Otaru & 15 Months

Two days ago my gf, her family and I went to Otaru to do a little sight seeing and pick up some seafood. It was a pretty cool place. The area we visited was, I think, one of the main tourist places. Most of the buildings looked so old and some were definitely historic or semi-historic at least. There was one restaurant/bar that was in an old train station. Down the middle of the building there was a hallway from one end to the other of the building with train tracks running along it and to one side there was a beautiful restaurant and to the other, a bar. Probably half of the shops were souvenir stores. Some of them were really cool. I bought some souvenirs for some of my family and friends and a couple for myself. I bought a "Kiki's Delivery Service" card holder. It's really cute and it's one of my favorite Miyazaki movies so I thought it would be a good souvenir.

My gf and I bought a 2 peice magnetic keychain with a guy's face and a girls face kissing haha. It's so cute. I think I'll bring back the girl side to Canada with me and she'll keep the guy's. And then we bought these little gems that were quite expensive. I chose 白 and my gf chose 緑色. Every color has a meaning and mine's kinda... everything. I guess they ran out of ideas or something. My color is supposed to adapt to the wearer's feelings or problems to fix them I guess. My gf's color, green, is supposed to help build a big heart and help with money I believe. They're kinda interesting... but expensive. For the 2 of them it was １７０００円 o_O but well, it's our anniversary so what can you do right? haha.

We also bought the most expensive chocolates I've ever seen hahaha. We only bought 2 because well... it was too expensive to buy more. Each peice of chocolate was ２４０円 so for 2 peices it was almost $5. We got a tiny little bag with pretty tape though. But sadly the chocolates weren't all that amazing. Sure, they were tasty, but what $5 chocolate isn't going to be tasty right? I wouldn't say it was worth $5, but maybe if I meet a chocolate fanatic I can tell them I ate Le Tao chocolate and they'll be impressed... if they know it hahaha. I believe it's only a small Japanese company since it doesn't have a link on Wikipedia and google only brings back results of Japan... Otaru specifically. It was good though.

Yesterday was our real anniversary day so we went downtown. We wanted to go for dinner but it was too early at the time so we went to an arcade to play some "metal" games. I took a picture of the one we played today the most. At this arcade there weren't really any interesting ones or big fancy ones so we decided on a cute little one that had a lot of minigames. It was really loud though and started to give us a headache after a while even with our scarfs stuffed infront of the speakers. We moved to a new one after a while but our coins disappeared pretty quick and we left haha.

We found what looked like a nice Izakaya and went in to eat. It was pretty good but nothing amazing. After dinner we went for some karaoke. I'm really starting to enjoy karaoke a lot. Maybe my singing is improving even! Still terrible, but now only... kinda terrible - I hope haha. I've been trying to sing some Japanese songs but it's hard to read Japanese so fast. But I'll keep trying =D so far my favorite song is 胸がドキドキ from the anime Detective Conan. It's fun to sing and I know the tune ^_^ Karaoke in Japan is much nicer than in Canada, as I've said before, but I have a picture to prove it now haha. In this room that we were in yesterday it's $3/h during the day and... $6/h at night. There's big flatscreen LCD TV and the karaoke machine has pretty lights (I know, completely useless, but if you like Apple computers you'll appreciate the pretty stuff like completely useless lights). You choose songs by 2 remote control LCD touch screen displays. Both English and Japanese interfaces (and Chinese too I believe... but I've never investigated the chinese button) and best of all... 2 large Bose speakers which pump out gorgeous karaoke sound. Actually the Bose speakers are kinda a pain because you realize how terrible you really are since you can't blame your terrible singing on sound quality hahaha.

Round 1 & Valentines

Round 1 is an arcade kind of place that has all sorts of stuff in it. You pay $15 and you get to stay for 3 hours and do whatever you want. They have a Tennis court, curling, batting cages, pitching practice, minigolf, volleyball, badminton, soccer, bowling, mini bowling, billiards, fishing and basketball for sports. Also there are massage chairs, manga, karaoke, rollerblading, a big arcade you can play as much as you want, a kids area with lots of balls and stuff and one of those electronic "bulls" which is in the background of the picture to the right. It's really cool. Fantastic idea and tonns of fun. For $15 you can't go wrong.

