Yaki-niku goodness

Today I was invited to a Yaki-niku party (a Japanese BBQ), by my co-worker. I happily went, especially since I love anything that has to do with a BBQ. Well, the host of the party is the leader of the local rotary club. A bunch of his friends were there. It was mostly a party for older people, but they were very nice. There was a guy that came by, and everybody was very excited. I had no clue who he was, but apparently he was a candidate to be the Prime Minister of Japan. I asked more questions, and I found out that he is good friends with the host of the party. Anyway, let's just say that I met some interesting people.

The house that I was at happened to be the home that the foreign exchange student from Mexico was staying. So we just talked a lot and joked around the whole time. Then his sister showed up. She is living in Japan in the same house too, and she is 25. They are both from Tijuana, Mexico. Which is similar to where I am from in El Paso, Texas. I didn't want to say anything but she was very pretty! haha :) We all just chatted for a few hours and ATE a lot!!! Japanese people definitely know how to eat a lot. Especially when it comes to parties. I was welcomed with generosity and warmth. It made the day/night so much more enjoyable. Here are some of the pictures that I took. Comment if you have some time.

peace

vince


yaki-niku


lots of grills


many people i didn't know


exchange student


exchange student's sister and me, and another dude

Language is overrated.

It's currently 9:33pm on Sunday night. My voice is almost gone due to yelling and a mysterious cold that is going around. My apartment is quiet right now. I can hear a girl singing a song with a guitar somewhere in the vicinity of my apartment. I feel like crap right now, but I will get over it.

Today was the first basketball game of the Matsubara High School. I was quite excited to see a Japanese High School Basketball game. It's very different from the USA. For example, in the USA, High School teams travel to each other's school gym to play. However, in Japan... 12 teams participated in the day long tournament.

The set up was fairly simple. The limited space, and horrible building layout of the Japanese schools made it difficult to find a place to watch the game. Luckily, I was able to go to the "coaches" area. Actually, I don't know if it is really called the "coaches" area, but that's what I'll call it for the mean time. :)

The day started off by me waking up feeling like a piece of crap(sorry I couldn't think of a clever word). I met my co-worker (the basketball coach) at the train station by my apartment. He picked me up in his cool van. We drove to the high school which was about 1.5 hour drive. 1.5 hours, mainly due to the horrible road conditions and overall crappy layout of streets here. :) We arrived at the gym and I started to warm up with the kids. I was doing a passing drill and getting them pumped up for the game.

The game was excellent. At half-time Matsubara was up 52-20. Which was quite ridiculous. I didn't think that they would destroy the other team so bad. The other team made a small but uninspired come-back late in the 4Th quarter. They scored a lot of garbage time buckets, sooooooooo, they managed to make the score look close. I was quite impressed that we managed to pull of 90 points. YAY!

After the game we watched the following 3 games. My co-worker had to referee two games so I hung out with the students while he was busy.

So you are probably wondering why I titled this blog post "language is overrated"? Ok, you probably aren't wondering that, but just start wondering about it now ok! :)

Well, first off, when I started helping out the basketball club, I was hesitant. Mainly because I would have to commit so much of my own time to help. But that was obviously selfish of me to feel that way. Everyday, after the kids destroy me in basketball practice, I am happy. And they aren't my English student, I'm not teaching them how to say "hi, how are you". I'm not helping them learn how to pronounce the letter "A". Actually we can't even talk too much because my Japanese ability is garbage. But, I've learned these past few weeks that in fact, language is overrated. We don't even speak the same language, but together we were able to attain a goal! Sports is almost like a language. It can make you feel horrible, ecstatic, depressed and overjoyed. I love sports. My students are making my time in Japan absolutely worthwhile! I hope you can understand my logic here. Anyway, I gotta go since this post has officially gone on too long. I'll be back soon... enjoy the pics and video...comment please! :) take care

peace

vince

and you thought japan was technologically advanced


Matsubara High School pre-game stretch



tip-off (MHS is in the white jersey)



the literally "standing room only" crowd



to see other videos that i have posted, please click "menu" here on viddler! enjoy!!!

