Yesterday I went skydiving, it was one of the best experiences I've had in my life. My day started by getting up at 7:30am (which was tricky, having not gone to bed until 4:30am). I took the motorcycle to the gas station to fill up and wake myself up while Blake and Jill got ready. - then we all headed to sugar grove to pick up andrea and head ( Read more... )

All pictures from previous posts are now up! a lot has happened since then, i hope to write about it on my way to osaka. -Matt

Wow, am I ever exhausted. Today I took a train into the Arashiyama / Sagano district of Kyoto.. Again, I haven稚 posted these pictures yet. I can稚 from here, as I have no way to get them to the internet terminal without copying 3 at a time to floppy disk, and then I have no way to get them onto the web server where I知 hosting them. I hope to ( Read more... )

i found this interesting, so i decided to post it here: i did a bit of research and couldn:t find that it wasn;t true, so for now i:ll assume it is... that or somebody has a creative immagination. - matt ( Read more... )

It痴 Monday the 2nd now, I知 sitting on a Shinkansen (high speed train) waiting to depart from Shinkurashiki station to Shinosaka station. I知 hoping that when I get there I can catch a local train to Kyoto, where I致e decided to spend my next few days. I致e been busy ? I haven稚 written much as I have not had my laptop with me, but I decided that ( Read more... )

Saturday I slept in  Because of the cold we decided not to wander to far, and so into main Kurashiki we went. The part of Kurashiki I’m staying in is Tamashima - it’s a twenty minute train ride to get to the larger part of the city. (I’d call it more of a county really…. Tamashima is the ward, but it’s more of a city.) On the way, I came ( Read more... )

After being here for a week, I finally got a taste of japan. On Friday, I went into Okayama to get a taste of the town. I’m completely convinced that under the entire town - is a mall, that is ½ the size of Chicago. It seemed like every time I went through an underpass to cross a road, or into the train stations / subways - there was a mall ( Read more... )

So i'm told that i'm in the part of japan that could be compared to states like arkansas or other souther states. I guess everyone here has an unmistakable accent when compared to other parts of the country, and in some ways are considered the redneck, or hicks of japan. I found that pretty funny. I heard a story from mari about one of her ( Read more... )

it's snowing now... i've stayed in the last couple of days in effort to get a little ahead on work, i'll be traveling with mari this next weekend, although we may decide to go into okayama instead, to avoid the cold. I forget where it was we're going to try to go, i'm bad enough with names already, and here they all have a foreign twist... but ( Read more... )

Mari in her living room in japan ( Read more... )