So, as you all should know, I went to Kyoto.  It was fabulous.  It is
a very beautiful place, and was especially beautiful this time of
year.  The Japanese Maples leaves are anywhere from red dabbed with
orange to bright red, to a dark crimson.  A lot of people were taking
pictures with really big lenses all zoomed in on what I can only
assume is the perfect specimen of a leaf.  To me, though, what made it
especially beautiful were the other trees.  They have a tree whose
leaves become really bright and yellow.  And another tree with
orangish leaves.  Then, there are trees that stay green.  When looking
at all together, it is very beatiful.  My favorite picture I took, is
of a yellow tree next to the red Japanese maple.  Unlike most people,
I did not look at a map the whole time I was there, so unfortunately I
can`t give you names of the temples and other places I visited, but I
will give you an idea of what I did.  I used only my intuition and
common sense to get around, so I walked north out of the train station
because I could see a temple, but it was not that interesting and
there were lots and lots of people, so I found the nearest nature,
east, and headed that direction.  Here I saw a big temple spire rising
into the air, so I went that direction, but I strayed past and found
something which no Japanese person I`ve talked to (ie none of my
students or my few Japanese friends), which was a giant buddha.  There
is one in Nara, so when I show my students the picture, they all think
I went to Nara and I tell them, No, Kyoto.  This gets a lot of
EEEEEEEEEEEE.  SOOOOOOOO.  And the rare rearry.  I have to digress a
little bit here.  One of the strangest things about the students at my
branch is that only the best once say rearry.  We have two students
who are near native ability, except they always say rearry.  They are
able to say available, actually, they can talk about honing knifes,
the effects of global warming, making complex decisions, but when it
comes to really, nope.  It is their personal bane.  A lot of our
really bad students can say really.  It`s just strange.  But back to
Kyoto.  This buddha is actually part of a war memorial from WWII.  And
is has a room that honors the Unknown Soldier and all the unknown
soldiers.  In addition to this it has this giant card catalog with the
names of all the allied soldiers that died on Japanese soil.  There is
also like a catacomb, which must be for war veterans or something.  I
didn`t go in, because I was unsure if I was allowed to or not.  I was
one of the only people there, so it was tough to tell what you could
and couldn`t do.  I almost when through the catalog, but thought it`s
better to do nothing and not get in trouble.  Behind this place, there
was an old samurai grave.  It was really cool and I took a lot of
pictures of shrines and graves.  You`re technically not supposed to,
but Japanese people do, so I do too.  From here, I ate lunch.  I had
unagi to chotto soba, which is Eel over rice with a little bit of Soba
noodles.  It was actually pretty good.  It reminded me of catfish, but
without the dirty flavor.  I also ordered in full Japanese and knew
what I was ordering, so I was pretty proud of myself.  I went to a
very famous temple from here, but it was not so great.  There were so
many people there, it was just ridiculous.  So I left it to them.
Next I wandered until I found a street no one was going down and
walked towards the trees.  On my way, I saw some women dressed in the
full traditional japanese garb, so I stopped and asked if I could take
their picture.  Which was pretty funny to me, but they let me do it.
This was also in Japanese, so I was pretty happy I pulled it off.
