Our phone has chickens

I kid you not. One of the phones in the teachers' office here occasionally cries out (or crows? caws? Cock-a-doodle-dos? I'm not really sure how to describe it) with a variety of animalistic noises that amount to one of the funniest mechanical failures I have seen in years. I've heard everything from a dull purr to a flat out rooster call, and I honestly wouldn't be shocked at this point if it teaches itself to roar like a lion.

Things have been...well, not dull around here recently, not exactly. I think “scattered” might be a word for it. I've had a number of small events and occurrences that strike me as worthy of mention at the time, but I have the short-term memory of a goldfish, so often I...hey, a keyboard! Where'd that come from...?

I've been terrible about updating this thing recently, and I know it. Every time I sit down and try to write, something somewhere somehow happens. It also doesn't help that this site is no longer accessible from work, thank you new site blocker. Sure, I can write entries in a word doc and post them from home later, but generating ideas is only made more difficult when I can't see what I've previously written.

So, what has happened in my life recently that matters? I last wrote about graduation, and I'm sad to see my sannensei gone, particularly since all the smart ones are now going to high school in neighboring cities, so pretty much no chance of me running into them. After graduation came spring break, and my first visit from home. Melissa and I bummed around this area for a bit, went to a lot of hot springs (this area is known for them) and then traveled south, passing through one of the more beautiful areas of Japan I've been to so far. Yes, here comes the photo album:

Here you are seeing Dewa Sanzan, three mountains sacred to Japan's Shinto faith. Well, you're not so much seeing the mountains per se, since the amount of snow remaining on the ground made two of them inaccessible, but the third one is a bit more tame, involving a walk through the forest and then a mere 2,446 steps to the summit. We completed that hike in a lazy, meandering two or three hours, though it supposedly only takes an hour if you don't dawdle. But why ever would we want to do that?

Damn hippie liberals...

I, too, long for the day when I might smoke a clean and tender heart. Wait, what??!

The blooming of sakura (cherry blossoms) in Japan has moved way beyond national pastime to something more like "frenzied obsession." Every year their blooming is calculated to the day in each region, and Japanese crowd the parks in hordes to stare, marvel, socialize, and often times drink themselves into hopeless oblivion. It's all in the name of living in harmony with nature, though, so who's to complain?

Now, don't get me wrong, they are pretty and all...but to me (and, I suspect, the majority of foreign guys here) it's really just an excuse to get stark raving drunk and flirt with Japanese women.

And back up north, where there is still tons of snow on the ground. On a little nature sojourn near the School in the Sky, a few of my elementary students discovered vines hanging from some of the trees. The vines were rather dead, but still strong enough to support them...your mileage may vary if you are not a 60 lb. Japanese child, though (see below).

Having experienced the beginning of a new school year, I now actually have quite a bit more to write about, but I'm going to leave that to the next post (which won't take a month to get written, I promise!). More important to get this one out there for now, so people stop bugging me about it.