Another Footy Game....

So I played another game of footy (Australian Rules Football). I played another game at defense (2nd ever) and i think i did well. Here is a report of the game from our team website.

"Players such as Mike Staffa and Atsushi battled their hearts out against bigger opponents, with Staffa in particular providing run out of the backline. He is developing into a specialist rebound back pocket combining both sound defence and clever attack when needed."

The other team only scored 3 goals on us the whole game. The Final score was 23-62.

3 5 23
8 14 62

attacks

Lets refrain from attacking people who post here please.

Gross

Yesterday i ate Cow Tongues. At least they were not raw, which most food is here. It was Jerky style and one could easily tell it was a tongue.

I have also eaten the following (That i can remember or identify) and have put them into 3 sections:

1) Chicken: Feet, Beaks, Cartalidge, Elbows, just Skin, and the other "normal" parts.

2) Raw: Octopus, Squid, Chicken. (Raw chicken has to be eaten no more than 15 mins after the death of the Chicken to prevent bacteria).

3) Other: Octopus Balls, Fish intestines, Fish Stomachs, Fish Eggs

Food that i have neglected to eat so far: Whale, Bear, Horse.

Yuning Surprise

This girl keeps on surprising me. I found out she speaks 4 languages, not 3. Add Korean to the list. Wow. I try to dabble in Spanish and flirt with Japanese for my repertoire of languages. But she is fluent in 4! Her cooking skills are great too. She cooked Korean the other day. 4 courses. The next day she cooked Italian making her own pasta sauce! I felt the cooking presure so i cooked her Mexican. I made fajitas. Probably the easiest thing to cook, but she had never had them before. (how to make Fajitas: Cook chicken in lemon juice and garlic, cook veggies like peppers and onions, add taco seasoning and put on tortillas with salsa, cheese, and sour cream). The hard part was finding tortillas in this crazy country. Imagine a 15 minute game of Pictionary and that was basically what i was doing at the supermarket trying to explain Tortillas to the staff there. AHHH. I also cooked her French Toast one day since she had never heard of that. So the score is 2-2 for cooking, but her food is a lot better! Any cooking recipies that are easy to do but look difficult...please send them my way!

Yuning

Yuning
Originally uploaded by mtstaffa.

News on the lady front, I have a new girlfriend. Her name is Yuning Zhang. (Zhang Yuning as it is written with the family name first, which is traditional in China). Yes, she is Chinese. I figured with 60 billion of them roaming around, I might as well get one of them on my side. Jk. She is great. She is a lot more intelligent than me, which isn’t hard. She speaks not only Chinese but also is fluent in both Japanese and English. (Her Japanese shocks my Japanese friends, it is native apparently with no Chinese accent). Her English is the best "non native" i have heard here. She is 23 and teaches Chinese at Nova. She also self taught herself Psychology. She wanted to learn Psychology in Japan but she never studied it. So she taught herself Psychology as well as Japanese and took an entrance exam (in Japanese) and was accepted to a university in Kobe. She also cooks up a storm!

Trains

I am convinced the people think foreigners smell, or that we are willing to attack people on trains completely unprovoked. On countless occasions, today being a more obvious showing, Japanese people do not like to sit next to foreigners. About once a week, I will be sitting on a packed train and the seat next to me will be open. There can be upwards of ten or fifteen people standing in the aisles and I will be oddly lucky enough to have all the arm room I need. People just don’t often sit next to blonde haired people on trains. I don’t know why, but I decided that im gonna hiss at the next person who sits next to me. I just want to provide reasoning for their fear. I have also become quite used to my “luxury” seat on the trains and I don’t want to lose that this false sense of grandeur.

12th Day of Christmas

12th Day of Christmas
Originally uploaded by mtstaffa.

On the 12th Day of Christmas my true love gave to me....The 12th Car of the Yotsubashi Subway Train.

This is where i stand to go to work. 12 was a hard number to find. Oddly enough, i found heaps of the numbers 11 and 13, but 12 was an odd number i guess. I am glad the 12 days are over, i was getting a bit sick of walking around and constantly counting everything i saw just it case it was the number i needed that day!

11th Day of Christmas

11th Day of Christmas
Originally uploaded by mtstaffa.

On the 11th Day of Christmas my true love gave to me.....11 Ikas (aka Cuttlefish)

10th Day of Christmas (delayed)

10th Day of Christmas
Originally uploaded by mtstaffa.

On the 10th day of Christmas my true love gave to me...Ten little cold buddhas. Look close, there are 10.

9th Day of Christmas (Delayed)

9th Day of Christmas
Originally uploaded by mtstaffa.

On the 9th Day of Christmas my true love gave to me...Nine White ball/lantern things.

Japan Road Trip Pictures

So i put up about 20 pictures from my road trip. Click on the title of this post to look at the pictures! Enjoy.

8th Day of Christmas (Delayed)

8th Day of Christmas
Originally uploaded by mtstaffa.

OK, so im gonna start back up with the 12 days since i was out driving around Japan for the past few days. So here is the (delayed) 8th Day of Christmas.

On the 8th Day of Christmas my true love gave to me....8 of the most random Christmas light lawn ornaments ever!

Here we have a: 2 Camels, Dolphin, Elephant, Deer, Giraffe, antelope and a kangaroo. I dont think the Japanese got the memo on standard Christmas decorations.

The driving was absolutely amazing! 4 days of driving. I drove along the Sea of Japan for 2 days then through the mountains for 2 days. It was absolutely amazing. I had a funky mini minivan type thing. I will add pictures of that later.

Driving!

Ok, this is a quick post. Im off to drive on the "other" side of the road. Im doing a Japanese Road trip. I will update the other days of Christmas when i get back! Off to go driving the Japanese coast.

7th Day of Christmas

7th Day of Christmas
Originally uploaded by mtstaffa.

On the 7th Day of Christmas my true love gave to me....Seven fried egg things.

Today i went to Sumiyoshi shrine. it is 5 mins from my apartment and it is one of the top 3 places to be on New Year's Eve in Japan. There was over 10,000 people! It was a blast.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!