A few videos

Here are some videos that I shot yesterday on my way home. I was bored in the train so I decided to pull out the camera. You will be going on the train from Tennoji Station to Amami station (where I live). We will go to the convenience store, then walk to my apartment. Enjoy!

peace

vince


part 1



part 2

Life is good

Well I really can't complain this month. I'm moving into a new apartment next month, my friends are great, I got a new TV today, and love is in the air! If only my family was closer to me here. It would make everything so much better. The past few days I have been so happy.

School is on summer vacation now. However, I still have to be at work. Why? I don't know, and I don't even do anything. Today I just studied Japanese at my desk for about 3 hours. Then I ate lunch, played some basketball and went home. Not much to the day. I came home and waited for my TV to arrive at my door. I set it up and then did my evening run. Today I ran from my apartment to 3 train stations south and back. It's so humid here so it's very easy to sweat and lose fluids. It was a great run. Well I just wanted to give a quick update. Everything is going well. Here is a pic of my new setup. When I move to my new apartment, it will be way better! See you! :)

peace

vince

p.s. i saw wall-e last weekend on my computer, it's amazing! it's not coming out in japan, so that's a pity. i also downloaded the dark knight. it comes out here in about a week or so. i will definitely go see it in the cinema.


my xbox 360 and my new tv! 22 inch hd! not so big but good enough for my apartment!


i love wall-e, i don't care how gay that sounds haha :)

Hey there

So I'm not going to South Korea anymore. It sucks, but hopefully I will go somewhere this summer. Today I went with my buddy Tom to sign for our new apartment. It's going to be awesome. It's really big and we can't wait to have some Rock Band parties. Hopefully someone will actually come to visit me this year.

I had forgotten about this but...Tuesday morning when I was riding my bike to school. I stopped by my local convenience store to buy something to drink. As I pulled up in my bike, there was a lady leaving the store. She saw me and literally screamed out loud and ran like she had just seen a ghost. I put my kick stand down on my bike, all the while staring at her. My stare was a blank stare with the universal face of "you are a fucking idiot!". I literally stared at her for about 5 seconds, then for some reason I looked around for a camera like in the show "The Office". Unfortunately the camera crews were not around... oh well... haha Anyway I walked into the convenience store to buy my damn tea. When I walked out, that biatch was still standing there. So when I got on my bike and rode close to her, I yelled out "BOOOOOO!!!" She yelled and ran like a stupid gimp. It was quite hilarious. Oh some people are so ignorant. Just thought I would share that stupid story with you.

I was reading some journal entries that some JET participants have wrote in this years JET Journal. They are quite good. I finished reading them and felt a bit envious of those JETs that are living in small towns and on islands in Japan. They seem to be learning much more Japanese and enjoying local life quite much. Of course there are perks to living in the giant city of Osaka, foreign food stores, cinemas, entertainment, night life, many foreign people. But is that really better than the island? I really don't know. I'm sure that there are pros and cons to both situations. I really want to visit some JET friends that live on an island or a tiny town in Japan. I want to experience that feeling of being there. I will gladly open my doors as well to anyone that comes to big Osaka too! :)

So as usual I have been listening to a lot of music. I feel like typing a lot today so I will recommend some new music for you. Farewell, Ace Enders and a Million Different People, The Morning Light, The Maine, Hit the Lights, Beat Union. Check 'em out if you want to.

peace

vince

here is a little pic of osaka that i took a few days ago with my phone...

Bummer

So looks like there was a scheduling issue with my trip to Korea. I might not be going after all. We are trying to reschedule for the following week, but I think the price will change dramatically. This sucks... Anyway I'll let you know.

peace

vince

Ups and Downs of Life

It's strange how things change so quickly. How one day you can be completely distraught and depressed. To being strong and wanted. Life works that way, and perhaps it's just for the best. Last week for me definitely had it's bright spots, and unfortunately some very low points as well. I'm not going to go into detail about the low points. I just felt horrible because of some circumstances that arose. Anyway, I'm doing better now. I still have hope, I'll just take it day by day...or whatever that cliche is...

Well I'm going to South Korea. I booked my trip last week, and I will be leaving on July 27th to Seoul. I'm looking forward to this trip. I will take loads of pictures, and I hope to make some sort of lame amateur documentary about it. So get ready for that. I also decided to move with my friend Tom to a new apartment inside Osaka City. Currently I'm living in Matsubara City, which is quite close to my work. The downside is that the area is completely lame. I'm far from most people and it's very boring around here. So Tom and I are moving close to Namba in Osaka City. We will have loads of space there. I'm looking forward to it. Now I just have to think about how to get all my stuff over there...hmmm...

Well I just wanted to give a quick update here. I'll be back soon to write something that doesn't make sense again. Take care...

peace

vince


p.s. thanks for the recent comments everybody! nice to hear from the new people!

Rainy Day

Hey everybody! Well, today is a very rainy day. Usually I can't hear thunder here in Osaka. But today I woke up to the wonderful sound of the skies cracking! I love it! I have a busy few days. These are the last few days of school until the mid semester summer break. I'm sure that when we all come back in August, the students and I will have forgotten everything that we learned.

