I’m not going to be posting things on this website for a looong time, mostly because I’m currently traveling around the world. I’m maintaining a site exclusively for the trip, so if you’d like to see what Val and I are up to please visit bigtripblog.com, our around the world travel site.
I set up a cool feature where a random picture from the photo gallery shows up in the right sidebar. The problem is that right now there aren’t many pictures in there, and I uploaded a few entire folders of pictures that haven’t been sorted yet. So there are some crappy pictures showing up, sorry about that! In a few weeks we should have all of the pictures from Japan up.
We went to South Korea in the winter of 2004 and damn was it cold. We had an amazing time though. The Korean style heated floors really make the winter bearable, and the spicy food and beer halls don’t hurt.
The first time I visited Egypt, in March 2002, I didn’t bring my video camera. I was travelling by myself and I was worried about taking expensive stuff with me. As soon as I got there I realized that was a pretty stupid decision. I went back with my older brother Chris a few years later, but we didn’t get to see nearly as many of the ancient sites as I did the first time. We flew in and out of Sharm el-Sheikh (a few hours after President Bush actually) and spent the majority of our time snorkeling, checking out the Sinai desert, and chilling in Dahab. We did make it out to Cairo for a brief two day visit to see the pyramids though. Here is a short video of that trip, at long last.
I made this video as a reflection on my two years in Japan. Thursday was our last day of work, so we organized a showing at an Irish pub called the Hill of Tara. There were about 30 people in attendance, which was really awesome! I also made a DVD featuring this video and the best videos from our time in Kyoto, and sold them for 1,000 yen each. All the proceeds are going to a new charity started by my friends called Flicker. I’ll post a link to the website when it is up and running. For now, here’s my attempt to sum up 2 years on JET in 7 minutes of video. If you didn’t get a copy of the DVD and you want one, let me know, I’ll send the proceeds to Flicker.
Sanjusangendo is a temple in the southeast of Kyoto renowned for the thousands of gold buddha statues housed there. Each January they have a traditional archery contest there. We went in 2004 and just enjoyed the atmosphere. Here is a short video.
Each year in July Kyoto gets mobbed with people as the city prepares for the Gion Matsuri. It’s an old festival that is considered to be one of the best in Japan. They close off the main street, Shijo, and the three or four nights leading up to the parade see the downtown area packed with yukata wearing folk enjoying the atmosphere and eating lots of festival food. Here’s the video.
I made this for the Welcome Video that gets sent out to all the new JETs each year. It’s just a montage (hey, even Rocky had one!) of sights from all around Kyoto.
Here is my video about spring in Kyoto, when the cherry blossoms come out and everything grinds to a halt.