09.16.2006 - After a long hard day

Hello, internet. I'm sorry I haven't posted for a while, it's just been very difficult to bring myself around to telling stories in the dead of night when I'm too tired from studying to string together sentences in English or Japanese.

But honestly, it isn't that bad. So what have I been doing since last I posted?

Well, a lot of stuff happened. We went to Osaka, but didn't get any good pictures. I think Osaka can be summed up as a mashup between vegas, new york, and toronto, but cleaner that any one of those. The subway stations are just amazingly nice, and the neon lighting is everywhere in many parts of the city. It does take a while to walk around, though. It's almost worth taking the subway one or two stops just to save your feet.

Next time I go I will take many pictures and talk all about everything there is to see.

After that I've been studying, a lot. But I still try to have some time to unwind between study sessions. Writing this blog is one of those times to unwind. There is a lot less pressure to study as well. And even better, this coming monday is a national holiday; which one? Beats me.

Not long ago we went to Besie and I spotted this cute tiny can of coca cola...

(please excuse the imageshack hosting... blogger's image hosting isn't working right now)

And in the middle of the week, in the rain, I rode out to 'Bell Road' which is like the Downtown of Hikone.

And on the way I saw this really cool car.


I should take a moment to comment that most cars in japan are similar to this one. Daihatsu, Honda, Subaru, Toyota and others all make these boxy, thin, tall, short cars with what looks like 12" or smaller wheels. EVERY car in japan has the window shade/rainguard things over their windows. There are SUVs of course, driven by tiny japanese women most of the time. You also see American cars, like the PT Cruiser. Sometimes on big cars, they have additional side view mirrors mounted on the front of the hood. I should get a picture of one of these just so you understand what I'm talking about.

At any rate, bell road is named for the following... bells. Though they're actually lamp-posts.


There is one that is bronzed. I wonder if it is lucky.

While on Bell Road I saw this hobby shop...


Since it said 'Tamiya' on the sign, I though I had better go in and look. It seems like Tamiya is one of the dominant model car makers in Japan, since they had it everywhere.






















Ok, that was a lot of pictures of cars in boxes.

But there were also some oddities, like this, UDON MAN!


Udon is a type of noodle made from buckwheat. It's a japanese noodle, anyways.

I also saw a Jack Skellington model from that movie, The Nightmare Before Christmas.


And this giant Keroro, Life Sized!


Finally after I left there I headed further down the street, past a KFC with a genuine 3/4 scale plastic Colonel Sanders grinning madly in the window... but I didn't take a picture of him.

What I did take pictures of, though, was the Pariya market's Joshin electronics store.



They had this whole wall of TVs showing different channels in the food court, so that everybody could watch what they wanted, I suppose.






It's a much nicer electronics store than the one at Beisie, I think. I got some help from one of the attendants looking at cameras. The one that I'm taking pictures with might seem alright, but it can only hold 38 of its so-so quality pictures and really doesn't like difficult lighting conditions, not to mention that it takes almost 8 seconds to warm up and 4 seconds between pictures.

While I was there I saw this curiousity...



It is a 'riding saddle' that moves in a 'realistic' way just like riding a horse. It is an exercise machine essentially, designed to tone your abs. Japan has many wierd things like this that come into popularity and then fade away, much like we have in America with the thighmaster, nordic track, Ab rocker, and so on. The videos for these things are hilarious in the way that the people enjoy doing these exercises so much, and go from flabby to fit like magic.

After hanging around there for a while and trying to understand the camera salesperson (who eventually told me that they had the Powershot S3 IS in stock and that I could come back to buy it anytime I liked) I headed home.

Another day Don went to the beach with his friend and when he came back he had an assortment of clamshells, including one closed one. "Open it." He tells me, so I look at the shell a bit and then say, "No, it's probably alive, opening it would probably kill it, so let's see if it is still alive." I put the clam into a glass of water on the desk and went back to work, but after a while it started opening up, sticking its foot out and prodding the inside of the glass with it. After this I filled a glass with sand and water, and now we have a pet clam. He's since been upgraded into more spacious accomodations, a round plastic jar.



Don named the clam 'Aizawa,' which also happens to be the name of one of our teachers. I wonder what the teacher would think of a clam being named in his honor...

Well, that's all the news for now. I will try to post on a more daily basis so you get a feel for what my life is like here. Plus I will forget less stuff that way.

Ganbatte!