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Date: May - July, 2003
Pictures: 119
Assorted pictures of the middle school where I taught English for one year under the auspices of the JET program, as well as pictures of my super-adorable
students who helped make my year there so wonderful!
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Date: May - July, 2003
Pictures: 78
Hiraka is a very small town with a population of just over 10,000 that is located outside the 'city' of Yokote, a booming metropolis with a whopping population
of nearly 50,000 people. In other words, I lived in Bumblefuk, Japan for a year. And fortunately, it was beautiful and I had a great experience there, despite
my initial apprehension about living in the countryside for a year. Here are a handful of random pictures from around Hiraka.
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Date: May 24, 2003
Pictures: 32
An annual tournament hosted by the JET teachers in Yamagata prefecture, which fortunately is located just below Akita where I lived. This was a 6-on-6 indoor
tournament that would have been loads of fun had I not pulled my hamstring the week before and ended up having to play the gimp goalkeeper for our depleted Akita
team that barely even scrounged together 6 guys to attend the tournament. Despite our desperate state, we still managed to get into the playoffs, but not we lost
in the first round to the eventual winners. But it was a great tournament, and we went out to a really nice camping area in rural Yamagata (is there such a thing
as urban Yamagata...?) afterward for a BBQ and a late-night party. The Akita JET crew needs to get their act together and put together a similar tournament!
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Date: May 29, 2003
Pictures: 138
This had to be the cutest sporting event I've ever attended. Students from all four of Hiraka's elementary schools, which I visited occasionally, came together
for the annual field day where students competed in various track and field events, as well as games like tug-of-war. Watching these kids in their color-coded
uniforms running their little hearts out like champion athletes was just too adorable. It was also the first chance I had to really test out my new Canon 10D
camera that I bought the week before.
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Date: June 1, 2003
Pictures: 22
After staying the night at 'Sukebe' Steve's place at Tazawako (he had a big party there the night before and let people crash in his extra house... some JETs are so
spoiled!!), Sue and I went out to the lake the next day even though it was drizzling outside. We were tempted to rent a duck, but decided against it.
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Date: June 5, 2003
Pictures: 60
I didn't ask if this was an annual event or not, but I'm guessing that every year in the summer the students at Yoshida Elementary take one day off from classes to plant seedlings
and flowers around the school. Why didn't we ever do that in elementary school...?
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Date: June-July, 2003
Pictures: 45
These pictures are actually from two different dinners that 'Crazy Boss', my boss at Hiraka's Board of Education, treated Sue and I to. Boss had to be one of
the best bosses a JET participant could hope to get. He always took me out for (expensive!) meals or had me over to his house and cooked me fantastic dinners (he's
quite the cook!). I really enjoyed my time hanging out with Boss!
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Date: June 7, 2003
Pictures: 23
A lazy Saturday afternoon hike in a trail Mark (my best mate in Japan) and girlfriend Bex found in some literature on the area. Narusemura is a small town less than
an hour from Hiraka and very close to the ski slopes where I snowboarded all winter. We hiked up to a nice mountain lake, and were surprised to find patches of snow
along the way considering it was already summer and the elevation wasn't all that high.
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Date: June 12, 2003
Pictures: 152
While some elementary school kids get to take a day off classes to plant flowers, others have to clean their school pool for an entire day! But these kids
at Asamai Elementary didn't seem to mind, as they splashed water all over the place (and each other) and scrubbed their little hearts out the entire day, smiling
and laughing the entire time. Why didn't our elementary school even have a pool...?
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Date: June 14-15, 2003
Pictures: 31
The most prestigious JET-hosted soccer tournament in Japan, the Nagano soccer tournament was by far the best soccer I played in my year in Japan. The fields in
Sugadaira are used to train the national rugby team, and were possibly the nicest fields I've played on in my life. And this in a country where I had become
accustomed to playing on dirt everywhere because grass is so hard (and expensive) to grow in Japan. Most teams were comprised of JET teachers from a
particular prefecture, with probably almost half of the prefectures in Japan represented. Akita didn't get a team together, but Aomori had possibly one of the best
JET teams in the country and promised I could play with them (Aomori neighbors Akita in the north). That is until they dropped out at the last minute. Bastards.
