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eggerbug
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Name: Sara
Country: Japan
Metro: Shikoku
Birthday: 5/4/1982
Gender: Female
Interests: PEOPLE!! travelling! animals! Japan! books! movies! music! The Beatles! riding my bike, making new friends and keeping the old, swimming and SCUBA diving, cooking, massage, women's studies, Native American studies, saving the world one smile, one joke, one dance, and one song at a time.
Expertise: smiling, finding silver linings, loving, counseling, listening, massaging, looking good in pictures, passing the time, seeing the beauty in small things.
Occupation: Education/training
Industry: Education/Research
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  eggerbug
Member Since:
10/5/2004
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| Does anyone else hate birds????
I HATE birds. They are disease-ridden, skinny-legged, knife-faced freaks of nature. They squawk and yell and fling themselves at innocent passers-by. Their faces. Their FACES!@!! Instead of a nice normal mouth, they have a sharp proboscis that can TAKE OUT YOUR EYES!!!!! Your freaking EYES!!! Fucking hell, birds are horrible, horrible creatures. You never know when they're going to attack, even just out of their own STUPIDITY.
I was once dive-bombed by a pigeon on my bike. Not as bad as this poor bastard had it...
I swear to everyone's gods, I would just die right there. My entire being would just GIVE UP if that freaking abomination had its face, with its instrument of terror which someone decided to call a beak, that close to me. Nope, I'm just done.
Tonight, after 3 bottles of wine with Chris and Bob at the play park, we stopped to smell some flowers in this beautiful bush over a walkway. While I was enveloped in their lovely smell, Bob went behind me to get a handful of the fleurs. When I heard the rustling, I of course thought it was a bird. Not just any bird -- a bird protecting its nest with baby birds. An aggressive mom with tiny, bald, demon-looking "chicks." Near my HEAD. So of course I ran away, straight into a brick wall.
I stand by my decision.
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| Hi there, couple of people who will read this. How y'all doin??
I had a great weekend. Mostly quiet, but very fun. Friday night Chris and I took a bottle of vodka to our fave restaurant, ordered the drink bar, made vodka orange juice, and got plastered. I don't really remember leaving the restaurant (and had to call C the next day to make sure that he had paid - he had). I do remember that on the way back to Chris's, we stopped so he could buy a tea from the vending machine. I stopped near him on the road (tiny back road), and then for some reason fell off my bike. Just... fell over... for no apparent reason... and then lay there laughing hysterically.
Saturday I was sick, sick, sick. 1/2 bottle of vodka and no dinner is /not/ a healthy thing to consume.  By Saturday evening I felt almost normal again but there's really not much you can do that's not drinking and there are no good movies out that we haven't already downloaded and watched. Whoops, illegal! 
Sunday I got up early, showered, shaved, and headed to the beach!!!! We got in a good hour and a half or so in the sun, and I'm already getting a good tan. Awesome. Back to mine to hang out with the furry ones on the balcony for a while, then we tried to go and get a massage but they were fully booked, boo. We separated for about an hour while Chris cleaned up and I took another shower to wash off the beach grime. Went to the store to get stuff for dinner and to Chris's so he could make falafel and some nice sauces. It was sooo good. So was the bottle of wine  .
Today we had a big staff meeting during which Chris and I did demos for the first day of every summer school course. I messed up the A course, which was the first one. Completely forgot to do the song, which should be the first thing. I remembered about 5 minutes in but it totally threw me off and then I forgot a little part of the first game. I've been feeling stupid about it ever since, though I know I'm just being too hard on myself.
Since the meeting I've just felt off. Tired, sad for no apparent reason, and easily angered at all the stupid ass driving I've seen since dropping Chris at his place. I promised myself and C that I would go to the gym tonight, and I'm FORCING myself to go. It's the very first lesson with the new songs and routines, so hopefully it'll be fun. I know there's a very good possibility that I'll be so out of shape I can't do it and/or won't like the moves and will just be annoyed, but if I don't go I'll just stay here and stew/watch a movie and pass out. And this is pretty much the only day this week I can go. So... ganbarimasu!
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| Wow, Xanga is way different. I guess that's what happens when you don't come to the site for a year and a half.
*** EDIT: It's been so long since I was on here that I forgot that a "protected post" is still visible to people. I meant to make this first draft "private," because I had to run out halfway through.
