Month in Review

Me and Krystal enjoying the lovely Fall Foliage in Kyoto

Hey guys long time see! Sorry for such a late post. There have been so many things happening that I didn’t have time to post some stuff. I know the Korea post is still not up here but I swear I’ll do a better job from now on. I guess the main reason why I haven’t been blogging is because I do most of my blogging when I’m in junior high. So far I haven’t been there for about 2 months. The elementary school schedule is much more grueling and you never get a good time block to type out a blog.

Well let’s see since the last time what have we done. I guess I’ll start at the beginning of the month. Well the first week in November, Krystal kind of got sick. And it seems like the cold she caught last year that lasted for almost 6 months. As long as its cold, she can’t seem to get over it. So the first week we were staying indoors watching a lot of TV and getting ready to hibernate for the winter.

The second week I was on my own because Krystal decided to visit her Dad over the weekend. Her Dad had been in Japan for more than 2 weeks at their church headquarters and she wanted to surprise him. That weekend I pretty much “vegged” out in front of the TV and did the usual chores. Because she was gone she gave me permission to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. We got some premire tickest and went a week before it came out to the public at the local theaters. My thoughts? I thought that it was the best Harry Potter! I liked the fourth book the best and had some high expectations about the movie. But in the end I was satisfied with the way they made the movie. My only critical thing about the movie was that the movie didn’t have the World Cup match that they had in the book. Quidditch is one of the most original aspects of Harry Potter and they thought that they didn’t have to enter it. They hit the main points like the port keys and the stuff that happens after the match but I was disappointed that they didn’t have the quidditch game for eye candy. People said that the movie was choppy and moved too quickly but I thought that they did a good job in putting the stuff you wanted to see in the movie. Emotions were portrayed very well and precise but for a movie goer I really wanted to see all the action stuff. It showed a very accurate image or memory of what high school was kind of like.

Of course we had Thanksgiving the following Wednesday. It was a holiday so we decided to have a huge feast. With some of the other JETs in the building we organized a Thanksgiving dinner worthy to be called Thanksgiving. We had turkeys, mashed potatoes, stuffing, pumpkin pie, and a few extras to keep going. We had gone to Costco previously and bought two turkeys that could feed everyone comfortably. The hardest part was getting a turkey that could fit in the small oven that two of my friends had. They just barely made it and it was the savior of the day. We ate just like we would have back home… until we couldn’t even swallow the saliva in our mouths and finished the evening with some Will Ferreal Saturday Night Live and Cranium. You couldn’t really ask for a better Thanksgiving in Japan.

But the best party of the Thanksgiving was that it was the first day that Lisa came to visit us. The last time I saw Lisa was in June so her coming to Kyoto meant a lot to me. It felt good to have the trio back again. Of course we took Lisa around for her four days in Kyoto. We went and did most of the stuff that Lisa likes to do in Kyoto and it was just fun cruising with her. I hope she had fun in Kyoto and hopefully we didn’t get her sick. Thanks to Lisa I got to see Harry Potter again. We ended up see Harry Potter on her last day since neither Lisa nor Krystal had seen it.

Also on Saturday we had a birthday party for me and Krystal! She denies that it was her party but I felt really bad that we didn’t throw a birthday party for her in October and then went and threw one for me in November. I hope she had fun. It was the first time we had a big party with lots of people come over to our apartment and I thought it went pretty good. No major spills on the tatami and no puke either. Only thing was that we started to play Cranium and it got out of hand and the neighbors started nagging on the walls. We were able to keep the game going on but we never got to finish the game. At four o’clock the game was still going on with no winner. We stopped the game because everyone started to get really tired and we kicked everyone out. We did some quick surface cleaning ad was off to bed.

The next day the people in the Rez-O (nickname for our apartment) took me out for a more quiet dinner. We went to eat at a Chinese restaurant close to our place. The food there is really good and some people even said that it was the best Chinese food in Kyoto. I couldn’t ask for a better group of friends in Japan.

What else… what else….

OH YEAH DODGEBALL!! How could I forget dodgeball?! Because of the cold weather kickball season has officially ended. So we wanted to play something indoors that everyone could play without having prior athletic experience. So the dodgeball season was created. We had been looking for a place to play dodgeball for over a year. Finally we were able to find a gym that we could rent for a few hours and use the gym to do whatever we wanted. We went to place called WINGS Kyoto a Women’s community center and rented out half the gym for 4 hours. The other half was being used by a geriatric volleyball league or something. Playing dodgeball in school with the kids is one thing but playing your peers is awesome. We had six on six games and it was one hell of a start. It was such a fun day. Not to mention beaming people with rubber balls, that was fun too. We even had a basketball we played around with during breaks and half times. I want to say my team won but it was pretty much back and firth all day. I was surprised that even some of the girls played. Although I had fun its not too fun today since I can’t even ore more arm above my shoulder. It hurt just to walk, eat, and even brush my teeth this morning. It hurts but it’s a hurt that came with the satisfaction of killing people all day on Saturday.

