Catching Up. Poll Result, Australia, Japan, and My Triumphant Return to USA!

So first, THANK YOU to the 38 people who took part in my poll. Out of the 4 choices, an overwhelming 50% voted I ought to move to Canada and become a farmer, so I decided to go with option #5, and get a job in NYC working for the international arm of a Japanese television channel.
I say "I decided", but I was also very fortunate that they agreed with my decision to work there :D That, btw, will be starting September 1st, so I hope the Big Apple is ready for Greg Beck!
 
So... Australia! I went there at the end of April and visited my sister, who was coaching the Adelaide Roller Derby (ADRD, but please read that as "Ad-Rad") and the ladies showed us a simply amazing time! Not only did this happen:

Hold a Koala? Check!

Pet wallabies, kangaroos, dingo, and capybaras? Check!

River Dolphin-watching Cruise. Cheeerk

Our hosts also planned a bajillion other amazing things for us. We went strawberry picking, saw an Aussie-rules football game, went on a wine-tasting trip, and sampled the the large selection of delicious food and beer that Australia had to offer! It was great fun hangin with my sis as well. She is my hero, and you may notice I have a link to her roller derby blog (which does much better than mine, no surprise) at the bottom of my page.

After that I spent a couple days in Melbourne with my friends Kathleen and Jude! They also did an amazing job playing host, putting me up, and taking me all around town, even to the school Kathleen works at, and the restaurant her sister works at (Clay Pots, i think it's called...it's a great live jazz bar, and seafood restaurant! Check it out in St. Kilda!) Here are some photos you can click to view full sized:

 

And to wrap it all up I saw my old friend Anni from back in my study abroad days in Japan! Stellar!

Then it was time to fly back to Japan, but not home! I bot picked up by my Hiroshima friends, Yamaguchi pals, and Ehime girlfriend in Fukuoka for another... RAMEN TOUR! If I've never explained ramen tours before, shame on me. I'll check later and post a link if I have.
Here's what you need to know about that:

IT WAS FUN! (You can see Steve and his wife on his motorcycle behind us!)

After that, Wendy and I split off from the group to sight see in Nagasaki and visit some of my CIR friends who took us out our second night there. Again, awesome, awesome, awesome. Here's the abridged version:

But we were by no means done. On the way back to Hiroshima we spent a day in Huis Ten Bosch, a Dutch-fashioned city in the northern cape of Nagasaki Prefecture, complete with gorgeous fields of flowers, a One-Piece (anime) themed harbor, real, working windmills, and a slew of attractions and restaurants. It was cool, overcast, and a wonderful day. Definitely a great place for couples!

Wendy brought her SLR so we got some very crisp shots of one another!

 Since then, I turned 27, but worked everyday that week (and weekend). And in June we went to our annual touch rugby tournament in Tokushima, Shikoku. Wendy met me up there too, along with her prefecture's team...grrr ;D

Most recently, I had another solid date-weekend with my Wendy! <3
We saw the new film Super8, spent a day at Kintaikyo and Iwakuni Castle, and spent the next day traveling out to Okunojima, the notorious "Bunny Island" that was over-run by escaped lab rabbits after the Japaense abandoned their illegal, top-secret poison gas facilities during WWII!

For some reason Kintaikyo is also famous for selling 100 different flavors of soft-serve! These were our second, EACH!

Not only did Wendy get these wild bunnies to hop upon the bench for some snacks, look how well they behaved!

So this has been my life these past couple months. Of course I'm leaving out my new venture in to the world of MMA, but that will wait for the next post!
With all this stuff, I hope you understand why I haven't been updating my blog so often.
July 30th will be my last day as a CIR and PA on the JET Programme, and after a couple more weeks with my girl, we must part for awhile as I fly home via Seattle on the 17th to visit my relatives and then fly down to Tucson and re-organize my American life while catching up with friends and family there as well! So busy! And to top it all off, I have to fly to NYC at the end of August and find an apartment by my first day at the new job!
PHEW!

Random Australia Update!

**UPDATE: Back home safe in Japan and here are my pics from Adelaide! **

Okay, so I am in Australia now and even though i owe you a big juicy blog about my week in Okinawa, I wanted to paraphrase an email about these last two rdays in Adelaide, Australia...AKA  "RADELAIDE" !!

