久しぶりやねん！ Long time no see!

On the lead up to New Years i managed to meet some of my old friends from Kobe when i last lived there. Thankfully they were free as most are busy at their new jobs and we all went out to an izakaya to catch up and have a few beers. It was great to catch up with them and see what theyve been up to since i left kobe 2 years ago. After the izakaya, some of us headed out together for some traditional karaoke. It was also good to meet some of my friends in Kobe as I usually go out with Mika's friends while I'm there.

Trek to Himeji

Today I went to Himeji with Mika which is about a half an hour train ride west of Kobe. Himeji is famous for Himeji Castle and is one of the 3 most visited and beautiful castles in Japan. Although, we went there, it was my 5th time to see it so i forgot to take a foto of it but i'll try find one of my old fotos of it and post it later. After that, Mika and I went to Engyouji which is located on the top of Mt Shosha, north-west of Himeji city. U have to take the ropeway to get there and spend like 2 hours to walk around to see everything. It was second time there but Mika's first (even though she lives so close) and she was surprised to see that what is pictured. Do u remember seeing this temple in any big Hollywood movies at all? No? Well, this is where they filmed some of the scenes from Tom Cruises film, "Last Samurai". Some of the locals call this place Tom's House because Tom Cruise actually lived up there during most of the filming of the movie. Its the place where Matsumoto (Ken Watanabe) goes to pray and has various conversations with Tom Cruise's character. Ring a bell? Anyways, i definitely recommend that u should go check out Himeji, the castle is awesome.

Christmas Day

I spent Christmas with my girlfriend Mika in Kobe. We woke up fairly late and then exchanged presents. I got Mika a huge expensive Stitch (Disneys Lilo and Stitch) stuffed toy and she got me a key holder! Anyways i didnt find out till later it was quite an expensive key holder! hehe. So after we exchanged presents the rest of the day consisted of me waiting till 3pm for Mika to put on her makeup and change her clothes so i could spend the day with her. But after she finally finished she wanted to go shopping to buy a present for her mother. So i pretty much spent the rest of the day christmas shopping on Christmas Day doing what Mika wanted. It was a whole bunch of fun! YAY! MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Yet another WHAT THE....?!?!???

On my never-ending quest to find funny shit during my time here in Japan, i found this little gem on Christmas Eve on my way to dinner with Mika (at a different restaurant of course). In case u cant read whats underneath the big writing it says, "INDIAN RESTAURANT"! id hate to see whats on the menu. Poofy popadoms? Some spicy curry with a side order of cock? I dont want to know!!! I wanted to warn everyone what the restaurants name means coz the Japanese have no idea what it means, but it was too cold outside.

My early xmas/new year party

I had a party last night at mine with some of my mates and it was quite a laugh. Once everyone finally arrived we played a few drinking games, tried out my bekuhai set, got fairly drunk and then as one usually does when drunk in Japan, headed for karaoke. It was quite interesting to see the look on all the locals faces as they witnessed 6 blind drunk gaijin walk into the karaoke bar, with stickers all over our faces. We then proceeded in belting out many classic tunes whilst the master of the bar kept everyone seated where they were supposed to be. After a long effort of drinking and karaoke we decided to go back home and drink even more. Dont know what time into the early hours of the morning it was but some wanker Japanese had driven to mine ( in his mini-truck) to join in on the party totally uninvited. He brought a fucking huge bag of rice as a present. This guy we had met at karaoke (it was the first time i had ever met him) and kept coming over to our table, checked out some of our keitais and saying how much he loved gaijin. All of us didnt want him there, so drunk me took went over to him saying that i had something to show him outside and once he got outside, i ran back in and locked the door on him. probably not the best thing to do but u dont know how annoying it is that everyone in my village knows who i am and where i live. after a while he came back to get his stuff but tried to crash at mine nonetheless. it was then that Matt, drunk off his titties, led him downstairs and chatted to him for awhile in broken jap before seeing him off......cheers matt. We all crashed not too long after that i think, and woke up late the next morning feeling sorry for ourselves. After some brekky and watching Steve Irwin make a complete dick of himself on the DVD i own, we all left. i had to go to Kobe and Aaron and the others went their respective ways. on the way out though, i happened to see that something was wrong with matts car. Unfortunately, some dickhead had obviously hit matts parked car during the night and we all knew that it could only be that toss piece that crashed my party. So please everyone be careful if ur living in Japan of these fuckheads. And once again, a big sorry to Matt and Karen about their car. I hope u guys will still want to come back here one day, but if u do i promise to pick u up and drive u from noichi. hehe.

Merry Christmas and all the rest, yeah!

this will probably be my last post for awhile as i dont own a computer and i will be travelling to kobe to stay with the gf tomorow till the 3rd january! So i wish u all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year wherever u r in the world! its gonna be a nice change to experience a cold (but no snow) christmas in winter so im looking forward to it! I had my Junior High Schools Bounenkai 忘年会 which is like a Christmas party but it is so that u forget the year u just had and look forward to the next year. It was pretty fun, as i got quietly pissed with everyone while they chatted away in all Japanese, at high speed. As per usual the party was over by 9pm and none of the bastards wanted to go out to a nijikai with me. hehe. anyways, i gotta back it up with the boys tonight as im having a party at my place as most are going overseas or travelling around japan during the holidays so we're having a christmas/new year party before we part ways. anyways, I look forward to hearing how everyones christmas was so i'll chat to u sometime in 2006 (crikey im getting old)

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

SNOW AGAIN...YAY...I know, i'll get over it soon!

