Sssooo here a late update on something I did durin...

Sssooo here a late update on something I did during my little break two weeks ago.
Most of the holiday was spent watching tele, but with both Wimbledon and the World cup on that was a given (^_^)
However one day in the week, I managed to pull myself away from the tele long enough to get out of the house. Once out in the open I decided to see one of the main tourist sites in Nagoya. Namely the Castle.
It turned out to be a perfect day so I managed to got some nice pictures :))

So first we have a long wide view of the whole thing, a picture of one of the smaller parts and one of a map of the place. Thing i liked most about it was it's white :P. The real castle was destroyed in the ar or something, and this is a reconstruction but it's till pretty old.

The weird thing is though because it is quite new, you'll find some strange things. Like...a frikin lift!! lol!!!

*Some more shots of the outside :)*
So what's on the inside you may ask?








Well it's full of displays showing the history of the castle, as well as some old artifacts.



*Swords,swords,guns and armour yeah baby!! :)))*


Lastly we have a shot from the top.

The castle is 7 floors up, so the view isn't too bad.
After having my fill of the castle I decided to pay a visit to the Noh theatre which was just down the road. I leave you with a few pictures from there, ja ne.





S

It's not so grim up north...

I had another business related trip last week and it was in Newcastle; oddly enough it's a quite pleasant place to visit. I had this preconceived notion that it would be very grey and industrial but it was quite the opposite.

My impressions of the city? Well it's feels far more like a town than a city; there are not very many tall buildings and the roads are quite wide which adds to the openness of the place. It helped that the weather was very good, as it was across the country; in fact I found it a bit too warm for my liking.

I visited the Chinatown up there, unfortunately there didn't seem to be very many of the small shops that serve quick meals. Most seemed to be the stuffy chinese restaurant variety. The main street was also not for pedestrians alone; which made the place feel like any other street rather than a small community. I had the usual roast duck and pork rice that was nice enough and came with brocolli.

The first picture should be easily recognisable to all but the second perhaps not, it's the new music and arts hall that is affectionately known as the armadillo. I walked across the rotatable Millenium bridge but forgot to take a picture...

N

When it rains it pours (T_T)

Hey hey,
So ends another tournament for England :((( we was robbed!!!!
Damn that argentinian referee!! (pardon the french)
Have to say in the last few tournaments the situation has always been stacked against us. Either some's injured or gets sent off!! and then we never lose properly, either it'e fluke (ala Brazil) or its penalties (damn penalties!! pardon the french again).
I'm ranting but I'm annoyed and I have to go back to work tommorow. Everything just piles up on ya when your not looking doesn't it?
So a change of schedule starting this month. Off days are now Friday and Sunday. Going to take some time to get used me thinks.
Anything else to update? well weathers still messed, today was torrential rain followed by clear skys (?_?). Tennis is going well (still no Badminton so whats new :(( ). Twist serve is no very close to completion, in the last session I got about 70-80% over and in (^_^). First serve is getting better, volleys are mostly good. Ground strokes are frustratingly inconsistant. Moments of brilliance punctured by moments of absolute spasticness. Much like my Badminton :P.
Anyway gotta look somethings over for tommorow, so caio for. dewa dewa mata ne.

*will give an update of my much belated trip to the Nagoya castle when I have the time*

S

Mini me

Hello hello, and back to the blog we go (^_^)
Just a mini one, so the last month has been pretty busy with a lot of paperwork being thrown my way. I had a load of student counselling and kids reports done by the end of the month.
Counselling is just a talk with the student about how they think the course is going, and how to improve the class. Doesn't sound like much but when you have a good number of students to get through, it does go on a bit (-_-)
Anyway thankfully the last week of the month of June, as in this week, is a school holiday!! woohoo!! so for the last few days I've just been resting and watching the footie and now wimbledon too!!:))) shame about Tiger Tim but he was playing Federer :( Go Murray go!!
Oh something that happened that I thought was kinda cool, while walking around some part of Nagoya, I come across a hachiroku!! a hachiroku!!!! what you don't know what a hachiroku is!?
*sigh* look at the pictures then :P

Even has the black hood (^_^)



S

My return...

