What Is An Expat?

Well, we’ve made it back and are enjoying being at work again. If it wasn’t for being able to come back to work, vacation could go on forever! I took approximately 1419 pictures before the “why do you exist?” deletions started occurring. I haven’t had the chance to get through too many of them yet, but the upside is that most of my notes were actually written out instead of being notes, so a possibility exists that I may actually generate a trip report out of this. (We’ll see. )

We had a great time but should have taken a few more days. Several places cropped up where we thought “hey, we’d really like to see that” but were unable to due to lack of time. We ran in to several old friends and Uzbeks, some of whom were both. We made several new friends as well, which is always nice. Japan was very polite and friendly overall and quite a nice trip, which I highly recommend to anyone who can make it. It was much easier to get around than we had expected, though there were a few small snags here and there, but none were very bad.

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Today, as Day of the Ninja, is your opportunity to experience a day full of ninjocity. It’s too bad we couldn’t have still been in Japan on this day, but them’s the breaks I guess. While I don’t expect to see too many men in black running around here, you can participate to the fullest extent of your nonja (non-ninja) ability by taking a look at the below links:

From Day of the Ninja.com:

Check out these Day of the Ninja Links:

The Big Four

1. Official page - http://www.dayoftheninja.com. This is the page to send all your nonja-friends to so they can learn how to be ninja (for a day).
2. Day of the Ninja store - http://www.cafepress.com/ninjaburger1/4067516. Purchase official Day of the Ninja merchandise.
3. Ask a Ninja event planning wiki - http://askaninja.wiki-site.com. Use this page to plan events and, later, to post photos of those events.
4. Ask a Ninja vlog - http://askaninja.com/node/2349. Learn about the true origin of the Day of the Ninja.

Also:

Step 1: Become a ninja:

Step 2: Take the Ninja Quiz:
http://quizilla.com/users/aeonite/quizzes/Are_You_a_Ninja

I heartily recommend subscribing to the feed over at Ask A Ninja. Every week or two they come out with another Ask A Ninja video and they are very entertaining and done with a lot of style and creativity.

Don’t let the Pirates have all the fun!

HOLD THE PRESSES!

We just got back from Japan and I saw a ninja! He was trying to be clever and be a secret ninja, but as he turned away I caught him!

Now, on the other hand, later in Himeji we’d see a few more obvious ninjas. It was a terrible shame we couldn’t catch them on video sneak-walking through the crosswalk, that was awesome!

These guys really made my day. I look forward to killing them soon!

(except they’re in Japan and I am not anymore, so they’re safe for now.)

(as far as THEY know, that is…)

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I did something silly and disabled a crucial plugin, disabling the site for a few days. I have fixed it now, and thankfully it was something simple that occurred to me fairly quickly. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Speaking of inconvenient, I am having trouble with these Japanese keyboards. Not everything is quite where it should be, though it is close…

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This is for our two new great friends, Tsuji and Masa!

Guli wanted to stop at a particular bar / restaurant type place to have sushi for her birthday.  We went in, climbed upstairs, and sat down at the bar to Japanese menus.  Uska (?) gave us an English translation and recommended an item.  The guys at the end of the bar noticed we weren’t from around town and said hello.  One of the guys, Masa, had lived and worked in the states for 5 years and Tsuji had been there several times on business.  Tsuji really wanted to show us some of Japan in a way that we might not ordinarily see.  He’d been well treated in the US and wanted to return the favor to some other foreign travellers.  You could see in his eye that it truly came from his heart.  Sometimes you can worry someone is going to take advantage but they seemed very on the level.  Anyway, why wouldn’t you trust these guys?

We went out to this out of the way, tucked in down the street type place that was small but very inviting.  I’m not ordinarily a fan of anything uncooked but this place was truly incredible.  We were treated as honored guests and had great food and wonderful shochu (? - can’t vouch for a spelling there ) and great conversation, some of which was obvious to all parties involved, while most of it went through Masa the translator.

Well, it’s late and the full story must wait, but I really wanted to give Tsuji and Masa a shout out because they treated us grandly and we can’t say enough good things about them.  It truly was a wonderful evening and a special birthday for Guli that we will never forget.  And since they wanted us to go on our travels beleiving Tokyo to be better than Kyoto, I’m going to say that Kyoto is going to have a heck of an act to follow!

Tokyo is better than Kyoto!

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Well, it’s time to be off again! In a few hours we’ll go wheels up on our next vacation plans. The destination (I guess the title was kind of a spoiler, huh?) will be Japan. We’ll be based in Tokyo for a few days, seeing the town and surrounding areas, then head to see Mt. Fuji. From there we’ll move on down to Kyoto and use that as our hub for a few days, checking that area out as well as passing through Hiroshima. We might be slightly too late for the turning of the autumn leaves, but maybe we can still catch it photogenically. It’s great to be able to travel.

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