I went there one time with my gf and her brother and a few days ago I went again with her and her friend Kawa. After we played sports for a while we went to the kids area to check it out and were pleasantly suprised. There were 2 different small rooms full of balloons and fans. One had a tonn of small balloons and one had a bunch of giant balloons. The giant balloon room was a lot of fun so we took some pictures in there, as you might have noticed above ^_^. After, we went up a bunch of stairs and took a slide down into the "kids area"... and it was really staticy. I went down a big spiral-ey one first and I could see lightning bolts flying off my shoulders to the slide. It was also fairly noisy. The two girls didn't seem too inclined on going down the slide after that but I managed to convince them to go down the shorter, straight slide. My gf went first with the same result. She touched a metal railing at the bottom and got zapped pretty good haha. Her friend, I think, was a little more cautious about the railing but was overly cautious of the slide. She hugged herself and flew down it like no tomorrow, slamming into a padded wall at the bottom hahaha. The whole area was pretty full of static. We climbed through a little maze-like contraption which had metal bolts in it... 危ない。 My gf got zapped again from the bolts.

And then there were tricylces... It's been a long time since I tricylced, that's for sure. It was a tonn of fun too. We were there at around 11pm or 12pm so there were no kids so we had the whole place to ourselves haha. There was a path around the "kid area" for the trikes so we went around a couple times. It was pretty difficult for me to petal though - I think I'm a little too tall. My gf and her friend had some troubles too but they managed it easier than I, I think. Those are the massage chairs in the background of the picture of my gf and her friend. After we triked for a while we sat down to relax for a few minutes there.

We played some arcade games but didn't have very much time so we decided on a game of mini-bowling before we left. Almost every time my gf wins at bowling but for some reason today just wasn't her day. It was pretty fun though. The whole night was pretty fun. Canada should get a Round 1. I have no idea why it doesn't actually. I bet it would make a tonn of money. I think Canada's problem is they charge too much for everything. If it was cheaper, this stuff would be a lot more popular. Sucks.

For Valentines day my gf and I went to a different arcade and movie theatre and watched 28 weeks later. It was fairly mediocre. Nothing too amazing or fantastic - it was a little too busy for most of the movie. The action never ceases - never lets up - it gets a little tiring after a while. After that we played some coin games. In Japan they're a tonn of fun. In Canada it's a lot more expensive and the return is almost nil so the fun ends quite soon. We spent $20 and got 240 coins and played for 3 or 4 hours. At one point we had more than doubled our original coin count but in the end, of course, we ran out. Then it was off to Gusto. It's kinda like Denny's but a little bit tastier and a little less oily. Still expensive like Dennys but what can you do. Actually it was really cheap in the end... Actually Gusto paid me to eat there haha. I paid for our dinner with ５０００円 but the girl mistook it for １００００円 and gave me change accordingly. I actually wasn't sure myself who was at fault for a while. I also had a １００００円 bill in my wallet and a day or two previous I had 2 of them in my wallet so I had to do a little detective work to figure it out. At the time her mom was waiting for us so we had to hurry out so after we were in the car I started asking questions. I figured out that I, had, indeed, given her ５０００円.. Our dinner was ２７００円 so she gave me ７３００円 change for the ５０００円 I had given her. So in the end she more or less gave me ２３００円 to eat there which is roughly $22CAD. I feel really bad.. their register is going to be pretty off and we were already too far away to go back (it's nowhere near where she lives). Maybe some day we'll go back and buy a lot of food to kinda make up for it... or something.

What makes me happy

In no particular order, here are 10 things that make me happy:

1. My girlfriend
2. My Family
3. Helping people (especially if they don't know I'm helping)
4. Eating
5. Talking to and hanging out with friends
6. Speaking a different language
7. Reading
8. Learning something new
9. Remembering happy memories
10. Snow (pretty, dry snow)

I got this from here, where I go to read when I can find free time. If you have a little spare time, fill this out too ^_^ they're kind of interesting to read.