Unfortunately one of them was in too much sunlight, but I didn`t know
how to ask if she could move, so I cut my losses and just took the
picture.  At the end of this path less traveled, there was a giant
staircase that led to I have no idea where.  So I decided whatevers at
the top should be pretty cool, so I started up.  There were two
Japanese women also on their way, but much older, so they had to keep
stopping for a breather.  At the top was another staircase just as
tall as the first.  But to keep their spirits up, I yelled back,
`Gambate, kire des,` which means `try hard, it`s beautiful.`  Then
went up the next set.  All there was at the top was just a little
shrine.  I took a picture.  The view should have been beautiful, but
there was so much shrubbery and so many trees that you couldn`t see
anything.  And all the trees were evergreens, so it was kind of
worthless, but good excercise.  My next stop, though, was a buddhist
temple.  This was cool, because all the monks were out sweeping up the
leaves and cleaning.  Here, the trees were all perfect, I mean the
scenery was fantastic and with the monks all sweeping, colors were
flying everywhere.  I stopped in the temple and on the advice of my
students threw a 500 yen coin in and made a wish.  So it was pretty
fun.  By this time it was getting dark, so I decided to take the train
home and stopped in Osaka for dinner, where I had Italian food and
scotch.  I was on vacation, so I treated myself.  For an appetizer I
had caper berries, which I`ve never had before.  They were really
good.  Then Hakkaido scallops in butter with bread for the main
course.  These weren`t that great.  I think they are bay scallops, not
sea scallops.  All in all it was a great day though.  And since it was
my only day off for the week, I`m really glad I went out and did
something.  Tomorrow I sign up for free Japanese classes and am going
to try to go to Himeji.  The castle there I think is the biggest
wooded structure in the world or something like that, and I`ve heard
many good things.  It is also cheap to go to, because it is past my
work, so my train card will pay for about half my fair.  Classes this
week have been great, especially the last two days.  Yesterday I had
two or three of the worst students and actually got them to learn
something and not only that, but satisfy the lesson tasks.  And today
I had a few really good students, but I finally got them one on one,
so I was able to push them a lot more and work on the areas that they
need to improve.  It feels good when a student actually learns.  And I
had a student for the first time today in an informal, no lesson based
format, who was so interesting.  She`s a writer that reviews sci-fi
and she`s interested in ancient history.  She went to mexico to
research Aztec society, so she can write an article or a book.  She
was very cool.  Other than that, I have luckily managed to avoid
karaoke until next monday, but then will have to succomb.  I`ve been
loaning and borrowing a few cds with some japanese friends and found a
pretty good old school band, the BBQ Chickens.  They are like 80`s
Japanese Skate punk.  The guitar player is now in a US band called
Hi-Standard on Fat Records, for those of you who will be familiar and
cover California Dreamin`.  Other than that, I met quite a few people
this week, which is good, but as a side effect have spent a lot more
money than I wanted to, so yesterday and again tonight I`m hitting the
books to work on Japanese.  I learned some things from going out, but
have also learned a lot of dirty Japanese that I`ll never use, so its
hit and miss.  One thing that is frustrating learning Japanese, and
this is in no way Japanese peoples fault no matter how I make it
sound, they are just trying to be helpful is the mixed help you get.
For example, I learned how to say very.  Totemo.  So a lot of the time
if the Japanese staff at work does something good, like maybe they say
some English that they are unsure of, we say Segoi -- good.  So, one
of the staff said something pretty complex and I said totemo segoi.
Very good.  And she says, no, no, no Totemo is Kantoben (Tokyo area
Japanese) this is kansai.  Mecha, kansaiben.  Ahhhhh, mecha segio.  So
then later, with other Japanese people, I say mecha segio (trying to
use my new vocab).  No, no, no.  Instead of mecha segio, say segai.
Osakaben.  It means great.  Cool, now I have even more new vocab.  So,
then with other japanese friends, segai.  No, no, no, say totemo
segoi.  AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.  First of all, instead of
learning more things to say, I`m stuck in this rut of saying the same
thing eighty different ways and everytime I use it someone tells me to
use it another way.  It`s very frustrating, but they are just trying
to help.  This is why I can`t wait to have a teacher.  One person to
whom I can refer all questions and everyone else can tell me what they
want.  I am a little paranoid though, because it`s all volunteers and
I`ve heard from some of the other teachers that you can be stuck with
some old Japanese lady that teaches you very formal Japanese only.  I
don`t really want super formal, I like the slang, just not too much.
I want definate ways to speak and thats it.  Maybe when I get better
I`ll learn how to fine tune and decide when to use totemo segoi, mecha
segoi, and segai.  I am already making very rudimentary jokes in
Japanese though.  But they are very basic.  Like one of my friends
taught me all the female and male body parts, which may be useful down
the road, but is not really helpful now, except for humor.  So when
people ask me if what I do, I say in Japanese I am a Japanese teacher.
 And then I can tell them to sit.  Then I say repeat after me.  Then
body parts.  Its crude, but about the best I can do.  This is always
at bars and its bar humor and hasn`t failed to get a laugh.  It`s also
fun to say I`m america, where are you from, canada, or australia,
because a lot of Japanese people assume I`m Australian, or from New
Zealand, or Canada, and almost never America.  That`s about all I got
for now.  Other than that, I am going to Thailand for New Years
holiday to visit Pat.  So hopefully I should have fun.  And I`ve
gotten in contact with Shannon, so I will probably visit him at some
point, but he lives up near Tokyo, so this will wait until I have a
few days off in a row or can shift swap so that I have three days off.

Dan