Last Saturday night was very fun. I made plans to meet my buddy Patrick in Namba for some drinks and dinner. I brought along my buddy NY Tom along as well. We were set to meet at 8:30pm, but Tom and I decided to show up a bit early to talk about a trip we have planned for South Korea. We grabbed a beer at Zerro (local bar) and started chatting away. Of course we hadn't ate anything, save for a measly salad that Tom bought at a conbini. So needless to say the tall glass of Guinness was having a small effect on him. I'm not going to lie, me too! haha We went to meet up with Patrick at the Dotonbori Bridge (a typical meeting spot in Osaka). Patrick had a head start on us because in hand was a nice tall Chu-hi 8%. Good stuff! We met up his nice friend and proceeded to the nights dinner location. Of course I went to my favorite cozy spot called Bamboo. My friend Levi cooked up some delicious lamb kebab (Israeli style) and others delicious goodies for us. We enjoyed them and had a few drinks. Tom was running low on money so he decided to go to the ATM. However we went to about 3 atms and they didn't work with his card. We thought he was screwed! I had his back with the money so it was all good. After a few drinks and the completion of our dinner. We started to walk to a place that Patrick wanted to go to. It was already about 10:45pm. Tom and I didn't have plans to pull an all nighter so we decided to just meet up with a couple of friends at a bar called Hawaiian Umiya. We said by to Patrick and his friend and walked to meet our friends. By the time we got there we were a bit tipsy and making ridiculous jokes. We met our Canadian friends from Toronto, Dorothy and Yi-lee. We hadn't seen them in ages, so it was nice to hang out for a bit. We had some beers and watched them eat an interesting salad. I can't go into much detail without confusing you, but the conversations consisted of references to "cave mango's", "love" and tongue twisters that I can't remember right now. By the time we looked at our watches it was 11:45pm. Tom's last train left the station at 12:01am. So if we didn't make it to the station, we would be forced into an all nighter. So we took our drunken selves out of the bar, and proceeded to run wildly through the streets of Osaka. Similar to what you might envision a group of cavemen to do...or something like that. I remember Tom dropping his cell phone. I yelled to the the Korean guards outside the consulate "Hey, we are visiting you soon!". And other random things. Anyway, Tom made it back to the train on time and so did I. It was a good night.

Sunday, was just wonderful. I went to the Osaka Aquarium. I was very humid and hot. But that didn't ruin the fun. The Aquarium was very nice, although there were so many kids there. The best animals I saw were, the Otters, Sea lions and of course my favorite Penguins! I love Penguins. I went to see an IMAX 3d movie, Oceans. It was exciting, not to mention how cool we look with those giant 3d glasses. I wanted to ride Japan's largest Ferris wheel but I think it will be the best at night time. It was just a great day. I can say that it was one of the best weekends I have had in a long time.

Hopefully at the end of this month I will go on a trip somewhere. I am looking to go to South Korea or somewhere in Japan. For sure somewhere though! I will keep you posted on that. Well take care everybody. Sorry for my Giant post today.

peace

vince

Been a while

Hello again. First off CONGRATULATIONS SPAIN! They won Euro 2008. What an amazing tournament. Unfortuntately I will without football for about 1 month. Oh well... I hope you are well. Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I've been doing many things, so I have stuff to write about. Honestly, I've just been a bit lazy to type here. Anyway, today is Tuesday and the sun is out for the first time in a few days. However, I'm sure that later today the sun will fall to the clouds again. Personally, rain and clouds make me happy. I come from a hot desert city with about 330 days a year of sun. So rain and clouds were great days when I was growing up. It's actually kinda funny if you think about it. I remember I used to get mad when I would go outside and the clouds were gone in El Paso.

So what have you been up to Vince?

Thanks for asking...This weekend was pretty good. I ate fake Japanese Mexican food at a pretty famous place in Osaka called "el pancho". If you didn't know, I am Mexican/American and I come from a place in Texas that arguably has the best Mexican food in the entire southwest of the USA. So I can tell you right now that it doesn't taste like Mexican food. But it is decent. I was a bit hesitant to take her there because of this reason. Anyway she liked it. I was a bit disappointed with my food. I wish I could show her real Mexican food, it's so delicious. Saturday I woke up late watched a bunch of "The Office" on my PC.  Sunday was pretty cool, my best buddies in Osaka, the famous Tom, Tom and I went to a Japanese baseball game. The Orix Buffaloes!!! YEAH!!!! haha That is second team in Osaka, and honestly they are quite rubbish. This was all UK Tom's idea, so if it sucked I was just going to blame him! j/k tom! It was interesting of course. First off, I think baseball sucks, so you can imagine what I think about Japanese baseball. One thing that is very different from American baseball games is that there are sections of fans that just sing and beat drums the entire game. If you go to an American baseball game there is never any people playing trumpets and other musical instruments and dancing. So that was different. The food in the stadium was strange as well. I didn't see any popcorn, peanuts or cracker jack here. More like noodles, rice and bento boxes. We were damn hungry though, so we went to Mc Donald's. The place a foreigner can always go. As we walked to our seats and people saw us, there was chatter among the people that we passed. Comments like "look foreigners"! They were so surprised to see foreigners at a BASEBALL game.  I took some photos and I will post a few later on. I also shot a couple of videos as well so that will go up pretty soon as well.

I want to travel somewhere very soon. I wanted to go to this Beach Party this coming weekend, but I couldn't find anyone to go with :( so that really sucked. Maybe I will go to South Korea this month, but I'm not sure. Summer vacation is coming in about 2 weeks so, yeah! Ok I think that's enough for today. On July 31st 2008, will be exactly 1 year I have been in Japan! Wow, time flies so fast! Well take care everybody! Hey is anybody coming to visit me in Japan!? Ever?? Never?? See ya!

peace

vince


ball park


vince, ny tom, uk tom


pitching


cool dudes


kyocera dome in osaka



here are some vids , remember to click menu to get more vids