And what of March? And what of April?

I'm sorry. I'm so very sorry. But things got out-of-hand-busy for awhile and the computer was giving me a lot of problems. Much has happened, including a long-overdue thaw of Japan's Cruel Winter of 2005. The cherry blossoms have come and gone and yet I remain. I'm working in different roles all of the time and trying to accumulate the money I'll need to embark on my Asian adventure. But I realized with a heavy heart that it was time to update this thing. I'll spare you further excuses. Just to mix things up, we'll use capital letters in this post. e.e. cummings can deal with it.

Well, I've been bad at keeping myself together. How about I post a few pictures and caption them with anecdotes?

I get along quite well with most of my students, and these three are no exception. I think one of them managed to wrestle my phone from my pocket so I used it as an opportunity to snap a shot of them. The technology of Japanese cellular phones (called keitais) is nearly unrivaled in the rest of the world. I don't know if it's the same now, but in October of 2004 when I was planning to come out here I was told that the keitais were about 18 months ahead in technology compared to North American phones. You can watch T.V. conference video call and take movies with most of the phones here, and they're not even top-of-the-line. My friend David's phone has three-point fingerprint recognition to prevent a would-be thief from accessing his emails or personal detail. Man. That's security.
Oh, and by the way, all eight of the photos posted above were taken with my keitai and I've only just now purchased a memory card that allows me to take them off of the phone and onto my laptop for the purposes of public consumption. Thank you for your continued patience

I had such high hopes for the Canadian men's hockey team this year that I would get all geared up to watch the games. I fell off the wagon pretty early and dedicated every appearance of the hockey jersey to the women's team. Yay! We won! Away goes the jersey, at least until the World Juniors tournament.

All the kids in Japan wear identical hats when out on a schooltrip for easy surveillance. I was just lucky and happened to have my camera with me when I saw this yellow tsunami of young'ins racing up the stairs. They were all so well-behaved. It's cute to see, especially when you see them walking two by two and holding hands with their partner, chatting away.

Some other treats for you to enjoy:


I miss all of you guys. Please write to me. I'm only feigning being busy. Really I'm spending most of my time reading Stephen King's DARK TOWER series, which is a 7-novel epic. I've been reading them at a pace of a book a week, save for part 5 which has taken me a lot longer than usual because I was entertaining guests on Golden Week (Jacob and Keiko came down to visit from Shizuoka and my friend Ai Miura returned from Vancouver to visit friends). (n.b.: If anyone has read all seven of the Dark Tower books and wants to chew the fat about them, email me. I'll even call you with Skype and we an get all into it. Those of you hoping to talk to me about Dungeons & Dragons, on the other hand, need not attempt a dialogue. I know nothing of the game and you'd be wasting your time.)

So yeah... Canada, America, Europe (not to mention DENMARK where my long-lost brother James is stationed) and the rest of the globe: contact me. It took my childhood best-friend Andrew Yap a few years to get around to it, but I recently even received a nice little note from him. He found me.
That's that for now. A bunch of pictures from Mt. Shosha and Osaka (where Jacob and I went on Golden Week) are still to come. But I'll try to get them up soon.

And before I forget: Happy 30th(!) Anniversary, Mom & Dad.