Also, read my previous post if you haven't already. It's actually new stuff I've written about.

A Winter Wonderland

I've done a lot since coming here and I've almost assuredly forgot some things but I'll try to recap as best I can. I've been trying to take pictures but I keep forgetting my camera or else I'm enjoying myself too much to remember. In any case, I've captured some moments on camera. I hope it will suffice for now.

I'll start off with the weather. It's cold here, as I've mentioned in my last post, but I don't think I put a picture... maybe I did but whatever, here's a picture of near my gf's place. We were walking to the grocery store at the time. There's snow piled everywhere!! It's great. It really makes me want to go jump in the snow like when I was a kid. It's cold but not unbearably cold. Sometimes my nose gets kinda frozen but that's about it. Nothing to complain about =D

Downtown Asahikawa 旭川 is pretty interesting too. I've only been on a couple of the streets but there's a main street meant for walking only. There's walking paths on both sides and the street in the middle is also for walking... does that make sense? Probably not. Actually the picture on the right is a picture of a different street... so maybe forget what I said until a little bit later. It's nice though. Inside this small mall there is a giant statue of the castle from Howl's Moving Castle. In Canada I would never have expected to see this kind of display but in Japan I don't see it as out of place - just cool. Actually the place that it's in is just about deserted. There's 2 restaurants, a place where you can buy bus tickets.. and that's all I've seen haha. So I'm not really sure why they chose here to put this piece. Maybe it's cheaper to keep it here or something. In any case, I'm not complaining. It's cool.

The other day my gf and I went to the Asahiyama Zoo (In Asahikawa). Apparently it's pretty famous in Japan - one of the most famous I think. And for good reason... it was really cool!! They had so many interesting animals I had never actually seen before. Like penguins!! and lots of them too. Some were swimming, some were running around, some were getting ready for the daily "penguin walk". It was really a pretty interesting thing to see. The walk way through the penguins "area" went underground and under the water that they swim in so I took a few pictures from underwater.

Then there was a tiger!! At least I think it's a tiger... If it's not please leave me a message and let me know what it is haha. Well, whatever it was, it was pretty neat to see in person. To be honest it was one of the most boring animals we saw in the zoo. It walked around in circles the entire time we watched it. Hardly interesting. We tried to take a picture with it behind us but it didn't really work out... you can only see a really small part of its back between our shoulders haha. So I won't put that picture on here.

And polar bears!!! Now that is something I thought I would never see. Penguins.. I thought it possible, but not polar bears. They're a lot bigger than I expected they would be.. and a lot tougher looking. There's two polar bears at this zoo and both of them have a lot of scars - one a lot more than the other though. Sadly neither went swimming while I was taking pictures but I still snapped a few good ones. I'll post up one to see.

We went to visit chimpanzees and orangatangs. Here's a picture of Hime saying hello to one of the chimpanzees who came to visit us and the little kid beside her. Don't worry, we let the kid say hello first before we took pictures ^_^ We didn't have very much time so we had to leave soon after that. We're going to visit again sometime. I want to watch the penguin parade. Actually we had planned on watching it but we ended up getting pushed back from the front and we had to wait another 15 minutes for it to start so we gave up since we were on a tight schedule. There's a picture of all the people lined up waiting to watch it. Actually, the reason I took this picture is because the view was nice and there was a giant ferris wheel haha.

