Gaijin buddies!

Hurray! We finally have some friends!

Shae (one of Erica's friends) got in touch with us about a month ago and asked us to go to an Indian Restaurant for lunch with her... and she brought other English teachers with her! We met Brian (from Nashville), Eric (From Michigan), Elle (From Niagara Falls), and Adrian (from Melbourne)! Woohoo! Since then, we've hung out with them a number of times and done a ton of interesting things (Including climbing on the roofs of buildings, watching intense animal videos, going to karaoke with limited English songs, going to the batting cages at 10 at night, going to see temple illuminations and, just yesterday, we went to see a taiko drumming performance)

Anyway, we're really happy to have met these guys, and I think that our stay here will be a lot more enjoyable because of them!

Adrian (AKA Marley)


Looks natural, doesn't it...?




Marley, Eric and Elle



Jim and Brian (AKA Sandy Vag)








Kongoin Temple illumination in Maizuru

Miyazu

During our vacation (back in October) we took the chance to visit a place called Amonahashidate (the Bridge to Heaven). It is a land bridge attaching one part of a bay to the other. It is located about 45 minutes away from Maizuru in another town called Miyazu.

Some beautiful scenery viewed from the chairlift

The first thing we did upon our arrival was take a chairlift up to the top of a nearby mountain that is great for viewing the bridge (by leaning over and looking through your legs) and also had a little amusement park. At the top, the view was beautiful, normally and through-the-legs style. The amusement park was not so impressive. There were things like a mini golf course, which was actually just a series of holes dug along a small patch of grass. No obstacles, no greens, no starting markers... just holes in the ground.
We rode on some go-karts, which were a lot of fun. Except that my legs were too long, so every time I turned I would bash my knee in with the second steering wheel (see picture).

After a jaunt on the ferris wheel we went back down the chairlift and wandered around for a little while. We found some interesting souvenirs. Then we made our way to the land bridge. Before we could start walking across we had to wait for a few boats to pass the bridge. It was pretty cool to see the motorized bridge rotate rather than lift in the middle.

The bridge itself was very beautiful, and we were there during the sunset. Meaning it was very beautiful, but also rather cold. So we only made it about 40% across the bridge before turning back and deciding to go find food.

We actually decided to find a Mcdonald's, but on our way to Miyazu we had spotted a crab shack. When we saw it again we realized that we hadn't spent much money on our vacation so we could afford to have a crab dinner. The restaurant was absurd. There was a boat in front of the kitchen. It was full of water and that is where they kept the crabs before killing them. I'd say before boiling them, but when we received our dinner we quickly realized that none of the crab meat had been cooked. There was also no butter to be found. So we were definitely eating crab Japanese style. The dinner was pretty good and the view was excellent.

After that we made our way back home. Thanks for reading!

Kinosaki

First up!

The first new addition to our blog must be our new little friends!!

Jim and i decided to purchase some little critters for me to coo at. We bought two orange fish (I couldn't tell you what kind they are) that we named "The Sisters" (after Daniel and Henrik Sedin heh heh) and we also got 3 snails which we named "The Cling-ons"...

So here's one of the strangest events I have witnessed regarding pets....

We went away for ONE SATURDAY NIGHT last month to Kinasaki (which will be written about later) and we figured that the little guys would be fine by themselves for one night, reasonable enough, right?

hah! We returned the following Sunday only to discover that Daniel had COMPLETELY disappeared! I know that the "darn fish jumped out of the tank and killed itself" scenario must happen often to fish owners everywhere... but this little guy was nowhere to be found! He wasn't in the bowl anywhere, he wasn't on the table, he wasn't on the floor... hmm...

Possible scenarios:

1. He jumped out of the bowl and remains in some forgotten place in the house
2. He got stuck in between/below the tatami mats on the floor and is still there (I think we would have smelled him by now, though)
3. Henrik ate him during a bout of rage (very unlikely due to the mouth:body size ratio)
4. The snails ate him...:|

None of the above bode well for the little fellow....

Anyway, after 2 weeks of mourning/living in complete disbelief we bought Daniel2! Everything's A OK so far....

Also, our 3 snails managed to produce a 4th! How on earth do snails mate/spawn/fertilize, anyway? Must be awkward...

The late Daniel with Henrik and the clingons

Daniel2!

More posts to follow soon!

We're still alive!!

Hello friends!

We are so sorry for leaving everyone out of the loop for so long! We have been quite preoccupied (to say the least) with work and haven't really found time to do our routine blogging....but hopefully we'll get back on track as of now!

Quite a lot has happened over the last while! We have new pets, Jim has been kidnapped by the Calgary Flames (:|), I've been knitting my free-time away, we're met some other English teacher friends and we're going to CHINA AND THAILAND for our X-mas vacation!! All very exciting... details will follow!

g