Well, I've been suffering from rather boring days at school recently. It's not really that fun. I did have some excitement last week. My younger brother Paul came to visit me from his town in Japan. It's about a nine-hour train ride. Not really a fun time, but I guess it is better than the driving 7.5 to 8 hours that I did in September.

Paul arrived on Tuesday night, and I gave him a tour of the town on the way back to my place. We went up the city hall tower and looked out over the city. However, we couldn't see the mountains because of water vapor. He saw the castle park from above too. Then we walked through the red light district just for fun, and on to my apartment. We ate at my favorite restaurant that night, the Nepalese one. The biggest limitation we had when Paul arrived is that he can't ride a bike. So we had to walk everywhere in the city. The city isn't too big, but it was a bit of a pain. We walked to the video store and got several movies since it was a discount day. We watched part of Being John Malkovich that night.

On Wednesday, I brought Paul to school, and introduced him to my teachers. We both got on AOL Instant Messenger and chatted with our friends, including Nora Gluch, a mutual friend from The Mountain that I haven't talked to for awhile. We went out to lunch at a place I'd never been before. It is a kebab stand inside a truck. It was about a 15 minute walk from the school, but I thought it would take longer. The kebab was pretty good, and a nice change, since such food is impossible to find in Toyama normally. I plan on going again sometime. In the afternoon, I helped out Paul with his taxes, and we found out he doesn't have to pay anything for his federal return. He doesn't even have to file his state taxes, since he made so little and they didn't withhold any money from his paycheck. It's nice that the money we earn here is tax free. After school, I brought Paul to my Japanese class. He's quite good at Japanese, despite not having any classes. I'm a lot less self-motivated about studying, I think. Also, it probably hurts me that there are lots of other foreigners around that I talk to in English. Paul is mostly surrounded by Japanese people. After class, we played basketball at the school, which was lots of fun.

On Thursday I went to school and Paul went to Kanazawa, a large city that's nearby. Thursday was a bright and sunny day, unlike the rest of Paul's visit. At night, Victoria came over and we watched "Meet the Parents." It's Victoria's favorite movie, and Paul hadn't seen it before. We got two pizzas for dinner, both of them are pretty close to what pizza at home is like. Some pizzas here are quite strange, with mayonnaise instead of tomato sauce. They're not actually that bad, but they sound pretty gross.

On Friday, I took vacation and my friend from the Toyama Cosmopolitan Association took Paul and I around the prefecture. Takemaru-san was the director of the TCA, but recently got replaced, so he had nothing to do (he's retired) during the day. This was nice for us, since he could drive us around. We went to a place called Kamitaira, which has old thatched-roof houses that are quite famous in Japan. On each house, the roof is quite steep to keep snow from collapsing the roof. Those areas get many meters of snow during the winter. I can't imagine living there a long time ago without any electricity. Inside the house they had a traditional Japanese fireplace, which has no chimney. It made me appreciate chimneys, since the room was filled with smoke, especially the upstairs part of the house. Also, the wood was all black, but apparently it started out with a light color hundreds of years ago. All the smoke changed the color of the wood. Later we went to two other small towns nearby. For lunch, we drove back to Toyama and went to a Korean-style yaki-niku (fried meat) restaurant. There's a big grill in the middle of the table and you fry raw meat on it. Then you dip it in a sauce and eat it. It's the type of place that will send you to heart attack city. My friend Carmen would really like it though. Takemaru-san said his wife doesn't let him eat much meat anymore, so he really wanted to go out for yaki-niku with us. It was actually my first time going to this type of restaurant. He dropped us off in the afternoon and we chilled for awhile during the day. We walked to Victoria's house at night through the rain since she wasn't feeling too well. Sarah was at Victoria's place and we talked with her too. Paul made spaghetti for everyone. Later on, we walked back home and it was pouring. However, a friend of mine saw us in her car and offered us a ride. It was really nice of her. She's not a very good driver, but we made it home alive, so the ride was a good thing after all.

On Saturday, one of my teachers who left for another school, Mrs. Iguchi, picked us up early in the morning and took Victoria, Paul, and I to Takayama which is in Gifu-prefecture to the south. There was a train we could've taken, but she volunteered to take us. She thought it was a long way away, and was worried about being the only driver. However, it only took an hour and a half, so afterwards she said it was not so far away after all. Mrs. Iguchi told us some cool places to go to, and Paul and I navigated. It is quite easy to navigate in the city, because it is fairly small, and there are signs everywhere in English pointing to tourist attractions. It's a famous little town because of having many older buildings and shrines. So it is quite used to having many tourists. We saw an old government building from hundreds of years ago, and many old houses. There is a street which is just old houses, most of which are now over-priced stores and woodcraft shops. It rained lightly all day, so the weather wasn't the best. In addition, it was quite cold, around 5 degrees celsius in Takayama. We made it back to Toyama around 5:30. Victoria went home and took a nap, while Paul and I walked to the foreign food store. I bought a bunch of stuff, including a masala curry mix, which became our dinner that night. Victoria came over after her nap and we all watched Shrek together. I guess we watched a lot of movies at night. There's not much else you can do during the night in Toyama when it is raining and cold. There was actually a festival in Toyama that weekend. It was a Chindon festival, a competition between Japanese street performer clowns from all over Japan. It coincided with the blooming of the cherry blossom trees. However, it didn't sound like much fun in the pouring rain, so we didn't get to see it while Paul was here.

On Sunday we had breakfast at Mr. Donuts and sent Paul on his way home. It was a beautiful, sunny day that day, so we just had bad luck when Paul was here. Victoria and I went "hanami"-ing (flower viewing) at the castle park. All the cherry blossoms were out in full force and the festival was still going on. We saw some of the festival and walked around the trees for awhile. It was quite nice. Around noon, I had another tax seminar for U.S. citizens. It would've gone faster than the first time, except people kept showing up late. It is difficult to do some of the lines if you haven't done the first few lines, so they had to wait until I finished with the people who showed up on time, before they could finish everything. I've been amazed at some of the advice that people have gotten from tax professionals who told them they don't need to file a tax return if they are living abroad. If you are earning money in a foreign country, you always have to file a tax return.

Later that night we went to an enkai at the TCA for Takemaru-san, the guy who drove us around on Friday. An enkai is a dinner party. At school they are quite expensive and generally a rip-off. At the TCA everyone helped cook the food and we ate in one of the meeting rooms, so it was much cheaper ($9 total). Victoria and I had a lot of fun there, and many people speak English at the TCA, so we could talk to some people. Takemaru-san got a good send-off, and we welcomed his new replacement. Unfortunately, his replacement doesn't speak any English. This isn't very good, since he is in charge of many different international activities. At least his staff speaks English fine.

I'm going to send my computer in for repairs this week. This time the Toshiba people in Tokyo at least offered to pay for the cost of shipping, so that is good. Previously, I've had to pay for the cost. I really hope they can find a good solution for what ails my computer. I don't want to have to send it in again in May. I'm also hoping that they fix my computer fairly quickly.