Let's get this out of the way...
* I moved apartments, to the complete opposite side of town. Anyone who knows Matsuyama, I'm on the north side of Horibata, Honmachi, towards Hojo/Imabari. It's really cool, in a nice neighborhood, 6th and 7th floors :) I have a massive balcony (and something like 25 pots of plants; I loooove it) and kitchen downstairs and my bedroom upstairs.
* Sometime in mid-August last year, Chris, Yuks, Bob and I went up to Sogo Park at around 4am (to sober up  ), and met a very cute and friendly kitten, probably about 6 weeks old. I said his name was Jack, off the top of my head (most likely beccause that's what Teresa always named random creatures, like the mukade in the toilet sink, frog in the kitchen, baby mukade in the bath room... I miss her house dearly). Anyway, he clearly needed to go home with me, because the cat crowd at Sogo is pretty shady. C and I were once mugged for salad dressing, and then scolded for "feeding the cats"  . So Jack moved in, and was a /bit/ of a terror. But extremely sweet and cuddly about 30% of the time  .
* On October 12, Jack got onto the window ledge (7th floor, overlooking the balcony) when I brought my futon in from sunning before an important meeting. I figured he couldn't go anywhere so I got dressed and called Chris and went onto the balcony to find Jack. Long story slightly shorter, he had fallen from the 7th story to the concrete parking lot below. Thankfully, Chris was able to understand me through my hysterics, and was on his way when I got to Jack, saw he was still alive, and carried him down the street. It was probably the most traumatic experience in my life. He was in the animal hospital for 4 full days, and came home mostly blind and very confused. Luckily I had taken the next 5 days off for some reason, anyway, so we did "rehabilitation," which basically consisted of watching TV shows online, sleeping, and feeding him through a syringe.
* He's okay now, still blind in his right eye and ... delicate . But he's only on his anti-seizure meds once a day now and is doing much better. He even has crazy time again 
* On the pet front, Jack and Ton-chan, the guinea pig, are good buddies. She's much more sociable since he moved in.
* I became the other Performance Supervisor of Shikoku alongside Chris in August. The hours are pretty awful, but I think I've gotten pretty much used to it. It was quite a shock going from my 22 hours of teaching PER MONTH to a regular 8-hour (minimum) day either in the office or travelling all over the island to teach. It's nice to have the added responsibility and feel like I'm doing a bit more with my life.
* Went home this past xmas with Chris, our friend Yuuki from Uwajima, and C's friend Robbie from Scotland. It was awesome awesome awesome, and I sort a met someone. That's a fun story... the quick G-rated version is that I had an unexpected layover from San Fran to Phoenix on the way back from New Year with my girl Alex. Happened to hear a group of people behind me who were flying to Indianapolis, too, so I struck up a conversation and we all ended up sharing the cost of one hotel room. One of the guys, Mac, and I stayed up all night talking and cuddling. He drove down to Columbus from Chicago to see me again before I left, and it was a /very/ good night. I felt somewhat bad about it because I did choose going out with him over dinner with C, Robbie, and the parents, but it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and hopefully they all understood.
* Jack was in horrible shape after over 3 weeks without me, and was having severe amounts of grand mal seizures due to his brain damage. I thought I was going to have to put him down at one point, but the meds really helped him. Chris now calls me "cat lady," and my lifestyle has completely changed. I don't go to the gym anymore and can't really travel.
That pretty much brings us up to now, I think. It's finally getting warmer, and we had a hanami (cherry-blossom party) last week. And! The Beer Garden started up again on April 1st, so that's exciting. We of course went for the first night, and Yuuki took Brian's wedding ring and proposed to me on the stage in front of everyone. It was hilarious. Everyone applauded and a bunch of people came up and shook our hands when they left.
Yuuki left for Australia today  . He's going to study for 4 years, and I miss him already. He's my Nametoko buddy , and we've all been a tight group of friends for the past year and a bit. Hopefully I'll be able to go and visit him sooner rather than later.
OK, that's all I have at the moment. I'd really like to get into writing more often, for the social aspect and keeping my family up to date, and also to help my horrible memory. I really need to have something to look back on and go, "Oh yeah, I did that!" 