After the Zoo we went downtown and found the ice sculptures had been started. There were sooo many sculptures and soo many people working on them. It was on the street I mentioned earlier in this post. All these sculptures are in the middle "walk way" or whatever you might call it on snow pedestals. Some of them are amazingly beautiful. We got downtown at around 4:30 so the sun hadn't gone down and I was able to take 1 picture with the sun up. All the other pictures I took are after the sun went down and so are kind of dark. I'm not really sure but it seemed to be a 1 day type of competition. At 4:30pm most of the sculptures were really starting to shape up and all my pictures around 6pm-7pm were almost complete. I really want to go down there again soon during the day to take some pictures of the finished peices of work =D

And today for lunch we made Takoyaki. I think I mentioned it in a post a long long time ago... But at the time only Kenji was reading my blog I believe. I really like Takoyaki and Kenji was the one who introduced me to it when we went for dinner and drinks together at an Izakaya restaurant on Davie street in Vancouver. So thank you Kenji for introducing me to Takoyaki ^_^ I'll explain what Takoyaki is. Tako is Octopus and Yaki is "fried" so thus the name. Even though there's a lot more too it and the Octopus itself isn't fried at all haha. First you take the Octopus as seen above and cut it up into small peices that would fit inside a 1 inch ball. Then you heat up your Takoyaki plate (like a hot plate but with half spheres) and mix up your Takoyaki mixture. (Now I know these instructions are useless but I want to explain how anyway) Next, pour the mixture into onto the tray, filling all the half sphere things. Add in some green onions, tempura bits and one peice of tako. Wait for the inside of the sphere to heat up and get.. more or less cooked. Then, using an extra long toothpick (forgive me for not knowing this word haha) spin it around so the previously exposed upper side can also cook. Spin spin spin until it's done. One package of this stuff makes a lot of Takoyaki balls... Like 50 or something. Man, is it ever filling. Her mom and dad ate some but they didn't want many. The last batch (the one I'm making in the picture) we gave to Hime's grandparents to enjoy. Actually It's kinda fun to make them but after you get full you don't really have that... drive to continue making them hahaha.

After we ate we decided we needed to take a walk to try to walk off some of the weight we most assuredly put on during lunch. We walked to the shrine near her place. The vew is amazing. This picture is overlooking the area where she lives. I have no idea which is her house but it's probably in there somewhere haha. I didn't take any pictures of the actual shrine itself because I feel it's kind of rude. But I really like this type of gate they have over everything. The style is absolutely wonderful. It's a little disappointing our culture doesn't have this kind of "style". After we left the shrine we took a different route back to her place that walks over the main road in the above picture. It's also pretty but I wanted to the show the snow piles along the side of the road. It's actually quite difficult to walk side by side along this path due to the snow. In some places it's high enough to brush my elbow while I'm walking. I'm not sure when I'll stop enjoying the snow... probably never ^_^ I really like snow, it's so pretty.

Also... my Japanese is not really coming along as well as I had hoped. I'm still not able to speak Japanese. I'm going to have to redouble my efforts... or more than that haha. I'll try to update this blog often but my first priority is going to be learning Japanese.

Ryu and Ming, I hope you guys are having fun in Vancouver. I really miss it (>_<) we're going to have to hang out in the future some time for sure. Thanks again for coming to the airpot with me ^_^ It really meant a lot =D

First Post From Japan

In this post I'm going to talk about what I've done so far and not what's different. There are a lot of things that are different so I'll save that for another day =D

My friends Ming and Ryu saw me off from the Vancouver airport in the morning. They both came down with me at 7:30 to say bye. Ryu was even hung over o_O crazy guy haha. It was really nice of them though. I showed them this neat trick you can do with your hand over your eye and we had a good laugh for quite a while doing that hahaha. I'm not sure if I should put the video up... maybe some other time though =D It was pretty sad saying bye to them though since they'll go to Japan before I go back to Canada. Actually almost all my friends in Vancouver I won't be able to see again for a long time so it's pretty sad. I'm really going to miss Vancouver after I get back to Canada. But I'm going to see my Hime and that's what's important now ^_^