I've finally got my arse in gear and returned to the blog! I've yet to finish my account of the China trip or start one about Singapore and Japan so I'll just go right ahead and completely avoid it by talking about my trip to Sweden! ;)

It was my first business trip! I have another to Newcastle at the end of the month. My Project Manager and I flew out to Stockholm on a Sunday afternoon expecting cooler weather than we had in London; which was baking! However the weather seemed to travel with us; it was sweltering in Stockholm the whole time we were there!

We touched down in the evening at Arland airport; which as you'd expect is very Swedish in design being open, wood panelled and square; very different to all the airports I normally pass through. We took the 20 minute express train ride to the Stockholm city centre and walked to our hotel that was nearby.

I'd skipped dinner on the plane because you had to pay and there were only sandwiches available! Unfortunately after dropping our bags off it was past 10.30pm and the restaurants had stopped serving food; we ended up eating in McDonalds who stop serving at 11pm.

The next day we took the underground train to the office. An interesting thing about the underground system in Stockholm is that all the stations look like roughy hewn cavernous passages and not the usual uniformly shaped examples on all other systems I've used; a picture would have helped here! Additionally after 9am, if the ticket office is closed, then you can effectively travel for free! In fact I don't remember seeing any ticket machines; it looked like residents buy booklets of tickets to use on the system.

The food I sampled in Sweden was very good! They eat a lot of fish over there and I had a typical grilled Mackerel salad for lunch on the first day and not as typical roast Ox (?) salad on the second; I don't normally eat a lot of salad but it is the norm for summer.

In the evening of the first day we were taken to a very nice restaurant (pictured), that effectively sits in midair, where the food was excellent. I had a veal dish with potatoes and vegetables, including asparagus, followed by a warm Winterberry and Vanilla ice cream dessert; the berries being a Swedish speciality.

After the meal we walked back to the hotel and we based a motor powered Viking boat for the tourists(pictured). The building in the background was the national gallery or museum, I don't remember which...

We took a taxi to the airport on our trip back and facing a good amount of traffic partly due to the many bridges around Stockholm being bottlenecks; the city is made up of several islands off the mainland with a network of bridges.

My PM had said that he almost always experiences delays with flights and we did this time; due to the storms around London! I usually don't have problems with flights, bar the resent experience of Singapore that I will recount at a later date...

N

Waiting for Big Brother

So here's another update then while waiting for big bro to get off his butt and get in his two cents :P
So lately I've had even less time than usual.
Last week I had parents observing me teach their children. Not the most fun thing in the world to be doing I'll tell you. Nerve racking and muchos stressful. By the end I got a good response from all the parents except one class. Yup you've guessed it it's the problem class in Tuesday.
Not only are the kids hard to control, the parents are also major education freaks. They want their children to be having conversations in English during the class. They're only 6!! and learning two languages at the same time *sigh*Well at least thats over just have to some paperwork then it's back to normal.
Still playing Tennis and looking for Badminton (still!!). Broke my first Tennis string last Sunday. Broke smacking a bullet serve. Break was right in the middle which is cool :D but stringing costs a bomb which isn't.
Another reason for my lack of time, is that I've been meeting up with various people who I contacted for language exchange. So far theres Yuko (a School nurse), Kyoko (a trainee Japanese teacher) and just recently Harue (works for an import/export company).
Met up with Harue yesturday and had a ball. She was born in China and can speak Mandarin. We spent the day teaching each other. I taught her English and Cantonese, and she taught me Japanese and Madarin :P.
Last reason is of course the WORLD FRICKIN CUP!!! :))))
So watched England and what a shite game that was, crouch played shite, but the referee really ruined it for me. Kept blowing the whistle at every oppurtunity :(( And still don't get erikssons choice of substitutes. I understand resting Owen but bringing on another midfielder? the side was just completely off balance *sigh sigh*
Watching the Japanese game tonight with Kyoko and hopefully Yuko as well, should be fun ^_^.
dewa ja ne



S

Update shimashou!!