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| In keeping with fitting in the last bits of summer before it ended, Shirota, Chris, Yumie and I had one final roof party at my place. It ended quite abruptly because the PO-lice came and yelled at us. Chris fit in a dance with Rilakkuma before they all headed home:
All tired out...
Yumie told her college class about it in an introduction the next day. It's dangerous to hang out with foreigners!!
Thus ends summertime fun, and now we enter into autumn fun...
As much as beach time ending sucks, cooler weather means it's time for Nabe parties!!!! Of course it also means it's getting closer to Christmas, which is AWESOME as I'm going home for almost 4 weeks.
Back to the issue at hand... NABE!!
The first nabe party of the year!! This was 2 weekends ago, when I had a record number of people in my small apartment. From left to right... Jeremy, Brett (new Niihama teacher), Ai-chan, Roger (new Ozu teacher), Seike with the hand in a cast, a girl whose name I forget, Yoko, Chris, Nabe-chan (ironic name, but I'm pretty sure that's right), Shirota, and I'm in the front if you didn't realize that already. It was great fun, even though Ai-chan got so sick that she puked on the stairs (luckily I'm the only person on the 4th floor), and Chris and Shirota mysteriously disappeared. Turns out they went to the convenience store to buy more beer (though I found 2 6-packs in Shirota's bag the next day ), and ended up following an omikoshi (portable shirines that battle each other) to Okaido, drinking, then passed out at Shirota's. ...which is good, because Chris left his keys and phone at my place. I love my drunken insane friends
Here's Ai-chan before the stair incident, Brett, and another one of the girl whose name I forgot (Jeremy invited her )
My favorite picture from the night...
Rilakkuma is a bit of a hussy when he drinks. Can't blame him; Roger's a handsome guy
The next day a few of us went to our favorite yakiniku place, Rodan. Thankfully, while Chris, Shirota, Yumie and I were at the gym, Roger and Brett cleaned the vomit off my stairs. Hooray!! More good friends!!  After the customary 2 hours of all-you-can-eat-and-drink, we followed by the customary 2 hours of rockin' karaoke 
I think we were singing the Backstreet Boys.
Shake it!!!
You know in Crocodile Dundee when the water buffalo is in the way of the jeep and Dundee goes over and sort of hypnotizes him with his fingers in a "rock out" sign? Well, he does, and for some reason I remembered that a few weeks ago when we were talking about trying to talk to Shy Guy at the gym and get him to go out with us, and how we should use that when we first talked to him so he didn't just explode from pure fear. We didn't, to say the least, but we still use it regularly to hypnotize each other. Usually while saying something profound like, "Hurdy furdy hurdy..."
On the way home from karaoke, it started to rain and we were all walking. Because Yumie rocks, she had just given me 6 cute towels with Miffy and Snoopy and Pooh on them, so we all covered our heads with them and walked back to my place.
Jeremy as the Armenian woman who will sell you apples. Or marry you if you have 5 minutes. Not sure why she was Armenian, but he did it well.
Last week I helped Chris pick out new suits.
Isn't he handsome? He should be a model... This picture is my favorite because it's a real smile. I think he was laughing because the shorts hanging on his a/c unit attacked me when I backed into them on his balcony. We laugh a lot. At really stupid stuff.
This past weekend we had a gyoza party at my place. Chris makes awesome gyoza.
My gyoza sweatshop: ... um, something like Yukari but that's not right. Dammit. Anyway, then there's Kaori, Yumie, Shirota just arriving and sneaking into the picture in my kitchen, Chris, and Yuko. We had a great night drinking Quick Fucks (bottom half of the shot glass midori melon liquour, top half Bailey's - it's awesome but you gotta swish it around in your mouth before you swallow. It's sort of got a mint chocolate taste to it) and chowing down.
Sara and Katsura stopped by for a couple hours which was great. Well, what I remember of chatting with Sara was really fun . And Shirota had a great time talking to to Katsura, who he seemed to fall instantly in love with as they could NOT pull themselves away from each other. It was cute.
Yumie and I both had too much and were ... well, not as well as one would like. I passed out on the floor with my big Rilakkuma doll as a pillow. Woke up at 5am and threw blankets over everyone and fell back asleep. The next day we all tried to go to breakfast but ended up waiting on the front lawn of the restaurant for an hour until they started the lunch buffet because breakfast was full. Sunday night was more Rodan for the 2-hour all you can eat and drink thing. Apparently they like us because we're such frequent customers, and they let us hang out eating and drinking for 3 hours. Then we went to see Kato-sensei's last dance event at a cool new club called Linda Linda which hopefully we'll remember to go to again.
My final good thing for the past 2 weeks is something that happened last weekend after Chris and Shirota drunkenly disappeared from the nabe party. Early the next morning, they went to Daiki Home Center, and Chris got me an early Christmas present...
A guinea pig!!!
Her name is King Julian Tontaro, Ton-chan for short (Ton is another reading for the kanji for pig, pronounced tone). She's sooooo cute and little, just about a month and a half old. Her bday according to Daiki is August 28th. I took her by Ido-cho school today to see Naomi sensei and the MASSIVE pumpkin she carved for her Halloween lessons this week...
Pretty damn cute, huh?? She's still a bit nervous, but getting so much better. She's really cuddly and spends most of her time on my belly or shoulder or in my shirt when I'm home. She learned very quickly where the top of my tank tops are, and that she can squeeze in between my boobs very comfortably (though extremely tickly for me).
On that note, it's time for the two of us to head home. We've been hanging out at Chris's all day as he went to Fukuoka this afternoon, but I think we're both ready for our own beds. | | |
| I the summertime. It's finally cooling off a bit here in good ol' Ehime, though that doesn't stop us crazies from going to the beach! (Two days ago! Tomorrow!!)
In honor of this most awesome summer and my most awesome friends, here are some pictures from our adventures of the past couple of months:
For our almost-weeklong vacation after summer school ended in August, we headed down to Oki Beach in Kochi. Just me and the boys: Chris, Shirota, Yasu, and Sean who was crashing with me while visiting from China (couchsurfing.com, baby!). We arrived at about 10 pm (because we were so freaking hungover from the club the night before and just generally slow), set up the camp, accidentally shown the flashlight on a couple getting it on in the bushes (well, mine was accidental, Shirota's weren't ) Of course drinking commenced before we even set up the tents, which was, as we decided when it started raining, probably not the best idea. But we managed as we always do and had an incredible night dancing away to Juanes and random Konami songs.
Almost sunrise.
The obligatory Chris running on the beach picture - one of my favorite pastimes is to have him run while I ostensibly photograph him and actually video it. The vast majority of my videos end with Chris yelling, "Are you vid-?!?" HA!
Well before the sun actually started to come up, the 3 of us who were still conscious (Chris, Sean, and myself) went naked swimming. Of course!! Body of water + Chris and I +/- alcohol = naked swimming. We were proud because Sean had never been before, hooray for corrupting people! All was fun and games until we saw...
A SEA MONSTER!!! Chris was CONVINCED it was a shark, and I was sure it was a ... well, a demon from hell washed up on the shore. (there was a lot of chu-hi and a bottle of shinryuchu in me). Sean was adamant that it was a log. We FINALLY worked up the courage to ... poke it with a stick ... and found that it was, indeed, a big piece of wood. But DAMN was that scary!!
We got Yasu up by sitting around him stark naked and dripping until he agreed to come swimming with us, though he wouldn't take off his trunks (wuss).
We drank until well after sunset, and then I passed out probably mid-salsa dance on a towel for an hour around 7am. I don't know how we slept at all... it was so freaking hot and miserable... but we did our best
That day the Uwajima crew came down and we barbequed and hung out and played with Sorato in the waves - he's fearless and amazing . I think I had a touch of sun poisoning and thought I was going to pass out and/or throw up a couple of times, but I managed.
I stayed with Teresa the next night, sunburned, hungover, sleep-deprived... I'm sure I was a barrel of laughs. We hung out at her place the next day and I recovered (read: slept til 1). Then we had an amazing time weeding her garden (I in my pajamas) while it rained all over us.
Isn't she cute?
We had sooo much fun in her muddy garden... weeded everything, hoed, and planted purty flowers and lots and lots of basil plants.
MWAH!
We went for a nice swim in the river with Voodoo and then made massive amounts of cookies and prepared to go BACK to the beach for 2 nights the next day.
... This was probably a mistake. The first night was great; we had yummy BBQ and set up a great little camp with our 2 tents on either side of a shade tent for Voodoo. Something bit or stung me on my arm that first night and I had a big bubbly blister about the size of a quarter the next day - it was freaky. And apparently something ate the crap out of Teresa's neck the next night - she had to go to the hospital a couple days later. The next day we laid out until it got too hot to bear (which was around 10:30am -- we found out later that it was the HOTTEST DAY on record since 1935 or something ridiculous), and drove into Nakamura for a break. Couldn't really go inside as we had the pooch, but we parked in the shade, read a bit, and had McFlurries for about an hour and felt a bit better. I was already a very deep shade of red by this point, and Teresa was a bright pink. Once the sun went down on the beach things were much nicer - we each had a couple of chu-hi and got tipsy, I built a great fire and overcooked some sweet potatoes on the coals by probably 2 hours while Teresa passed out and I swam, walked Voodoo, and read a book. Played some cards and had some food, and I slept under the stars in a little bed I dug out of the sand (much more comfortable than inside my tent). The next morning Teresa was kind enough to let me stay a couple hours and lay out even though she refused to come out of the tent and face the sun (she had my Harry Potter book to keep her company, and I don't blame her at all - I didn't realize until later how terribly burned she was). We ended up heading back towards her house around 10am the second day, adamantly swearing off ever going to the beach again... it was absolutely miserably hot.
Voodoo chillin' on the beach
Since then, Chris and I have been going over to Hojo beach (about 30 mins from Matsuyama) at least once a week to keep up our tans. We are very sexily brown (you can really tell because my ass is BRIGHT WHITE - it's really quite funny).
Most of the early beach days included alchohol, and I was the designated driver. Of course as soon as Chris and Shirota got drunk I'd feel drunk too just because they're so wild and fun. I love our group!! (quick background - Shirota is the guy from the gym who we really didn't like until we talked to him in March - not sexy kickboxer or sexy instructor, just sexy combat guy. Yumie is Chris's ex-girlfriend from May, and hooray for us all being friends again.)
Shirota, Yumie, and Chris
Shirota rides are fun!!
One day this crab came and joined us, and I was FREAKED OUT by it. So they made me hold it until I wasn't squealing anymore...
And I ended up loving him
...though it was still pretty creepy when he slipped down and ended up IN my top... *shudder*
One of my favorite pictures: me and my boys at the DJ Mayumi event at Area
Of course, one of the highlights of the past month was that we finally have started emailing Nishizaka, the gorgeous Combat instructor. AND! We went out drinking with him last week!!
Some pictures from karaoke:
Sexy pose
We're thinking...
You can't tell, but the arm that's behind him is slightly resting on his ass. And his shirt is open because I unbuttoned it. For purely artistic purposes SWEET.
Hanging out was lots of fun. He was absolutely WASTED and quite funny. Little flirty (he kept moving closer to me until our legs were touching, and I moved away a few times), but mostly just friendly. I honestly just like to look at him . Other than being absolutely gorgeous, he's not really my type.
Last weekend was the last beer garden of the season, which is just so sad...  BUT, being US, we took utmost advantage of it.
At WaraWara Izakaya in the karaoke room after 4 hours of drinking at the beer garden...
Kiss marks, anyone?? (Shirota showed up to the gym that night with a NECKLACE of hickies around his neck and on his upper arms (??), and asked us not to mention it because Japanese people just don't realize what they are... *sigh* so much to teach)
A-HA!
We ended up drinking at Shirota's till who knows when, and woke up the next morning with 7 people passed out on his floor. I was in Shirota's arms because we were freezing and must have passed out close to each other. Aww...
Despite the raging hangovers, we decided that since that Sunday was really the LAST Beer Garden of the season, we HAD to go back. So Shirota made reservations, and we all met there after the gym that evening.
Yay!!
One of our favorite games - find the nipple under the shirt. Shirota is surprisingly good at it.
Tuesday night, we had a little party at my house and drank on my roof with a futon, pillows, candles, and music. It was so nice... until the stupid cops climbed up the building next door and told us to fuck off. Heh... Chris and I printed of lots of pictures to give them from our adventures this summer, and even made a comic!
Full of our catch phrases and inside jokes. It makes me so happy everytime I look at it! Yumie made the excellent suggestion that we should make one with a story. When we get that done, I'll post it up.
Until next time...
Hurdy furdy from us all
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