Well, I just had my birthday weekend. It was pretty good overall. Nothing too bad happened, although now I am a little injured. I didn't have any cake or any typical birthday things either. So here's the story:

Friday night was a party for Toyko-area bloggers, thrown by Mike and Nadine at a cool little place in Harajuku called the Pink Cow. It was a small place and it turned out that there were like 40 people there. And it was cool. I didn't really get to talk to most of them, because they know each other better than me and I am not so sociable, and because I had to leave pretty early, but it was fun seeing the faces behind some of the web pages I read, and even meeting some of the people. Mike and his wife (from hunkabutta.com) were especially interesting, but that may have been because I have read his site before and as such I knew a little bit about them. The voyeuristic aspects of such meetings are usually stronger, but since I hadn't read most peoples' sites beforehand, it wasn't that bad. A few people even claimed to have read my site though. They seemed to be a nice group of people so I look forward to meeting up with them again.

Interlude: It seems as if a lot of new people are reading this site. I can attribute this to two things: first, people who I met at the party on Friday giving me links or looking at my site, and second, this picture of a drink called Placenta that I put in the gallery. Apparently someone posted a link to it on the Everlasting Blort and hundreds of people came to check it out. They do have some funny drinks in Japan, but I a little surprised that this picture is so interesting. I have never seen anyone drinking this stuff in real life. Its funny also because we were just talking about stupid ways to get more readers for your blog on Friday at the thing, because we all have blogs, although it seems as if most of the other people also have readers. Apparently Mike gets a lot of hits for this one ugly picture of some girl's ass that he posted a long time ago. It is hard for me to understand why someone would want to look at that when there is so much genuine pornography on the net, but to each his own I guess. But I think we all decided to post some pictures of people's asses, just to increase traffic to our sites. So keep an eye out for that. Although wacky Japanese English seems to be pretty popular too so maybe I will just stick with that.

But for the benefit of those new to the site, here is a short introduction of myself, in Japanese:

おはようございます！私はアメリカのボルシモア市からきたジェフシオッテイと言います。六か月前に日本に来ました。日本では、北越谷に住んでいます。今英語の教師ですけど、日本に来る前は、プログラマーでした。二十九歳です。私の趣味は絵を描くことです。毎日に、日本語を勉強をしています、でもまだ上手じゃない。私の一番好きな食べ物はピザですけど、日本の好きな食べ物は広島風お好み焼きです。夏よ冬が好きですけど、秋が一番好きです。

Okay, that's enough of that. My Japanese is still pretty bad. I had to leave the party early because on Saturday morning we were leaving for snowboarding, and the train left at like 5:15. We all had to get to Omiya to get the Shinkansen to Naeba, but it wasn't too bad. The problem was that when we got there, we were too tired to snowboard very much. I went for a few hours on the first day and then took a long nap. It was amazing that we were able to coordinate 16 people and get them all on the train and all that, although obviously I am taking no credit for it myself since Vincent did all the work. As for snowboarding, it doesn't seem as if I am very good at it. It was fun and all, but I couldn't do much more than just go down the easy slope. Not the bunny hill, but the easy slope was enough for me. I still managed to wipe out pretty thoroughly on several occasions. I think I hurt my neck a little bit actually. The problem was that, when going down the hill, half the time your ass is pointing down the slope and you are facing up. At this point, if you lose your edge and lean back a little too much, you will slam onto your ass with all the velocity you were previously using to go down hill. After this, the back of your head is whipped into the ground, and in my case your glasses are thrown 20 feet downhill. I guess you could get some whiplash this way, but I hope that all I have is neck pain. It doesn't hurt too much; it is just sore, and difficult to look to the left. Specifically, I have strained my sternocleidomastoid muscle, which supports your head when you tilt it back past upright. Other than that, I am fine and had a great time, although I think I like skiing better than snowboarding. Skiing just seems more natural. The Japanese mountains were really cool, and going on a trip with so many AETs was really cool too, but I don't think I took too many pictures so don't go harassing me to see them.

So, now I am 29 years old. Does this mean anything? I don't really think so. I am pretty sure that 30 is a big year though, and that people tend to look back on their lives up to that point and freak out that they haven't accomplished anything yet, so maybe I should try to accomplish something in the next year. God only knows what though. I think it would be an accomplishment just for me to decide on something to accomplish. I do feel pretty old though, and this feeling is exacerbated by my soreness from this weekend. Physically I am not too creaky yet, although playing basketball with all the kids at lunchtime is getting to be a bit of a challenge. And of course mentally I am still quite immature, so maybe it will be a long time before I can really feel old. So, what should I do with my life? What do you hope to accomplish by the time you are 30?