When I arrived in Narita (Tokyo's Airport), I was kinda surpised - it's a lot like Vancouver's airport... Except that everyone spoke Japanese. But then again almost everyone spoke enough english to get by also. Twice I had to ask for help. I needed to transfer to a domestic terminal for my flight to Sapporo but I wasn't sure which sign said "Domestic" so I asked the girl at the information desk and she showed me the way. Then I need to call my gf from the payphone and i do know her number but only when calling from Canada so I tried as many possibilities as I could think of involving the area code and prefix (since I wasn't sure which was which) but nothing seemed to work. So I ended up asking one of the employees that happened to be walking past and he explained how to do it　難しい～。 But in the end it was all good. I bought a couple of things in the little shop they had. I was really hungry and thirsty as well so I bought a can of coffee and a rice ball. Sadly the rice ball I chose was one of the only kinds I don't like... but they didn't have any pictures and I wasn't sure what it said hahaha. I guess I'll have to study some more. While waiting for my plane to depart, they had Sumo wrestling on TV in the terminal so I ended up watching that for about 40 minutes I think. The pictures here are of the Domestic terminal in Narita.

After I arrived in Chitose (Sapporo) I got my luggage, which took forever, then went to meet my gf!! Long time no see. At first it felt so different because it had been almost 3 months since I've seen her but after about 30 minutes or so it was right back to the way it had always been. We had to take the train from Chitose to Sapporo and then again to Asahikawa but it was really neat. She had brought me this super tasty bento and we were both pretty hungry so we ate that (it was really good) and she had also bought some neat chocolate. It was like... rice cake and chocolate? I'm not really sure but it was also really good. And then she gave me a DS!! ありがとう私のお姫様ぁ～ It was for our anniversary. She had been working while I was in Canada so she decided she wanted to spend some money on me =D When we got to Sapporo we left the train station and walked around a little bit downtown. Actually I think Sapporo is a much nicer city than Vancouver. I didn't take any pictures while I was there but I'll be sure to take some next time. It was pretty cold and I was pulling my suitcase around everywhere so after walking a little bit we decided to go back to the train station to wait for the train to Asahikawa (where she lives). Actually inside the trainstation was just as cold as outside... It's really weird. A lot of malls and stuff aren't heated inside... But I'll talk about that in my post of "what's different" some other day. In any case we got on the train to Asahikawa and enjoyed it together. When we got off her brother was waiting to pick us up from the train station. I've never met her brother so I was a little bit nervous but it looked like he was also a little bit nervous hahaha. He's really cool - actually I like everyone in her family. They're all so nice. But anyway, when we got home her mom and dad were already sleeping so she showed me where I'd be sleeping and after some talking we went to bed. Long first day eh? =D

Now the following days I don't remember the exact order of what we did but I'll try to remember in the best order as I can so bear with me ^_^ So far I've done a lot here. At least it seems like a lot to me hehe.

We went out for sushi and ate a tonn of different types of sushi. In Canada we have so many kinds of sushi that they don't have in Japan and vice versa so it was cool seeing what they have here. Some of it is pretty "fishy" (no pun intended) but it's still good. After we finished I was stuffed and wouldn't have minded just relaxing but... We were going to the spa. So I went to a spa with her and her parents and it was really interesting. The spa is seperated male/female so it was just her dad and I and I don't speak Japanese so it was an interesting hour and a half together. We got along pretty well though - no major road blocks. Sign language works well and he knows some english words as well so it was all good. I pretty much followed him wherever he went and did what he did. I probably looked kinda weird to everyone else but what can you do right? I gotta learn some way. The spa was really nice. They had this circular shower that blasts you from every angle when you first come in (to make sure you're clean before you go in the water) and then they had so many pools to choose from as well as a shower area for cleaning your body and a hot sauna and a steamroom. The 4 pools they had were all different temperatures. The biggest one was like... luke warm. Like the same temperature as your body or something? It was my favorite. It wasn't warm and it wasn't cold. When you got in the water it felt the same as outside the water, just you're now sitting in water haha. Then they had a cold pool which was really cold. I'm not sure of the temperature but my body started to feel numb after I was in there for more than a minute or two. And there was a jacuzzi style tub - like a hot tub with jets which was also pretty big. It was right in the middle of the room. And there was another hot water pool which was about the same size as the cold one - it was really hot. It was really fun though. I've never been to a spa before so it was interesting to experience it with her family.

