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Places Japan |
 Oji,
Nara, Japan
Pretty much a little hick town but, in many ways, a lot like the place where I
grew....um, except everyone is Japanese. Centered in one of the most historic
prefectures in Japan (Nara) you can find what seems like an unlimited supply of
Japanese temples. The Summers are unbearable for most people. Really hot and
humid. I happen to like this type of climate and looking forward to getting a
good sweat on. Japanese beer from the tap tastes incredible during the long,
hot, Summer days. |
 Oji,
Nara, Japan. |
 Amanohashidate,
Kyoto, Japan. |
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Places Traveled |
At least half of the United States.
Mexico.
San Diego, California.
Taiwan....Philippines.
Saipan....Palau, Micronesia.
Toyama City, Toyama, Japan.
Oji, Nara, Japan.
Thailand.
Korea....Japan. |
 Thailand. |
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Schools Attended |
 Lindbergh
Elementary School
https://www.kenton.k12.ny.us/kentonle/site/default.asp
This is without a doubt the coolest school in the United
States. Really good memories from this place for sure. The
building is what a school is supposed to look like as
opposed to the crap they build for schools in California.
Most of the schools look like manufactures homes....one
story buildings, run-down school grounds, and what's up with
all the locked fences and gates? Anyway much more about this
school later on. |
 Kenmore
Middle School (formerly Kenmore Junior High School)
https://www.kenton.k12.ny.us/kentonkms/site/default.asp
Kind of began disliking school at this point. Not really
much to say for now except a bit disappointed the school is
now a middle school grades 6-8. |
Kenmore
West High School
https://www.kenton.k12.ny.us/kentonkwhs/site/default.asp
Went a few days and decided to take the G.E.D. |
 San
Diego City College - General Education
https://www.sdcity.edu/
This is an inner-city school in San Diego. While I was
attending this school, I was working like crazy to pay rent,
tuition, and books. With this said, not much in the way of
fun but this was a fantastic place to take general education
courses. Pretty much an easy A anytime. |
 San
Diego State University - Alumni - B.S. Business
Finance, minor in Real Estate, Geological Studies
https://www.grossmont.edu/
Even though I was still working a lot while attending SDSU,
I still managed to enjoy myself. Plenty of beach and house
parties in between work. I was a geology major for much of
the time until the oil industry was going bust. Then I
decided to go for a business degree and switched to finance.
Really missed all the Geology field trips though. A bunch of
students sleeping on the ground in the middle of the desert
waiting to get up the next day to collect rocks or look for
faults, um, earthquake faults, not faults with each other. I
worked at the weather station in the Geography building for
quite some time which was an absolute thrill for me. |
Grossmont
College - Alumni - A.A. Japanese Studies
https://www.sdsu.edu/
Hmmmm, what can I possibly say about this place. I was the
first student to graduate with an A.A. Degree in Japanese
Studies. A couple of reasons. Although the college offered
Japanese classes for many years, the degree was kind of a
new thing. In addition, most students dropped out of
Japanese after one semester after finding out there is much
more to the language than manga and anime. Actually I was
one of the few students studying Japanese for cultural
reasons and not to understand Japanese cartoons. Come to
think of it, I was one of the few students to actually
study. This school is filled with lazy American students who
are basically unsure of which direction they plan to take.
The students were cheating on exams like crazy and the
teachers didn't even give a crap. Anyway, happy to be out of
that "college" for sure. The main benefit of this place was
the presence of tons of Japanese students since this school
has the lowest entry requirements "TOEFL score" in San
Diego. This meant plenty of Japanese students for language
exchange, many of whom became and still are my friends. |
American
Language Institute - Alumni - Teaching English as a
Foreign Language (TEFL) certificate
https://www.americanlanguage.org/
I wanted to go back to Japan and stay for at least a year
but was unable to because of the 3 month visa limit. I
decided to obtain a teaching certificate in order to teach
English and get a working visa. The teacher training program
at this school is awesome. The teachers are very dedicated
and my mentor, Rob Shaffer, really taught me a lot. We are
now good friends. |
|
Places Worked |
- During college and before - Insignificant jobs -
numerous to get myself through college. More about these when I feel like
writing about them....um, and if I can even remember.
- From graduation from SDSU until 1992 - Security Pacific
National Bank - Appraisal Officer - This was a very cool place to work.
Probably would have stayed there if stinky BofA had not bought them out.
