Adventures in....Toilet Training the Cats???

The possibility of doing this seems like an urban myth. But gosh darnit I hate my house smelling like catbutt! So the adventure begins...

About a week and a half ago I decided that I was going to toilet train my two cats, Ami (short for Queen Amidala) and Vader (Yes, both are Star Wars names). After consulting various websites, my favorites being How to Toilet-Train Your Cat and the Douglas Island Veterinary Service's Toilet Training for Cats made Easy (ironic name), I set off with Step 1 - moving the litterbox into the bathroom, smack next to their new best friend, the Toilet. Cats generally will go where the litter is, but to discourage peeing on the carpet where the box used to be and to encourage going to the litterbox's new location, I put the Vader's favorite scratching toy in the place where the litterbox used to be, and lugged Vader over to the litterbox and plunked him down in it. That was the easy part. No problems, other than our bathroom being rather small, and the litterbox rather large.

Step 2 occurred a few days later, when I threw a cardboard box lid (~3-4 inches tall) under the litterbox to get them accustomed to doing their business higher up. Again, no problem. Considering the horror stories I'd read about the resistance cats had put up to the whole process, my cats were going easy as a slip'n'slide ride. So easy, I only waited about 2 days to move their box up higher, this time onto a box a whole foot off the ground. Again, easy. A few days, and I switched out their litterbox for an aluminum roasting pan, since that was what was going to wind up in the toilet eventually. Before long, I had that pan up on the toilet lid, and the cats were having no problems using it up there. Andrew, on the other hand...

More to come!

P90X, It's called "X" for a reason

Indeed it's been a while since we've updated this blog, but here goes.

We got back from our cruise, which was awesome(The photos are on Facebook), we've planned a few swing trips (Camp Jitterbug, All Bal), and we've been working our tails off to make the money. Fort Collins dance projects are taking off, including Teni's new "Free private lessons" offer which got a flood of requests. Needless to say we're busy.

Nevertheless, we still felt lazy, as people like us tend to whenever we get time to relax. Relaxing = no bueno apparantly. So to stave of the desire to watch all 13(15?) seasons of Buffy in our "free" time, and to tone up a bit, we've decided to do P90X like many swing dancers these days. We've seen the results that people like famous dancers Nick Williams and Bobby White have achieved, and thus we were convinced that it wasn't just another late night infomercial.

They're not kidding that this workout is extreme. The fit test at the beginning gives you hope for your own performance and conditioning before the program. However....day 1 is Back/Chest and a devil of a workout called Ab Ripper X, and you slowly realize that your current "conditioning" as compared with these people is akin to a snail without it's shell...soft, squishy and grossly inadequate.

Tony (the host and creator) starts Ab Ripper X saying: "Ab Ripper X: I hate it, but I LOVE it". This became immediately apparant why as even with our competitive natures, Teni and I successfully pulled about 1/3 of the reps as the people in the video, and while Teni refused to stop until I did, she sure as shit collapsed on the ground into the same mushy puddle as I had one or two reps before.

They say that required equipment is a pullup bar, a heart monitor, excercise bands or weights, and your "bring it" face. After day one, I've already snapped one band amd my "bring it" face was quickly melted into something like a "holy crap, no mas" face. But I guess that's how you know it was a good workout. Today, day two, we have yet to do today's workout: Plyometrics, but all I can say is, I'm SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO glad that there's no upper body focus today, as I'm not sure if I'll ever feel normal in my upper body again...

P90X: I hate you, but I love you.



P.S.
Incidently, my favorite part of the entire thing so far comes from the "how to bring it" intro video. He suggests that you start with the light version for the first 30 days, then move to the normal for the next 30, then do the "doubles" program all back to back. But he says once you do that you need to: "write me an email and tell me when you're scheduling your trip to Mount Everest because I KNOW you're an animal and I LOVE YOU." I'm still laughing at that....You may not find it so funny, but once you see this Tony guy, you'll get it.

Finally...the funny Japan pictures!!!

...Or at least the things that struck me as funny. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I'll just mostly post the pictures...

I've always thought he was pretty cool...

Chocopie...For MEN. Yum.

Andrew explained to me that in Japan, the Colonel and Santa are thought to be the same person...I didn't believe him, but here's the proof!

"Eternally No Charge" lol!

Park'n Park...and then?

Yeah, no clue.

It's an energy drink...

It's no ordinary toilet...

It's got buttons that squirt water and plays music!

You know, I think we all like standards...

Don't trip!

Oh, the car names...

"Moco" means booger in Spanish...

It's a coffee vending machine...named Blendy. Lol.

It's a beer vending machine...

Hope you liked them!

We're going on a cruise!!!

Andrew and I found a great deal on a 7 night Caribbean cruise that we decided we did not want to pass up, so...April 26 we go on a Carnival cruise!! We will be stopping at the Cayman Islands, Belize, Isla Roatan, and Cozumel. Yeayyyy!!!!!

