Forest Therapy

A while back during spring I was invited by one of my Japanese teachers to go to Wakayama along with his granddaughter and another student I am friends with. At the time I still had yet to visit that prefecture and really wanted to visit, especially since I live relatively close anyways. We left early…

Temple Pilgrimage

My Japanese coworkers have told me about a nice temple/shrine that is off in Sakurai. I came here once before looking for it, but never ended up finding it. A friend and I wanted to go take pictures and we ended up back in Sakurai so we went on a search. There was a huge…

Shiga Rains

Shiga prefecture 滋賀県is northeast of Kyoto and is home to Lake Biwa. I live really close, relatively anyway, to Shiga prefecture but have yet to actually visit. Eventually I want to try and visit all 47 prefectures so I planned to come see this land sometime during my visit. I have weekly Japanese classes and…

Blooms at Tsukigase

Spring is finally coming back. This winter felt like it took forever to complete its cycle. Thankfully I finally got to taste spring the other day. One of my Japanese teachers from a weekly class I go to invited me to go see some plum blossoms. Most of the plants, trees, and flowers haven’t bloomed…

Until Fukui – Ep. 2

After leaving Tojinbo we arrived at Awara Onsen town. They had quite a few hot springs in the town so we went for a relaxing visit.  Saw a cool girl with a film camera there, which always gets me hype to see others enjoying photography. We popped into a hot spring and relaxed there for…

Until Fukui – Ep. 1

It’s always so refreshing to get out of town and go someplace new. Refresh the mind with all sorts of new sights and new people. Usually I like to wait till I have a long weekend or something flexible to work with when I go on an overnight trip or so, but this time my…

The Water City – 郡上八幡

Gujohachiman, the city of water. A beautiful mountain village up in Gifu prefecture 岐阜県. I have wanted to go to gujohachiman for a long time now. I first saw a video of some vloggers who visited there on YouTube. It looked like such a gorgeous place I really wanted to visit for myself. I finally…

Purpose of the ALT

An ALT is an assistant language teacher and my current job. I work in Japan teaching English at various Middle schools and Elementary schools. I wrote a post earlier about school life and what I usually do at my schools. This time I want to talk about a topic which usually turns into quite the…

Friendship

Recent days keep showing me how important other people are in our lives. This past weekend I went up to Nagoya City which is the place I studied abroad in back in 2013/14. I lived in a dorm back in those days and had a few RAs (residential advisors) that helped us out when we…

Japanese School Life

I teach at Japanese Middle and Elementary schools as an Assistant language teacher (ALT). I got into this position from the JET Program and now work directly for the schools and the Board of Education here in my country town in the Mie Prefecture of Japan. It’s a great experience and I feel like I…