Many things that I might regret in my life come down to personality flaws. I really can't and don't regret those things. You know, I just try to learn from them, and I have learned from them. However there is one thing I do regret not doing. See the post below. Why no comments?  Will this post get any comments?

Tuesday, February 27, 2007 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070228/ap_on_en_mu/people_michael_jackson I'm there. Who's comin with me?

posted by robbo at 6:48 PM
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PS I love reading this old blog. It's really a story of teenage angst that ran into the mid 20's. I suffered with those things so much. I never even told anybody outside my family the climax of my suffering. I wouldn't even tell my family if they hadn't witnessed it. But man, that suffering was worth it. An old Buddhist saying goes that without suffering there is no enlightenment, and with enlightenment there is no suffering. I'm just glad that the things that bothered me, bothered me so much, and I got to where I am now. It really encourages me to take on the problems I experience these days.

The Preacher, Me, and the best man, Khotso, my brother-in-law

Hiromi`s mom gave her away. She came all the way from Japan.

Happily married (Actually we were already married but we never had a ceremony)

Well I never wanted a formal wedding, but then I realized that it was an opportunity to create my relationship in front of all the people I knew and loved since I was a little kid. I think it`s a very powerful moment, and now, I`d like to recreate with anybody reading this blog. Our Vows:

I promise to be the best person I can be.
I promise to be with you forever.
We`re gonna double our joy, and we`re gonna half our hardships.
I`m gonna help and support you and express my love with a smile everyday.
I will appreciate and respect you all the time, forever.

BTW, We`ve settled down in Austin. I live on South Lamar. I have a part time job right now to pay the bills. I just started looking for a full time job.

I got married a week ago to my beautiful lovely wife Hiromi. I'm happy to say that she is the love of my life, and we are going to create a great and wonderful future together.

We got married in Japan, but that was just to get the paper work. I proposed to her in AUstin at the Green Belt. I got down on one knee and gave her my life.

Tomorrow we are going to immigration in San Antonio to get her situated in America. It takes a lot of paperwork, but we got it all together. We are going to make a mini honeymoon out of it. more on that later

Well its time to give the good old blog some love. You can see 2 of the links on the right no longer work. I guess Scott and Eston cant even be bothered to keep there account open. Nevertheless, those links will stay right there, and I will continue to check them. I myself wish that I could say that I`ve simply been too busy to keep up with the blog, but actually I have an absurd amount of free time. I work an average 3 hours a day, but the school makes me stay there for 9 hours a day. So the rest of the time I study Japanese, read books, and surf the net. Lately I`ve even started doing Yoga.

I guess I`ll just give a general update on this first post. Overall things are going really well. I was getting pretty home sick back around June and pretty much ready to head back home, but then my parents came in August and I decided to finish out my contract. Right now I`m getting homesick again, but I only have 4 months left. I`m enjoying a lot of things about Japan, Ive done a lot of traveling on my Island, Kyushu, which means 9 states. I`m actually proud to say that I`ve been to 6 out of 7 of those states, and definitely plan on going to the seventh before I leave. Yeah that`s right 7. Some of the states were combined, and the Japanese can be really slow to change things.

Really I can`t believe it`s already been a year. I`m gettin pretty good at speaking Japanese, and I can actually communicate just about anything I need to communicate allbeit in broken Japanese. I`ll certainly be more compassionate towards illerate foreigners when I get back home now that I`ve experienced it first hand.

In other news, I recently had a one year anniversary with my girlfriend, hiromi, who has been a reoccuring character here in the blog for those of you who check everyday. She met my parents in August when they came to visit and right now she`s in Texas for a few days to check things out. Unfortunately I couldn`t be asked to spend over a thousand dollars to visit Texas especially since I`ll be home in 4 months. It sounds to me like she`s liking Texas which is good. Right now she`s at my sister`s birthday party, so she`s getting to meet the whole family.

Well thats all for now. Sorry if its a bit incoherent. I just had a lot of different random shit I wanted to say. I will soon update with pictures from Korea Hong Kong, and some of my travels throught Japan.

