Rocking in Hakata

This month, the Japan Blog Matsuri is being held at What Japan Thinks, and the theme is “Slow Times in Japan.” Now, while I live on a tiny fishing island in rural Japan, I’m a pretty busy guy. I’m frequently scooting from one school to the next, blogging, networking both on and offline, planning classes, planning trips, starting upcoming podcasts (the rumors are true…), and more. Then it occurred to me – this is the perfect opportunity to announce the special project that I’ve been asked to help with. You could say that my city, Imabari, is having a bit of a slow time with tourism lately. It’s my job to help – and I want your input! Read more…

Deas Customary Drivel, JBMatsuri, RIH Entries, Trips, Unsolicited Commentary

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Ok, folks. So now I’m an Open Water Diver with a mere 9 dives under my belt. These pictures were taken with crappy disposable underwater cameras, so forgive the lousy quality – I’ve cleaned them up as best as I could. Anyway, I’m looking for my next dive, hopefully in Japan. My question to you is, do you have a suggestion for where should I go next? I hit the Dive Japan website for some starter clues. But I thought I’d throw out this question for my readers too – especially for any fellow divers. Word of mouth always trumps websites in my opinion.

The principal at my base school told me that his friends who were fond of diving really enjoyed their time at Kochi Prefecture’s Paradi dive center. Kochi and Ehime share a border, so I’m really darn close. That makes it an attractive option. The website also makes it seem like an ideal spot for a quick long weekend type trip – maybe 2 or 3 days for about 6 dives.

Should I finally go all the way out to the Ogasawara Islands? (I once mentioned these islands ages ago in passing as a potential whale watching destination.) They’re extremely isolated – and yet they’re technically part of Tokyo. The idea of a place you can only get to via a 30 hour long ferry ride is appealing in and of itself for some reason…

Okinawa is probably the most obvious option – it features the mysterious underwater Yonaguni Monument or Yonaguni Ruins, which were originally brought to my attention with a great video that Ryan aka “freedomwv” submitted to JapanSoc. I don’t really think it’s Lemuria or anything, but hey – how cool would it be to see those big geometric shapes underwater? Or, elsewhere in Okinawa, if I didn’t wimp out, I hear I can see loads of hammerheads…

So, what do you think? Do you know of any other dive spots I should consider? I’ve heard people say that the Izu Peninsula has some neat spots. Anyway, I’ve got some time to look into it. It’s still too cold to dive in anything but a drysuit. I’ll wait for 5mm weather.

Deas Customary Drivel, Media, Photos, Trips

So…Bill has posed the question – how will I make the most of my time in Japan? Well, the answer may not be the standard, but it’s true for a lot of people here – I’ll make the most of my time in Japan by getting out of Japan as often as possible. That’s right, folks, I’m all about international travel.

Being an ALT on the JET program is a unique opportunity. I’m young, much of my cost of living is subsidized – so I have some expendable income, and I have the ability to take chunks of vacation whenever the schedule has an opening. Also, I’m geographically much closer to a lot of places of interest than I was when living on the east coast of the United States. Most of Asia is just a hop, skip, and a jump away. I will likely never be in this situation again. I’d better make the most of it, no?

Some folks are far more serious than I am about travel, but I’ve still done my fair share. In my time here, I’ve been to South Korea, North Korea (technically…if you count 5 minutes over the line in the DMZ), Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Macau, and the Philippines. (Posts containing photos and video clips from each trip are available by searching around. Too many posts to link to here.) And I’m currently looking at a trip to Taiwan in March. Of course, I’ve done loads of travel inside Japan as well – again, far too much to even list.

I still want to go to Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia*, India*, Russia, mainland China, Australia, New Zealand, and some other spots. But we’ll see. I might be able to knock out 1/3 to 1/2 of that list by the end of my stay here. If not, I’ll at least give it my best shot. That’s how I plan on making the best of my time in Japan. Other than financially saving as much as I can – yes, it’s doable even with travel expenditures – and improving my Japanese, that is.

*Providing they are safe enough for me to go.
** Yes, I borrowed the map from GraphicMaps.com, so sue me. Figured I shouldn’t erase their watermark if I was gonna use their image. Ha ha.

Deas Customary Drivel, JBMatsuri, RIH Entries, Trips, Unsolicited Commentary

It’s here! The last Philippines entry. I promise! Breathe a sigh of relief. Ha ha. I just wanted to break my bad habit about doing stuff and postponing actually posting about it for ages. I think I successfully did. This clip is enormous. It’s easily the longest blog-related video I’ve uploaded. It’s almost as long as my old student project, Beautiful Stranger, which came in at 15 minutes and 33 seconds. This one is 14 minutes and 6 seconds long – but that covers clips from 2 weeks of vacation! And when you consider that I culled it from about 35 minutes of footage total, all taken on my digital camera, it’s pretty concise. Ha ha. Fair warning! If you’re freaked out about the death of farm animals, skip from the 30 second mark to the 50 second mark – you don’t see anything, but you hear a pig squeal for a second, and then see it being roasted on the spit. No biggie. Highlights include Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer (the song, not the actual magical reindeer) on banjo and guitar at 2:20, tarsiers at 10:57, and the flamboyant transvestite python attendant explaining about Prony’s diet which consists solely of virgin / white pigs and also about the snakeskin bra and panty set at 11:16. In other words, the video is roughly chronological, but will still seem disjointed. Enjoy!

Deas Customary Drivel, Media, Trips, Video

Before I post the videos, I thought I’d do a follow-up and tell you exactly where I went, what I did, and why. So, here’s a rough Google Map of the route that I took around the Central Visayas. Below it I’ll chronicle each day. For those who are interested, that is. Ha ha. The entries are pulled from shorthand notes in my JET Journal. Needless to say, this is a gargantuan entry. Read on if you’re curious!

Read more…

Deas Customary Drivel, Trips, Unsolicited Commentary

This is part 2 of 2. The following pictures continue my two week long adventures scuba diving in the Philippines. Look for a video post next week at some point, along with a recap post, and possibly a diving related post. But for now, let’s get to the pictures!

Side notes: yes we went to the Bohol Bee Farm twice (got rained out on the tour the first time), the ketchup is made of bananas and is sickly sweet, those are blacktip reef sharks in the ponds at the Maribago Bluewater Resort, and I only took the last 3 pictures to tell the time by timestamp since I didn’t have a watch. Yay! Also, as long as the 2 picture posts are on the same page, you should theoretically be able to see all 103 pictures in the same set – just click on the thumbnails and go to town.

Deas Customary Drivel, Media, Photos, Trips