Just in case you're worried by the title, no I didn't get Herpes, it's
just a funny side note for part of my story.

Lately I've been working a lot so I haven't had much time for stuff,
but heres a few things I've done recently.

First, me and my roommate went to Ueno Iga.  This is one of the famous
Ninja towns in Japan and Ninja from there became famous for doing all
kinds of work for the government, in addition to being slaughtered by
the government.  We had to be like Ninja to find the town.  We read
that you could take a bus from Umeda, the main stopping point in Osaka
for going anywhere.  So we went to the bus  depot in Umeda, but they
said we had to catch a different bus, a ninja bus, so we walked to
this new place and there was just a bus stop on the street.  This was
our bus.  When it came it had Ninja painted on it (I'm not making this
up, it really was a ninja bus).  We didn't buy tickets, we just paid
when we left.  It was like a two hour straight drive, but me and my
roommate were the only ones on the bus.  I fell asleep and woke up in
the middle of nowhere.  It was really odd.  The woods were just like
the woods in all the ninja movies and cartoons, though, no branches
just wood going up and then greenery at the top, it was really cool.
In Iga we went to the House of Ninja.  First we got to watch a demo by
ninjas of ninja techniques.  It was really cool, it was kind of meant
to be a joke,  they did some shuriken throwing, sword fighting, and
fighting with other stuff, it was pretty cool.  They really overacted
and made it very funny.  Then we went to the ninja castle, which was
just so so and then the ninja house, which was really cool, it had
trap doors and floors and all sorts of secret ninja stuff for
fighting.  It was really cool.  After this we had dinner at a ninja
restaurant.  I had their specialty which was ninja chirazushi.
Chirazushi is a kind of sushi where there is a lot of mixed stuff over
rice, like this one had shitake mushroom, ginger, unagi, anago, and
some other stuff, but it was served upside down with seaweed covering
the rice to make a ninja face and then you turn it over to reveal the
secret ninja food, it was really cool.  This restaurant was run by a
husband and wife who are really into rock'n'roll and elvis presley.
So the husband has two harleys and a 57 ford.  He also has a record
collection of over 4000 records, which they took us upstairs to see,
it was really cool.  We also met an old man that has a party once a
year with people from all over the world, so he invited us to that in
September, so I might head back to Iga.  Small towns in Japan are
really cool, because people are much less reserved, they are used to
stopping and chatting.  I guess it's like that anywhere in the world
though, you just see too many people in a city to stop and talk.

The next day we hiked from Kobe to Arima (which is famous for hot
springs).  This was a pretty cool hike, but it took like 7 hours.  But
we did the red onsen, I think Japanese call it gold.  It was really
cool.  It made my whole body tingle, because it is full of Iron and
Salt, so you can feel everything being pulled and pushed into your
cells.  I probably also lost about two pounds in sweat, but it was
really fun.  I want to go back to Arima like once a month, because it
felt so good.  The next day I felt just overall good.

I also went to this place in Osaka called spa world, which is supposed
to be dangerous and dirty and you can get herpes from the water
apparently, but they have this really big waterslide, this is inside
of course, that drops you out onto a cone with a hole in the bottom,
like those old charity coin things and you go around and around and
then drop in the water.  Unfortunately when I went the pool was closed
so we just had to leave, but I got free tickets for next time.  So
instead I went to a party and restaurant area in Osaka and found a
cool burger place with microbrews from american, so I was able to have
a good beer at a reasonable price for maybe one of the first times
since I've been in Japan.  Japanese beer isn't bad it's just all the
same and all bland and none of it is bitter at all.  They just don't
understand beer.

Other than that, work has been usual.  Although Nova is in the news
again in a bad way.  They were ordered by the something or other
department to suspend advertising and are very limited about their new
contracts.  You can look it up on the internet.  Type in NOVA japan
and you'll find out all about it.  What this means for me is nothing
really except when I go to renew my contract, I'll get almost no
raise, but I may just use it to get a longer visa and find another
job, who knows.

That's about it, sorry for the long delay in e-mailing.  I've just
been lazy I guess.