- 1992 - Bank of America - Appraisal Officer - Nothing
good to say about this bank except working for this company after the merger
(yeah right-takeover) with Security Pacific for eight months gave me the
motivation to form my own company.
- Somewhere in there was my brief attempt at an acting
career. Will try to pull out the pictures and videos at a later date.
- 1992-1999 - Paramount Appraisals - Owner - Residential
real estate valuation company.
- 1999 - Retired and went back to school to learn
Japanese.
- Currently - Still retired, well semi-retired, and
actually making an income now from my Internet projects.
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My interests |
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Interests |
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Hiking
- Really into hiking since my place is one mile from Mission
Trails Regional Park in two different directions. This is
one of the largest urban parks in the country and
encompasses 5,800 acres. In the background you can see
Cowles Mountain which actually is the highest point within
the San Diego city limits. The hike is about 3 miles round
trip and is a level 5 trail, which is considered to be
difficult based on a 1 to 5 rating scale. From the top is a
panoramic view of San Diego which stretches all the way from
the ocean to the mountains at the edge of San Diego County. |
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Mountain bike riding
- This is a picture of the back of Mission Trails Regional
Park. This section of the park has miles and miles of trails
through meadows and over small hills. Mostly grassy with
some small bushes much of which turns brown during the
Summer months. |
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Camping
- We usually go camping a couple times every year in the
Cleveland National Forest. This is our favorite campground
because the camping spaces are really spread apart and, if
you go during the week, you can pretty much get the place to
yourself. This campground is up at around 5,600 feet in
elevation. Not exactly Mount Fuji but pretty high for San
Diego County. Tons of wildlife up here including birds like
blue jays, woodpeckers, crows, and hawks. You can also find
squirrels, raccoons, field mice, coyotes, and an occasional
mountain lion, although very rare. Oh yeah, one year it had
just rained and there were thousands of small tree frogs
everywhere. They were even in the bathrooms. They were
really cute although Akiko wasn't too thrilled with them. |
 Wine
- I was really not much of a drinker over the years except
at parties and other social occasions. After Akiko and I met several years ago,
I began to appreciate wine. Akiko knows quite a bit about the different
varieties. My favorite is Cabernet Sauvignon. Last year we drove up to San
Francisco to visit friends and went up north to Napa Valley and Sonoma County,
California wine country. We visited many wineries many of which offered free
wine tasting. It was a lot of fun. |
 Traveling
-
You can find out more about this if you visit the places
section of my site. |
 Learning languages
- Hmmmm, let's see. I studied the following languages.
English - Fairly proficient.
Hebrew - Studied for 3 years. Can still read a little bit
but pretty much forgot most of the vocabulary.
French - Studied for 3 years. Can read a little and still
remember some vocabulary.
Spanish - Took one semester and can understand a little.
Japanese - Completed an A.A. degree in Japanese studies.
Traveled to Japan on four separate occasions. Two of the
trips included three months each with Japanese families. Can
understand and speak the language at least enough for a
basic conversation. Really technical conversations are not
possible due to lack of vocabulary. Can read a little bit
but need to learn thousands of kanji, Chinese characters. |
 Learning about different cultures
- Probably the best way to learn about the world is to
travel to your countries of interest and hang out with the
locals. This picture was taken on a really old sleeper train
which we rode for 10 hours from Bangkok Thailand to Chiang
Mai, Thailand, a city up in the northern mountains. It was
right before New Year's and we went to Thailand for 10 days
including this trip up north for a 3-day trekking tour. This
was the party car in the middle of the train where everyone
was drinking, including the train workers. Akiko is in the
orange shirt, and Rieko is a Japanese girl we met on the
train who was en route to Africa to continue her world
travels. It was an unbelievable experience. |
 |
 Star
Trek - Pretty much limited to the Original Series and
The Next Generation. Really could not get into the other
spinoffs. A couple links for watching the old shows.
Full episodes of the original series on Fancast
Full episodes of the original series on YouTube - Season 1
Full episodes of the original series on YouTube - Season 2
Full episodes of the original series on YouTube - Season 3
|
 Total science geek - Anything related to meteorology,
geology, geography, astronomy. |
Surfing
-
Hey, this Summer I am going surfing for the first time after
many years in SD.
https://surfing-gooroo.com/ |
Fishing - Yup, I really like fishing. Spent the last few years
trying to work out a formula to figure out when the fish
would be biting. Needless to say, still working on it.