After my escapades in Tokyo, all that's left to talk about is general stuff.
Work is going well, all except one class in Tuesday which is so annoying now I dread the day.
It's a group of four kids all of which are well above the level they should be. The material I have for them is too basic for them and I'm struggling to control them. The main protagonist however is one boy called Kosuke who I really wana smack sometimes, because he just doesn't listen properly, if he wasn't there I'm sure the class would be better *sigh*
Weather is taking a turn for the better or worse depending how you view it. Strange as it's supposed to be coming up to the rain season soon. June is supposed to be a whole month of rain. However the weather has been very different this year than normal so who knows.
The last few days it has been very hot, unbearably so. Specially if your wearing a suit to work ala moi. Finding it difficult not to sweat buckets and completely ruin the shirt I'm wearing. I'm hoping I acclimatize to the weather soon, so I won't have to be wearing one shirt a day before it needs a wash lol
Only other thing of note, was last Saturday saw a few of us gather for the sending off of one of the students at Shane, who is going to the UK for 6 months. I managed to get pretty mashed up and had a banger of a hangover the next day, and was really not thinking of going to my Tennis class which I have every Sunday now. In the end though I decided to go and was better for it. All the hitting of furry balls really cleared my head and I even managed to smash another wonder ace woohoo!!
Sunday evening I met up with a friend of Nickys in Japan called Kwok, and we went for some sushi and drank some beer in Tsuramai park. All in all a nice day apart from almost dieing in the morning :P
dewa dewa mata ne


S

Tokyo baby!!!

Hey hey!! wwooohhoo an update!!! ^_^
Well have to say been a bit lazy on these now, and the finding the time to do this properly is a bit troublesome, but I'm trying my best.
Big bro should also do some updates but he's even lazier than me it seems (if that's even possible :P)
So whats to say?
Well last week had a nice event in the form of Nicky and some friends coming over to Japan. Being the older brother Nicky pulled rank on me and had me come all the way up to Tokyo, instead of him coming to Nagoya, the bum!! :D
Anyway I didn't really mind as I hadn't been to Tokyo yet. I was only up for two days but still managed to fit in quite a bit.
Big bro and his friends stayed in a hotel called Sunshine City Prince in a place called Ikebukuro.


Coming up on the Sunday, I stayed the night there as well. We were on the 25th floor or something I can't remember now, but it was pretty high up and the view wasn't bad to boot.

First up on this magical mystery tour was Akihabara. For those who don't know, it's the techonological centre of Tokyo, where all the latest gizmos and gadgets are at.
We went looking for a Nintendo DS lite, unfortunately for us the thing was sold out everywhere we went :((((
Next up was Asakusa which harbours a very nice temple and was the reason for our visit.
Leading up to the temple is a street full of little shops much like your local market, but Japanese style.

Here's a load of pictures of the place. 2nd one has a side profile of big bro :P
The temple is quite famous and the thing it is most famous for is a really big red lantern
(6th picture), which is hung up at the entrance.
The last place we went to was Shibuya. Again for those who aren't so enlightened it's the clothes shopping central of Tokyo.

The group wanted to all go clothes shopping, but big gro and I didn't really feel like it so, we parted ways for a bit. And while they were off shopping we found the nearest arcade and got in some quality thumb bashing :P
We ended playing the latest version of Virtua Tennis, called Smash Tennis 3 over here. Very good and will definitely play again when I get the chance.
Dinner was a eaten in a large ramen noodle restaurant, after which I quickly said my goodbyes and caught the last shinkansen back home to Nagoya. The end. :)



S

To infinity and beyond!!