Oh, nevermind! :)

Hey family, friends and other people who read my blog. I just wanted to quickly say that I am not going to be putting my blog on private anymore. I was going to do it because I have been getting a lot of spam messages on my comments. I have found a few useful filtering tools on the web, so it should take care of the problem. So you don't have to worry about my blog going down ok!

So what else is new Vince?

Hmmm, well as you could probably guess, it began to rain last night. Once again I arrived at school a dripping mess. It's not so bad though, because all the students are pretty much the same way. I've been quite busy the past few days. I have had basketball, and after I get home I just pass out sometimes. It's really taking a toll on my body. On Sunday is the first game. I will be hitching a ride with the basketball coach in his car. I'm hoping to snap a few photos to put on the blog while I'm over there. Look forward to seeing that in a few days. I will be making some phone calls tonight so get ready!! haha Oh, and a quick update; I received my brand new modem from Softbank BB yesterday, and it works like a gem. So Internet is back up! Well take care everybody, and thanks again for taking the time out of your busy day to read my blog.

peace

vince

Want in?

Hey everybody, so I'm going to make my blog private and by invite only... if you would like to be on the invite list let me know by leaving a comment with your email. Most family and friends I have your email, but some other readers might want to continue to read. Soooo, leave me your email. I'll be sending out an email on Saturday in Japan.

peace

vince

Untitled (actually isn't that a title...)

Hello and good Monday to you! For a change it is a wonderful sunny day here in Osaka today. I am loving the weather, after the deadful rain last week.

Well, this weekend was quite interesting. I really don't know what to say about this weekend. It was an emotional rollercoaster if you will. I won't get into details here actually. To top everything off, my modem just stopped working the other day. So I called customer service, and that was completely useless. They didn't know any English, and I was even trying to speak Japanese to them and they wouldn't help me. But they would sure damn take my money though right! ahhh so lame... Anyway this morning my co-worker (actually I could probably call her my guardian here, because she helps me with EVERYTHING!!! she is so important to me, and I can call her if I ever have a problem) called yahoo bb for me and she sorted it out quite fast. They will send me a new modem tomorrow morning, which is awesome because I don't have to go to school tomorrow. The students are going on a school field trip. Or what the Japanese like to called it, an "EXCURSION". Oh man...

My basketball kids are getting ready for a big game next weekend on the 27th. I told them that I will be going to the game and they were so damn happy! I guess they just thought that I was just playing around with them. But I actually do care about them. ;) So on that day expect some pictures from a real Japanese high school basketball game! :)

I had two classes today and I had about 20 returning students along with 16 new students. They were so happy to see me and so was I. Sometimes living in Japan by yourself can be quite depressing and sad. But when I come to school, my students usually bring a smile to my face. I know that may sound damn corny or whatever, but it's entirely true!

There is a holiday weekend coming up pretty soon called "Golden Week". I am trying to think of some kind of small trip to go on during this time. I want to see something cool in Japan. If you have any suggestions, send them this way. I will take lots of pictures and put them up on the site. Also any of my friends in Japan reading this, let's get something organized! :)

Well, I have to get back to the grind right now. I just thought I would give a little update to the infamous vince in osaka blog. You know blogging is somewhat strange. Sometimes I feel bad because I don't update much. It's like always on the back of my mind!! haha I do enjoy it though. Sometimes it's just hard to think of something to say. Well take care all...

peace

vince

Rain and bikes don't mix well.

Well, today as usual, it started to rain as I was riding my bike to school! Oh man...everyday! haha I have been needing to change the brakes on my bike but I have been procrastinating about it! Well today I had a great reason to. I was riding to school and a old lady decided to randomly walk in front of me aimlessly! Since my breaks were...not so good, I rammed into her! I know some of you will laugh about this (like me). Yep, I ran into an old lady on my bike. However, it really wasn't my fault, since she was so stupid to walk right in front of me. Anyway, to keep a long story short, I said I'm sorry and picked up a cucumber that she dropped from her bag! LOL

