good grip

kindergarten school bus

in a totally unrelated matter, i was asked to hold a discussion with elementary school six graders on the sub-prime loan crisis in america. usually i am asked to come talk about american culture. so it was fun to talk about something else a little bit more in detail.

featuring teddy pendegrass, baby

taken by john, not me, the picture

john took this picture, i believe it was in tokyo last spring. john is really good about giving out pictures as gifts. i have a whole summer vacation albumn that john gave to me a while back. thanks john. if you havent seen john's site, you should. oh and extra special bonus for the ladies and for some of the men out there, there is a revealing picture of me on there, for you to enjoy.

and i am getting extra excited about john coming down to the 7-5-8 here in a few weeks time. hopefully i will have a new bed or couch for john to crash on as well. i am breaking down and throwing some old stuff away out of my apartment. throwing things away like couches or desks is a little bit more tricky here. you cant just put it out on the curb. you have to call up the trash company, tell them you want to throw away something, you give them the measurements, then they give you a code. you then take that code to the nearest 7-11, Circle K, Mini Stop, Daily Yamazaki, or Family Mart, then you pay the amount given to you. in my case, around 15 dollars. then you have to put the tag they give you on your crap, then you place it outside in the specific place and on the specific day they tell you to. in my case, its february 7th, i believe.

so if anybody wants a couch or a desk, come down to 8 Bears Street in Kanayama before 8 am, and its yours.

and while i am typing, lets just all bow and say a word of thanks for the dollar dropping against the yen. i just enjoyed a nice exchange rate when sending some money back to the u.s.

LNK-MSP-NRT

night nabe party

Göteborgs Rapé...whoa! för länge sen

congrats to my brother and his wife, brenda

johnny passed this idea along to me, i wish i could take credit for this one. anyway, brenda's got a baby!

sunday in osu

some pretty obvious comparisons

i went back to nebraska for the first time since arriving in japan about a year and a half ago. i really had a good time. thanks to everybody for helping me out while i was there. obviously, nebraska and nagoya are quite different. so some things that jumped out at me were:

customer severice

it can be really great or really bad.
really great, meaning the customer is always right. i could not believe that i could buy a dvd set for 40 dollars, then return to the store the next day and show them my reciept and get 20 dollars back because it went on sale for $19.99. are you kidding me? i am pretty sure you can return or exchange just about anything at most big retail stores in america.

really bad, some people can be really unprofessional. i was in scheels at southpointe and some employees were giving each other charlie horses, and arguing over who farted. and at the lincoln airport northwest counter, one of the guys working there put his open coca-cola right next to my passport. unbelievable.


-food

food is pretty cheap and comes in bigger sizes obviously. but i really believe eating out in japan on the cheap and healthy is a lot easier than in america. also the whole thing with tipping really hits you, too. no tips are necessary in japan. but sometime s restuarants in japan can get you with a table charge. japan being a nation obsessed with food offers a lot more than going out to eat in nebraska. but nebraska has a lot more to offer in terms of selection. so many brands, so many choices!

i also enjoyed waddling around the golden corral and overhearing people say stuff like, "i am getting my money's worth"


-people

very friendly in nebraska. but this could go also go up to customer service as well, i was amazed with all the small talk people make with you when you are buying something at the cash register.

small talk, of course, exists in japan, but i have never had small talk with somebody at the cash register, except for when they tell me my japanese is really good. and anyone who has been to japan, knows that doesn't count.

the weirdest thing i heard in a store in nebraska, was from a guy who had seen some video clip of me on japanese television. it's on youtube somewhere, but i was hoping that clip might get buried somewhere. pretty embarrassing.

some more nebraskans

nebraskans

packing