This is a picture of the Ocean Beach pier. Anyway, thought it might be cool to put this fishing report
up this year since this is the last fishing season before
moving to Japan. |
|
Ocean Beach Fishing Report |
|
Date |
Caught |
Fish |
Conditions |
| 4/19/09 |
18 |
Sardines |
Warm-80's, calm wind |
| 4/20/09 |
12
1
1 |
Sardines
Jacksmelt
Mackerel |
Warm-80's, calm wind,
Ocean H2O-64
Light Waves |
| 5/7/09 |
0 |
|
Awful
conditions, record high surf, looked cool
but no fish |
| 5/18/09 |
1
1 |
Mackerel
Smelt |
Cloudy,
windy, and not very warm |
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|
 San Diego,
California and Japan Time Differences
Japan is 17 hours ahead of San Diego using
Pacific Standard Time (PST) and 16 hours ahead
of San Diego during Daylight Savings Time (DST) in Spring and Summer.
I put this information together for those of you who want to chat
and are confused about the time differences. Since most of you are in San Diego, this page will
include time differences between California and Japan.
Hoping to talk to all of you soon. Until then. |
| San Diego to
Japan
Time Differences - PST |
|
San Diego |
Japan |
| 12:00
am |
5:00
pm |
| 1:00
am |
6:00
pm |
| 2:00
am |
7:00
pm |
| 3:00
am |
8:00
pm |
| 4:00
am |
9:00
pm |
| 5:00
am |
10:00
pm |
| 6:00
am |
11:00
pm |
| 7:00
am |
12:00
am |
| 8:00
am |
1:00
am |
| 9:00
am |
2:00
am |
| 10:00
am |
3:00
am |
| 11:00
am |
4:00
am |
|
|
San Diego |
Japan |
| 12:00
pm |
5:00
am |
| 1:00
pm |
6:00
am |
| 2:00
pm |
7:00
am |
| 3:00
pm |
8:00
am |
| 4:00
pm |
9:00
am |
| 5:00
pm |
10:00
am |
| 6:00
pm |
11:00
am |
| 7:00
pm |
12:00
pm |
| 8:00
pm |
1:00
pm |
| 9:00
pm |
2:00
pm |
| 10:00
pm |
3:00
pm |
| 11:00
pm |
4:00
pm |
|
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| San Diego to
Japan
Time Differences - DST |
|
San Diego |
Japan |
| 12:00
am |
4:00
pm |
| 1:00
am |
5:00
pm |
| 2:00
am |
6:00
pm |
| 3:00
am |
7:00
pm |
| 4:00
am |
8:00
pm |
| 5:00
am |
9:00
pm |
| 6:00
am |
10:00
pm |
| 7:00
am |
11:00
pm |
| 8:00
am |
12:00
am |
| 9:00
am |
1:00
am |
| 10:00
am |
2:00
am |
| 11:00
am |
3:00
am |
|
|
San Diego |
Japan |
| 12:00
pm |
4:00
am |
| 1:00
pm |
5:00
am |
| 2:00
pm |
6:00
am |
| 3:00
pm |
7:00
am |
| 4:00
pm |
8:00
am |
| 5:00
pm |
9:00
am |
| 6:00
pm |
10:00
am |
| 7:00
pm |
11:00
am |
| 8:00
pm |
12:00
pm |
| 9:00
pm |
1:00
pm |
| 10:00
pm |
2:00
pm |
| 11:00
pm |
3:00
pm |
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|
 Kenmore
Days
I thought it might be nice to put a few thoughts
about my time in Kenmore and Tonawanda. Certainly was fun bowling at MilSher
lanes....seems like that place is still there, although with
a different name. |
 Porter,
New York
This is the area where I am thinking of
purchasing a home. I found a lot of good points about Porter
and the surrounding areas and some things of concern as
well.
The good points of this area include
the following:
Nice homes, large lots (really prefer at least half an
acre), small town feeling, basically secluded which is
something I prefer, especially after spending a couple of
years on this island and a few years in the countryside of
Japan. I also like the close proximity to Canada, and the
possibility of catching salmon.
The not so good points include the
following:
Possibly a fairly old population, making friends for my kids
difficult to find, the difficult climate, and the fact that
any salmon caught are probably contaminated with toxins.
Actually we are not a catch and release family, we are a
catch and eat family, lol. |
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