But I was determined to go anyway, so I drove all the way to Nagano and looked for a team when I got there. A ragtag team from Kobe, which only had 10 players including
two girls who'd never played soccer before, took me into their squad, and I was sure we were going to get massacred. But I was there for fun anyway, and I was
still recovering from my hamstring tear, so I figured it didn't really matter who I played with. In the end, we went undefeated all the way to the semifinals
and lost to the eventual winners of the tournament, then went on and one the 3rd place game. I played every game without a sub with a severely aggravated hamstring
and a slightly fractured foot (happened in the third game), but loved every minute of one of the best and funnest soccer tournaments I've ever played in!
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Date: June 20-21, 2003
Pictures: 149
Our annual end-of-the-year Akita JET 'conference', in which all of the JET teachers in the prefecture come together for two official days of pointless (but reasonably
short) meetings and all-night parties involving the consumption of copious amounts of alcohol at all-you-can-drink establishments. I wonder if the conferences
in the other prefectures are this much fun...?
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Date: June 26, 2003
Pictures: 21
Lunch with the kids at Yoshida Elementary. Kind of random, I suppose.
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Date: June 27, 2003
Pictures: 40
I think it was Kiwi Nicki's birthday that night, but it doesn't really matter because we used any excuse to go to Ariran restaurant in Yuzawa for 100 yen beers on
Friday nights. I think they probably hated us there, because they were a yakiniku (Korean BBQ) restaurant, and they did the 100 yen beer Friday nights to attract
customers to spend money on meat, but we always just went in and only drank their cheap beer (for hours on end). Then when they'd finally manage to kick us out of
there, we'd go eat sushi at the 'rotating sushi' place right up the street, which was much cheaper (and tastier) than Korean BBQ. This night we followed up the sushi
with a night at the video arcade, where Nicki broke a world record or something at Street Fighter, or whatever old-school game she was playing.
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Date: June 29, 2003
Pictures: 56
The annual festival of Hiraka town, which celebrates the blooming of the beautiful irises (Hiraka's town flower) in the local park. Or at least I guess that's
why they hold the festival. Probably the biggest event of the festival is the Ms. Ayame contest, which picks the hottest 20-year-old woman in Hiraka to serve
as the town's beauty queen for a year. Twenty is the age when Japanese officially become adults, which is probably why only girls that age are chosen. I wasn't
too impressed with the selection of the hottest three girls in town, but I suppose in a town that small there's probably not that many 20-year-old virgins to choose
from. Oh wait, I don't think they have to be virgins actually.
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Date: July 2, 2003
Pictures: 80
My parents and grandfather came to visit me in Japan right toward the end of my stay. It was the first time abroad for my father, and only my mother's second
trip abroad. Their first full day in town, I took them out to the neighboring prefecture of Iwate to see a very famous temple complex called Chusonji in Hiraizumi.
I took the 'shortcut' through the mountains on the way back home, which ended up being a very narrow mountain rode with steep drops most of the way, which
my mother was of course very ecstatic about. But there were some beautiful views along the way.
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Date: July 3-4, 2003
Pictures: 31
For the next two days Sue and I took the family around Hiraka and Yokote. I think their favorite site was actually the all-you-can-eat restaurant
in Yokote, where we stuffed ourselves silly with Japanese and Western food. And cotton candy.
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Date: July 3, 2003
Pictures: 28
A very sad day, as Hiruno was perhaps my favorite of the elementary schools. By far the smallest of the elementary schools, with some grades having less than 10
students, my experiences here offered me the most personal insight into the school life of both teachers and students. Now this school has already been closed and
the students sent off to nearby Asamai elementary school (where they will get to help clean the pool every summer).
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Date: July 5, 2003
Pictures: 49
Matsushima is a nice tourist town outside of Sendai. I was originally going to take them to Sendai for the day, since they had to catch the bullet train
from here to Kyoto anyway, but in the end we decided that Matsushima might be a little more interesting. We spent a nice relaxing day leisurely exploring the town
and its many small islands with red bridges connecting them to the mainland. Probably the most interesting part of this trip, however, was where we stayed the night
before arriving. Looking for cheap accommodation after dark on the outskirts of Sendai, we didn't have many options and I decided to try for a love hotel along the way.
