Valentine's Day chocolates

These are the chocolates I got from Akina yesterday. For those unfamliar with the way things work in Japan, on Valentine's Day, women give either obligation (giri) chocolate or true (honmei) chocolate to the men in their life that they have some connection to, whether co-workers, friends, relatives, or (possible) lovers. Giri chocolate is simply meant to keep relationships smooth (though it's also a sign of how male-oriented/dominated Japan has traditionally been). Honmei chocolate is for those towards whom the woman has romantic feelings. On March 14th, "White Day," men return chocolate to the woman they want to return romantic feelings to.

New Year's Cards

I know it's late, but I wanted to show off the new year's cards I made. They're called "nengajyo" and this year being the year of the tiger, I made them tiger-themed. These are all hand-done (I had time at school :D). Some teachers saw them and said "wow, they're cute...it's kind of surprising considering it's Andrew." Wasn't sure how to take that, so I just assumed it was because I was so cool and laid back, and not because I'm creepy or something.

Eating Shit

Excuse the language, but there's really no other way to describe what happened Saturday night during night boarding. We went to a place called Mikata Snow Park that has a fairly decent night run with rails, jumps, and even a large quarter pipe (the crummy half pipe was tried, but it was falling apart).

The night started out ok, but the first few jumps I tried were just not happening. Couldn't stick a landing without almost stopping, and I was digging a few holes with my butt out there. The big screw up on my part, though, was my attempt to go over a barrel jump. Basically it's just a barrel that sunk into the snow with a small kicker going up to it. You're either supposed to go up and over the barrel slowly, or use the barrel's side as an extra ramp and jump even higher. I'd seen a few folks go over it and thought I could do it. It looked like this:

I rolled towards it with some decent speed, and hit the barrel going decently fast. Being an inexperienced jumper, I wasn't ready for the way the shape of the barrel was going to affect me and I apparently ended up like this:

I laneded on my left shoulder and head, though to a lesser extent, before the rest of my body hit the ground. I sort of crawled over to the side a couple of feet before collapsing. It definitely hurt, but not as much as one might think when 170 odd lbs and a snowboard plus gear falls from about 6 or 7 feet in the air onto a single shoulder. My friend found me and made sure I was ok, then I got down the mountain with my goggles and beanie in my hand and took a break before continuing til they closed, though I only managed one more jump and it was a small one. On my next trip up, I checked out the landing, and found the main indention of my body was about 9 or 10 feet beyond the barrel, meaning I was in the air the entire time. My buddy Gabe said he could see my head above the barrel and that thing was at least 3 or 4 feet high.

Suffice to say it was very scary.

Presenting Akina

I finally got her permission to introduce her on the internet, so here she is, the Japanese girlfriend, Akina. Tried to pick pictures that represent her personality :)

It spreads...

This sore throat has turned into a full fledged cold, complete with slight headaches, stuffy nose, sneezing/coughing, weariness, and one of my all time favorite words to write, phlegm. It's managed to get worse with increased rest (went from working out and sleeping maybe 6 hours the first couple nights to doing nothing and sleeping 13 hours yesterday) and today I barely got through 3 classes. Tomorrow is 6!

On the plus side, I have a chance to experiment with Japanese medication/remedies. I'm taking things that look like this , suppliments of about 400 mgs of Vitamin C. Also drank one of these Oronamin C drinks today, an energy drink that has another couple hundred of mgs. Add to that a ton of orange juice, mikan, and veggie soup cooked up by Akina and hopefully this thing will be gone by the time Yukigassen rolls around this weekend.