I went to meet Hime's grandparents also. They live in the house next door so it's not very far at all. The first time I went over there to meet them, only her grandmother was home so we talked to her for a couple hours but had to go back to hime's place. The next time her grandfather was home and I got to talk to them both... well, through my gf. They're both really sweet too. Her grandfather told me he was a samurai and had a picture of him with a katana. He told me to come back another day and I could try on the clothing he had worn in the picture and I could see his katana also. So fascinating! I accepted his offer ^_^

Then my gf and I went out together downtown to sing some Karaoke and go to Izakaya to drink to our hearts content. Karaoke is so... fancy here. Everything is "fancy" actually. She used her phone to show her membership card and we got to choose what kinda machine and it was on the 3rd floor! Three floors of karaoke! So interesting haha. Actually in Japan it's incredibly cheap as well. In Vancouver it's usually $20 for an hour but here it was ３４０円 or $3.25 for an hour (I think). I had a coffee and my gf had tea, we sang for 2 hours and our total was $12. The quality of the karaoke machine and the room you get to use is all a lot better also. And there's way more songs to choose from - English included. After that we went to Izakaya. Now, in Japan there is "all you can drink" for a certain price at some Izakaya restaurants so we went to one of those. We paid ９８０円 which is about $9.50 for all you can drink for 90 minutes. I had my new favorite drink 梅酒 (Umeshu - sweet plum wine) on the rocks. It's so good!! I think I had 9 drinks before we had to go. We bought a bunch of food as well and it was all really tasty. After that we walked around Asahikawa for a while then walked over to the spa her parents were at so we could grab a ride home from them instead of taking the bus. We had to sit and wait there for almost an hour in the lobby though but it was well worth it haha. It's cold outside.

We went back to her grandparents house the next day to talk to them and we ended up talking Izakaya. He asked me if I was a strong drinker and I said I was kinda mediocre. Then he asked if I'd like to try some shouchu? I'm not sure how to write it actually. It's kinda like Sake. I said "sure, I'll try it" so he poured me a small glass of it (straight) and it wasn't as bad as I expected it. Actually it was kinda tasty. But it was pretty strong. I drank about half the glass and then he asked me if I'd like to try the kind of souchu that he drinks (he drinks a little bit weaker stuff) so I accepted and he poured me a 2nd full glass. He also poured himself a glass. So now I had 2 glasses of it in front of me. I thought "I'll be okay... maybe a little bit intoxicated but I'll be fine" So I continued drinking the strong one first but he refilled my glass for me when I got just a little over half finished haha. The weaker stuff was a little bit better but almost the same taste... just less of a burn. But I wanted to finish the strong first so I could relax a bit more. But it was really strong. I could feel I was getting a little bit drunk. In the end he said I could keep the bottle of Souchu. He said it was from the most southern part of Okiniwa... actually I can't remember the city he said so I'll have to ask Hime but I was pretty suprised. I thanked him a lot and took it back to her place with me. But he had these really tasty peanuts too! They're Japanese peanuts. Usually peanuts are made in China so they're bigger (like probably all the peanuts you've ever eaten) but these peanuts are a little crunchier and longer and skinnier. Like not so big around. Man were they ever tasty.

Hime and I visited her local library here to study. She wanted to study English and I wanted to study Japanese so we sat in the library for quite a while trying to study. She found it really cold in the library for some reason so I told her to wear my jacket. Actually I was wearing a tshirt so I wasn't really sure why she found it so cold... but then again almost everyone still had their jacket on. It was pretty weird hahaha. Also we visitied a DVD store near her place to look at DVD's and stuff. We ended up going into the game area and they had Wii's for sale!! They actually had Wii's in stock! Actually her father really wanted one but they could never find one so Hime bought him a Wii and a game. I also bought him a game as a thank you present for allowing me to stay here in their house. I got him ぷよぷよ (PuyoPuyo) because he really likes puyopuyo according to my gf. He hasn't had time to play puyopuyo yet but yesterday he tried out the minigame game.. I can't remember the name of it though... maybe はじめってWii or something. It's pretty fun too. In Japan Wii sports doesn't come bundled with the Wii though... even though in Canada it's the same price as in Japan. It's kinda stupid. But whatever. Can't complain ^_^.

