A particularly large amount of ash flew over the Osumi peninsula this morning. The cloud followed me from Kanoya to my school in Nejime, leaving my car nicely coated in gray.

Slowly creeping over the apartment.

Looking south.

Mos Burger’s bright red a-frame roof, soon to be less bright red.
A JSDF plane flies into the thick of it. [...]

Despite not having classes, today ended up being quite busy. The morning started out with three letters in my mailbox at school:

In case you are curious, the numbers on the outside are chosen by students (and teachers!) so they do not have to put their name. When I reply, I write their number on a [...]

Sakurajima erupting under the waxing gibbous moonlight.

We were greeted with the same hail-stone pelting of ash to and from the Sakurajima Ferry yesterday. Driving through it was quite an experience. The cloud blocked out both Sun and Moon, swirling around passing cars and headlights. The Black God continues breathing.

Menko, めんこ, is a game very similar to Pogs (admit it, you owned some pogs). The cards (also called Menko) are made from thick cardboard and were originally found inside packs of cigarettes and candy. The objective of the game is to flip your opponent’s card over by tossing down one of your own. If [...]

This morning I woke up to see around 6cm of snow outside my kitchen window. I couldn’t believe it actually snowed here.

Sure enough, there it was covering the base of Mt. Ontake right outside my kitchen window.

Finally, wiping snow off of my car instead of ash. A nice change of pace… it almost feels like [...]

My co-workers told me it was a rare site to see snow on Kaimondake. This was taken around 7:30AM on the way to Nejime. When I looked out of the window at school around 9, the white peak had disappeared.

I can think of no more fitting reception upon my return to Kagoshima than a massive plume of ash from Sakurajima. Here you can see the cloud being split by the Takakuma mountain range. This was the view from my kitchen window just after the taxi dropped me off at my apartment.

A deceptively gentle looking [...]

Currently writing from an Internet Cafe in Nagoya where I will spend the night. If I get H1N1, it won’t be from any of my classrooms,  co-workers or students, but rather here in this cracked, fake leather recliner.
The trip thus far:
12/25： Kagoshima to Haneda, overnight in Kawasaki at Takashi’s place.
12/26: Used camera shop tour around [...]

My new bowling ball. 15lbs with a pretty sharp hook on paper, though the alley drilled a balance hole that really mellowed it out… I wasn’t getting a lot of movement out of it, but I think it was due to the lane conditions.
Watch out, Kasonohara Bowl. I’m joining the 2010 tournaments.

A peek at my first Christmas in Japan:
Dec 24th: Thanks to my family for the thoughtful gifts and decorations, and Chris for the surprise package of Big League Chew®, Jaw-Busters®, Mass-Effect for 360, and yet another charming caricature of me.

Dec 23rd: Dinner with Miyuki and Kosuke. Miyuki brought these chicken legs which looked difficult to [...]

That’s the artist’s rendition of me in the corner. If my hair only looked that cool in real life…

3D!

This was a great way to start my day.

This was a particularly active day for Sakurajima. I first noticed the a massive cloud of ash being redirected south-east as I drove to work around 7:30.

An ominous cloud approaches.

In this shot, you can really appreciate the distance this stuff travels and the volume that is produced…

The city was blanketed in ash nearly all day [...]

Hello!
Sorry for the overwhemling gap between posts. Writing in my journal AND on this site during the trip proved to be too time consuming. I had a few drafts, but nothing worthy of a full post. I will be going back through day-by-day and recounting all of the steamy and scandalous events of the past [...]