the street, but on a bike, it's like they assume you wont be going that fast, so they walk right out in front of you. I was looking forward to going on a ride today, but it's rainy. I might go anyway.

Rocking and Rolling

Tonight starting at 5:30, we had a few strong earthquakes. The main one was 6.7 on the Richter scale, about 150 miles from Tokyo, but where I was at Ai's house in Tokyo, it shook pretty good for about a minute and a half. It wasn't as strong where I was as the one a few weeks ago, but near it's epicenter in Nigata, it collapsed some tunnels, houses, started a few fires, knocked out power and telephone, and derailed a bullet train. In the hour after the earthquake, there were at least 4 or 5 more that we could feel.

After the earthquakes subsided, Ai and I went to her grandma's house and she made us Sukiyaki, which is vegetables and thinly sliced beef cooked in a broth in a pot on the table. It was really good.

I got a scanner finally, so I will start uploading pictures to my Flickr page, and a new one I have set up at Lomo Homes. I will put a link to that site up when I a chance.

Tully's

Tully's
Originally uploaded by noexit.

Tully's Specialty Coffee to go. In a convenience store near you.