Greetings and salutations!

*Update* Times are now in Tokyo time

Question of the day: Why am I always dying?

Eric and I have spent the last two days exploring Nagoya. His past experience as an exchange student to Japan has been very helpful and we are getting along quite well. I'm sure I will miss having him as a flatmate. He worked for EA in Vancouver doing animation for video games such as FIFA Soccer which is awesome!

Anyway, we've been spending time traveling the subways (which turned out to be much less complex than I feared) to all parts of Nagoya. Aside from hitting coffee shops and making phone calls, we've hiked through the city's core - checking out the vast assortment of shops, arcades, and so on. We've also toured through many beautiful parks, trodding through rocky waterways and wooded paths. There's this indoor/outdoor market called the Galaxy Platform which makes fascinating use of glass and water. I hope to have pictures of all these things up quite soon.

There have been a couple highlights worth noting. We happened upon a trick bmx contest which was lots of fun and made Eric's day as he's into Bike Trials...the best way for me to describe this is as bike aerobatics on natural environments...balancing acts on rock outcroppings and such...quite cool stuff actually. Today we made the long trek to Nagoya Castle, a 17th Century Samurai fortress which was destroyed during WWII but has since been restored. You can check it out yourself here.

Anyway that's all for now. Training starts on Tue and I am looking forward to it. Oh...a few observations: prices on most items here are comparable to those in NA, though quantity is something entirely different! Everything is smaller here...a "tall" coffee is about the size of one of our smalls and even items that are the same dimensions as in Canada are packed in much fewer quantity. Also, I've been trying to call home but keep getting answering machines...cmon people! *S*

Take Care and God Bless!

With Hope,
Joseph