Well, only one more work day until my spring vacation begins. Huzzah! So, y’all are probably wondering, “What will Jimmy do for spring vacation? Perhaps bounty hunting? Bar fights? Oh jeez…I hope he’s not going to spend the break sneaking into my house to kill me…” What? You’re not interested in what I’m going to do for break? Well, I’m going to ( Read more... )

Perhaps the bizarre weather patterns in Yokkaichi are a sign that the heavens have forsaken this town, but the weather recently has been weird even for Yokkaichi. Last weekend, the weather was beautiful. It was about 60 degrees out, sunny, and the winds were calm. I woke up this morning to a snowstorm with gusting 36 mph winds. It is still ( Read more... )

Last Saturday, Justin dropped by Yokkaichi for the afternoon. During our Hapkido practice, I introduced him to some black belt level technique concepts and while working different angles with techniques, we discovered a nasty #5 variation. It's basically an upside down 5 with an almost 38 special twist to it. It's definitely a technique worth ( Read more... )

I took the DNA personality quiz thing that JHayz posted a little while back. Check it out and feel free to comment on how accurate/inaccurate you feel it is. Here's the link to my results: http://www.personaldna.com/report.php?&k=yoZGWynBSDyRBeN-GJ-

I’m bored at work now, so I thought I’d update the live journal. Friday afternoons are always uneventful as I finish my myriad of Elementary school classes a little after lunch and there is nothing to do in the following 2 hours or so and I’m usually too tired to do anything useful ( Read more... )

I have recently learned about a host of minor Japanese holidays. I found these particularly interesting because they came about by playing changing the pronunciation of the kanji to an alternate pronunciation resulting in a word that has another meaning. It’s really a lot easier to understand when shown it rather than having it explained, so here ( Read more... )

Last weekend, JHayz dropped by Yokkaichi unexpectedly while Katie was at work in Nagoya. We mostly bummed around Yokkaichi, but he also asked to see some cutscenes from Vim et Virtus (the video game I’m making) which I gladly set up for him. He was extremely pleased with them and stated that they were perfect. It’s always good to see how other ( Read more... )

Last week was extremely exhausting because I went to kindergartens and played with the kids all week. I spent most of my time there carrying kids, swinging kids around, chasing kids, and fleeing from or dodging kids, which of course had me climbing on or jumping on all of the playground equipment. I discovered, however, that I have more energy or ( Read more... )

Wow, it has been a busy week or two. The weekend before last was the inaugural Shizuoka JET Martial Arts Exchange seminar hosted by JHayz. He’s been working on putting it together for several months and it turned out pretty well. Unfortunately, as the seminar drew closer, fewer and fewer people seemed interested. We ended up with 4 people: me, ( Read more... )

The end of the Japanese school year is rapidly approaching (it's in the middle of March), so I am starting to see many of my students for the last time and have been asked by my teachers to give a farewell speech to the students at the end of their last class with me, so I thought I would share what I have been saying. This changes a little every ( Read more... )