November 16th: A day for the host family

Before I had made all my preparations and whatnot to come to Japan this time, I contacted my old host family from back when I studied abroad four years ago. We have been keeping in touch all these years, and I really wanted to see them. My host sister had gone from 9 years old to 13…..a big jump for a young girl. Especially in Japan, when you enter your “chuugaku” (middle school) years, and your preparation for college starts. A big responsibility at a physically challenging time... I won’t get into the details of the cultural context and all that stuff, but needless to say: Japanese kids have it rough during this time in their lives. I was particularly interested to see how Kayoko was handling it and how grown up she had gotten since I was last here. As her “brother”, I was impressed and pleased. Much like my blood sister, she has matured a lot and shows a great deal of promise :-) Here's a picture of her to the right of their new host daughter, holding a gift that I won in a claw machine, hah:


So I dedicated a whole day to them. I got up and going from Ian’s and met my host family at the station I used to go to everyday for school, Korien-eki:


They came with their new host student, whom I was very pleased to see. You see, I was their first host student, and I was always curious really what kind of impression I left on them (the Japanese are often not very forthright about how they think of you….in fact, they never are). I guess the fact that this is their 7th host student since me is a testament to me not being a terrible “son”. Here are some pictures of my family:




This is the skateboard I left behind when I came back to the US. They made me sign it. They're going to keep it. Wow....I feel like I'm famous :-)


“Boku no koto wo wasuranaide kudasai” I said to my host mother before I left from Japan. By the time I got back to the US, she had written my mother an email that said “I cannot forget Andrew, he was my first son”. I almost cried.

Nov 15th: Outback to Izakayas

On Saturday, I decided it was about time to get the hell out of the house, so after sleeping in, me, Mike, and Kozue (who stayed over with us) decided to go out for breakfast/lunch (at 1pm, hah) at…


Yes, Outback Steakhouse. I know, strange to go to an Asian country for an authentic experience and whatnot, and then drop a bunch of money on a western franchise, but what the hell, Outback has some tasty food, I’m not gonna lie about that…

On the way to Outback we saw this (take a look at these tights...this lady was like 60):


And this cool sculpture:



After this tasty treat, we took a trip down to Nagoya station, where they dropped me off so I could head to Osaka via my good old friend the Shinkansen (I’ve really gotten my money’s worth out of my unlimited train pass dealy):




Nice sunset out the window of the train:



Upon arrival, I settled at Ians place and then met up with a friend to go dancing! It was a lot of fun, and it was good to see my old dance friends from 4 years ago. I took this really cool picture of a wall of advertisements near shinsaibashi(a popular area for bars and shopping in Osaka):



Me and Ian killed some time and called up another friend of ours, Matthias Kreiger, who previously joined us for Karaoke in a previous post. Due to a negative experience after the last time we stayed out late in Osaka, Kreiger decided to bring some friends to accompany him on tonights ichibanjuunomi (All night long drinking…..yeah, doesn’t translate well). After some brief debate, we all decided we’d go out drinking - Japanese style! By that, I mean we decided to go to an Izakaya. Izakayas are essentially the traditional version of bars in Japan. They serve interesting small snack-y foods and lots of tasty, tasty booze.

On the way to the Izakaya:


This is what is being said:


So, we removed our shoes, climbed up behind a more or less non effective curtain, and congregated around our table and so began the fun. After introductions, and some general chit-chat about relationships and whatnot, I brought up the idea of drinking games, and we decided to try out a few. We started with a game that some of my Japanese friends in the US taught me called “Gyuu-tan geimu”, which literally translates to the “beef tongue game” (don’t ask…I don’t know). Apparently it’s a really popular game, because everybody at the table knew it right away. If you’re interested, I can teach you….it’s really easy. After many rounds, and many beers, we decided to switch games, we played another game that I don’t know the name of, but in similar style, people around the table call off certain words in a pre-determined order. Add to that, random pointing to reset the order of the yelling, and you get one big, fun, drunken mess. It was a blast, to say the least. After that, Ian TRIED to explain a very complicated coin flicking, beer chugging, game, like quarters…mixed with Hockey… mixed with pinball, mixed with….well you get the idea. After two other drinking games, and the ensuing difficulty in learning and explaining it, needless to say, we eventually just sort of gave up in drunken disinterest.

Unfortuately, I don’t have any good pictures from the Izakaya. (I know….I’m a slacker. Sorry, I was distracted by delicious booze and fun games, can you blame me?). These pictures are of us putting our shoes back on the way out from there:





After this, Ian and I went home, and Kreiger and posse headed to the next destination in their ichibanjuunomi. Needless to say, after the brief bike ride home (in the light rain, no less). We passed out VERY quickly.

The 13th and 14th: Gorogoro

Thursday, I took most of the day to relax from the traveling all over the place, and get some work done, get some stuff prepared for the blog, chat with Teni (who I was beginning to miss a lot!), and just generally get re-organized. So, unfortunately, there’s not a ton to report about today. However, I do have some pictures of what sitting at home all day does to me:




In the evening, Mike and I went out on the town. We went downtown, and just generally hung out. Nagoya is a cool city. According to Wikipedia, “it is the capital of Aichi Prefecture and is one of Japan's major ports along with those of Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, Yokohama, Chiba, and Hakata. It is also the center of Japan's third largest metropolitan region, known as the Chūkyō Metropolitan Area. As of 2000, Chūkyō Metropolitan Area has 8.74 million people, of which 2.17 million live in the city of Nagoya.”

Quotes aside, my impression of Nagoya is that it’s very open and western-looking for a city in Japan. Mike told me that the reason for this is that Nagoya was used for military weapons stockpiles at one time, and that the American presence during the rebuilding of Japan after the war, heavily influenced the building styles and layouts. But enough of the history lesson. Mike decided to take me to a cool shopping area called Osu Shotengai (Shotengai is the word for a covered walkway. There are Shotengais in many cities in Japan).




We also came upon a random shrine at one part of the shotengai....it really surprised me.



Friday was another day dedicated to “gorogoro”, the onomatopoeic expression in Japanese for lazing around relaxing. I did venture out a little bit in the form of a walk around the immediate area around Mike’s place, but I didn’t take any pictures, so I’ll just leave the narrative there. Later, after Mike got back from work, we decided to go out to dinner with his friend Kozue. We went for Kaiten-Zushi. It was delicious and inexpensive at the place we went. Here are some shots from that night:











Got bored in the back of the car on the way home...haha: