you come back now ya here. 

Have fun, but not too much fun.

 

Have fun mang..............

Bring back some JDM only toyota parts.. 

and a wife for Swamper..   

Yeah, please bring back some cool J-spec parts for my 6MGE. Thanks. HA!

If you think you can manage bring back a 1KZ-T 3.0 Toy diesel and I will pick it up when we come over for MCR5. That shouldn't be to much trouble right?


Oh yea, also bring back a wife for Swamper. 

HAve fun Mike!!!

It's ON now!!!!!

sweet a geisha is a good Idea mike

Think I could get a geisha too?!

   

you guys are funny

Have fun mike  

Ya i'll take one of thos........ um  just get me one of everything

Hey Mikey....where ya at.

Hope he's not in some Japanese jail.

We want pictures!!

Big Mike is doing just fine  -- talked to him a few days ago. He is still trying to get internet there in the apartment he is staying in. Just thought you'd like to know.

CLC - "Mom"

Thanks Mom, glad the kid is doin good.
When are you and dad gonna come up and visit us?

HEELLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO PEOPLES!!!!!!!


I am writing to you from the "Oais" internet cafe in Chiyodaku Kanda, right near the center of Tokyo (Tokyo City is about a mile west of here, just before the Ginza prefecture).

This is a really really cool internet cafe. We are on the 10th floor and in booth number 31. This is a cozy little booth where I am sitting on top of a foam mattress about level with the floor in front of a small computer desk. We have free unlimited (soft) drinks and coffee and there is an ice cream machine as well. Downstairs there is a huge "Toshokan" or "Hon-ya" (library/bookstore) with many "hon" (books), "manga" (silly "otaku" [nerd] japanese comic books), "zashi" (magazines), and "bidi-o" (videos). So one is welcomed to browse their selection, take it to there little cozy station, and use the internet, enjoy some drinks, watch a movie, or read a book or two. This is a 24 hour facility that even includes showers for 200 yen (about $1.75). And are you ready for the most amazing thing about this?? IT ONLY COSTS 240 YEN PER HOUR!! That's about $2 per hour!

So I now have this chance to report back here and to explain how things are going

Originally we were going to have internet on the 3rd of July. Now since we are just renting an apartment for just 3 1/2 weeks, Misato, being the clever girl that she is, signed up for a 1-month free trial for Yahoo DSL internet service, of which we will cancel before I leave, so basically free internet But something happened with Yahoo and they had to delay the package containing the modem by a week, and it finally came here on the 9th. Well, everything looked good, but while setting everything up, it seemed to me that there was no internet service at the wall jack. I could set up the LAN (network) and I could access the modem, but there was no DSL signal. So after phone call after phone call, it was determined yesterday, the 14th, that there is some trouble with the wiring of the apartment room and that they would need to send out a technician to repair it at our own expense.

Well, since I am only going to be here for about 1 more week, we just decided that it was not worth it any more, and so hence, I have come here to this internet cafe to say hello to everyone and to let you know that I am not in some Japanese Jail

Everything is going very, very, very well here and the two of us couldn't be happier. We have been able to do lots of very important things during this trip in order to get Misato a visa back to the US so she can return to me, and more importantly, to college. She has put in her 6-month notice with her work and she will be resuming her American education this upcoming Spring Semester.

I have been taking many many pictures, but beings that this is not my computer, I am not sure if I will be able to bring my external harddrive here (if) the next time I come back.

Hang on a second, I need to go get some more Ice Tea

Well, anyways, I got side-tracked  in my Summer Project thread for a while and I forgot really what I was going to finish talking about here DOH

Basically everything has been going well, I visited Misato's family the 2nd day of my trip, which involved boarding a National Flight to the 3rd largest Japanese Island of Kyushu (south Japan). There I visited the city of Kumamoto, which has a population of about 670,000 people, so it was a bit larger than my hometown of Fresno back in California (~500k). Misato's house where she was raised is about 20 miles outside of Kumamoto in a small town called Kawahara. If you are familiar of Fresno County, it would be about the equivalent of working in Fresno but living in Prather/Auburrey.

I took many pictures of my visit including visiting Mount Aso, which a volcano that has the largest caldera in the northern hemisphere (circumference of about 75 miles) that contains five volcanic cones. They are only about 5,000 ft above sea level, but it was pretty amazing none the less.

Despite my fears that her parents possibly do not like the fact that their daughter is dating a foreigner and hence they might hate me , I was very well received and they said that I was "very well mannered" and my chopstick skills were better than her 24 yr old brother. Misato has an older brother (2 yrs) and a younger sister (3 yrs?) both of which are very nice. I got along with everyone quite well and they were equally impressed with my Japanese language ability and my respect for their culture. Her father's parents also reside in their house (of some 200-years old, seriously) and I was well taken in by them as well, eventhough the older generations are much more conservative.

One thing that I will remember for the rest of my life is that on the first night of the first day of meeting her parents, we went to an "Onsen" which is a sort of Hot Springs or a Public Bath, and I got to strip down naked and move in and out of various hot spring pools of varying temperature and then take a bath sitting atop small wooden stools right next to her father Yeah, talk about a culture shock. Talk about a reality shock. Here I am, just got in town in time for dinner, got to "Meet The Parents" while eating food I am not used to, speaking in a language I am not used to, and using chopsticks while sitting rather uncomfortably in indian position for a good hour on a wooden floor, then to go to a Public Bath with her father, who I've only known for about 3 hrs, then to find myself naked with him (and a couple of other older Japanese fellows) and talking about my life and my experiences back in America and how Misato and I met. Talk about being I couldn't stop thinking about if I was in his place. Here I am, visiting my future daughter's boyfriend for the first time, who is a foreigner who can't really speak my language, and has been doing who knows what with my daughter, and now we are in a public bath together.

Yeah I thought to myself, that could get real ugly really quick, but it went really really well and we were both rather comfortable I thought. It was actually a pleasent and enjoyable evening. We learned a lot about each other real quick like that night, and it was a great experience that I am fortunate to have done

Well, despite not having any internet, I have been able to remain pretty busy here. I brought a copy of the website with me and have done extensive updating and grammer/coding errors, but of course I have not been able to upload them. I have also been working on some other things for Dave at the shop which I am almost finished with as well.

For the first time in my life I have become sort of a book worm. I have been reading "Time travel in Einstein's universe" by Professor J. Richard Gott, and not only have I finished it, but to my own astonishment, I read it again. Being of only 300 pages may be a very little book to you, but the only other book I have EVER and I mean EVER finished in my ENTIRE LIFE is "How to eat fried worms" when I was in elementary school. I did read "A Time To Kill" by John Grisham, and also "How To Kill A Mocking Bird", both for school book reports, but I only got about 3/4 of the way through and called it good enough for the book report. So despite how harloius my book history may be, I am really surprised that I have completed this book and also re-read it in nearly the same week.
Then, a book I bought a while ago, "The Japanese Samurai Code: Classic Strategies For Success" by Boye Lafayette De Mente, which is an even smaller book of about 200 pages, but I am already 80% finished with it and I barely started reading it a couple of days ago.

Books are really boring to me and I have a horrible attention deficit disorder when it comes to reading books, especially novels. I would much rather be working at the shop or on my truck. But, with the amount of free time I have had without this dang thing known as the "Internet", I have been able to touch aspects of my life that I otherwise would never get the chance. Kinda funny really.

Its actually been pretty crazy because I have been severely severed from the world ever since June 27th. No internet = no news. Not being able to read Japanese Kanji (advanced logographic writing system) = can't understand newspapers. And finally, Listening to the daily Japanese TV News Programs are about as helpful as trying to listen to John Moschitta Jr. (remember Micro Machines commercials?) present the news to me in Hungarian. Everyone speaks so dang fast and there are so many Kanji and Kana thrown all over the screen its just impossible to gather anything more then the images I see, like the Missels in Korea, and what just came to my attention this morning, the chaos in Israel and the train bombings in Bombay. In fact, now that I have the internet, I JUST FOUND OUT that Korea has launched not two, but seven missels. Yeah, being unplugged from the world and the news is pretty crazy as I am learning first hand.

Well, looks like my time is about up. Hopefully I will get another chance to chat back before I get back home, but it is unlikely. According to the Copernicus Principle, if I am able to use the internet again between now and next weekend, it would be during the later percentage of my trip here, which would make it a Special occurrence, and since there are no special times during my trip (ie. my location is not special), if I was to have already used the internet, then it would have been during the majority of my trip. So it looks bleak for any more future trips to this internet cafe.

So until I get plugged back into the Internet,

Saiyonara from Japan!

BigMike