Of course, it stopped raining when I got to school. As I was leaving about 4:45pm, there was RAIN! But not just sprinkles, it was raining like hell. So I went directly to the bike shop and changed my brakes. While they were changing them, I decided to take a few photos with my cell phone(sorry they aren't so good). EVERYBODY rides bikes here, so there are so many bikes in the store! Well I hope you are enjoying life where ever you are. Be kind and comment. See ya

peace

vince

lots of kiddie bikes too


bike heaven

It hits Japan

So I was in the subway and saw a Cloverfield ad on the wall. Hmmm, only like 4 months late! haha

New week, good times

First of all I would like to say sorry to many of you for not calling lately. I don't have any skype credits 'till I get paid so this weekend will be a calling fest!!!

Anyway, the past few days have been quite eventful. School has officially started and I had my first classes yesterday. I have a group of about 60 new kids in addition to the 120 I already had. My English conversation classes are really big this semester. They all seem very Genki (happy) too. So I have a good feeling about this school year. I gave my self introduction to my freshman students today and handed out the class rules. It was an average day. I am going to do my daily writing journal with every single one of my students from the beginning this year. I will keep all of our communications, and at the end of the year they will be amazed at how much they wrote! I suppose I will be amazed at home much I will have wrote too! hahah

My co-workers are as friendly as ever. And I seem to be getting along with them quite well. We have 3 new foreign exchange students this year. A guy from Finland, a girl from South Korea and a guy from MEXICO! I was really happy to see the kid from Mexico. We started to speak Spanish and he felt very relaxed. He made a self intro speech for the assembly here and I translated it in English for him. He is a really nice kid and I think I will be helping him out a lot, this year.

Tomorrow I am going to show my returning students my little video slide show (the one I posted here). That video has been seen almost 300 times on this page, so I think people like it. I made a remix version in HD with different music. So if you want me to post that one up I will. Anyway, my returning students are dying to see how my trip back to the USA was. I will bring them some sand that my mom and dad jacked from White Sands for me. So hopefully they will like that little surprise! I will let you know how that goes ok.

So on a more personal note, I have been taken off the market! I'll give you more details on that when I call you. ;) Well I have to get back to "work" now, so thank you for reading my blog. Take care and be safe...

peace

vince

Happy Time

Last night was the return of the "happy time" party. It was good times! We went to a Korean BBQ place. This place would be very strange to a westerner. I say this because they bring you a plate of raw meat and you basically have to cook yourself on the hot plate in the middle of the table. Yeah it sounds quite strange, but I think it's just the way Japanese like to socialize. I enjoyed it very much. The night started out with everybody around the table giving a Kampai (cheers), then we started to dig into the amazing food. We had some Korean style salad at first, with some kimchi and chijimi(Korean pancake). Then the staff brought out the pork meat. We grilled it up together, all along joking and laughing. There was much alcohol going around the whole time. For some reason my Japanese gets better as the more I drink. haha The night ended with each person giving a self introduction. We did this because there was a few new teachers that had joined us that night. We all went around and made our self introductions (in Japanese). One of the new teachers said she likes "house music, and indie rock". I was so happy since that's exactly what I like, so we chatted up a bit afterwards. The big surprise came when one of the teachers said they were getting married. It's not such a big deal, but the person that he is getting married to, is another teacher that works at my school. We were all very surprised to hear this. They had kept it a secret the whole time. I asked them when they became a couple. They told me that it was when we went on that rafting trip back in August(I posted the video a few months ago look in the archives), they realized they were in love. WOW! The cool this is that I was on that rafting trip, and I can say that I know some Japanese people that are getting married! They said I can go to the wedding too!! WOOHOO! It's sometime in May so YAY! Anyway, last night was great! I broke some ice with the new teachers and made my friendship with the others even stronger. Well I took a few photos of last night so enjoy them. Today I am going to meet my friend for lunch down in my city. Talk to you soon!

peace

vince

The start of a new school year!

Well it's been a while since I have posted something for a while. Actually I have been quite busy at work lately. It's been raining as hell the past few days too. It always seems to rain in the morning while I ride my bike to school and about 5:30pm when I get ready ride my bike back home! lol Oh well!