Just as an end note I'd like to mention the weather. It's absolutely beautiful. It's cold, yes, but it's really nice here. It seems like it's almost always snowing but snow is so pretty! Right now it's -13 so it's kinda cold but what can you do, right? I have a warm jacket so it's all good =D

Also I've probably forgotton some stuff but I plan on writing it on here as I remember. Hopefully I'll have more time from now on to write what I've been doing. And I'll try to take some more pictures too. I think this post is long enough as it is though hahaha ^_^

20th is When I Leave

It's confirmed. I fly out on the 20th. This morning I woke up, went and picked up my passport and went straight to buy my ticket. I'll be leaving Canada on January the 20th and comin' back home on the 13th of April. I'm pretty excited =D I can't even imagine what it'll be like. Right now it feels like it's all a dream - like I'm not actually going there. It's a pretty amazing feeling. My gf has been at work all day so I haven't been able to share the excitement yet but I think she'll finish soon ^_^

Here's some numbers:

• The passport took me about 2 weeks to get. I applied in person and picked it up in person. It cost me $97 I believe (with the $10 pickup charge).
• The plane ticket cost me $1057 (incl. tax) for a round trip flying economy on JAL Airlines. It's a flight to Sapporo (In Hokkaido - Northern Japan) so I'll transfer in Narita to Chitose.
• Other than that.. no numbers haha. Once I'm in Japan I might be able to give a little more insight but that's it for now.

I'll be moving out of my apartment before I fly off to Japan. I'm moving back home to Penticton so I can save more money and live with my family before permanently moving to Japan later in 2008. I'm kinda sad to say bye to my friends here in Vancouver but well, we'll only be a flight away ^_^ I'm not sure if anybody reads my friend's blogs I've linked on the right (at the moment only 2 update) but Bodhi is who will be moving in. She's mentioned it in her blog too but I thought I'd point that out. She has an interesting blog so go read it if you're looking for more reading material. If you're studying English, also go read it as she uses a lot of interesting grammatical styles that you probably won't find very often.

I'm going to Japan!!

A Man From Earth

A Man From Earth is a good movie. I watched it because... well mainly because I was bored. The 2nd reason was because it sounded interesting. More-so than most movies that have come out recently. The 3rd reason was because it's free to watch on certain websites. Now, I'm not condoning being a pirate however, on this site you don't actually have to download anything. It's great!! If you can find a movie hosted on Stage6 or S6 for short, you're laughin'. It's DVD quality and streams really fast. Wonderful website - use it while you can. (also the poster for the movie has no relevance to the actual movie itself... so don't be fooled - it's completely different haha)

ANYWAY the movie was really good. It's about this guy who's been around for 14,000 thousand years (or so he claims) and suddenly he just decides to tell his friends about it before he leaves town. The whole movie is situated in his living room (yes I know it sounds boring but bear with me) while he tells his story. His friends are all highly intellectual colleagues of differing professions. It's really well written, filmed and told. Despite it never changing location, it went by quicker than most movies - I was upset it was over so soon. But don't let the drab description I've given it dissuade you from watching it - go watch it because I said it's good. That is... if you like movies that make you think.

Skiing at Apex

Today my dad, his friend Chris, my sister and I all went up to Apex Ski Resort to go skiing. Well my sister and I were going skiing and my dad and his friend were going to go skating and play some hockey at the rink they have there. The forecast was for snow, moderate winds, and about -5 degrees... It ended up being quite different.

We arrived at about 10 and it was already snowing quite heavily and the wind was blowing pretty hard at 1500m (base elevation). I couldn't imagine what it would be like up the Quick Draw (that lead to the top of the mountain). But after getting some equipment and our passes that's where we were headed. One of the people working at Apex told us that if the winds hit 90km/h at the summit the Quad (Stock) chair would be closed. Meaning more than half the runs would be inaccessible. So we went fast haha.

