The real reason I came to Japan...

was to play dodgeball with little Japanese kids! Actually the real reason was to take photos, but playing dodgeball is always fun! I remember when I studied in Tokyo, once a week I along with some other exchange students volunteered at a local elementary school once a week and one time we played dodgeball with the kids. The teachers literally told us (remember this Mark??), "please do not go easy on them, they are built to take pain." Of course we then injured 3 or 5 students...just kidding, of course we didn't go all out on the little kids, but it was fun and nobody got hurt.


Anyway, last December I got a chance to go play dodgeball again! This time, one of my students at my boys school is an assistant coach of an elementary student aged dodgeball team that has won a few regional tournaments and he invited me to one of the practices. It was pretty amazing how organized and how they had so many skill specific drills (such as getting up off the ground without using your hands, the correct defensive stance and how to throw the ball). As you can see from the photos, during a match the best team formation is to get in a line next to each other (so you can catch the ball if a team mate gets hit with the ball). Again it was a lot of fun and again nobody got hurt :-).

Kites are dangerous

Today I went to a kite festival about 2 hours north of where I live in a place called Kesennuma. Kesennuma is famous for Chinese food , especially shark. Anyway, the festival was a pretty good opportunity to take some photos and it was fairly interesting, but I had to stay on my toes bc as you can see in the photo above some of these kites were fairly big and not to be cliche, but the bigger they are, the harder they fall.


I am proud to say that I made it through the day without getting hit by a kite and enjoyed myself enough to take some decent photos. see the gallery for more.

Icicles are cool.

Don't get to see to many of these in NC and don't think anyone in Miami even knows what icicles are, but I find them pretty cool.

So today I was thinking to myself...

"gee it hasn't rained in a LONG time...come to think of it I can't remember the last time I saw rain. In fact, it has been SO LONG, then if it were raininig right now I might not even recoginize it was rain." then I went outside, saw about 6 inches of snow and said to myself, "oh yeah, forgot about that stuff." anyway check out some more snow photos.

One More Year and School Stuff...

Despite the bitter cold weather, last week I signed a contract saying I was going to stay one more year, so that being said....

So not too much is new, but things are starting to calm down... The Japanese school year comes to an end in February so students are about to start taking final exams. My 3rd year students (seniors) have just finished so now I only have 12 classes a week until the new year starts (April).

Pretty much all of my students at the moment are 1st year students (freshman) so while I am not sure if I will be teaching them or not next year, it will be interesting to see how they change throughout the next year. In a place where there is so little motivation to learn English, I will be happy if just a few of them are motivated enough to continue to practicing English with me.

So starting in April I will get all new students and maybe some new teachers. In fact I know that at least 3 of my favorite 5 teachers are most likely leaving, so I am more nervous about their replacements then the new students. I will have more to say about that in April.

Antonio Lang is my friend.

For those of you who don't know, Antonio Lang use to play basketball at Duke in the mid 90s or so. Anyway, now he plays for a team in the Japanese Basketball League (JBL). That is him wearing the Carolina Blue.

Cutting back a few months, I became friends with a photographer here in my city who also coaches some junior high school basketball and I have been going to his practices every Monday night. The coach/photographer (who is pretty much a Japanese version of me) is also a member of the local basketball association group so when the JBL came to town he asked me if I would be interested in taking some photographs. I am sure you now what my response was.

So at the game, during warm ups, I surprised that I recognized one of the players, walked over to his area and since I stood out easily he said hello to me and we started chatting. I couldn't remember who he was, but he finally introduced himself and right away I remembered, and told him that I was Tarheel! He started laughing and told me that the fans care a lot more about the rivalry then the players do. Anyway, he had to get warmed up and said he would talk to me after the game.


Well his team lost, but he gave me his email and said if I ever get down to his area to let him know.
For those of you wondering what Japanese Pro Basketball is like... well the above picture of my friend pretty much sums it up. Each team is allowed a certain number of foreigners (I think 3) and those 3 usually play the whole game and the Japanese players pretty much rely on them. so it is kind of like the 3 v 3 or Phil Jackson's Triangle Offense.

GO TO NC April 28th-May 6th

Mark your calendars. Can't wait to see you! Enough said.

Sorry, I've been like a bear.

I always thought bears had a good idea with the whole hybernation thing during winter, but now I FULLY understand why they do it. The coldness here has got me do be about as active as a bear during hybernation. It has been in the teens here for the past 2 or so weeks, but next week it is going to be warm!....by warm I mean it will be in the 40s! *sigh* I miss miami! I am not sure why, but today I have some motivation so I am going to try to make a couple posts today....