Welcome to the world of wonders, a world better known as Japan. Today we will venture forth, into the depths referred to as Western Japan. A place not well explored or known even amongst the natives. On my safari I found a fascinating site at which I unfortunately have no pictures of and furthermore no PROOF of it’s existence. It will just have to remain a mystery in likeness to bigfoot until I can provide solid evidence! My discovery,.. I like to call it… the “Super Multi Kiddie Carriage”! That’s right, have the need to place a kid in day care? Worried about your kids not getting to see the town while at work? Have no fear, the “Super Multi Kiddie Carriage” is here! One caretaker can push around 5 to 7 of your children in a playpen on wheels!

No,.. seriously,… I’m not joking. I saw it.

Sorry Queen. Yea, so the highlight of my day was this kickin’ Bicycle I got. It came complete with: wheel light, bike lock, adjustable seat (no seat warmer, what can I ask for 5000 yen), and I can even lock the steering wheel so the person stealing it will go endlessly straight into that wall over there. Now all I need is some handle streamers and noise makers for the wheels…..

It’s amazing how riding a bicycle can clear your head. The whole change in lifestyle and culture has its tolls but once I get on that bike, everything just seems to go away. It’s pretty great. Today was quite a baffling day, full of Nihonglish and meetings. I met all of my co-workers (6 schools worth) and the board of education which hired me. I finally start this Friday! I am pretty excited to start and I will keep you all posted on how that first day goes! As for now, I will leave you with this, the 100 yen store is absolutely awesome. This message and my entire interior decorating scheme brought to you by Daiso, 100 yen amazingness.

So I finally arrived in my place. After two days of bustling around, I finally got water, gas, electricity,…. and INTERNET! In the mean time I was just walking around and checking out the area. Now this time of year is very popular for Cherry Blossoms, so I figured I go check out this park which is about a 30 minute walk from my place. I came to find out that a park in the conventional sense is nothing at all like I thought. It was MASSIVE like, hugely huge. We are talking: Three Soccer Fields, Two Baseball Fields, and Three Tracks. Of course this is excluding the cool Cherry Blossom Garden and the sweet Kids’ Mystery Forest! I was blown out of the water. I checked out a baseball game, chilled with a few families in the garden… and almost played on the slides! It was pretty cool.

Tomorrow is my first day at work. I get to meet all the teachers from the six schools I will be working. I go to two Junior Highs, one every week, and an different elementary school once a week. The schedule looks pretty intense, but not as bad as I was thinking. Honestly, when I saw four elementary schools I started preparing all my lessons for that! Now I have to go back and kind of plan for Junior High instead. Oh well. All in all, it’s going to be interesting and I do have some photos to get up here… or at acornsandgold,… whenever I finish that, for now you will get them here when I am done with them!

So, lately I have been preparing my exodus,… well not so much an exodus, but my transition to Japan. It has been a trying month and a half filled with visits, packing, trashing, and starting many things. Through all of it I have been a little lost and just have not had time to really see everyone. I was lucky enough that a group of friends at URI decided to throw me a party on the 7th. It was honestly one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me and I will never forget it. In all reality, I don’t see it as the end, but merely the beginning. Most of the people that were there, were in fact people I will probably see within the coming months. Sure I am moving far away, so you may be asking, “how can he see them so soon?” Well the truth is most of these people have plans to travel to my part of the world this summer or live in the area and will be moving back there come the end of the semester. A little ironic that they throw me a going away party, but it was amazing and I still hope to see them all one last time before I make the long haul to east Asia.

I know I am not the best photographer out there but I have decided to push forward and actually pursue my interest in photography. I have recently started creating a new site to form a portfolio of my work. I’m not sure anyone reads this yet, or will , but I figured I would reach out and ask for opinions on how it should be organized. It will conjoin with this site becoming a sort of sister site. Originally when I built my two sites one was to host photos and the other depict my adventures for my friends to read. It’s no face book, so it’s hard to compete for people’s time when my site doesn’t allow such networking but I’m hoping my venture to revitalize my sites will get people to keep in touch with me as much as I desire to stay in touch with them. Eventually there will be a French log written as well, and maybe Chinese if I ever come to in the language. For now, minimatt.com will remain the main site. On the other hand, acornsandgold.com will most likely be taken down permanently and replaced by a site that will remain undisclosed at the moment till more is completed. This secondary site will be a true portfolio of photos and art work I have made whether they be recent adventures or crazy inpsirations. What are your thoughts? Feel free to e-mail me, I am sure you all know where to reach me, if not leave messages here.

What’s all the way out in Vermont aside from snow and mountains? The Burton 2008 US Open of course. My friend Ian and I went out to check out this snowboarding extravaganza. The snowboarders were amazing, flying off the half-pipes no problem. I got some pretty sick photos of the pro boarders coming off the pipe and of the serene countryside known as Vermont.

Of course while I was there I decided to try snowboarding for the first time ever. With my trusty guide, he taught all about the art of gliding down the hill and all I managed to master was the tumbleweed. I was nasty at it, pulling a 1080 tumbleweed was no problem as long as no one got in the way of my graceful tumbling. That aside, it was awesome because I managed to start going up the mountain on lifts the very same day. Snow boarding is amazing, a whole different sport entirely. I don’t think the whole half-pipe thing is for me, but I’ll be sure to go snowboarding some more in the future! Pictures will follow sometime soon, so keep an eye out for those!

So I heard about this thing going on on April 5th. It’s supposed to be this huge Dance till Dawn (DTD). From what I hear it was pretty big last year, talking hundreds of people, but unfortunately I was in France so couldn’t go. So yeah, anyone who’s in the area should check it out, I hear the price is going to be around 2 to 5 dollars, a good deal for an all night dancing craze. Here’s a listing of what to expect:

Hey Everyone!

Welcome to the new miniMatt.com site! I tried using my other site as a sort of blog but the whole site’s maintenance would become astronomical to continue that way. Instead, I took a hint from a friend and now I have this running on my site. If you want updates on what’s going on with me, want to comment on the craziness, or just plain old want to talk, then you will be able to catch me here. Hope that all is going well with everyone! Keep an eye out for changes because they will be arriving, I hope, on a daily basis.