We got on the chair and started riding it up and damn it was windy. It was really snowing hard and the wind wasn't helping it. My sister and I took cover under our jackets and kept our goggles on the entire time (except when we took pictures). Cold cold. Up at 2100m it was really cold and really windy... and really snowy too! I didn't even bother taking pictures because there was too much snow. The picture of me there is about 1/4 of the way down the mountain on the side that wasn't as windy haha. It was really fun though. After we went down the mountain once we went up the Triple Chair (Stock Chair) which is about 3/4 of the way up. It was also pretty windy but what can you do right? We went down a couple times then packed it in for lunch.

We went to the Apex Mountain Saloon if my memory serves me correctly and had a bite to eat at the restaurant. We took some pictures before ordering anything. My sisters face was just about frozen and mine had condensation all over it hahaha. Anyway, my sister ended up getting poutine and I had the chicken fingers. They were a little on the dry side but still pretty tasty. And anyway, who am I to complain - I'm hungry. The food did take quite a long time to arrive so we didn't tip very much ^_^. Time to head back to the mountain.

After we at lunch we discovered that the Quad had been closed. I guess the winds were above 90km/h now at the summit. Lame -_-' So we continued down to the Triple chair to get a couple more runs in. Overall it was a pretty good day. I haven't been skiing in soo long but it was really fun. I didn't even fall down! Then again we didn't do any black diamonds. BUT Apex blue's are pretty hard too - moguls and stuff.

I took some pictures of the scenery on the way home but none turned out all that well. It was cloudy, we were moving and I'm not a photographer haha. So because of that I'll just put this on picture here. Don't want to bombard you with crappy attempts at scenery photography.

On a side note, I watched I Am Legend last night with my brother. It was a pretty good movie but definitely nothing spectacular. I was really surprised at the ending. I won't spoil anything except the fact that there is almost no falling action. Really weird... There was the climax and then about 30 seconds more of the movie. When it ended my first thought was "that's it?". It doesn't leave it hanging for a sequel.. it just sorta ends haha. It's alright though. I like the idea and I like how it was made.. most of it.

Polar Bear Swim

I'm not sure who's familiar with a "polar bear swim" so I'll explain it. It's when crazy people run into freezing water in the winter to celebrate New Years. At least that's the definition for Penticton. Other cities might do it differently... but the 'crazy' part still stands haha. This new years afternoon my mom and I went down to watch this strange event. This is the first time it's been hosted in Penticton (It's our centennial year this year). There was quite a big turn out too! Usually it's in Summerland which is about 20 minutes out of town so it isn't so busy. This year there was a lot of people participating and a lot of people that just came down to watch.

The weather was pretty good - it wasn't windy. It wasn't snowing either though which is also good. But it was kinda cold. I think it was probably -2 or something near it. Also, as you can see on the left, the shore was completely frozen. That's a picture of some ice some of the kids that were there broke off before it started. The lake wasn't totally frozen obviously (only a very small part of it was) - but that's enough to keep me from going in haha.

Here's a shot of a bunch of the people getting ready to go in. If you look at the full size picture you might be able to see some people standing in the snow in their bare feet! (refer to my crazy statement) I was really surprised to see so many young girls going in - they'd be the last people I'd expect to go swimming in freezing water. There were also a lot of people in strange costumes too. There's a guy with a blue spiky plastic wig on, some sort of ladybug(?), a santa, some girl who just wanted to look eccentric, a guy in a Hawaiian t-shirt and some others I can't remember that aren't in the photos. Almost all the young girls in the picture were in an out of the water in just a couple seconds (before all the people were even in the water). There's a video of it at the end of this post if you want to check it out.

Also!! When I went to Kelowna a few days ago I found a place I thought was "Bon Appétit" but it was "Bone Appétit" I was a little bit disappointed but It was still interesting enough to take a picture. The reason I found it interesting was because Sam Soon from "My name is Kim Sam Soon" worked at a place called "Bon Appétit" so I wanted a picture of it. So here it is - even if it's not really what it was supposed to be haha.

And here's that video of the Polar bear swim I was talking about. I hope you enjoy it!