site redesign

if you click on the photos link for me in the sidebar, we've done a simple redesign to the site. hopefully it'll kick my ass into adding some new chapters this weekend.

Yakushi Temple is where the Patron of Medicine is..so people come here to pray for their health. The roof of the temple is thatched straw. 

Came across a temple where C captured a lovely stone relief "Nakayoshi" - "Friends" 

Cassandra & I went to Mt. Hinata,. It's about 1 hour away from Machida, in Isehara-shi, Kanagawa. 

Its the new slim me with our new mikan tree 

In Sano

We also went to the town of Sano in Tochigi, same prefecture as Nikko. Ian's cousin Ryan and Ryan's girlfriend the lovely Kirsten are ALTs there. We stayed the night at Chez Ryan, wandered around an athletic park at night, fought some dinosaurs til the death, and sampled some of the local specialties, the best of which was the imo-fry in bulldog sauce. They're also famous, apparantly, for ramen and senbei, though I didn't try the ramen as it wasn't veg. Ya'll'll have to let me know how the senbei stacks up. (Do you like my new conjunction? Can you please start teaching it in your English classes?)

fall colors

we went to see some fall colors in nikko. it's really beautiful there right now, and not too crowded since we were there on a monday.

shiBOO-YA

since nobody posts, here's one from the archives. me and birch in shibuya. photo credit jeremy punkass.

old fogeys

at the bar in akabane, a bunch of old fogeys got up on stage and blew the actual booked band out of the water.
all the pictures we took were crap, even adjusting for night mode and what have you.