This is a video of all of the stuff we did while my brother and sister-in-law were visiting us in Kyoto. We went to Himeji Castle, the best preserved traditional castle in Japan, as well as some traditional sites around Kyoto. The last part is from Kokedera, the Moss Temple. They supposedly have over 120 different species of moss there. It doesn't quite come across on video, but it is a pretty surreal place. .

Here is some video from the annual Yuki Matsuri in Sapporo, Hokkaido. It's an awesome spectacle, with huge snow and ice sculptures. We didn't actually get to see the festival, just the build-up beforehand. I think it's more interesting that way, because you get to see how they build all of the exhibits. STANDBY="Loading Windows Media Player components..." TYPE="application/x-oleobject"> WIDTH="192" HEIGHT="190" ShowControls="1" ShowStatusBar="0" ShowDisplay="0" autostart="0">

Here's a video from our trip to the Philippines in August. Of course it could never do it justice - it's impossible to bring a video camera to the coolest places! But please check it out nonetheless. STANDBY="Loading Windows Media Player components..." TYPE="application/x-oleobject"> WIDTH="192" HEIGHT="190" ShowControls="1" ShowStatusBar="0" ShowDisplay="0" autostart="0">

I finally got back to the computer to edit together some video from the Gion Matsuri, a huge festival in Kyoto that is supposedly one of the best in all of Japan. I hope you find it interesting. See it here.

This post is actually titled "Taipei to Kenting" because, well, that's where we went. In case your geography is a bit fuzzy, those places are both in Taiwan. Here is a video I made of the footage from that week-long trip I took with some friends from JET. We had a rockin' good time, as I hope is made perfectly clear by the video. Please enjoy, and if you feel like, comment. Thanks. Oh yeah the movie is here. As always, I am too lazy to figure out anything other than realmedia. Sorry.

Japan is famous for its cherry blossoms. They only come out properly for about 10 days , and that period can be significantly shortened if bad weather moves in. This year was really nice and I got some good video. Please check it out here.

Here's a quick look at just a little bit of footage from the annual Kyoto City Half Marathon. My friend Matteo was running in it, show I just showed up at the end to catch him just before he finished. Check out the video at the link here.

Well, it's Sunday night, which means we have to go to work tomorrow. It could be the last full week at my base school ever, because of the new changes taking place in April. But I'll blog about those some other time. Anyways, the weekend was fun, last night was William's birthday. He's our PA, which means he takes good care of us when we need assistance. Anyways, we went to a really kick ass izakaya and had lots of good food and beer, then went bowling afterwards. Lots of fun, I took some pictures that I'll try to post up here later this week. Still working on those Korea pictures too..hmm so little time. Today we went to a festival/archery contest at this really awesome temple. Apparently it's a really old, traditional contest, and everyone was all dressed up in their kimonos and what not. Very cool! Val took some good pictures, as usual, which I will also be putting up soon. I shot some video, and as soon as I got home I started editing it. Which means I can post it now! Click here to watch the video. It's about 2 minutes long. I hope you enjoy!

So we had another three day weekend, which means I have only had one real day at school in a month or so. That makes this next week, and the subsequent three months, a little difficult. I like teaching classes, but it is stressful and frustrating as often as it is satisfying. So I'm not exactly looking forward to getting back into the daily routine, but it will be fun again soon, I just have to be patient. I used my time this weekend, while trying to get over a cold, to edit together the video I shot in South Korea a few weeks ago. I hope you will check it out. To see it, please click here. Other than that not much is happening. It's really cold here, and we are searching for the most economical way to heat our apartment. We have been using the heater/AC unit, but it is not the most efficient machine out there, and we are afraid of high heating costs. Winter here is pretty crappy because it isn't very warm anywhere really, except for nice stores. The office at school is cold, so cold that my feet start to hurt after a few hours, and the classrooms are worse. I have been taking handwarmers to school and hoping for the best, but it takes its toll on you after a while because there isn't anywhere to go to just be nice and toasty warm. When we get home, it's cold, and we only heat one or maybe two rooms at once. The bathroom and the nearby hallway are always cold, with the only salvation in that part of the house being the toilet seat warmer. (To get a better mental picture of our apartment, watch a short video.) So now things aren't so peachy, but this is supposedly the worse time of the year for every JET in Japan, especially after traveling home for the holidays. All we can do is stay warm, party a lot, and get back into the swing of things in a big way. I'll keep you posted on how that effort goes.

We've actually been back in Japan for a few days now, laying low and relaxing in Kyoto. Our two week marathon vacation, from Kyoto to America, back to Kyoto, then to Korea and back was pretty taxing, financially and physically. I managed to post some of the stories from Korea while we were there, and a lot happened after that, but I wouldn't know where to begin. The trip was amazing, we really loved Seoul. It's a pretty happening city with lots to do, and the best part was that everything was cheaper than Japan. Val played with her new camera and took some amazing pictures, which we'll be putting up here soon. I brought my video camera, and I should be putting up that video this week. If you haven't checked the main page, I finally figured out the whole streaming video business. If you click here you can see a brief tour of our apartment. If you click here you can see a short video of the snow we got in Kyoto on New Year's Eve at a cool temple, as well as some of the cool festivities at a shrine just after midnight. I hope you check them out and like them, because I'm planning to put lots more up as soon as I can! So please check back often! Now we are sitting at the board of education building, because our holidays are over but school is still out. So we have nothing to do except sit here and pretend to work, which gets old fast. It's cold here in Kyoto, but not quite as cold as it was in Korea, where it rarely got above freezing during the day. Thinking about the biting, Siberian wind makes me cold all over again. For anyone that doesn't know Asian geography very well, Japan and Korea were completely unaffected by the massive tsunami that decimated parts of South east Asia last week. We were lucky because we had originally planned to go to Thailand, but it was just too expensive after the trip home to America. Lucky I guess. Well, that's really about it for now. We're trying to get back into school mode, thinking about teaching classes and all that. Hope everyone back home had a great holiday and is doing well!