DearScotty

This past weekend Theresa and I took a few days off and vacationed in Okinawa. What makes Okinawa special? What if I told you Mr. Miyagi told Daniel-san that his home country was Okinawa? This Japanese territory is made up of hundreds of islands south of the Japanese mainlands. Basically, it’s Japan’s Hawaii. The dilemma for me wasn’t deciding which island or beach to visit, but how I could find a sports bar playing the NCAA basketball tournament. We searched Kokusai St. which is the main hot spot in Naha but only found a few bars that were only getting feeds from games earlier on in the tournament. I wasn’t finding any luck until a stray light bulb bludgeoned me in the head. The Hostel’s Internet!

Luckily for me, our hostel had a couple computers connected to the internet with zero security. That meant I could download the slingbox application and watch the tournament from my brother’s cable feed. I was able to watch both UCLA games early in the morning while Theresa slept, and the other time while she went off for a massage. (Note to Matt, I deleted the slingbox player from the computer, no worries. I’ve got some Pineapple Hi-chews for you as an expression of my gratitude.)

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Instead of trying to piece together another Thanksgiving holiday in Japan, Theresa and I abandoned the kitchen and took a night bus to Tokyo. For that taste of home we decided to spend the weekend at Tokyo Disney. Unfortunately for us, our bus arrived in Tokyo around 10am on Friday. We would do Disneyland first since Friday would be our shortest day, but we didn’t expect that it would sell out! We arrived at Disneyland just after 11am and were welcomed with apologies from the overhead announcements informing us that Disneyland had stopped all ticket sales until 5pm that night.

There wasn’t anything we could do but hang out in their version of Downtown Disney which they call Ikspiari. We ate a decent burger and fries meal at Planet Hollywood and enjoyed some coffees at a cute bakery. We went into every shop trying to kill as much time as possible but later decided to wait near the gates until they reopened the ticket booths.

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I went out for sushi last week and decided to be biter and toss my camera onto the sushi belt express. Prepare for utter sushi awesomeness:

The little girl ratted me out to the chef. Ruined the whole thing. I’ll try again because I really wanted to catch a glimpse of the back kitchen area. The trouble is I don’t really like sushi, so it’ll be awhile until I get another stab at it.

After returning from Eugene and recovering from a killer sinus headache from a painful plane landing, I went to Vegas with the fam damily. The Buffets were nice and the black jack gods seemed to favor me. It was ridiculously hot, but I managed to deal with it since I didn’t have to sweat my ass off like a Japanese school boy practicing tuba on the baseball field in August. Although the food and winnings were nice, I had the most fun playing with my nephew Devin. He is just pure boy. He was casting powerful stunning spells in my direction while wearing the most wicked outfit of all time: Spider man shorts with Ninja Turtle undies riding up; spider man shirt and cape with a Reno 911! police badge; Shark Boy 3D glasses marked his authority; His right hand held a Power Rangers blaster gun, and his left hand tried to grip his collector Darth Maul light saber. Devin is bad ass. So, to tribute lil’ D. I posted a video of some of our horsin’ around.

Two weekends ago many schools in the area held their sports day. My school was one of these schools. What is sports day exactly? I’m not the guy who can answer this, but I can tell you it’s a culmination of month’s worth of practice. Has this grueling schedule of practices paid off? Was sports as exciting as it sounds?

Not really.

Happy New Year and all that smooth Jive. So, I’m back to my routine of sitting at my desk at school downloading American TV and surfing through Youtube. Can’t say I’m bummed to be back, but I’m definitely not happy to be back. Thailand was really nice, well if you exclude Bangcrack. Surprisingly, Vietnam turned out to be the most fun part of the trip, of course the most deadliest. I’ve never seen such horrid, ruthless, lawless traffic in my life, it was exhilarating! There were Vietnamese on scooters flying all over the place. Some scooters had families of five packed on to one moped with one kid on the handle bars reading comics. I’m going to miss the great food and especially the insanely cheap prices in Nam. I’ve uploaded a video from the trip, enjoy!

After a brief four day stay back home that seems to have passed like a Dumbo acid trip, I’m back at my desk fearing what will be on today’s lunch menu. I barely remember what happened back home. The jet lag, the reality of having to return to Japan, and the gorging on good American food made the entire trip go by in a snap of a finger. I will always cherish my evening at Islands as I stuffed my face with buffalo wings and my private trip to visit an old friend, Taco Bell.

So my sister finally married and so there is one less Robertson in the world. The wedding was actually really beautiful and you can see for yourself on my flickr site. Devin was definitely the most pimp 3 year old I’d ever seen; even more pimp after putting on his superman outfit. Well the rest is a blur but I think I enjoyed seeing my family and having real Mexican food even if the servers and mariachi band had fake accents. Maybe I’ll post a wedding video soon. It’s time for my head to hit the desk and hopefully wake up in time for lunch.

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I’m back at school after an amazing 3-day weekend in Kyoto. Sights were seen, towns were painted and my legs were destroyed. Now I’m back at school slowly regaining my insanity. How ’bout a funny story?

Last week I was asked by one of the secretaries to pay an extra ten bucks on top of the school lunch fee. Instead of spending an hour trying to find out why, I handed over the money. A few days later one of the teacher gives me some cookie cigars wrapped in clear plastic with blue stripes. I realize I have no clue how to say congratulations, shrug and say thanks. I figured blue must be universal for boy, and usually in Asian cultures having a boy is the preferred outcome. Later, during lunch another secretary handed me even more cigars and said they were from Whoever-Sensei. She speaks a little English so I responded, “Wow, he must really be excited.” She shot a confused stare at me, “eh?” Trying to end the confusion I asked her, “What are these for?” she explained, “Remember the money you gave this week? That was for Mr. Whoever-sensei. His wife’s father died.” So apparently everyone paid up some money and gave it to him as a gift. The cigars were a thank you for the consolation gift. Thank Moses I didn’t jump up, hi-five him, and give him a giant bear hug “Congratulations!!”

Pay Day. After not working for over two and a half months this day couldn’t have come any sooner. My translator arrived 5 minutes early and apologized for being late as usual. Knowing there was nothing to do, I asked him to take me to my bank so I could check my balance and withdraw some money. I wasn’t sure how much money I would be getting because I didn’t know how much they were taking out for health insurance, pension plans, and school lunches.

The atm is at my train station so Naoki waited in the car while I waited outside the vestibule. After sweating off 2 gallons of Pocari Sweat (a delicious. Flavorless version of Gatorade) I was able to enter the ATM after the woman had finished. So it’s not just in America where women take hours at an ATM. It must be a global issue. Would it really be so bad to have a male ATM and a female ATM? Guys take about 1 minute to withdraw the necessary funds. Woman take about 20 minutes to check their balance, deposit four checks (separately), buy stamps, transfer money from checking to savings, and another 5 minutes to put all the junk back in their purse.

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