Friday, April 15, 2011

Spring Is Slowly Approaching

(warning: this post goes on forever)

Today the weather was quite warm - almost 60˚ F at midday. Great day to be outside, but not so great for pictures because it was pretty cloudy.

Regardless, I tried to capture some new spots that I haven't shown on here yet...

This is the front of my apartment, we have outdoor closets for storing old furniture and what not... which is where a lot of my current furniture came from (other peoples' outdoor closets)

When I arrived in Mashike, I had to slip and slide over a good foot of snow to get from the parking lot to my front door. As you can see in the picture, that's all melted at this point.

I can even see the ground! There seems to be some tilled land right behind my apartment complex.

Everyday the playground becomes a little less covered.

The drainage system is overflowing with water from melted snow up in the mountains.


On a small back road behind my apartment there's this little set of barns. The lettering says "りんご” - Apples, "さくらんぼ" - Cherries, and the large characters in the center say, "直売" or "ちょくばい" which means "selling directly."

Seem to be a lot of orchards in my area.


Country road.

I don't have the energy to look up this kanji. That's all I do. All day long. Is look up kanji.

If anyone's interested in how one "looks up" kanji - there's a variety of methods, depending how adventurous you're feeling with technology. I've been experimenting with using the new feature on OS X Snow Leopard where you "write in" the kanji using the track pad.
but it looks like it works a lot better than it actually does.

I still prefer picking out the pieces and assembling them using jisho.org

back to my pictures:
I've always found something distinct about Japanese sidewalks. I really miss the ones in Tokyo near Yoyogi Park.

Curious about the temperature? Just ask the giant apple. It was 57.2˚F today! Very pleasant.

These little fellows are sprouting up all over the place.

People are beginning to uncover their gardens from their winter dressings. A lot of trees and bushes in this area are shielded from the snow in tepee-like wood and burlap coverings.

The junior high right near my apartment that I'll be teaching at twice a week.

Dinner the other night: rice, green beans, potato and bacon croquettes

Dinner tonight: Yakisoba, Beef broth-ish "soup," broccoli and rice. Lots of rice.

Speaking of dinner, this is my lovely little kitchen. I love it. I did this freaky "photomerge" so you could see the whole room. (unsuccessfully that is, note the bottom cabinetry - didn't quite pan out right...) And because I don't have a wide angle lens. yet.

This is what my kitchen window looks like at night.

I often stare at the window making myself scared that I might look at it once and see this...

BAM. GHOST FACE (killah? is that a rapper or something? just googled it, yeah, he's a rapper)
Feel free to click on the image above and observe just how well I photoshopped that ghost face into this photo. I got the window distortion down so good. real good. I didn't go to grad school for nothin' my ghost face photoshop skills are in peak form.

also, if I took this picture standing right in front of the window.... where's my reflection.

Scaaary~

Anyway, that's all in my head. Why on earth would there be a ghost face there?

My apartment building is relatively new, so it wouldn't likely be haunted or anything.

and there isn't a huge ass cemetery nearby or anything- OH WAIT YES THERE IS.



It goes on for MILES. And it's RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET FROM ME.

It's actually kind of pretty, but I didn't notice it until the snow started melting. Imagine that. You live some place for a week and then, BAM, HUGE cemetery outta nowhere. I was like, "WHA? Where'd you come from?!"

But I'm just kidding, it doesn't bother me.

But just to illustrate how close it is... here's a video. The pink building is muh house. and the cemetery is muh next door neighbor.



I probably just disrespected a lot of dead people. sorry guys :(

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