lately

hey you.

I haven't got any specific awesome trip or event to write about, but its been a while and you deserve to be filled in.

Spring is here, the rivers rushing and the waterfall outside my bedroom is louder than ever, things are green and i should expect every tree in the park outside my window to be bright pink with cherry blossoms by about next week, this is something the japanese really really love, the rest of Japan already had their blossoms a long time ago though, ha.

oh hey I'm going camping! for three days, me my favourite rotarian and the two australians will be roughing it, fly fishing and bobber fishing on the way up from sapporo to wakkanai! the highest most northern peninsula in Japan and the closest to Russia you can get! It will be cold up there, there will be nothing there but bears and mountains! I'm very excited to see something new, and to do something adventurous. I tell people I'm going to wakkanai and they say "why? youre crazy." but then again they say that to most of my ideas!

Oh, and last weekend i went out to Yuni, one of my australians towns, his host family is so nice and they are caterers and he is very lucky to have such good food and good people and a small friendly community. We did some serious exploring there, that was an adventure too.




and before that weekend i had yet another adventure, ski season was over, but we drove farther north where you could still ski and had a great day of spring skiing, we took the chairlift to the top, and then for the hell of it hiked another couple hundred vertical metres to the actual summit, the view was fantastic and it was cool because the kid i had taught to ski was with me and he was good enough to go up there and get down just fine, it was a great end to a great season.



we have a new Australian-Japanese kid at school, and a new sri lankan girl as well. My friends from class have a band and their show impressed me, I will be going to an exchange student confrence and doing a sleepover in some random japanese families house in the host town, its to get the townsfolk exposed to foreigners or something, i dunno probably a speech involved.

3 more months guys!

north korea launches, alex goes to yuni, yuni comes to alex.

hello faithful readers,



well, as I'm sure at least some of you know, North Korea launched a multi-staged rocket over my head today.

North Korea said several weeks ago they planned to launch a satellite for their space program, and in 1998 they used a similar story to test their ability to launch a nuke, so people suspected a similar thing this time naturally. Japan also claimed it would shoot down whatever was launched regardless of what was inside. So I and every other exchange student and every other person who cares about political stability in Asia was living for several weeks with the small possibility of impending nuclear death, or even worse, having to go home because of political instability. One friend actually did go home, but he's rich enough to go home for a stint and come back.




It was an interesting time to be in Japan, all though not the funnest. My host family laughed at me for being scared and told me this kind of thing comes form north Korea about once a year, but I talked in depth with people who were very worried. so there was a satellite in the rocket, not a nuke to be tested, everything's gravy, but it still shows how well, fast and far N Korea can launch something like that, and that's what they wanted to show off, personally I think a space program can wait until you feed your countries starving masses. In fact I think space programs should be international.
, but we won't get into that. All I can say I'm glad its over.

Here's an article from today, sorry I never told anyone, especially you mum I didn't want you to woooorry,


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30035197/page/2/



On a lighter note, last weekend Me and and the Australian, went to Yuni, a small farming town like 2 hours out of Sapporo by train, Yuni is where the other Australian lives and our Japanese friend who will go to Australia on our program after I go home. We had a really fun time, he said we were definitely the most foreigners that had been in Yuni at one time, ever. It was a nice change from the city in terms of atmosphere and scenery, but also in terms of people, people all new the Australian so they weren't so terrified of us and very interested and excited to talk to us, especially when they found I could speak Japanese. It was really cool to see life on a farm, and live on a farmhouse, and stay out late in the wilderness.

Then yesterday and today, the Australian from Yuni came to my house overnight, the train ride is beautiful but expensive enough that he can't come into the city that often and wanted to make the most of his time so he showed up early in the morning and came to the rotary meeting with me, where I gave a speech about him and my trip to his town, which I made up on the spot.

We spent the day on what Australian aboriginals call "walk about" which is where you walk about and don't have any particular place you're going. It is traditionally done as a manhood rights thing in ancient aboriginal tribes, but It can also be done by international exchange students in Downtown Sapporo. The results were as follows; furthering the clarity of the map of this city that is burned behind my eyelids, finding and abandoned restaurant in the middle of the city, using stealth to get on the rooftops of several buildings for city skyline viewing, mountain viewing, sunset viewing and the like, all very cool things I've been wanting to do but never had a willing partner before. This is a great place for urban exploration, but you didn't hear it from me.

I'll put a few pictures up, please excuse my spring break beard.












Here's on from my balcony outside my bedroom, the view is this good now, but you should see it in summer or in autumn, I've seen both,