Smashmouth

I went and saw Smashmouth for free on base tonight, the show was over an hour and lots of fun. I had a great time and was right in front of the stage for most of the show. No pics cos I took the crap camera but hopefully I can get some of the great pics my friend took. The Steve Harwell, lead singer, is much hotter than he was when I was in college. Much to the hubbs joy I did not get to relive the glory days and one of my few claims to fame and get another kiss from Harwell. We hoped the kiddies would clear out and we could talk to them, a friend I was with said it has happened in the past, but no such luck. ok off to bed I am tired, those damn kids made me feel old and they didnt even know the music

What do you mean no one want to volunteer

I saw this story and could not stop laughing. A couple of weeks ago a polar bear fell into his moat and he is rather happy down there. The part that makes me laugh is not that they are waiting for him to climb out but that they are doing everything they can before they sedate him. The reason? Someone would have to go into the moat to make sure he is really sedate and they don't have any volunteers. What you don't want to jump in the moat with a possibly asleep polar bear? Why not? CHICKEN?

http://www.wisn.com/cnn-news/17787134/detail.html

Hakone take 2

Yesterday I went back to Hakone and Lake Ashi. It is just an absolutely beautiful place. Yesterday I went with the Good Time Trekker club. It is a group of Japanese men and women who conduct tours with a group from the base in English. They are fun and I have been out with them before, it is just a wonderful experience to have them tell us about things. Yesterday we were doubly blessed by beautiful weather. Please check out my Picasa Gallery because I got many beautiful pictures of Fuji and other things but mostly Fuji.

From Hakone and Fuji

Adventures in Billpaying

We have many options on how to pay our bills here in Japan. In the States we basically had 2 sometimes 3 and now with web bill pay 4. So in the States it generally was auto-deduct from an account or send a check. In California, I could pay at some liquor stores but not many and it was never clear. Then with Web Bill pay I could pay through the bank but it was still similar to writing a check.

Here in Japan I have a variety of choices and then more as an American with base access. Ok so most Americans use a company with GI in the name that I distrust for that reason alone. They get your bills and send the money from your account and it is entirely hands off which is why most Americans do not know what they pay. I can also pay some utilities and rent in the base exchange but it is in dollars with a generally poor exchange rate.

Now the Japanese options. We have your typical auto-debit, which again I am not comfortable with especially since I can't dispute without a translator, The bank, but I do not have an account and my favorite, the Konbini. I pay my bills at 7-11 or any of a number of other stores. It is great I walk in get a soda and pay $200 worth of bills. Considering there is one so close to my house it is just great and I never have to worry.

There is another option which is where my adventures happen, the Post Office. I have to pay one bill at the Post Office, there is no other option for me. It is not a big deal except the machine only lets you pay in Japanese, it is also an ATM and that works in english. So in the 9 months I have been paying the bill, I have succeeded doing it 3 times without help. My agent has paid it for me twice on seperate occasions because the machine rejected my documents or I could not figure it out. The postal worker has helped me twice, once it took him 20 minutes because we were doing it right, it just didnt like the form. The best time was this month when they didn't send the form and I tried filling one out. The post guy managed to communicate that I needed a bank to use the form. So I went to see my friend who helps me and she was too busy which led me to the translators at housing. Well they tried and got confused so they called and the company is mailing me the form they always do. I got the impression that even the Japanese don't pay their own bills or at least not at the post office. oh yeah and I do know how to use the machine, in fact I walked the hubbs through it once over the phone when I was not feeling well.
So yeah I have tons of ways to pay my bills and i still cannot pay the gas bill on time.

Well it finally happened

i was sitting in a meeting and I finally felt a Japanese Earthquake. It was very gentle and rolling, quite different from the ones in California. It was also not nearly as noisy as I am used to. Now I know why none of the other ones so much as woke me up. It was only a 4.6 but it lasted for a long time, seriously. I was in a meeting and it resumed and a few of us were looking around going, we're still moving and we were on the ground floor.

Things have been crazy. School started, 1/3 of our staff is new and almost an entirely new admin staff and well life has been hella crazy since August. Work and sleep that is all I have had time for. I did take a trip up to Yokohama one night and dropped some serious change on a Pentax K20D at Yodobashi. If it isn't at Yodobashi it probably doesn't exist. So I took it to Hakone with my buddy nitch one Saturday and Kamakura on another Saturday. Those pics are in my Picasa album at

Hakone

for Hakone. Or Kamakura

Kamakura 09-13-2008

But the Good Stuff was a couple weeks ago in Kyoto and Osaka. The hubbs was in the area so I took some time off work, hopped on the bullet train and I was off. Osaka was fun, tons of food, lots of places to go and a city under the city. We walked until our feet hurt. We spent Saturday in Kyoto. Where we looked at Temples and Shrines, some traditional art and just wandered and got lost. It was loads of fun, we saw some Maiko on their way to work and had some good food. We also went to the aquarium in Osaka and the Castle.

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