Overhead in Japan

So today I was walking to work as usual, and at a busy crosswalk in front of the station, I noticed 3 policemen - each at a different corner. Then I notice 2 people at each corner (8 in total) each holding a little flag with some japanese written on it that I couldn`t completely decipher. I wait at the light, and once it changes the two people at each corner hold the poles of the flags horizontally, letting the flag hang vertically. Half way across the street, I finally realized that they were directing the pedestrians to walk only on the white painted crosswalk, so of course I complied and hopped on the crosswalk and went about my day.

I get to work, and explain the situation to a coworker. He`s 23, fairly smart, fairly open-minded, and has probably been outside of Japan at least once in his life. If not yet, I imagine he`ll venture out eventually. In broken Japanese I say "This morning, at the crossing in front of the station. 3 police. and 8 helping people. why? I`m surprised by so many people" He immediately understands what I`m saying, and his responce was merely "They are there for safety" I`ve been in Japan a year, sometimes there are communication barriers, but in this case I could see that he felt as though the question had been completely answered, so I smirk and continue on with my day.

This is from May 3rd - 5th

Hiromi and I went to a small island close to where I live called Iki. We took a ferry. Or as they call it in Japan herry. (they don`t pronounce the `f` properly)

It`s kind of open seating. Everybody just takes off their shoes and sits on the floor. Pretty customary here in Japan.


This here rock is suppose to look like a monkey. The Japanese call it monkey rock or saru-iwa in japanese.



And this is that same monkey rock taken from the bottom of the cliff. Doesn`t look too much like a monkey anymore.


After the monkey rock, Hiromi and I took a romatic Kayak ride out to this little island with a lighthouse. Only it wasn`t so romantic because I seemed to think it was a race even though there was noone else in the water. Hiromi wasn`t impressed

This is a picture of a pretty flower


And this is a picture of an idiot taking a picture of a pretty flower


I actually got to touch this dolphin. Admission to this park was a whopping $2, and I get to touch a dolphin. Unreal.

And of course I had to include the picture of the vending machines without a building in site in both directions. Only in Japan!


Rice fields. The island is covered with them. Literraly, even a space as narrow as a walking path might be used as rice field. Good old Japanese efficiency


`And this is Iki taken from the island`s highest point an astounding 353 meters.

Well that`s Iki. Overall not too much to do on the small Island. But certainly well worth the trip. I`d definitely go again if a was inclined to surf or spend some days relaxing on the beach. Actually with the added Dolphin attraction, I`d say its an excellent place to go and relax.

TODAY

This here is sports day. They dress all the kids up and they do coordinated activities all day long. Dances, races, etc. Looks like a lot of good fun for the kids.

After sports day we went to the beach for an hour. Good fun, but the water is still a bit too cold for me to get in.


Then we went to the highest point in Kitakyushu - Mt Sarakura.

But we didn`t hike. We took a cable car. I wasn`t too happy about it, but it was already 5pm and it was a fun relaxing ride with the girlfriend. Certainly I`ll eventually summit without the aid of mechanical devices

I jumped a fence to get to this Giant toilet. It was Narly!


I`m getting flushed out of the toilet! It was the 17th most exciting experience of my life.


I think that being flushed out of a toilet probably wasn`t even ranked in Hiromi`s top 100.

This is a high tech teleportion device that the Japanese constructed on the top of Mount Sarakura.


Hiromi just teleported back from Mars. We didn`t get any pictures of mars because we only had one camera, and hiromi wanted to make sure that we got a picture of her teleporting


The Japanese have the technology to develop a teleportation device but apparently they havent figured out how to flatten curvy wood. Seriously I tried this thing out and it was not good for the back.


I couldn`t wait to get back on the cable car. Actually I couldn`t wait to wait in line. It was so exciting. The prolonged anticipation of what`s to come far surpasses the actual experience. Only 75 seconds left but what an amazing 75 seconds it was.

Being the first person on has its advantages. This little warning sign on the steering wheel clearly says Don`t touch in 4 different languages, so I touched it and took a picture of myself touching it


Added this pretty picture because its purty.