Yesterday I woke up after one late night of drinking home brewed beers. I'm staying with an amazing artistic and culinary couple involved in roller derby here. I hopped in a large passenger van (driven by the father of one of the roller derby members) and 12 of us drove an hour north to Adelaide's famous wine country, Barossa. The scenery was GORGEOUS and I took lots of photos...until my camera battery died! But I'm sure as I slowly friend them on facebook more photos will pop up. ANYWAY. After grabbing some delicious bacon and eggs for breakfast, we did wine tastings at 3 vineyards, but the guys brought an entire cooler (called an "eskie" in Australia - "chilly bin" in New Zealand, btw) of beers and since we had our designated, dad driver, we all got really drunk by the time it was dark.


For lunch we had an amazing picnic-style lunch at a lake, with food provided by a nearby restaurant run by a famous Australian cook (like Julia Child-style famous). I ate pheasant for the first time ever! It was baked into a flaky pie crust, and it was delish!

At the end of the night we were dropped off at Bonnie's "homestay" and we had an almost equally amazing dinner cooked by Paul, Kit Cat Krunch's fiance. Then we played drunken Rock Band on PS3 (I played drums of course), and then they busted out an ukulele for me to play! By the time I got home I was so sapped, I passed out immediately!

This morning I awoke to the sound of my sister and others arriving. I got dressed and went out to coffee and croissant sandwich (BACON for breakfast: DAY 3!!! <3) - everyone cooks here and eats such amazing food, and today was no exception. In the morning a ref/roller girl couple "Brain and Foxy) drove my sister, another San Diego coach "Ringer", and me to a wildlife park were we got to PET kangaroos, wallaby, wombat, dingo, (okay, technically we shouldn't have tried to pet these last two through the bars, but WE DID! heh heh!), and even held a Koala!!!!

It was so magical!
After another oranic health food shop-supplied picnic, we went strawberry picking! After all this I was exhausted so I passed out for the last three hours after we got home, woke up, took a shower, and just ate a power bar and some left over potato chips for dinner. Good night world! Adelaide RULES!

Eating Flipper

Last weekend I ate dolphin. Wait! Where are you going? Let me explain. I did not set out to eat dolphin. I went to an international exchange barbeque, held by my friend in Osaka. The participants came from Japan, America and Australia. We all brought food and drinks for each other, and learned how to play cricket. We fired up the grill and started throwing on what we brought, and one of the Australians said, “I have a bit of dolphin in the cooler if you want to try.”
Here is where I feel the pressure. I love trying new food and I have never said no to a challenge. I keep a list in my head of animals I have and have not yet eaten, and dolphin is one of things, like whales, that I KNOW I shouldn’t eat, but… maybe just once. So that is exactly what I did. I tried the steak part and the skin part, once raw, once grilled, each.
While I ate Flipper, I found out more. The Aussie who brought it said he loved the stuff, and always ate it raw with soy sauce. He bought it from Taiji, the very subject of the new film “The Cove”, which the (far-too-biased-to-really-be-called) documentary condemns for their annual killing of literally tens of thousands of dolphins. It is also the main capture spot for dolphins used in shows and aquariums worldwide. I had seen previews and wanted to see the movie, but I already knew the gist of it. Dolphins are intelligent, majestic animals that should never be caged or killed for food. I love, respect, and admire dolphins, but just like dogs or cats, if I find myself in a place where they are eaten normally, I’m going to try a little.

We all continued to discuss the subject and the man who brought it talked about how he, as a foreigner, couldn’t find it at the stores there, but if his Japanese wife went in alone and asked for it, they would bring it out from behind the counter; this sounds very diabolical, but given the threat protesters and demonstrators could pose to the businesses who sell it out of simple indifference, I can understand why they would be careful. Why are there no Japanese protesters causing problems in Taiji? That is a larger and better question for someone who wants to research the topic.
When I came home from Osaka, I immediately watched “The Cove”. But much like actually eating dolphin, the experience was unimpressive. Sure, the movie made a few good points about mercury levels, pollution, and the over-fishing of whales and dolphins, but this movie was less about the killing of dolphins, and more about how difficult and dangerous it was for the crew to get in to Taiji, and record the killing of dolphins. Their goals were admirable, what they exposed was deplorable, but the whole movie screamed of their own egos.
Ultimately, I do not feel bad about eating dolphin, because I was not actively pursuing it, I didn’t pay for it, and I didn’t create any new demand for it. I got to find out what it tastes like, and that was enough for me. The taste, by the way, was similar to liver but with the texture of beef. The skin, mostly fat, was obviously chewy, oily, and not very good. Now that I have crossed that line I can say from experience, it is not worth trying. But I also know that if you are like me, you want to make that decision for yourself. In contrast, I also tried crocodile that day. It was delicious, like sword fish, and came from an animal that is decidedly stupid, ugly, and disagreeable. So I’d like to conclude by saying, save a dolphin, eat a croc.