Hey hey all ^_^
So not much happening in the posting department, because to be honest nothing new happening at the moment lol
Think I've settled now, getting used to the system and people around me and the area I live in.
Been paid as well!! Woohoo!! loaded!! not!! :P
First few months I wont get full pay, because I have to pay off the money for the bedding which they got us at the begining, but hey I got money!! Woohoo!! Now what to spend it on? hehe
Last week was the first week of my 'proper' schedule, as I may have said before. For the last few weeks I've been covering various teachers, and been traveling to a lot of different schools. Now, finally I have a fixed schedule with all regular students. All except Wednesday where one of the teachers pulled a sickie. So the head of staff, Gareth, decided to take my day, and shift me to the other teacher's day. Now a quite a few of the other teachers have told me that Gareth is a bit lazy and I from this incident I can see why. My Wednesday being a pretty empty day, and instead of letting me get to know my students, he takes my day and moves me to the busier schedule of the sick teacher :/ Well he's a good guy so I let him off.
Other than that, the only other thing to happen last week was a belated welcome party for Scott, Julian and I the new teachers to Nagoya. It had been pushed back due to Julians late arrival (2 weeks ago). We went to a very nice a popular restaurant chain call Murazaki. Basically lots of finger type food, with a lot of variety. A bit pricey but recommended :))
Yesturday I played a bit of Tennis, and officially joined the school, paying for 6 lessons in advance. The session was pretty good. Forehand is getting more solid and I'm begining to give it a bit of whack as well. I like the fact my strokes are the most extreme they can be. Not just top-spin, but super top-spin!! hehe. Backhand is a joke though :(( I seem to tighten up on it and dont follow through properly so it just goes everywhere bbbooooo. The session finished with a game which was cool. I said before I've been practicing my 'twist' serve which will be my 2nd serve, but I havent really practiced my banger of a 1st serve. So I decided to try it out in this game. 1st serve banger 2nd serve twist serve ^_^ Managed to get two bangers in.1st one was the best!!
Absolutely pummeled the ball and the it landed about 1 inch from the middle line!! The guy barely moved to react to it!! saiko!!! :D 2nd one was to the same guy, I saw he had moved towards the middle to cover the line, so I sliced it out wide and got him as well :P
Well I'm off to the main office to get some work done, then I'm meeting someone I've been emailing for a bit. I got some emails ,from the Nagoya international centre, of people (mainly female :P) who wanted a language exchange. I thought I might as well, as a way of meeting new people, so I've been emailing a few people and I'm meeting one of them today for coffee. Wish me luck!! teehee gambarimasu!!



S

Final Round!!! Fight!!!

Nnnooooww then now then, now we're up to date it's on to todays action packed day ooofffff???
Housework :P
Up to the present time, I've managed to iron all my clothes and clean up the flat ^_^
I also got to watch some Badminton on my phone while ironing. At the moment there's a womens team event happening in Japan. The match I watched was China versus Holland. China rolling out 3-0 winners *sigh* really missing Badminton :(
Also got to watch some golf as well, and am now writing emails and other bits and bobs.
Tommorow is lesson planning day and then it's back to work on Tuesday. Life goes on eh?
One thing of note, is that for the whole week I've been out and about, we've had some perfect weather, sunny and pretty hot to boot. Today being the first day in a long time, of me staying in, it decides to pour it down. Looks like it's making up for the the whole week of good weather. It's seriously raining cats and dogs here, and hasn't stopped since about 10am :(
Ah well always look at the brightside and all that.
Ja ne


S

Three for one!!

After the events of Tuesday, Wednesday was spent playing a bit more Tennis.
My tennis is moving along, still needs lots of practice but I am getting better if a bit slowly :P.
Thursday then was spent participating in another first for me.Watching a Baseball game. Football is okay over here, but the Nagoya team isn't particualarly good. The Baseball team however are very good, and are at this moment 2nd in the league to the Tokyo Giants.