The rooms were reasonable and my family didn't mind the fact that most people used them for sex, so my parents shacked up together and I got to share a bed with my
grandfather. In a love hotel. Great story to tell the grandkids.
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Date: July 2003
Pictures: 29
I played soccer with two teams while in Hiraka. One was indoor soccer with the local guys for fun, and one was on a more competitive outdoor team in a league.
These pictures are from two different games, one with the indoor boys and one with the outdoor boys. Make sense?
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Date: July 10, 2003
Pictures: 63
Another sad goodbye to some of my elementary school kids. Well, they weren't MY kids... at least none that I knew of.
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Date: July 11-14, 2003
Pictures: 96
After venturing off on their own to Kyoto and Ehime, my parents and grandfather made it to Tokyo on their own, and Sue and I hitchhiked down there to meet up
with them. It was my first time to hitchhike with somebody else, but it was quite easy considering our very first hit was a large truck going all the way from
Yokote to Tokyo.
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Date: July 16, 2003
Pictures: 23
My incredibly awesome Board of Education, who were officially in charge of me while I was working in Hiraka, threw me a going away party two weeks before
I left. Boss, Hotta-san, Endou-san, Takahashi-san, and Kawasaki-san, all the people in my office, were there, as well as 'Tiny' (bet you can't guess which
one he is...) from the office across the hall and 'Boss Boss', who was the head honcho of the BOE and a very cool guy to have as a reigning superior. Though
nobody compares to Crazy Boss of course! We all got a little tipsy and managed to take one of my all-time favorite group pictures. What a crazy bunch... that's why
I love them so much!
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Date: July 17, 2003
Pictures: 22
Another sad goodbye at another one of my elementary schools. Actually, I was the only one crying... the kids were all cheering when I left, for some reason.
Ok, not really... there were at least three of them I saw that looked like their eyes were getting a little watery. It was touching....
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Date: July 19, 2003
Pictures: 50
The local boys threw one hell of a going away party for me the week before I left, which included a crazy dinner (where I think we really only consumed beer,
and usually one mug at a time) with lots of nudity, followed by an even crazier karaoke session afterward, also with lots of nudity. If you have an aversion to
looking at Japanese asses, or mine for that matter, then please stay away from this gallery. You've been warned!
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Date: July 20-21, 2003
Pictures: 50
Mark, Bex, Ben, Jim, Corey, Jordan, Denver Dave, and I all enjoyed one last weekend at the lake together before several of us left for good. We went ballistic
with the pyrotechnics that night, scaring the poor Japanese kids unfortunate enough to have chosen a spot next to us on the lake shore. Actually, I think they
were probably the ones scaring us.
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Date: July 27, 2003
Pictures: 12
Despite being my second to last day in town, and despite the fact that my contract had officially ended the day before, I was asked to teach a two-hour class
on Saturday morning to a group of kids from the elementary schools around town. They didn't seem all that excited to be there, and I hadn't slept at all
the night before, but amazingly I managed to muster enough energy to keep them entertained. Well, that is if you consider the fact that they weren't crying
the entire time indicative of them enjoying themselves.
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Date: July 27, 2003
Pictures: 15
That night, still sleepless and having hardly started packing up my year's collection of junk, the English teachers from Hiraka Junior High had their
own little going away party for me, which involved drinking an insane amount of alcohol and doing stupid things (surprise surprise... are you beginning
to notice a pattern here). My advice is if you value your liver at all, either never come to Japan or if you do, never leave!
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Date: July 28, 2003
Pictures: 47
My last night in town the local boys took me to dinner at an Italian place in the neighboring town and then we all went to play some pool. Well, all the guys
played pool while I took pictures of them playing pool. Surprisingly (maybe it was at my request), there was very little alcohol consumption that night. Not that
it kept the boys from getting rowdy in the pool hall.
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