What a great day. A crazy Japanese festival, A beach, moutainside scenery, and a bunch of crazy Japanese stuff on the top of a mountain. I`m lovin it

Sooo, I see that Andy`s going full force, Scott finally updated, Mike`s been goin strong on the pics, and Eston - his blog doesn`t even exist anymore. I`ll keep the link just in case, and actually, I`ll keep checking his none-existant blog. . . just in case. So that said, I figured it was time for me to do a quick update.

So, at first in Japan, my experience was limited to a bunch of bars, and working for a shitty company. Well it was an ok company, but they just stopped paying their employees, but we got that money from the government. Enough of that boring story.

So I`m living in what is a bit of a country town of 1 million people. Might not sound like a country town but actually its five small cities that are really close and they conglomerated to make what sounds like a big city. Anyways, between my limited travels (too much time in the bars) and living in a small town, I was really bothered by how ugly Japan was. Tokyo is an amazing city, and just the sheer number of people was such an interesting experience, but I found as I traveled to Osaka, Nagasaki, and my small country town, Kokura - I found that the whole country looked just like Tokyo - crowded and full of concrete. 127 million people in a country smaller than California. The most upsetting experience was a trip to Beppu. Now Beppu IS BEAUTIFUL, and I had a great time. Its basically the Yellowstone of Japan, full of hot springs and actually has one geyser. However, unlike Yellowstone, in order to get to said geyser you have to walk through a tourist shop to see a geyser that is encircled by concrete, and has a huge stone wall on one side that hangs over the geyser so that it actually shoots up hitting the ceiling of the stone wall. A beautiful place, but I`d prefer a nice hike rather than walkin through a tourist shop.

Let`s see, sorry for the long-winded aside, the point I actually wanted to make is that after my first few months of trolling bars and working for a shitty company, Now, I work at an elementary school, and do quite a bit of traveling. I miss meeting lots of new and interesting people, but my job is a lot more rewarding, and I`ve actually come to find out that Japan can be a very beautiful country.

You can look forward to more of the beauty of Japan in future posts. For now I`ll give you a taste with hiraodai- a small mountain range located in my small city that is mostly composed of limestone (which was an abundant mining resource used in construction for this once booming country town in the 70`s - the mine has since been closed, and it has been shrinking ever since)


Aint that purty.


Oh look at that-it just got purtier. (the girl standing on the rock is my girlfriend)


In case you were wondering why her jeans were wet and rolled up, I had to add the picture of us standing outside of this cave that we went in.


And here is a picture to prove that we actually did go into the cave


And I added this picture to prevent a comment from Scott saying that the prior picture only proves that my girlfriend went into the cave. (I debated adding this picture because I had to weigh the importance of preventing smartass comments from Scott with the idea that I could actually get a comment on my blog which is always a great thing. In the end, I imagined a long drawn out comment war between me and Scott that would eventually lead to me posting this picture, and Scott winning. And since I posted the picture before Scott ever even checked my blog, I win which is more important than getting comments.

Well, for all those who`ve been keeping up with me for the past couple years, constantly in suspense about what I end up doing with my life, I`ll let you all know that I didn`t get into medical school. I haven`t been officially rejected as yet, but I missed the major acceptance date which means my chances are quite slim.

Now this is good news and bad news. Bad news of course is that I didn`t get in. Good news is that now I have absolutely no direction, and that could lead me just about ANYWHERE. Basically I could be blogging about just about anything a year from now, and your guess as to what it is - is as good as mine. Pretty exciting stuff.

I`ve had quite a few slacker years lately. Between going back to school, poker, and now teaching English (make that talking in English for a living), things have been pretty simple. I suppose the right thing to do is to follow my dreams, and never give up, but frankly, I just don`t want to.

As for now though. As for now, I`m gonna start planning a trip to Thailand.

So for everyone that`s been keeping the blog open in the background, pressing the refresh button everytime they sit down at the computer after last week`s suspenseful post, Here you have it: Hiromi Murakami. Beautiful, sweet, and loads of fun. I don`t know how I got lucky enough to come across a girl like this one, but I did. Its been great fun, and she`s one good reason to stick around here in Kokura.