So, as for school. Three English teachers were transferred to another school. So we have three new English teachers. I have met them all and they are all very nice. One of them sits right behind me. She is a very nice lady and we have chatted a few times. As for my schedule, I will officially start my first class of the new school year on Monday. I will work with a new teacher in addition to the others that I currently work with. I am very excited to work with her this year! This year is already looking to be a great start. I have also met most my of my 1st year (freshman) students. They all seem quite "genki" (excited,happy) to be in English class. It looks to be that most of my 1st year students from last semester are coming back for another round of English classes with me!!! I really enjoyed those kids, so that will be a lot of fun. Overall it's going to be great this year!

Tuesday I started to assist the basketball club in coaching. We did some shooting drills and passing drills. Afterwards we played some half court games. I played with them for about 5 games. I am focusing on helping the "center" player get stronger. I figure if he can score on me then he can score on a Japanese high school kid in a game. Today we played full court games. Since we practice with the girls team, we played a 10 min game then the girls played a 10 min game and so on. We played 3 games, and I can tell you I was dead tired afterwards. Those kids are quick! I told them to give me a month to get back into good shape and we will run all over the place! haha It was really fun, and I don't mind staying till about 6pm. I am supposed to leave at four, but I would rather just hang out with the students and help them with their skills! After a few minutes of chatting up with the volleyball players I grabbed my stuff from the teachers room and went home in the rain. haha It's quite funny sometimes, because occasionally I will glance at the door to the gym and there are usually a few teachers gathered just staring at us play basketball. I guess they were all surprised to see that I can play. I have no idea what they were gawking at, but I don't mind. There is always a random "binsu, do a dunk shot!" And I will throw down a dunk once and a while for them. :) Anyway, this is something that completely enriches my experience here. I think sports is a great way to communicate with students even if our cultures are so different. I will keep you posted on what happens. Tomorrow we have a short practice at about 2pm. I'm already looking forward to it!

Tomorrow is also the return of the infamous "happy time" party. Honestly, I can't wait to get my eating and drinking on. I haven't done much of that lately, due to sheer volume of activities I am involved in. So I will get down with that tomorrow and have a blast with my co-workers. I might take a few photos of the party so look for that coming in the next few days.

So did you like my amateur video slide show? It has been viewed close to 90 times as of now and I have no idea who has watched it. Well, except for my cousin. Let me know what ya think. If you like it, then I will try to make some more movies in the future. What else would you like to see? Give me some ideas. Sometimes I think that writing about my life could be boring to you. ahh I'm blabbing again sorry... :(
I added a crap load of new songs to my music play list. Check it out, you are bound to like a song or two there. And most likely you haven't heard any of those songs before. ;)

Oh by the way, I have been reading this excellent anthology of science fiction short stories (thanks dad). If you are even remotely interested in science fiction stories about first contact, technology and reflections then give these books a shot. The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction Volume 1 and 2. I would recommend them! Ok, long post today! Thank you for reading and I will talk to you soon! maybe... :)

peace

vince

New Video Slideshow

Hey everybody! I made a video slide show of my trip back home. I hope you enjoy it. I used a good site called viddler to upload the video. You can actually leave comments on any part of the video by pushing the plus sign. Give it a try! ENJOY!!!!

Ohanmi Festival

Hello everybody! I am back in Japan now. Like I said before, I had a wonderful time back home. I appreciate everybody that took the time out of their busy lives to spend some time with me, I truly appreciate it. Thank you so much everybody. :)

Well today was absolutely wonderful. I had a great welcome back today. I went with my friend Mai to a Ohanami Festival. It's a festival for spring with all the cherry blossom flowers that have bloomed. It is truly a beautiful sight. I met so many nice people today. I played dodge ball, and threw some frisbee. Well take a look at these photos to enjoy the beauty of Sakura(cherry blossom). See you!!!!!

peace

vince

Hey Y'all

Well it was a long but short trip back home. I'm leaving in the morning, so I will be back pretty soon on my BLOG. Wish me luck on my trip back! I hope I don't get stuck in the Dallas airport again! lol Take care, and I'll post soon! :)

peace

vince