(Tis a very bad pic I know, and this was when I really really hated the fact I don't have a good camera *sigh*)
Our seats were pretty good and you could see most of all that happened. As for the game itself, it was very enjoyable. The game peters in and out, with the begining being a duel of the pitchers, and not much in the way of hitting. the 2nd half picked up and we had one home run (from the opposing team bbooo!!). In the end the Chunichi Dragons (Nagoya) ran out 3-1 winners yay!!.
A very good day out and will probably go again ^_^.
On to Thursday, and a bout of trekking in the countryside. Alex, Brent and I took a train from Nagoya station out to a place called Sekigahara near Gifu. It's the place of a very famous battle, which resulted in much of Japan being united. Before we took a look at the battlefield and the touristy things there, we decided to trek it up one of the mountains of which there were many.
Starting at about 11 we trekked for about 2hours, going seriously offroad at the end.

(1st and 2nd pics-A shrine we saw on the way up, 3rd pic-Brent and Alex taking a break, you can see from the growth around us that we were deep in there, with no walking path in sight)
Following our little adventure in the mountain, we met up with a student of Brent and Alexs' who lived in the area called Sai. However we didn't just meet her, we met up with her,her friend and her family!! lol!!
Anyway with their help we managed to go round and visit the important points in the battle.

And last but not least Saturday, which was saw me play a little bit more of that game were you hit the ball over a net :P
Today saw the problems I have at the moment with the game. My game just seems to swing up and down. It started with my serve completely messing up, with me hitting everyone on my frame :( very annoying. And ended with me serving two aces in one service game, and finishing the other two off with a serve volley each time. At the moment I'm putting a lot of work into my serve. It's really my second serve, as the first serve will just be a blaster. This serve is the one only twist serve!!! haha and it is a proper twist serve, it's side and top spin together. Still need practice but it's coming along and when it works it really works ^_^ The rest of my game just needs hitting practice. I need to practice hitting it at full pelt and getting a feel for the ball.


S

The Traveling thing (Golden Week mega update!! Part1!!)

Hhhherrreess Simon!!! ^_^
With a MEGA update for ya :)
Ssssoooo for my first bit of traveling in Japan we have to backtrack to Tuesday. When two other teachers (Alex and Brent), and two receptionists (Ayumi and Chikako) went on a day trip to Kobe:

Kobe is a port city very close to Osaka. We took the Shinkansen from Nagoya station at 8.46am, arriving at Shin-Osaka by about 10am. After arriving at at our destination there was only one thing on our mind. Food!!! :P So where else would we head to? But Chinatown of course!! lol!!

(The last pic is of Alex and Brent (haven't got any of the girls, but I will be getting photos from them which will :P)).
Thing to not about China town in Kobe is that its China town but not as we know it. Shops are very small with limited space, so most of the selling and eating takes place in the streets. An interesting and tasty experiance :)
After filling our bellies we went off to see some tourist spots. First up was the port. Kobe port was destoyed in an earthquake in 1995,resulting in many deaths.


(1st pic-Kobe port tower, 2nd pic-Prototype electromagnetic ferry,3rd pic-An old ship,4th pic-The museum,5th and 6th pics-damged parts of the port which shoe the damage caused)
The port has been rebuilt since and there's a lot of information there detailing the events of that fateful day.
After that we decided to visit the european houses town. Confused? well basically it's this town built ages ago to house important european visitors. The town has a house for a lot of european countries including Holland, Germany, Denmark and of course England. The houses are built to a european design and i think to a style from that country too.
We went round and saw most of the houses, and even climbed to the top of the mountain.

(The view from the top, if the closely at the third pic you can just make out the port tower, we were at a short time ago).
The last thing to do was of course to have dinner, and sample the local speciality, Kobe beef.
Leaving with a once again full belly, we headed home via the now familiar Shinkansen :)
I leave you with a pic of the shrine at the top of the mountain and also of a building plucked straight out of the mother country.




S