I think that’s pretty much the major things that happened in the month of November. I’ll make sure to do a better job in blogging and get ready ‘cause I’m coming home soon!

Happy Halloween!

Krystal aka Rebellious Princess Poo and Chris aka Snoopy; Halloween '05

Been neglecting the blog again. I don’t know why it’s been like this the past month. Joel had said something about only posting four times in October, but I think I only got in three blogs last month. Technically I had more time to blog in school since I was in junior high but it seems like I’m on the computer more often in elementary. Actually I blame our forum that we have here in Japan. A forum that tall the Kyoto City JETs use. It gets pretty funny and very comical at times. Also they have this scoring system where you get points on the forum to see who is the most active. I was away for about a month and in that time people logged in a lot of hours. I think I’m currently in 13th place with the people right above me only a few points ahead. As long as I get into the top 10 I’ll be ok.

Last night was Halloween. What did we do? Nothing. Well nothing in the spirit of Halloween that I would consider a proper celebration. Halloween weekend was really busy for us. On Friday it was Krystal and my three year anniversary. Woo Hoo! We’ve been going strong ever since 2002! Everyone decided to go karaoke but we had decided to go on a nice intimate date just the two of us and it was indeed romantic. First we went to dinner at a near by café/restaurant. The food is really good there and is usually crowded with an office party or a bunch of random people at the bar. We pigged out on Italian food and headed for the movies. A new movie complex opened really close to our house that has restaurants, a video game level and the movies on the top floor. We had some time to kill so we went to the video game place. The whole floor is a majority of Japanese slot machines but we found some stuff to do. We raced cars, played taiko, electric guitar and took some sticker pictures.

The sticker picture machine there is pretty cool since it has a new one where the back drops are interactive and they change depending on what you do in the picture. For example there was an under water one where you had to bat away fish. Anyway we chose to do a haunted house/horror one. The first scene wasn’t too bad, it was in a graveyard where we had to swat away bats but the second one was pretty crazy. When the demonstration came on we were to “run away” from a ghost and then they would take the picture. So when we started running we noticed that a Japanese ghost (like the one in Ring) was following us. And it got closer and closer to us. And this totally freaked Krystal out! She was screaming and looking behind her. Even I looked behind me only to see a green screen yet the monitor in front of us showed us that they ghost was right behind us. When the thing finally took our picture the ghost was literally right behind our shoulder with its one red eye glaring at us. We had a good laugh and headed towards the movie.

We went to see the Corpse Bride. I thought it was a nice touch seeing it since it was a date type movie and in the spirit of Halloween who would be better than Tim Burton. The movie was cute and actually pretty funny. But then again it wasn’t a must see blockbuster. Krystal actually fell asleep towards the ends which made the whole date experience even more familiar. Afterwards we went home and crashed early. It was Friday and we had just been at work the whole day.

We went to play kickball on Sunday and I’m still paying for it. It was the anticipated Old School team (2nd and 3rd years) versus the Newbies (first years) kickball tournament. For about three weeks we were talking smack on the forum and finally the day had come. We set out for our famous kickball field and had the games of our lives. The first game was going perfectly well with the Old School team keeping control both defensively and offensively. We had originally decided to only go 5 innings but because the excitement of the game was on high and we were winning we decided to play until 9. But the thing is that we had a horrible 6th inning where the Newbies came from behind to take the lead. After that it was a close defensive battle but we were able to tie the game and send it into extra innings. Again we made one mistake and the Newbies were all over us and we got shot down 7-6. Although it was a close battle I think we definitely need a rematch. So we decided to play a second game but the sun was down fairly early and we lost our light source. That game ended in a tie. I can’t wait for the rematch.

But I would say that I’m not really healed up yet. Actually to be honest I’m no where near perfect health. Since Sunday my knees have been sore, muscles all over the place are tight, and I’m not even sure if I can walk properly. The stairs at school have been a real hard struggle. Not to mention trying to keep up with the kids in elementary school. I just hoe that these sore muscles go away and I need to remember to stretch more thoroughly next time.

Yesterday was the actual Halloween day but we had nothing planned. Our friend Val called and asked us if we wanted to go to our neighbors on the sixth floor to go trick-or-treating just for fun… so we did. Krystal dressed up as a punk rocker but then she had a swirly poo stick and swirly poo head band that she wanted to use. She ended up going as the rebellious Princess Poo. I had a snoopy dog cap which we bought at Universal Studios Japan and a pair of Disney Mickey Mouse hands so I went as Snoopy. We surprised our friends and decided to go to another friend’s house only to discover she had company over celebrating her birthday. We felt like dorks. It was a whole bunch of the new first years and they were looking at us as if we were crazy. But nevertheless it was fun to crash the party. So all in all this year’s Halloween wasn’t that bad. I had lots of fun and made some good memories, what more can you ask for?

Break it Down