This beautiful (cough cough) Spanish looking building is the town train station. As I've mentioned earlier, this town used to be home to the famous Spain Town amusement park. The park is in the same place but, the home is now a larger city down the road. By home I mean, people used to come here and then take the bus to the park but, now the bigger city has taken all the cliental... apparently. The building to the left is the train station and the one on the right is the towns tallest building and most vibrant hotel. Although it dosen't seem to get much use the parking lot always has a dozen or so cars in the lot. We'll see how that changes once school starts again and the amusement park going season dies down.
Not much to see here but, my school is at the top of a small hill and this is the view that greets me every day coming home from work. I am told that at the base of that large crane you can see is the future home of the Shima City Assisted Living Center (aka Zombie Halfway House). Although there is not a lot to see based on the skyline, it really is a cute little town.
This is a failed attempt of mine to take a panorama photo of my school front. I neglected to realize at the time of taking it that as I change my body, vanishing points change and so does size perspective. Hopefully those of you reading can fill in the gaps with thier heads and appreciate my little collage as a modern piece of art.
This is a standard school hall at a Japanese school. Not much to see here but, I imagine halls like this were the inspiration of many a Japanese horror movie. Can't you just imagine Sadako, the creepy girl from the Ring, standing at the end of the hall slowly walking towards you. You turn around and she is like right in your face! Boo! Yea, so can I!
This is where your friend, my rear, rests all day long. I know its anything but glamorous but, this is my desk at Shima Highschool. Its quite comfortable really. To think, so far I'm getting paid to keep that piece of tin company. It may be hard to tell but, this is the standard setup for a Japanese teachers office. The room is full of probally about twenty desks like this all lined up to each other. Every morning the teachers all meet here before class and (apparently) have a meeting with the Principal/Vice Principal who will go over the things of the day.
This is the main school field. Here they do rugby (you can see the post in the background) as well as baseball (you can see a diamond too). This school also has tenis courts, soccer field, a weight house, a gymnasium and a goat path running track which goes around this field in the picture. 3 times around is 1k so about 5 times around is a mile..? Give or take. Japanese students go to school Monday-Friday (however until not too long ago Saturday was included in there too... and may still be in other places). School is until around four and then the students all clean the school for a little while and then go to thier club activies. These activites range from sports (Basketball, baseball, martial arts, swimming, badminton, etc) to language clubs (like an English or Korean club) to misc. (Flower arranging, tea ceremony, chorus, band, etc.) Anyways, I'd guess a large majority of these students are involved in these clubs. In the summer thier club scheduel is roughly nine in the morning until noon for some clubs and then noon to three for the others. When school starts they'll do thier clubs from around four-thirty to around seven..? I am told, with Saturday as thier only day off from the club. Yikes!
This is a picture of my sweet ride. I call it "Lucy", after my favorite mutt. Just kidding, I don't call it anything... anything but sweet. Up until yesterday (we bought Ayumi a bike) she would ride sidesaddle sitting on the rack on the back. It was fun (and a little romantic I suppose). This is your standard issue Japanese bike. One gear, basket and a tire powered light on the front. Sweet indeed, sweet indeed.
This is where I park my sweet ride every night when I go to bed. The ratio of bikes to tennants in this apartment is probally about three to one, three bikes to one person. There are bikes in there that are probally older than the complex itself. Security you ask? Five dollar lock at the home center... that and an old busted camera that I am sure used to work for about a week until somebody pointed it straight up and nobody bothered to fix.
Now the next picture is of our front door. I know you may be asking; "Now AJ, why don't you show us a picture of the front of your apartment". The answer is simple. I don't want people just showing up on our front porch with a copy of the picture in thier hands saying they knocked on every door at this complex know that we were one of them. Well, without further a due, here is our front door.
Beautiful isn't it. Yesterday coming home from work I saw a preying mantis standing on the ledge a few feet away. I wanted to flick it with my shoe and watch if fall the four stories to its death but, a)didn't want to get nearer to it than I had to and b)knowing the little devils can fly figured it would just fall a few seconds then fly up here and bite my head off.
Picture looking off from the front of the balcony.
And a picture from the back. You can see the amusement park in the picture and this is roughly the same spot I took the pictures of the fireworks with the other night. I don't have any pictures of inside the apartment but figure maybe Ayumi would like to post those on her website... She always does a much better job at presenting things than I. Either on my site or hers, one day you'll see the inside of this place once we have it looking presentable.
I am going to go to my other Highschool tomorrow so if I remember I'll take the camera and snap a few shots so I have pictures to go along with all my boastings.
I think I'm giving too much time to this blog.
Night.
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