Showing posts with label Nagoya. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nagoya. Show all posts

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Typhoons, Turtles and Kobe, Japan

Another week finished and i finally have a day off. For many of those who may follow this blog or my video blogs on You Tube, you may now that I work six days a week. This is a situation of my own choice, but the extra money is very helpful. Hopefully, next year, I won't have to work a part time job and will have more free time on the weekends. Luckily though, with my current job, I have a lot of days of and some good holiday time.

Tyhphoon Melor came and went and it sounds as if the only place in this part of Japan that had some serious damage was Nagoya. A city that is traditionally prone to flooding, they had it happen to them again. I saw some surprising images on NHK of Nagoya Station flooding quickly while JR employees made a futile attempt to block the deluge with a few sandbags.

The typhoon sure sounded a lot worse than it really was. I suppose that's because I live on the top floor of a tall apartment building on a man-made island in the middle of Kobe harbour. there is very little protection here and the wind really lashes us. It was also made worse by the fact that Japanese buildings are normally not insulated. there is no insulation in the walls and the windows are always single-paned glass. The wind whistled loudly through the windows and rattled the heck out of them. When we got up on Thursday morning, we just discovered a lot of leaves on the ground as well as a lot of garbage that had blown around. That was it!



On a cuter note, while out the other morning and wandering through a large grassy field, I found this little critter. One of the few moments in life I wasn't carrying my video camera. I took a few pictures of the baby turtle, just before I released it into a nearby pond.


Gosh golly! What a cute little chap! I was really surprised at how sharp their little claws are. I suppose they need them for climbing up rocks and things.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Kansai Music festival

Last weekend saw the first Kansai Music Festival come to Osaka. I thought it was a pretty cool deal because it afforded me my first chance t meet fellow You Tuber and musician, Fatblueman. Fatblueman is actually a band based in Nagoya, Japan and is comprised of one Canadian, two Americans and one Japanese person. The lead singer, John, has been a very active member of the Japan You Tube community for quite some time and launched himself and his band into a sort of micro-stardom with their viral video, "Christmas in Japan" (which I appeared in).

They performed at a showcase at a live event bar in Hommachi called mother Popcorn. This was the first time for this festival so there were apparently some major hiccups. I was told that the keynote speaker failed to show up and at the showcase i saw, one of the bands failed to do so as well. Luckily, Tom Fallon (a member of Fatblueman) and Brian Cullen stepped in for an impromtu set.

Check out some of my videos from the showcase at Mother Popcorn in Osaka:

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I wanted to upload some pictures, but unfortunately, Blogger isn't allowing me to put them online!