It snowed here again last night so being the true Australian i am, i took a shiteload of fotos of the white stuff i never get a chance to see. We didnt have as much as last Sunday but enough to cover the roads and shit. I heard it even snowed over there in Kobe, which never really gets any snow.

SANTA STEVE

Today I was Santa at the kindergarden i teach at. It was awesome to see the kids reaction to a tall skinny almost bilingual Santa as he walked thru the door. Most of the older kids new it was me but i kept denying it by saying "who is this Stephen guy? i wanna meet him, he sounds pretty cool". I had a lot of fun with the kids, and they looked so ureshii when they got their presents. Wasnt embarassed at all, especially after having a few weeks ago got into a sumo diaper in front of the whole village and partake in the tournament. Compared to that, being Santa was nothing!

You dont wake up to this too often in Australia

In fact, Ive never woken up to see the place that i actually live in completely covered in snow! Sunday was supposed to be my Junior High Schools Culture Festival and i was supposed to be working but i got a call from my JTE, Tamura Sensei, waking me up and telling me that it was cancelled due to the shitload of snow that apparently snowed. of course i was half asleep and didnt believe her until i opened up my window and said, "WOW! THATS BLOODY AWESOME!!!" i then went to take this foto of the view i had from when u walk out of my front door! It made my day! The next day snowed as well which was even better. the locals kept telling me that it never really snows here in december before this happened, but this proves they are full of shit! just kidding!

The Return of the Cat Penis

For awhile there i thought that the Pet Hospital in Nankoku had completely gotten rid of the ever famous cat with a penis as they had taken it down off the roof one day! Then on my way into Kochi the other day i was saw the new and improved Cat Penis and had to stop, chuck a u-turn and take a foto of it. As u can see its now bright orange, it has arms and is holding a banana. bloody brilliant. They must be trying to get take the focus away from the cats genitalia or something, hey!!

WHAT THE.......?!?!!?

ルミナリエ The Luminarie

Whilst in Kobe for the weekend, I went with Mika, for the second time (our first time being our second date ever two years ago), to the Luminarie in the heart of the city. I have to say it is an awesome sight to see and there are so many people there holding their keitais (mobile fones) in the air taking fotos of it all. To start with u walk down a street listening to some European classical music then get hit with walking down a street covered in lights overhead like this:

This extends for a couple of blocks. id hate to pay the electricity bill!

This is me and Mika down the main street of lights, completely surrounded by the crowds.

At the end of the street u come to this in a park. The lights go around in a circle and theres a stage for any performances there are to be. But its packed with Japs!

This is inside the above foto! Definitely bright enough in there!

This is the next day when we went out on the piss with Mika's friends, quite off topic but a cool foto.

The Luminarie goes till about the 22nd of December so if u wanna go, u better haul ass or u wont be able to go next year! it is definitely worth checking out!

BACK HOME FOR A BIT

Recently my grandmother has passed away so now im back in OZ for a couple of days to attend the funeral. I will be back by Thursday evening on the 8th and will spend the rest of the weekend in Kobe till Sunday evening.

I just realised..........

........ that ive mentioned the gf yet never really have posted her picture so to prove that she exists, here's a photo of me and her on the way back to Kobe on the Bus....... that should keep her quiet for a while.

FISH, BEER and KARAOKE.......

......what a great mix! On Saturday night, me and the gf went to Kochi to spend the night on the town with Dan, Aaron and Angela! We gathered at Harimayabashi (the sorriest excuse for a popular bridge) after a few cheeky beverages at Dan's, and then went to try some local Tosa cooking. Dan, not knowing that aaron, angela and myself didnt like fish that much, proceeded in ordering a whole bunch of fish dishes, which were surpisingly fairly nice. Although i did have my beer there to wash it all down with. So after much banter and beverages we headed off to Big Echo for some drunken karaoke entertainment.

We arrived at Big Echo only to have to wait a while for a booth to open up so we were quite drunk and proceeded to befriend some local Japanese people and to muck around with these promotional stickers and a life size cardboard cut out of some guy (which aaron took to the booth with him). Of course Dan did his famous BACK IN THE USSR first up and then it only got better from there. Mika was a great sport, having only met everyone for the first time and had a good time with everyone besides the language barrier. But i think Karaoke is an international language where u simply get pissed and try sing

as many songs as badly as u can. After a while, without really realising it, me, aaron and Dan had our shirts off and belted out some classic 80's tunes! the Japanese people we befriended also came in and joined in on the festivities until our time was up and we left big echo.

We then proceeded down Obiyamachi where Aaron taught us how to do the Haka dance (the maori dance, as he is a kiwi. so there were three gaijin standing in the middle of the shopping arcade, in the freezing cold, doing the haka. after a while the cops came down to check it out. Thankfully Dan teaches them english conversation and they asked if we were ok and then told us to settle down. So we headed off home to crash. Dan let us crash at his, but once we got back, he decided to make himself some curry. all me and mika wanted to do was to sleep but out of nowhere Dan pulls out his violin and starts to serenade us while he waited for the curry and rice to cook. It took him ages to tune his violin but ive learnt now that u should never play the violin pissed. it sounds like someone is literally scratching their nails on a blackboard. Sorry about that Dan, but it was quite funny!